The girl in a box: the mysterious crime that shocked Germany

In 1981, after being missing for 19 days, 10-year-old Ursula Herrmann was found buried in a box measuring 72cm by 60cm – the size of a small coffee table.  So, how did a member of the prosecution team, the victim’s brother, no less, end up acting in favor of the defense?

Author: Xan Rice
Source: The Guardian
Published: Sep 24, 2019
Length: 28 minutes (7,135 words)

Who Chooses

Reckoning with her father’s death left her reckoning with life.

Source: Moss
Published: Feb 25, 2019
Length: 11 minutes (2,953 words)

The Rescue

“A flimsy raft, more than 100 souls, and three teenage heroes—or are they pirates?”

Source: The Atavist
Published: Sep 30, 2019
Length: 28 minutes (7,010 words)

Was It Worth It?

Chanel Miller, Lauren O’Connor, Paula Coughlin, Anthony Rapp, E. Jean Carroll, Barbara Bowman, any many more people — mostly women — who went public about sexual abuse talk about what happens next: moments of empowerment or relief, but many more that were exactly the opposite.

Source: The Cut
Published: Sep 30, 2019
Length: 59 minutes (14,798 words)

McDonald’s CEO Wants Big Macs to Keep Up With Big Tech

The fast food giant is trying to modernize, but do its ambitious automation and data processing plans outstrip its stores’ abilities?

Published: Sep 25, 2019
Length: 13 minutes (3,370 words)

The Sum of Life: Zora Neale Hurston

A new profile of one of America’s most important writers.

Published: Sep 24, 2019
Length: 36 minutes (9,158 words)

To Love and Protect Each Other — From Bigotry

After Jay Deitcher sits silent as his wife is verbally assaulted by his father’s racist friend, he grapples with the ways his family has been muted by trauma.

Source: Longreads
Published: Sep 27, 2019
Length: 10 minutes (2,743 words)

Four Years in Startups

Wiener recalls working for a variety of tech companies earlier this decade, observing the men who ruled Silicon Valley.

Source: The New Yorker
Published: Sep 23, 2019
Length: 29 minutes (7,268 words)

Stories About My Brother

“I was finally becoming the woman I had always wanted to be, but was heartbroken that my brother, the person I loved more than anyone else in the world, seemingly hated that woman… When he died, I believed that I didn’t know the facts of his life well enough to write his obituary. Worse, I feared that he wouldn’t have wanted me to write it. How do you write about someone you loved intensely, but didn’t really like?”

Source: Jezebel
Published: Sep 26, 2019
Length: 27 minutes (6,812 words)

Walking with the Ghosts of Black Los Angeles

“People tend to speak of South Central Los Angeles as a homogenous neighborhood, an undifferentiated community of African Americans wracked by poverty, gang violence, drug use, and general social disorder. In actuality, South Central is not a neighborhood at all, but a massive swath of the city settled by black migrants in the 20th century. It’s a radically horizontal post-industrial landscape where buildings rarely exceed two or three stories and pedestrians find little shelter from the sun. Down Slauson, decommissioned train tracks that once carried freight from the Port to the inner city call to mind the region’s formerly robust economy.”

Source: Literary Hub
Published: Sep 20, 2019
Length: 18 minutes (4,560 words)