Directions to Brooklyn

On the way from the old Brooklyn to the new, branded, post-industrial Brooklyn, the city got lost.

Source: Places
Published: Jun 26, 2018
Length: 31 minutes (7,825 words)

Letters from Trenton

While striving to become a travel writer in the years after Watergate, Thomas Swick discovered that although writing for a newspaper was educational, there was more to be learned through romance with a foreigner.

Source: Longreads
Published: Jul 5, 2018
Length: 19 minutes (4,829 words)

Reversed Aging, Pig Organs, and the Future of Humankind

Predictions for the future of gene therapy as told by the “God” of geneticists, George Church.

Source: Medium
Published: Jul 2, 2018
Length: 11 minutes (2,974 words)

The Counterfeit Queen of Soul

In the 1960s, Mary Jane Jones modeled herself after Aretha Franklin, but she had the emotion and range of an original soul singer. After a crooked James Brown impersonator forced her to perform as Franklin, she got famous from her own talent, until she gave up show bizness to raise her sons.

Author: Jeff Maysh
Source: Smithsonian
Published: Jul 1, 2018
Length: 17 minutes (4,499 words)

Summer of Rage: White Men are the Minority in the United States — No Wonder They Get Uncomfortable When Their Power is Challenged

The rights and priorities of white men in our country have always overshadowed those of people of color and women. It is, however, a ruling minority situation as white men make up only a third of the population. With shifting demographics and destabilizing movements like #metoo, the ruling minority seeks to minimize and discredit their disruptors because they know what they are: real threats to their long-lasting hegemony.

Source: The Cut
Published: Jun 29, 2018
Length: 11 minutes (2,880 words)

That Night, It Never Ends: A Story of Life With or Without Parole

Denied parole, a convicted murderer serving a life sentence challenged Rhode Island’s state parole laws, claiming they should have considered his age as a mitigating factor, and that he should now be offered parole. His case raises many questions: Shouldn’t the people convicted as children be offered parole as conscientious adults? Is it really fair to charge juvenile offenders as adults? Here’s a portrait of what rehabilitation looks like.

Published: Jun 28, 2018
Length: 36 minutes (9,190 words)

Sweetness Mattered

A small romantic gesture, even though unrequited, helped the author recover from a violent teenage assault.

Source: Tin House
Published: Jun 27, 2018
Length: 14 minutes (3,575 words)

Rejected by A.A.

Is the 12 Step program’s decades-old philosophy exacerbating the opioid crisis by discouraging medication-assisted treatment like methodone?

Published: Jun 27, 2018
Length: 19 minutes (4,945 words)

‘It’s nothing like a broken leg’: why I’m done with the mental health conversation

Hannah Jane Parkinson responds to so many empty refrains encouraging mentally ill patients to just ask for help, a beyond frustrating suggestion “when you’ve been asking for help and not getting it.”

Source: The Guardian
Published: Jun 30, 2018
Length: 14 minutes (3,513 words)

Ordinary Person, Wild Radical

Seventeen years before the Stonewall Riots, Dale Jennings proclaimed to a California court that he was a homosexual. It was the first glimmer of a civil rights revolution.

Source: The Atavist
Published: Jun 29, 2018
Length: 42 minutes (10,666 words)