Dial Up!

The Hmong diaspora broadcasts radio programs run by DJs via conference call — a place where far-flung people can phone in to listen to programs and connect with one another in their own language.

Author: Mia Sato
Source: The Verge
Published: Nov 22, 2019
Length: 15 minutes (3,897 words)

Trump Got His Wall, After All

A small, dedicated crew of hardliners has put up bureaucratic barriers that are far harder to overcome than any hunk of concrete on the southern border.

Published: Nov 24, 2019
Length: 33 minutes (8,300 words)

Gimme Shelter

Wes Enzinna writes about living in a 32-square-foot shack behind a friend’s ex-boyfriend’s house in Oakland in 2016, the year of the Ghost Ship warehouse fire. Struggling to find personal solutions they can afford amidst the country’s worst housing crisis, Enzinna and his friends try to live within their means by downsizing what they need to live, dwelling in dangerous makeshift spaces that threaten their health, well-being, and, when disaster strikes, their lives.

Published: Dec 1, 2019
Length: 32 minutes (8,100 words)

He Said, They Said.

Tony Robbins arrived at the summer camp as a star guest. He left with one accuser, two eyewitnesses, and dozens of others who would remember the day’s dark turn for decades.

Source: BuzzFeed
Published: Nov 22, 2019
Length: 18 minutes (4,500 words)

Sing Across the Ocean

“Ranky Tanky is an ancestral funk band. Their members are variously jazz and gospel trained, but as a collective, ancestral funk is their genre. I know because they start Ranky Tanky, their first album, with horns on the three and four, but Good Time, their second one, released in July, with bass on the one.”

Source: Oxford American
Published: Oct 31, 2019
Length: 26 minutes (6,636 words)

This Is How You Lose Your Mind

In this personal essay, Dani Fleischer recalls how a lifetime of perfectionism led her down a path of self-destruction.

Source: Longreads
Published: Nov 22, 2019
Length: 10 minutes (2,731 words)

The Quiet Rooms

Schools across Illinois have been punishing students by locking them into “seclusion rooms” — essentially putting them into solitary confinement. Schools say the isolated timeouts are a necessary tool to dealing with students who pose a safety threat to themselves or others, but many of the students put in these rooms have disabilities and receive no therapeutic value from being locked away. Not long after this Tribune/ProPublica investigation was published, Illinois took emergency action to end this practice.

Source: Chicago Tribune
Published: Nov 19, 2019
Length: 30 minutes (7,726 words)

Don’t Blame the Internet for New Slang

Language is always changing. Has technology forced it to evolve in new ways?

Source: The Walrus
Published: Sep 10, 2019
Length: 16 minutes (4,039 words)

Her Own Space

“At Hackensack High School in New Jersey, where her family later moved, [Melina] Matsoukas was into photography and hip-hop. At home, she watched the films of Mira Nair, The Color PurpleAll About My MotherThe Royal TenenbaumsWest Side StoryBelly, and her absolute favorite, Julie Dash’s 1991 Daughters of the Dust, an impressionistic movie about three generations of Gullah women on South Carolina’s St. Helena Island. It was also the first feature directed by a black woman to be released widely in theaters. ‘The queen of Black women filmmakers [is] Dash,’ Matsoukas told the website Shadow and Act in August. ‘She was a tremendous influence … on my voice.'”

Published: Nov 18, 2019
Length: 13 minutes (3,478 words)

A Tale of Two Churches

Two pastors—one black, one white—unite their congregations in the heart of Trump country.

Published: Nov 20, 2019
Length: 28 minutes (7,000 words)