Can A.I. Usher in a New Era of Hyper-Personalized Food?

Think beer and snacks as unique as your fingerprint, and a future where your food knows more about you.

Published: May 14, 2018
Length: 19 minutes (4,923 words)

Do You Know Where Your Healing Crystals Come From?

Healing crystals are now a multi-billion dollar industry. But if people want to use crystal energy to heal yourself and the planet, they should demand greater transparency about their crystals’ sourcing.

Published: May 11, 2018
Length: 8 minutes (2,147 words)

A True (Non-Hierarchical, Shared) Love

In this personal essay, Journalist Mithila Phadke navigates polyamory while falling in love for the first time.

Source: Longreads
Published: May 14, 2018
Length: 12 minutes (3,006 words)

The Trip of a Lifetime

In the context of some recent reads on psychedelic drugs, Laura Miller looks at Michael Pollan’s new book, How to Change Your Mind: What the New Science of Psychedelics Teaches Us About Consciousness, Dying, Addiction, Depression, and Transcendence. In it, Pollan says that drugs such as psilocybin and LSD got a bad rap after some flawed scientific experimentation and images of burned-out, ’60s counter-culture hippies soured Americans on exploring the medical benefits these drugs might offer, suggesting that their mind-altering abilities might help free us from cognitive patterns that are holding us back.

Source: Slate
Published: May 14, 2018
Length: 9 minutes (2,320 words)

The Man Who Lives Inside His Dreams

Grief takes many forms. In this case, an art house and a place to share stories.

Author: Joe Zadeh
Source: Vice Magazine
Published: May 9, 2018
Length: 22 minutes (5,694 words)

Why Buying a House Today Is So Much Harder Than in 1950

The 2017 National Home Price Index increased at twice the rate of income growth, further tightening an already difficult housing market, especially for Millenials. But it was past racist policies, government intervention and once-abundant land that helped put home-ownership beyond many people’s reach.

Source: Curbed
Published: Apr 10, 2018
Length: 10 minutes (2,581 words)

Missing Hope: A Trio of Miscarriages, and What Happened After

“I have been afraid most days of my life, which is what anxiety is, and the months of this pregnancy have been the most anxious of my life.”

Source: Catapult
Published: May 8, 2018
Length: 14 minutes (3,613 words)

The Moral Cost of Cats

Pete Marra, head of the Smithsonian Migratory Bird Center, is pushing a controversial conservation idea: that as the single-biggest man-made danger to bird and small mammal populations in the United States, outdoor and feral cat populations should be controlled, either by keeping pets inside, or by euthanasia and sterilize-and-return programs.

Source: Smithsonian
Published: Sep 20, 2016
Length: 15 minutes (3,772 words)

(MORE) Guided Journalists During the 1970s Media Crisis of Confidence

Before Gawker there was MORE, a scrappy magazine of media criticism that wanted to hold journalists feet to the flames: “It questioned the objectivity that the New York press had long held onto. And it ended up chronicling one of the most eventful and transformative decades in American journalism.”

Published: May 10, 2018
Length: 12 minutes (3,200 words)

Four Women Accuse New York’s Attorney General of Physical Abuse

Eric Schneiderman, as the head of law enforcement in New York State, used his position of power to become a voice for the #MeToo movement. But behind closed doors, his treatment of women was abusive and physically disturbing. Schneiderman resigned three hours after this story was published.

Source: The New Yorker
Published: May 11, 2018
Length: 24 minutes (6,100 words)