The Legend of Nintendo

How can a perennial blockbuster like Nintendo fall down for more than a century, innovate continuously from that prone position, and rise up, as if on cue, to master the art of fairytale comebacks time and time again? Felix Gillette tries to crack the code behind the gaming giant’s success, which remains as mysterious and unlikely as lucking into a banana bunch in the depths of an abandoned mineshaft.

Published: Jun 21, 2018
Length: 13 minutes (3,349 words)

How I Broke, and Botched, the Brandon Teena Story

Journalist Donna Minkowitz apologizes 25 years after breaking the story of Brandon Teena, transgender murder victim and subject of the film Boys Don’t Cry. Retroactively realizing it was “the most insensitive and inaccurate piece of journalism I have ever written,” Minkowitz examines what she sees now as her own internalized homophobia and ignorance of trans issues. 

Source: Village Voice
Published: Jun 20, 2018
Length: 16 minutes (4,019 words)

A Walk to Kobe

A 6.1 earthquake recently struck Osaka, Japan. In 1997, writer Haruki Murakami walked the long stretch between Kobe’s city center and his childhood home in the outskirts, to see how the great Kobe earthquake changed his hometown. He found not only a foreign landscape, but traces of himself, and the constant echo of violence.

Source: Granta
Published: Aug 6, 2013
Length: 19 minutes (4,893 words)

Putting Enslaved Families’ Stories Back in the Monticello Narrative

Author Andrew M. Davenport highlights how the work of an oral history project, Getting Word, has informed a shift in the visitor experience of Thomas Jefferson’s primary estate, Monticello.

Source: Smithsonian
Published: Jun 14, 2018
Length: 16 minutes (4,226 words)

In Staten Island, a Remote Wilderness Is Threatened by Encroaching Development

On the southern edge of Staten Island lays the undeveloped creeks and woodlands around Sharrotts Shoreline, a rare relict of old New York. It might not be undeveloped for long.

Source: Curbed
Published: May 17, 2018
Length: 8 minutes (2,190 words)

The Future of Castro’s Crocs

Shanna Baker reports on the ongoing bid to preserve C. rhombifer, the breed of Cuban crocodile beloved of Fidel Castro, who was known to send living and embalmed versions of the animal to allies around the world. The Cuban croc is endangered, not only due to shrinking habitat, but also to hybridization as its gene pool gets polluted by natural encounters with the bigger, shyer American crocodile.

Source: Hakai Magazine
Published: Jun 19, 2018
Length: 13 minutes (3,414 words)

This Whippet Is One of the World’s Great Athletes

Christopher Solomon profiles the little-known sport of dock diving and one incredible athlete who already has five world records under his belt, or rather, collar: a 5-year-old whippet named Spitfire, Spitty for short.

Source: Outside
Published: Jun 18, 2018
Length: 7 minutes (1,883 words)

A Woman’s Work: Home Economics* (*I Took Woodworking Instead)

An illustrated personal essay in which New Yorker cartoonist Carolita Johnson tallies the costs and benefits of love and cohabitation as a woman artist living in a patriarchy.

Source: Longreads
Published: Jun 20, 2018
Length: 10 minutes (2,600 words)

Arundhati Roy: ‘The Point of the Writer Is To Be Unpopular’

The acclaimed author answers questions from our readers and famous fans on the state of modern India, the threat of AI, and why sometimes only fiction can fully address the world.

Author: Tim Lewis
Source: The Guardian
Published: Jun 17, 2018
Length: 17 minutes (4,412 words)

Britain Built an Empire Out of Coal. Now It’s Giving It Up. Why Can’t the US?

With little industry pushback, the United Kingdom announced plans to stop burning coal by 2025. Instigated by cultural shifts and a tax on coal usage, an obvious glowing ember remains staunchly reliant upon coal: the United States.

Published: Jun 18, 2018
Length: 10 minutes (2,700 words)