The Newlyweds

If you’re a young couple looking for a love marriage in India, you could turn to the Love Commandos to perform your marriage ceremony and register your union with the government to make it legal. Beware that in addition to paying an expensive fee, you’ll be expected to clean, cook, run errands, and walk the bomb-sniffing dog at the Love Commando safe house.

Published: Jan 1, 2018
Length: 26 minutes (6,739 words)

Late Nights Online

For people who grew on the early dial-up internet, AOL Instant Messenger offered a safe place to refine their identities as they moved toward their grown-up selves. By the time AIM ended, most users could live all its best parts in real life.

Source: Hazlitt
Published: Dec 15, 2017
Length: 17 minutes (4,427 words)

How Tough Is It to Change a Culture of Harassment? Ask Women at Ford.

A multi-media expose of the ongoing sexual harassment and misconduct toward women at Ford Motor Company. Despite numerous lawsuits filed and settled in the 1990s, a threatening culture has persisted and led to a new round of litigations. Reporters Susan Chira and Catrin Einhorn investigate whether that culture can survive the #MeToo revolution. What will it take to bring down male auto workers, managers and union leaders who have harassed or violated women, in the way that they are being taken down in Hollywood, media, and the food world?

Published: Dec 19, 2017
Length: 21 minutes (5,368 words)

Why Aren’t Fashion ‘Disruptors’ Serving Plus-Size Customers?

Apparently making pants for fat people is so radically difficult from making pants for thin people that it will take years of additional R&D.

Source: Racked
Published: Dec 20, 2017
Length: 11 minutes (2,790 words)

Deliverance From 27,000 Feet

In May 2016, four Bengali mountaineers attempted to achieve a lifelong dream: to summit Mount Everest. After an egregiously late start to their summit attempt, they were abandoned by their guides and left to die on the mountain. Only one survived. John Branch reports on the ill-fated expedition and how a team of sherpas recovered the frozen bodies of Goutam Ghosh and Paresh Nath from 27,000 ft above sea level.

Published: Dec 18, 2017
Length: 55 minutes (13,823 words)

The Secret History of the Russian Consulate in San Francisco

Thanks to ten years of robust and brazen espionage, the US Government closed the Russian Consulate in San Francisco in August, 2017. That’s the short version. The detailed version is far more interesting and terrifying.

Source: Foreign Policy
Published: Dec 14, 2017
Length: 17 minutes (4,403 words)

Estonia, The Digital Republic

To encourage business and save money, this small Baltic nation streamlined itself into a society where all bureaucratic processes, from banking to voting, can be conducted online on one platform, and citizens only need to enter their personal information once, be they physical citizens or e-residents. It sounds like an Orwellian nightmare, but e-Estonia believes it’s the US who has it all wrong.

Source: The New Yorker
Published: Dec 18, 2017
Length: 30 minutes (7,630 words)

A Fleeting Resource: In Praise of the Cold

Miranda Weiss on moving to Alaska — 3,000 miles away from her parents — and choosing to stay there.

Source: LitHub
Published: Dec 4, 2017
Length: 15 minutes (3,858 words)

In Praise of Cowardice

A humorous personal essay in which Emily Meg Weinstein considers the ways in which her grandfather’s less than heroic choices in love and war led to her existence.

Source: Longreads
Published: Dec 18, 2017
Length: 22 minutes (5,522 words)

Mimi O’Donnell Reflects on the Loss of Philip Seymour Hoffman and the Devastation of Addiction

Mimi O’Donnell reflects on Phillip Seymour Hoffman, his very public death via overdose, and overcoming loss as a family of four.

Source: Vogue
Published: Dec 13, 2017
Length: 15 minutes (3,784 words)