The Blaming of the Shrew

Sara Fredman explore antiheroes of Golden Age television shows — and the nasty women who humanized them.

Source: Longreads
Published: Feb 28, 2019
Length: 11 minutes (2,982 words)

The Minnesota Murderess

“Just as much as the state needed to punish murder, so too did it have to enforce proper womanhood in a rapidly changing social order. Science, journalism, and law, still the dominions of men, were tools for catching bad women and holding them accountable. “

Source: The Atavist
Published: Feb 28, 2019
Length: 39 minutes (9,936 words)

Baring the Bones of the Lost Country: The Last Paleontologist in Venezuela

In light of recent events in crisis-ridden Venezuela, its last vertebrate paleontologist puts together key pieces of the baffling puzzle that the country has become in the past couple of decades.

Author: Zoe Valery
Source: Longreads
Published: Feb 27, 2019
Length: 20 minutes (5,011 words)

Thirteen Ways of Seeing Nature in LA: Part I

A nature writer in Los Angeles tackles her genre’s fundamental problems, which is also the problem of how modern Americans relate to the natural world. And yes, there is nature in L.A.

Source: The Believer
Published: Apr 1, 2006
Length: 19 minutes (4,828 words)

What Remains

As she recalls a trip to Peru, the body of a mummified girl sacrificed for the safety of the Incans over 500 years ago, and the frustrating neurological condition that steals her memory and strength, Jacqueline Alnes mines the topography of female identity and the stereotypes that erode our self image.

Published: Feb 21, 2019
Length: 19 minutes (4,935 words)

A World Without Clouds

Global warming is disastrous, global warming without (or at least with far fewer) clouds would be much worse. Natalie Wolchover speaks to scientists who are studying periods of cloudless warming in the Earth’s past, and simulating what a future where the clouds were to vanish once again would be like.

Source: Quanta Magazine
Published: Feb 25, 2019

The Latest Diet Trend Is Not Dieting

Instead of counting calories and using weight as the barometer of health, intuitive eating encourages people to eat what they want when they feel hungry and dispense with notions of “good” and “bad” food. Guilt and shame only lead to overeating.

Source: The Atlantic
Published: Feb 22, 2019
Length: 9 minutes (2,342 words)

The Trauma Floor

Facebook has thousands of peopleĀ  in contract centers around the world reviewing questionable content. They make a bit above minimum wage to watch people get stabbed or shot, read hate speech, and watch conspiracy theory videos — at massive personal cost and without the support and perks of actually working for Facebook.

Source: The Verge
Published: Feb 25, 2019
Length: 29 minutes (7,435 words)

The Greeter

At age sixteen, the daughter of a wealthy Florida couple with chemical dependencies found herself facing her uncertain future, tangled in a web of trauma, self-harm, sexual objectification, and leaning on her tight relationships with other young women. This essay is part of the author’s forthcoming memoir, Long Live the Tribe of Fatherless Girls.

Published: Feb 23, 2019
Length: 20 minutes (5,238 words)

The Color of Money

After her book, So You Want to Talk About Race, becomes a bestseller, Black author Ijeoma Oluo offers to build her white mother a home with her earnings and learns how race can affect the ways adult children care for their aging parents.

Source: Topic
Published: Feb 19, 2019
Length: 6 minutes (1,706 words)