The Uncertain Future of Your Neighborhood Dry Cleaner

Startups are disrupting New York’s dry-cleaning industry and threatening the welfare of the Korean-Americans who have thrived in the industry since the 1970s. One thing startups can’t provide, though, is quality.

Author: Sunny Lee
Source: The Outline
Published: Oct 1, 2019
Length: 9 minutes (2,284 words)

Why We Need a Working-Class Media

“…the working class constitutes 62 percent of the U.S. labor force. I want a prominent media home that reflects our size and heterogeneity. I want stories about wealth as opposed to income inequality and its effect on intergenerational and social mobility. I want stories that aren’t just about our problems, but that are also told by, for, and with us. We are civic participants who matter. I want us to set the terms of debate.”

Source: Dissent
Published: Oct 7, 2019
Length: 8 minutes (2,105 words)

I Was Flying to Montana to Bury My Son

On a plane ride over the Mountain West, a grieving father retraces his adventurous youth and searches for solace in the rugged landscapes that molded him.

Source: Outside
Published: Sep 30, 2019
Length: 8 minutes (2,200 words)

The Black Cube Chronicles

While investigating allegations of sexual-assault against Harvey Weinstein, Ronan Farrow was surveilled by an Israeli private-intelligence agency called Black Cube. Agents from Black Cube tried to get close with Farrow and other journalists looking into Weinstein — as well as several women who were planning on coming forward with their stories — in an attempt to suppress the allegations. An excerpt from Farrow’s book, Catch and Kill: Lies, Spies, and a Conspiracy to Protect Predators.

Source: The New Yorker
Published: Oct 7, 2019
Length: 42 minutes (10,500 words)

The End of Silence

Noise is never just about sound; it is inseparable from issues of power and powerlessness. It is a violation we can’t control and to which, because of our anatomy, we cannot close ourselves off. “We have all thought of killing our neighbors at some point,” a soft-spoken scientist researching noise abatement told me.

Source: The Atlantic
Published: Oct 10, 2019
Length: 35 minutes (8,800 words)

The Serial Killer of Laredo

“Last September, law enforcement officers were confounded by a murderer targeting prostitutes along the border. As the investigation intensified, they discovered that the killer had been hiding in plain sight.”

Source: Texas Monthly
Published: Sep 18, 2019
Length: 26 minutes (6,543 words)

This economist has a plan to fix capitalism. It’s time we all listened

Mariana Mazzucato, author of The Value of Everything and “one of the most influential economists in the world,” first set out to rewrite a narrative of corporate innovation that omitted the role of the state’s early investments in risk-taking. Now the European Parliament has just approved Mazzucato’s proposal for Horizon Europe, a set of concrete, measurable policies designed to invest heavily in moonshot solutions in five defined mission areas: “adaptation to climate change; cancer; healthy oceans, seas, coastal and inland waters; climate-neutral and smart cities; and soil health and food.”

Source: Wired UK
Published: Oct 8, 2019
Length: 17 minutes (4,394 words)

The Obamanauts

“In retrospect, it seems obvious that such a smallness of vision could never withstand the largeness of the right. But, for Obama, opposing largeness with smallness was the point.”

Source: Dissent
Published: Oct 6, 2019
Length: 23 minutes (5,928 words)

Meeting My Third Family

An only child — and the daughter of two only children who died young — Margot Livesey grew up knowing none of her other relatives and adopting a nearby family as her own. Recently, though, DNA testing led her to take a trip to Australia, where she met relatives from her mother’s side, and learned a secret about her maternal grandmother’s parentage. In this moving personal essay, she muses about the differences between adopted family and those to whom we are connected by blood, and finding fragments of ourselves in those who share our genes.

Source: Catapult
Published: Oct 8, 2019
Length: 19 minutes (4,840 words)

Signs and Wonders

Obsessed with standing at the geographic center of the U.S. in Lebanon, Kansas, a curious adventurer drives 2,000 miles alone on U. S. Route 83, despite peoples’ warnings. Why? Even he wondered. “Maybe this trip is not the best idea I ever had,” he thought. “What is the best idea I ever had? How good was the best idea I ever had? Have I already had the best idea I’m ever going to have?” This is a journey through America as much as through his own psyche.

Source: Esquire
Published: May 1, 2017
Length: 21 minutes (5,331 words)