The Skin I’m In: Stories By Writers of Color

I wanted to share these stories about love and music and beauty and family. These stories are also about hair, about plastic surgery, about skin color, about contending with the harmful standards imposed by white privilege. They’re all written by writers of color, whose stories don’t always get the air time they deserve.

Source: Longreads
Published: May 3, 2015

The Man Who Beat HIV at Its Own Game for 30 Years

For 25 years, Kai Brothers, who is HIV positive, has been studied by AIDS researchers because he has been healthy and has never taken HIV drugs. Brothers now faces a vexing choice—a dilemma that mirrors a quandary for modern medicine.

Source: Nautilus
Published: Apr 30, 2015
Length: 9 minutes (2,480 words)

ZPM Espresso and the Rage of the Jilted Crowdfunder

A Kickstarter project gets fully funded by backers, who become irate and consider legal action when the project fails to deliver. The creators explain what went wrong.

Published: Apr 30, 2015
Length: 22 minutes (5,555 words)

Inside the Story of Ethan Couch and the ‘Affluenza’ Phenomenon

On June 15, 2013, an inebriated 16-year-old named Ethan Crouch slammed into four people with his truck, killing them instantly. During his sentencing hearing a psychologist infamously blamed his bad behavior on “affluenza,” a portmanteau describing the psychological problems that can affect children who come from money. Mooney takes us behind the story.

Source: D Magazine
Published: Apr 27, 2015
Length: 22 minutes (5,576 words)

A Rare, Personal Look at Oliver Sacks’s Early Career

Lawrence Weschler, a close friend of Oliver Sacks, looks back on the life of the best-selling author and neurologist in the early ’80s.

Source: Vanity Fair
Published: Apr 29, 2015
Length: 28 minutes (7,124 words)

An Alternative-Medicine Believer’s Journey Back to Science

How the parents of two autistic sons found—and lost—faith in the alternative medicine movement.

Source: Wired
Published: Apr 29, 2015
Length: 14 minutes (3,660 words)

Freddie Roach Is the Best Damned Trainer Alive

A profile of Freddie Roach, Manny Pacquiao’s longtime trainer.

Published: Mar 1, 2010
Length: 8 minutes (2,180 words)

Slavery and Freedom in New York City

The story of slavery in New York, the messy path to abolition, and a shameful history with which America has yet to come to terms.

Author: Eric Foner
Source: Longreads
Published: Apr 30, 2015
Length: 33 minutes (8,362 words)

From Ferguson to Baltimore: The Fruits of Government-Sponsored Segregation

It’s not just about the police: A brief history of how cities, including Baltimore, experienced “a century of public policy designed, consciously so, to segregate and impoverish its black population.”

Published: Apr 30, 2015
Length: 8 minutes (2,084 words)

Lost in a Broken System

Beauty left the streets of the Bronx and returned to her native Oklahoma to turn her life around. Old charges brought her forcibly back to New York, trapping her in an inflexible and overwhelmed legal system.

Source: The Guardian
Published: Apr 16, 2015
Length: 12 minutes (3,050 words)