Thank You, Jon Gnagy: An Appreciation of a Predecessor to Bob Ross

Ned Stuckey-French reflects on the host of “Learn to Draw,” the “middlebrow” instructional art show he loved as a kid.

Source: Longreads
Published: Nov 22, 2016
Length: 8 minutes (2,204 words)

Orlando: The Day After

“It keeps happening, at an unpredictable frequency and with its own malevolent rhythm, because June 12 isn’t when it happened. That’s just when the shooting stopped.” Sean Flynn explores what happened in the days, weeks, and months after the Pulse nightclub shooting in Orlando.

Author: Sean Flynn
Source: GQ
Published: Nov 22, 2016
Length: 18 minutes (4,722 words)

Dark Meat

An unflinching look at the grueling, dangerous work of the poultry workers who process millions of turkeys ahead of Thanksgiving.

Source: Slate
Published: Nov 21, 2016
Length: 14 minutes (3,566 words)

A Story of Racial Cleansing in America

Why did the forced removal of African Americans seem so plausible in Forsyth County, Georgia in 1912? Was it because it had all happened before?

Published: Nov 21, 2016
Length: 18 minutes (4,588 words)

Fine Dining

One New Orleans man reflects on the many unflattering racial layers of life of his city. “There are four of us. Four African Americans out of 280. One from a class of the early eighties. Two from the nineties. And me representing the 2000s.”

Source: VQR
Published: Oct 1, 2016
Length: 16 minutes (4,211 words)

Tim Robbins’s Prison Improv Classes Make Inmates Less Likely to Re-Offend

A look at the Actors Gang Prison Project, an improv workshop actors Tim Robbins and Sabra Williams have been leading for inmates for ten years, which has been shown to reduce recidivism rates.

Published: Nov 14, 2016
Length: 8 minutes (2,092 words)

Chris Kraus, Female Antihero

Almost 20 years after the release of I Love Dick—her autobiographical novel about a married woman filmmaker’s unrequited obsession with a critic—Chris Kraus has become an antihero for a new audience of readers, and watchers of Jill Solloway’s adaptation for Amazon Prime.

Source: The New Yorker
Published: Nov 14, 2016
Length: 11 minutes (2,917 words)

The Barnacle Queens of the Spanish Seaside

Matt Goulding profiles the González sisters of Galicia, four women thriving in the dangerous, male-dominated field of percebes, or gooseneck barnacles, a rare Spanish delicacy. Adapted from Grape, Olive, Pig: Deep Travels Through Spain’s Food Culture.

Published: Nov 11, 2016
Length: 25 minutes (6,300 words)

Michael Chabon Is An Underdog On Top Of The World

A sprawling profile of low-key, down-to-earth Pulitzer Prize-winning author Michael Chabon, whose new novel, Moonglow, out next week, is based on his grandfather’s deathbed confessions to him.

Source: BuzzFeed
Published: Nov 15, 2016
Length: 23 minutes (5,910 words)

I Spent Four Years Trying to Get My Book Optioned for a Movie. All I Got Were Two Belgian Waffles.

This personal essay is a year old, but like hope, this story springs eternal. Except in Hollywood, where hope lives and dies in endless meetings where promises are made in a dialect designed to conceal the unpredictability of the film industry while still feeding your hopes.

Published: Feb 11, 2015
Length: 7 minutes (1,789 words)