A Look Inside the Small U.S. Towns That Will Be Crushed By the Trucking Revolution

“The highway was taken. They killed my business.”

Source: Quartz
Published: Jul 11, 2017
Length: 7 minutes (1,757 words)

The Strange Alienation of Being a Latina Who Loves Hiking

A personal essay about loving hiking as a Latinx — in both Ecuador, where author Amanda Machado’s family members see it as un-classy and unladylike, and the United States, where hiking has largely been the domain of upper-class whites.

Source: Vox
Published: Jul 10, 2017
Length: 11 minutes (2,765 words)

Sacred Architecture

After a friendly Sufi sect decided to build an enormous religious sanctuary east of San Francisco, locals resisted, and nimbyism and misinformation challenged the basic American tenant of freedom of religion.

Source: Fader
Published: Jul 12, 2017
Length: 25 minutes (6,498 words)

My Hundred

Beth Ann Fennelly suggests that to fully embrace the beauty of poetry, one must memorize it. Once committed to memory — a process that gets easier with practice — a poem forever becomes prophylactic against stressful days and lonely times: “We’ve all known solitary confinement. We’ve all inhabited isolation rooms. But the poems we know by heart can visit us there. They arrive as layer cakes, with files baked in.”

Published: Sep 1, 2008
Length: 12 minutes (3,089 words)

Searching London for My Third Place

A personal essay in which Jessica Brown reflects on reading sociologist Ray Oldenburg’s, The Great Good PlaceCafés, Coffee Shops, Bookstores, Bars, Hair Salons and Other Hangouts at the Heart of a Community, and walking the streets of her much gentrified adopted city seeking deeper connection.

Source: Longreads
Published: Jul 18, 2017
Length: 10 minutes (2,605 words)

Youth From Every Quarter

A teacher at an elite boarding school confronts her own confused leap up the ladder of class privilege.

Source: Longreads
Published: Jul 17, 2017
Length: 9 minutes (2,390 words)

Why Are Humans So Curious?

Mario Livio on his new book about human curiosity, his work as an astrophysicist, and why we shouldn’t fear our expanding universe.

Source: Longreads
Published: Jul 18, 2017
Length: 18 minutes (4,600 words)

A Team of Their Own

The players on this all-girls travel baseball team dream big — MLB big.

Source: Bleacher Report
Published: Jul 12, 2017
Length: 13 minutes (3,455 words)

The Alien and Mundane

Tragedy struck, but we’re thinking about our commute. What’s wrong with us? Are we not grieving enough? Or is a return to banalities a healthy sign? A meditation on loss and melancholy.

Source: The Believer
Published: Jun 7, 2017
Length: 11 minutes (2,999 words)

The Unsettled

In Ubud, Indonesia, Jessa Crispin looks at the impact of next-generation expats — Western tech workers and “digital nomads” in search of carefully curated, long-term authenticity.

Source: The Outline
Published: Jul 13, 2017
Length: 15 minutes (3,789 words)