A Stranger in the World: The Memoir of a Musician on Tour

The Hold Steady’s Franz Nicolay on DIY touring in the punk underground of the former Soviet Union.

Source: The New Press
Published: Oct 17, 2016
Length: 27 minutes (6,916 words)

Van Doren And The In Vogue

After 50 years, Vans shoes are going stronger than ever. Here’s how a hunk of canvas became and stayed an international icon of cool.

Author: Lou Boyd
Source: Mpora
Published: Oct 7, 2016
Length: 7 minutes (1,978 words)

The String Theory

What happens when all of a man’s intelligence and athleticism is focused on placing a fuzzy yellow ball where his opponent is not? An obsessive inquiry (with footnotes), into the physics and metaphysics of tennis.

Source: Esquire
Published: Jul 1, 1996
Length: 58 minutes (14,729 words)

The Professor Wore a Hijab in Solidarity — Then Lost Her Job

A graduate of evangelical Wheaton College herself, journalist Ruth Graham writes about the ousting of its first tenure-track black professor, Larycia Hawkins, after she wore a hijab during Advent in solidarity with Muslim students.

Published: Oct 13, 2016
Length: 25 minutes (6,256 words)

My Friend Sam

A beautiful story about a friendship.

Source: The New Yorker
Published: Oct 12, 2016
Length: 9 minutes (2,274 words)

How U.S. Torture Left a Legacy of Damaged Minds

So much for assurances that harsh interrogation techniques used by the United States at Guantanamo Bay and in secret CIA prisons around the world wouldn’t cause lasting harm. New York Times reporters interviewed over 100 former detainees for this article on the never-ending psychological torment many of them live with years later.

Published: Oct 9, 2016
Length: 24 minutes (6,085 words)

The Prodigy Complex

Waylon Jenning’s famous country music lyric “Mammas don’t let your babies grow up to be cowboys” can be adapted to the tune of classical music prodigies, too.

Source: Van Magazine
Published: Oct 6, 2016
Length: 8 minutes (2,005 words)

The Virtue of an Educated Voter

An educated nation is an empowered nation. Pulitzer Prize-winning historian Alan Taylor details the place of public education in the founding fathers’ vision of American democracy to argue that, even though their vision ignored African-Americans and women, we would benefit from thinking of education as a larger public good, not just an individual economic one.

Published: Sep 6, 2016
Length: 16 minutes (4,186 words)

Dangerous Idiots: How the Liberal Media Elite Failed Working-Class Americans

Trump supporters are not the caricatures journalists depict –- and native Kansan Sarah Smarsh sets out to correct what newsrooms get wrong.

Source: The Guardian
Published: Oct 13, 2016
Length: 15 minutes (3,899 words)

The Fantastic Ursula K. Le Guin

A profile of the American writer and author, whose fiction helped transform the mainstream.

Source: The New Yorker
Published: Oct 13, 2016
Length: 26 minutes (6,658 words)