Searching for Salvation at Antioch

In this personal essay, Jodi M. Savage remembers her grandmother, a Florida-born Pentecostal preacher, and considers the complicated relationship between black women and the Christian church.

Source: Kweli Journal
Published: Jun 2, 2018
Length: 26 minutes (6,580 words)

Dry, the Beloved Country

Cape Town’s current drought has destroyed farms and the rich’s lush gardens and birthed extreme austerity measures, but could it have long-lasting effects on race relations in this segregated city?

Published: Apr 19, 2018
Length: 27 minutes (6,885 words)

The Tower

In an epic seven-part piece, Andrew O’Hagan writes on the harrowing Grenfell Tower fire that took place in London, England on June 14th, 2017. Telling dozens of individual stories of survivors and victims of the catastrophe, his essay posits that shoddy renovations and a poorly managed fire response that urged residents to “stay put” and wait for rescue — a policy only rescinded until it was too late for residents on the upper floors to evacuate — cost 72 people their lives.

Published: Jun 4, 2018
Length: 240 minutes (60,028 words)

After the Miracle

The Bangalore-based tech company called Infosys employs more people than Facebook and Google combined. It builds and maintains software for large American companies, and it helped build India’s IT industry. Now that industry is bracing for not only massive layoffs, but what the author calls the end of “India’s dominance of IT services”.

Published: May 31, 2018
Length: 19 minutes (4,957 words)

‘This Place Is Crazy’: How America’s Cell Blocks Became Its Psych Wards

Ten of every eleven psychiatric patients housed by the government are incarcerated. Here’s what this crisis looks like from the inside—a series of lost lives and a few rare victories—as reported by a prisoner-journalist.

Source: Esquire
Published: Jun 5, 2018
Length: 21 minutes (5,400 words)

Drawing a Line in the Sand Over River Rights

A four-year battle over a tiny patch of river beach in Northern California Outillustrates the deep divide in how we perceive access rights to public lands

Source: Outside
Published: May 30, 2018
Length: 17 minutes (4,410 words)

Exploring The Digital Ruins Of ‘Second Life’

“I logged into “Second Life” in the year 2018 A.D. It still exists, sort of.”

Author: Joe Veix
Source: digg.com
Published: Jun 5, 2018
Length: 12 minutes (3,000 words)

Bird Flight

Jazz radio host Phil Schaap relishes jazz history on a show whose winding, digressive style is both “exhaustive and exhausting.” Unlike many obsessives, Schaap uses his deep knowledge of mid-century jazz to keep it alive in the collective memory.

Source: The New Yorker
Published: May 19, 2008
Length: 30 minutes (7,720 words)

Barbearians at the Gate

In the tiny anti-authoritarian town of Grafton, New Hampshire, residents have endured encroachment by bold black bears. In a town driven by a sense of liberty, when government agencies won’t protect the people from bears, then the people will protect themselves. But is the problem bold bear behavior or human behavior?

Source: The Atavist
Published: Jun 1, 2018
Length: 37 minutes (9,255 words)

Exodus in the Ozarks

A travel essay in which, at a theater in Branson, Missouri, Pam Mandel finds an unexpected plot twist in a very familiar story.

Author: Pam Mandel
Source: Longreads
Published: Jun 4, 2018
Length: 9 minutes (2,441 words)