On Randy Travis’s Distinctive Whine

As one Tennessee native’s parents taught him, nobody respects a whiner, so how did his favorite country singer get away with it?

Published: Jan 8, 2019
Length: 8 minutes (2,096 words)

Learning to Forgive My Distant Father

In an excerpt from his book, The Organist: Fugues, Fatherhood, and a Fragile Mind, Mark Abley deconstructs the pipe organ, examining its components, appearance in history and popular culture, and its powerful capacity for meaning via sound as he recounts his distant father Harry’s obsession with the instrument and with musical composition and arrangement — often at a cost to his personal relationships.

Author: Mark Abley
Source: The Walrus
Published: Jan 18, 2019
Length: 13 minutes (3,383 words)

The Secrets of Lyndon Johnson’s Archives

Robert Caro describes how he started researching and reporting his multi-volume biography of Lyndon B. Johnson in an excerpt from his forthcoming book, Working: Researching, Interviewing, Writing.

Source: The New Yorker
Published: Jan 21, 2019
Length: 45 minutes (11,432 words)

The Immigrant on My Couch

As a result of Trump-era immigration policies, fewer highly skilled and educated legal immigrants — like 26-year-old Akirt Sridharan from India — are being hired by U.S. companies despite their qualifications.

Published: Jan 19, 2019
Length: 22 minutes (5,609 words)

Lightning, Struck: How an Atlanta Neighborhood Died on the Altar of Super Bowl Dreams

Thirty years ago, the entire community of Lightning, in Atlanta’s west side, was destroyed to build the Georgia Dome. This oral history, told by the residents that were displaced, compiles the stories and memories of a long-gone neighborhood.

Author: Max Blau
Published: Jan 22, 2019
Length: 32 minutes (8,051 words)

Can a California Town Move Back From the Sea?

By 2050, the ocean is expected to consistently flood Imperial Beach, California, but in recent years, high tides have already flooded many streets. The town is now discussing how to confront rising sea levels. One tactic is called a managed retreat, and the discussion alone has many property owners trying to sell.

Published: Oct 15, 2018
Length: 16 minutes (4,145 words)

Warren Jeffs’ Polygamist Cult Once Controlled This Town. Now It’s Launching a Democracy From Scratch

Disputed propane tanks, magic rocks, Christmas carols, and a former-fundamentalist, female mayor: things are changing in Hildale, Utah, home of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints

Source: Daily Beast
Published: Jan 19, 2019
Length: 24 minutes (6,235 words)

Reefer Madness 2.0: What Marijuana Science Says, and Doesn’t Say

Fear-mongering through data (or a lack thereof): on Alex Berenson, Malcolm Gladwell, and “what happens when tidy narratives outrun the science.”

Source: Undark
Published: Jan 21, 2019
Length: 7 minutes (1,969 words)

Traveling While Black Across the Atlantic Ocean

In this personal essay, following in the footsteps of African Americans traveling to Denmark in the early 20th century, Ethelene Whitmire experiences a 21st century transatlantic crossing.

Source: Longreads
Published: Jan 22, 2019
Length: 18 minutes (4,642 words)

Frosted Glass

“Eloisa acted like she knew more than her mother, even though she’d been handed everything in life. Even though she’d never had to scrounge and save and claw her way through these Broken English streets to finally arrive in Miami’s suburbs. Eloisa didn’t have to force her mouth into unnatural shapes to curve around impossible words like turtle, like cinnamon. English spilled out of Eloisa’s mouth like a newborn baby, slippery and loud and unafraid to announce its existence.”

Source: Iowa Review
Published: Jan 7, 2019
Length: 15 minutes (3,867 words)