Fortress of Tedium: What I Learned as a Substitute Teacher

This New England novelists’ view of the world is always singular. Baker recounts how he became a low-wage, revolving door educator in order to better understand American education and the ways it makes “interesting things dull.” “Explain your answer,” said the assignment. “No, thank you,” said Baker.

Published: Sep 7, 2016
Length: 11 minutes (2,789 words)

Revisiting the Ghosts of Attica

A wrenching new book recounts the bloodiest prison battle in our history.

Published: Sep 9, 2016
Length: 14 minutes (3,722 words)

The Drug of Choice for the Age of Kale

The ancient South American hallucinogen ayahuasca has become America’s psychedelic drug du jour, with everyone from Baby Boomers and Millennials to the Silicon Valley set seeking its potent revelations about harmony and interspecies unity. To hear the plants speak, all you need is money and some strength of mind.

Author: Ariel Levy
Source: The New Yorker
Published: Sep 5, 2016
Length: 21 minutes (5,413 words)

Roald Dahl at 100: A Reading List

Roald Dahl, the whimsical and wicked mind behind Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Matilda, and other famous children’s literature, would have turned 100 on September 13, 2016. Here are seven stories about the man behind these tales.

Published: Sep 8, 2016

The 24-Year-Old Coca-Cola Virgin

“If you’re looking for evidence of mass commonality, it doesn’t come cheaper or more convenient than Coke. It’s consumed around 1.9 billion times per day, and distributed everywhere except North Korea and Cuba (for now). Through Coke we all have something in common — Liz Taylor knows it, the president knows it, the bum knows it, and you know it. I, on the other hand, can only trust and speculate. I’ve never had a Coke in my life.”

Source: Eater
Published: Sep 7, 2016
Length: 22 minutes (5,573 words)

I Want to Know if Love is Real: Springsteen on His Book, Born to Run

Springsteen may today be a man who splits his time between a horse farm in his native Monmouth County, a second home in New Jersey, and luxury properties in Florida and L.A., but Born to Run is an emphatic refutation of the notion that, as a songwriter, he can no longer connect to the troubled and downtrodden.

“One of the points I’m making in the book is that, whoever you’ve been and wherever you’ve been, it never leaves you,” he said, expanding upon this thought with the most Springsteen-esque metaphor possible: “I always picture it as a car. All your selves are in it. And a new self can get in, but the old selves can’t ever get out. The important thing is, who’s got their hands on the wheel at any given moment?”

Author: David Kamp
Source: Vanity Fair
Published: Sep 7, 2016
Length: 21 minutes (5,262 words)

How Elizabeth Holmes’s House of Cards Came Tumbling Down

At once-lauded biotech start-up Theranos, Elizabeth Holmes built a multi-billion-dollar corporation on a foundation of questionable science and secrecy.

Source: Vanity Fair
Published: Sep 6, 2016
Length: 20 minutes (5,119 words)

Choosing to Set Him Free: The Stillbirth of Charlie Showman

My son was born in Toronto on September 15, 2010. He had dark, wet hair, and when I cradled him, he was warm and damp, swaddled in a flannel hospital sheet. He smelled just how you would think a newborn baby would smell. He had a pink, thin upper lip and a button nose. His eyes were closed, but the death certificate later said they were brown.

Source: The Walrus
Published: Sep 6, 2016
Length: 13 minutes (3,251 words)

The Pleasures of Protest: Taking on Gentrification in Chinatown

Working as a tenant organizer in New York’s Chinatown opened Esther Wang’s eyes to the ugly—and complicated—realities of gentrification in New York City.

Source: Longreads
Published: Sep 6, 2016
Length: 16 minutes (4,223 words)

Back To School: A Reading List

Bullies, teachers, classmates—it’s time to head back to school with these six stories from the Chronicle of Higher Education, Los Angeles Times and more.

Source: Longreads
Published: Sep 5, 2016