My Semester With the Snowflakes

A 52-year-old former Naval officer enrolls as an undergraduate at Yale, alongside a primarily 18- to 22-year-old student body. Contrary to what his contemporaries expect, in the midst of tackling complicated ideas with his classmates, despite their differences, he finds he has great respect for his them — and they have great respect for him.

Source: GEN
Published: Dec 21, 2019
Length: 10 minutes (2,550 words)

The Hacker Who Took Down a Country

“Daniel Kaye, also known as Spdrman, found regular jobs tough but corporate espionage easy. He’s about to get out of prison.”

Published: Dec 20, 2019
Length: 21 minutes (5,297 words)

Nevertheless, They Persisted

The EPA approved a plan to pump enormous amounts of fracking wastewater under a rural Pennsylvania township, potentially poisoning residents’ groundwater and ruining their health and property values. The township has no public water service, only private wells. In opposition, residents created a Community Bill of Rights stating that “all residents of Grant Township, along with natural communities and ecosystems within the Township, possess the right to clean air, water, and soil.”

Source: Sierra Magazine
Published: Dec 17, 2019
Length: 14 minutes (3,615 words)

The Christmas Tape

Wendy McClure recounts how an old audio tape of holiday music becomes a record of family history, unspoken rituals, and grief.

Source: Longreads
Published: Dec 23, 2019
Length: 18 minutes (4,618 words)

Collision Course

Nobody on the 8,300 ton destroyer USS John S. McCain — not even the captain — really understood how to use the new touch-screen steering system the navy installed in a bid to reduce the number of sailors required to safely guide the ship. Fraught with “false alarms” and problems, engineers called the system, which regularly encountered “multiple and cascading failures,” unstable. Then, the navy blamed Captain Sanchez and the sailors steering the ship for the accident in which 10 sailors died.

Source: ProPublica
Published: Dec 20, 2019
Length: 26 minutes (6,611 words)

An Addict, a Nurse, and a Christmas Resurrection

Working the night shift on an intensive care unit, Suzanne Ohlmann brushes up against death, Jesus, and her biological father.

Source: Longreads
Published: Dec 20, 2019
Length: 16 minutes (4,121 words)

Snow machines and fleece blankets: inside the ski industry’s battle with climate change

Each snowmaking machine uses around the same energy as a boiler in a family home — but are they the answer to saving our retreating glaciers?

Source: The Guardian
Published: Dec 19, 2019
Length: 16 minutes (4,110 words)

History’s Largest Mining Operation Is About To Begin

“Life could appear in perfect darkness, in blistering heat and a broth of noxious compounds — an environment that would extinguish every known creature on Earth.” Life has been discovered at the deepest depths of the ocean, but is it under threat from mining?

Source: The Atlantic
Published: Dec 18, 2019
Length: 28 minutes (7,094 words)

Chuck Coma Comes Home

Every year, thousands of people are assaulted in federal prisons and left to deal with their trauma. Chuck Coma, a two-time combat veteran incarcerated for armed robbery, was nearly killed by his cellmate. When he was eventually released, Chuck returned home unable to remember years of his life and suffering from uncontrollable tremors.

Published: Dec 17, 2019
Length: 18 minutes (4,600 words)

The Art of Dying

In this long, kitchen-sink essay, long-time New Yorker writer and art critic Peter Schjeldahl reveals that he is dying of lung cancer. He poignantly looks back at his life and career, and his history as a smoker.

Source: The New Yorker
Published: Dec 16, 2019
Length: 37 minutes (9,282 words)