Who Do You Want Elisabeth Moss to Be?

As the first season of the television adaptation of The Handmaid’s Tale wraps up, author Emily Gould profiles Elisabeth Moss, the show’s star and executive producer. Gould manages to draw Moss out out a bit on topics the actress is famous for being tight-lipped about, including the book and show’s feminist messages, and how her upbringing in the Church of Scientology might square with Margaret Atwood’s story of religious oppression.

Source: Elle
Published: Jun 7, 2017
Length: 13 minutes (3,453 words)

Twelve Seconds of Gunfire

The shooting at the elementary school lasted just 12 seconds, but the damaging effect it had on a group of first-graders continues to endure months later.

Source: Washington Post
Published: Jun 9, 2017
Length: 19 minutes (4,946 words)

A Voice for the Voiceless

Poet Charles Simic celebrates the late Philip Levine, a working class writer from Jewish Detroit who spoke for the middle class and saw the extraordinary in ordinary life. It’s refreshing to talk about poetry instead of Trump sometimes.
Published: Jun 22, 2017
Length: 13 minutes (3,345 words)

Welcome to Chef Jordan Kahn’s Anti-Locavore Fine-Dining Spaceship

As many chefs focus on local foods, Jordan Kahn in Los Angeles sources in a galaxy far, far away to create a futuristic, immersive, all-consuming experience.

Source: GQ
Published: Jun 7, 2017
Length: 6 minutes (1,619 words)

The Word Is ‘Nemesis’: The Fight to Integrate the National Spelling Bee

For talented black spellers in the 1960s, the segregated local spelling bee was the beginning and the end of the long road to Washington, D.C.
Source: Longreads
Published: Jun 5, 2017
Length: 11 minutes (2,900 words)

Welcome to Refugee High

Chicago Magazine writer Elly Fishman spent several months at Sullivan High School in Chicago, where 40 languages are spoken, 35 countries are represented, nearly half of the students were born outside of the U.S. and 89 of the students accepted this year were refugees. Fishman’s story offers both a snapshot into the experiences of these students at a time when their host country is sharply divided over how to treat them, and a primer on how, after years of decline, a local school reinvented itself by adopting a new mission: becoming a haven for refugee youth.

Published: Jun 7, 2017
Length: 20 minutes (5,000 words)

The Art of Difference

With the publication of two books and new gallery showings featuring photographer Diane Arbus, Hilton Als explores her work, writings, artistic motivation, and her uncanny ability to capture on film the humanity of the “freaks” — the marginalized people — who were the subjects of her work.

Author: Hilton Als
Published: Jun 8, 2017
Length: 17 minutes (4,301 words)

America’s Hidden H.I.V. Epidemic

Ground zero in the AIDS crisis happened on June 5th, 1981, when the C.D.C.’s Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report identified five cases of pneumocystis pneumonia (PCP) in previously healthy white men in Los Angeles. The sixth case — a gay African-American man who had contracted PCP and cytomegalovirus — went undocumented and that critical omission has had a horrific ripple effect in the Southern United States where the “Centers for Disease Control and Prevention…predicted that if current rates continue, one in two African-American gay and bisexual men will be infected with the virus.”

Published: Jun 6, 2017
Length: 36 minutes (9,168 words)

Weddings of the 0.01 Percent

The big, expensive wedding isn’t just about an ostentatious display of wealth—it’s about service. The weddings of the ultra-rich are about the the creation of an entire experience, from the moment you step off the private jet onto a flower-covered personal island, to the final sip of Dom Perignon on a a Mediterranean balcony. Throw in enough money, you might get social media coverage as well.

Source: Racked
Published: Jun 7, 2017
Length: 26 minutes (6,600 words)

How Korea Got Cool

As tensions rise between North Korea and the United States, one British journalist’s books offer a look at neighboring South Korea across the scope of nearly 40 years, and show the country’s meteoric rise from third world economy to one of the most vigorous, proudest, coolest nations on earth.

Published: May 24, 2017
Length: 6 minutes (1,641 words)