On Being Smaller

Colin Gillis finds both joy and an unexpected sadness after losing one-third of his body weight.

Published: Jul 18, 2017
Length: 6 minutes (1,574 words)

Class Dismissed

Here’s what has happened as Arizona continues to reduce funding for public education. Here’s what will happen if other states follow suit.

Published: Aug 17, 2017
Length: 24 minutes (6,131 words)

Turn On, Tune In, Drop by the Office

Emma Hogan reports that in Silicon Valley, microdosing LSD is the new “body-hacking” tool everyone from engineers to CEOs are using to boost productivity and creativity. Interestingly, while apparently everyone is doing it, users are reluctant to have their real names appear in print. Psychedelic secrets, man! Peace out.

Author: Emma Hogan
Source: 1843
Published: Aug 31, 2017
Length: 11 minutes (2,790 words)

In a Swimming Pool, Learning to Trust

A personal essay in which Matt Grant details how he learned to trust himself as a swimming teacher as he taught students of all ages to trust the water. He learns the most from a particularly frightened, challenging young student named Jacob.

Author: Matt Grant
Source: Longreads
Published: Aug 21, 2017
Length: 14 minutes (3,550 words)

Pregnant, then Ruptured

In this personal essay, Joanna Petrone recalls the medical abortion for an ectopic pregnancy that led to the rupturing of one of her fallopian tubes, followed by emergency surgery. She also reflects on the kinds of legislation that can — and has — kept women from being able to terminate life-threatening pregnancies like hers.

Source: Longreads
Published: Aug 18, 2017
Length: 30 minutes (7,729 words)

A Presumption of Guilt

Bryan Stevenson examines the connection between the modern day death penalty and lynchings of the 19th and 20th centuries.

Published: Jul 13, 2017
Length: 13 minutes (3,467 words)

The Rise of the Valkyries

53 percent of white women voted for Trump, Lara Lokteff reminds her audience. “And, I guess, to be really edgy, it was women that got Hitler elected.” Lokteff, the “queen bee” of the alt-right, is on a mission to remind these women that they are first and foremost, white. “When women get involved,” she declares, “a movement becomes a serious threat.”

Published: Aug 14, 2017
Length: 30 minutes (7,500 words)

Song of Songs

Examining the music of the female orgasm and the orgasmic language of music.

Source: The Believer
Published: Aug 11, 2017
Length: 21 minutes (5,322 words)

The White Lies of Craft Culture

How the artisanal-food movement has built its success by appropriating — and erasing — the labor of people of color.

Source: Eater
Published: Aug 17, 2017
Length: 11 minutes (2,886 words)

What Thomas Jefferson Taught Me About Charlottesville, and America

A personal essay in which Joshua Adams, a Black graduate of the University of Virginia, traces the roots of the recent racist attack there back to UVA’s problematic but venerated founder, Thomas Jefferson.

Source: Longreads
Published: Aug 17, 2017
Length: 11 minutes (2,840 words)