The Bicycle Thief

He was an Olympic hopeful in track cycling. Then he was a bank robber, more prolific than Dillinger, with a bright orange getaway bike. And then he was a prisoner, caught by his distinctive wheels.

Published: Jan 29, 2019
Length: 38 minutes (9,675 words)

A Second Passport

In this personal essay, instead of returning home after a trip to Israel like most Birthright tourists do, Pam Mandel goes on to Egypt, and beyond.

Author: Pam Mandel
Source: Longreads
Published: Feb 1, 2019
Length: 14 minutes (3,605 words)

The Family Vice

Tom Junod reflects on his father’s gambling habit: “…he made people think he was a gangster when really he was just a mark.”

Author: Tom Junod
Source: ESPN
Published: Jan 21, 2019
Length: 12 minutes (3,214 words)

A Black Legacy, Wrapped Up in Fur

Jasmine Sanders writes a cultural history of Black women and fur.

Published: Jan 31, 2019
Length: 12 minutes (3,221 words)

Model Metropolis

You probably haven’t read Jay Wright Forrester’s dubious ideas on how cities work (and why they die), but if you played SimCity you’ve had more firsthand experience with them than you realize. Historian of science Kevin T. Baker explains why.

Source: Logic
Published: Jan 30, 2019
Length: 9 minutes (2,377 words)

The Desperado

“Paying for his breakfast would require the last of the cash in his wallet. After that, he had only $1.75 left in a Prosperity Bank checking account, which he’d opened roughly eight years earlier. But Averill wasn’t worried about money. The bank was less than a block away, and when he finished eating he was going to rob it.”

Source: The Atavist
Published: Jan 31, 2019
Length: 39 minutes (9,825 words)

Teaching My Daughter that Love is Love

Vanessa Mártir learns about homophobia as a child but grows up to raise her daughter while in a happy, same-sex relationship.

Source: Washington Post
Published: Jan 30, 2019
Length: 6 minutes (1,507 words)

How a Thirteen-Year-Old Girl Smashed the Gender Divide in American High Schools

Journalist and documentarian — and Stuyvesant High School alumna — Laurie Gwen Shapiro profiles Alice de Rivera, whose 1969 case challenging Stuyvesant to open its enrollment to girls led to so many other male-only secondary schools and colleges to abandon gender-based exclusion.

Source: The New Yorker
Published: Jan 26, 2019
Length: 11 minutes (2,795 words)

Sidney Wants to Be Someone Else

At age 25, Sidney Gilstrap-Portley had enough of his current situation in Dallas, so he became Rashun Richardson, a homeless teenager who escaped Hurricane Harvey. But Gilstrap-Portley’s gift—he was an athletic slasher and scorer on the basketball court—ultimately doomed the facade he tried to build as Richardson.

Published: Jan 23, 2019
Length: 23 minutes (5,990 words)

The Last Fish Shack on the River

For decades, there used to be dozens of fish shakes threaded about the Wilmington River, which cuts through Savannah, GA. Each restaurant offered thriving family-friendly service of seafood plucked fresh from Wilmington’s tidal waters, but each is now gone—except for Desposito’s Seafood Restaurant, a 50-plus year old establishment that is running out of time.

Published: Jan 29, 2019
Length: 14 minutes (3,571 words)