The Mister Rogers No One Saw

As Jeanne Marie Laskas remembers her friendship with Fred Rogers, she recalls his obsession with “the meager and the marginalized,” the universal human need to create, and his firm belief that what’s most essential about us as humans is invisible to the eye.

Published: Nov 19, 2019
Length: 28 minutes (7,212 words)

Inside the Toxic Culture of the Nike Oregon Project ‘Cult’

Mary Cain was a promising distance running star when she began training under the revered Nike Oregon Project long-distance team. But Mary says that the team’s coach, Alberto Salazar, often publicly berated her for her weight, causing her to develop disordered eating and spiral into self-harm. Several former Nike Oregon Project members have come forward to validate Cain’s allegations of abuse.

Published: Nov 13, 2019
Length: 15 minutes (3,772 words)

My Brown Dad Voted for Trump

A personal essay in which Anjoli Roy struggles to understand the conservative father she dearly loves.

Author: Anjoli Roy
Source: Longreads
Published: Nov 20, 2019
Length: 27 minutes (6,945 words)

‘If Andrew Yang Can Unite a YouTube Comment Section, He Can Unite the Nation’

“Yang very much wants to be president, and he’s got a plan to do it that’s both modern in design and relatively straightforward. He also has hats.”

Source: GEN
Published: Nov 19, 2019
Length: 21 minutes (5,341 words)

How The Kremlin’s Assassins Sowed Terror Through The Streets Of London While British Authorities Scrambled To Stop Them

In this adaptation from her new book, From Russia with Blood: The Kremlin’s Ruthless Assassination Program and Vladimir Putin’s Secret War on the West, Heidi Blake reports on Scotland Yard’s attempts to maintain the safety of Boris Berezovsky, a Russian oligarch living in Britain. From a poison factory, to a multitude of hired assassins, it seems Vladimir Putin will stop at nothing to silence his most vocal critics.

Source: BuzzFeed
Published: Nov 19, 2019
Length: 21 minutes (5,384 words)

The Grocery Store Where Politics Meets Produce

It’s not the first piece written about the Park Slope Food Coop, but it is the most candid yet loving — an ode to the people who make it the combination oasis of equality and den of drama that it is.

Source: The New Yorker
Published: Nov 18, 2019
Length: 29 minutes (7,405 words)

Portrait of the Artist: An Oral History of David Berman at UVA

The lead singer of the band Silver Jews was renowned for his music, but he was also an accomplished writer and visual artist. This is the story of his formative years, as told by friends and collaborators, many who learned how to live life as a creative person from Berman’s energetic example.

Source: UVA Today
Published: Nov 14, 2019
Length: 13 minutes (3,477 words)

The Homeownership Obsession

Writer Katy Kelleher, whose work explores the ugly history of beautiful things, turns her attention to the ugly history of homeownership — and why the manmade dream of owning a home haunts so many prospective homebuyers.

Source: Curbed
Published: Nov 13, 2019
Length: 17 minutes (4,490 words)

I Bought an Elephant to Find Out How to Save Them

At a time of unprecedented mass extinctions, no animal epitomizes the global biodiversity free fall more than the Asian elephant. Paul Kvinta travels to Laos to visit a moon-shot project aimed at saving the country’s 400 remaining wild behemoths, investigate the strange underworld of wildlife trafficking—and make a very unexpected purchase.

Source: Outside
Published: Nov 12, 2019
Length: 29 minutes (7,300 words)

‘American Horror Story’: The Prison Voices you Don’t Hear from Have the Most to Tell Us

The Montgomery Advertiser interviewed more than two dozen inmates in the Alabama correction system, all of whom report extreme routine violence and “unhinged” drug-induced behavior among some inmates — often against elderly and vulnerable members of the prison population. Rehabilitation is impossible, they say with little access to programs, while guards remain indifferent at best, refusing to enforce prison rules, or at worst, helping to perpetrate heinous acts.

Published: Nov 13, 2019
Length: 30 minutes (7,590 words)