The Uncounted

A multi-media investigative report on the vast discrepancy between the actual number of Iraqi civilians killed by American-led coalition airstrikes against ISIS, and the number the coalition itself reports. In addition to uncovering likely truer math — for instance, while the coalition says 1 in 157 air strikes have killed civilians, reporters Azmat Khan and Anand Gopal claim the ratio is more like 1 in 5, a rate 31 percent higher — the report puts human faces on the air strikes’ victims and survivors. Threaded through the reporting is the story of Basim Razzo — who survived a September, 2015 strike on his home and his brother’s adjacent home that killed his wife, daughter, brother and nephew — and his endeavors to get the coalition to stop denying it had struck his home after mistaking it for ISIS headquarters. Included alongside the article are photographs and videos telling the stories of other strikes, their victims, and survivors.

Published: Nov 16, 2017
Length: 46 minutes (11,576 words)

Inside the All-Consuming World of Paw Patrol

How six animated pups conquered the psyche of the toughest demographic out there: preschoolers.

Source: The Walrus
Published: Nov 1, 2017
Length: 10 minutes (2,721 words)

I Think, Therefore I Am Getting the Goddamned Epidural

On midwives, metaphysics, and intensely natural births.

Source: Longreads
Published: Nov 21, 2017
Length: 15 minutes (3,989 words)

Why Ageism Never Gets Old

Tad Friend takes a look at the ways in which ageism is perpetuated in a variety of fields, particularly tech, where rapid-fire advances in technology keep rendering obsolete the knowledge and skills of those who are older.

Author: Tad Friend
Source: The New Yorker
Published: Nov 20, 2017
Length: 18 minutes (4,530 words)

Why My Family Takes a Thanksgiving Vow of Silence

A personal essay in which Nina Coomes recalls her family’s tradition of extreme unplugging — no reading, talking, using digital devices — while taking silent retreats at a Catholic seminary each Thanksgiving.

Source: Catapult
Published: Nov 22, 2017
Length: 6 minutes (1,533 words)

On Being Midwestern: The Burden of Normality

When one man moves back to Michigan, he struggles to reconcile the region’s sense of self with the identity he sees, and what effect being “normal” might have on people.

Published: Nov 1, 2017
Length: 21 minutes (5,376 words)

Rise of the Robots

Driving trucks is the second most popular job for Canadian men, now autonomous truck technology threatens to put many out of work. Having seen automation replace bank tellers and elevator operators, some drivers are planning ahead for a driverless future.

Source: The Walrus
Published: Nov 14, 2017
Length: 22 minutes (5,580 words)

What Do We Do with the Art of Monstrous Men?

We is an escape hatch. We is cheap. We is a way of simultaneously sloughing off personal responsibility and taking on the mantle of easy authority.”

Published: Nov 20, 2017
Length: 20 minutes (5,175 words)

How to Say You Maybe Don’t Want to Be Married Anymore

In this personal essay, Sarah Bregel takes a close look at her marriage after two kids, and wonders, how hard is too hard to keep going?

Source: Longreads
Published: Nov 20, 2017
Length: 10 minutes (2,671 words)

Bumpy Ride: Why America’s Roads Are in Tatters

“Roads symbolize one of the fundamental contracts between a government and its citizens,” Dale Maharidge reports in Harper’s Magazine, with support from the Economic Hardship Reporting Project. “If the roads are failing, it means government is failing.”

Published: Nov 1, 2017
Length: 12 minutes (3,000 words)