Before You Know It Something’s Over

On grieving over the loss of a parent at a young age: “My father died on November 14th, 1995, when I was 14. Every day since the day he died I am one day farther away from him than I was before. This is the truest thing about me.”

Source: Autostraddle
Published: Jun 15, 2014
Length: 29 minutes (7,414 words)

Multiple Lovers, Without Jealousy

Polyamorous people still face plenty of stigmas, but some studies suggest they handle certain relationship challenges better than monogamous people do.

Source: The Atlantic
Published: Jul 21, 2014
Length: 22 minutes (5,504 words)

How the Other Half Works: An Adventure in the Low Status of Software Engineers

Software engineers are paid well, but they still don’t seem to move into leadership roles. Church investigates what happened: “There was a time, perhaps 20 years gone by now, when the Valley was different. Engineers ran the show. Technologists helped each other. Programmers worked in R&D environments with high levels of autonomy and encouragement. To paraphrase from one R&D shop’s internal slogan, bad ideas were good and good ideas were great. Silicon Valley was an underdog, a sideshow, an Ellis Island for misfits and led by ‘sheepdogs’ intent on keeping mainstream MBA culture (which would destroy the creative capacity of that industry, for good) away. That period ended.”

Published: Jul 22, 2014
Length: 17 minutes (4,316 words)

Kanye West: A Brand-New Ye

“I just want to do crazy, colorful shit like that that has more nudity.” An interview with Kanye West.

Author: Zach Baron
Source: GQ
Published: Jul 21, 2014
Length: 22 minutes (5,680 words)

Why Poor Schools Can’t Win at Standardized Testing

A data journalism professor’s experiment reveals a very big problem with standardized tests at the schools in Philadelphia.

Source: The Atlantic
Published: Jul 21, 2014
Length: 12 minutes (3,091 words)

The Lonely Diplomats Club

A look at the lives of the “micro-ambassadors” of Beijing, diplomats from the world’s smallest nations who have set up Chinese embassies, hoping to woo tourist dollars and direct investment to their home countries

Published: Jul 1, 2014
Length: 14 minutes (3,595 words)

The New Science of Evolutionary Forecasting

Scientists may not be able to predict what the world may look like 100 million years from now, but they may be able to look at how diseases like the flu will evolve in a few months, which has the potential to save lives: “Lässig hopes to be able to make predictions about future flu seasons that the World Health Organization could consult as they decide which strains should be included in flu vaccines. ‘It’s just a question of a few years,’ he said.”

Source: Quanta Magazine
Published: Jul 17, 2014
Length: 21 minutes (5,407 words)

28 Years With Weird Al

“‘Everyone else is here for the Monkees,’ dad said. ‘But we’re a Weird Al family.'” Bex Schwartz looks back on her long-time obsession with singer-songwriter and parodist Weird Al Yankovic.

Source: The Awl
Published: Jul 18, 2014
Length: 7 minutes (1,854 words)

Oh, the Humanities! A Reading List Pertaining to the English Major

“Majoring in English was both the joy and bane of my life. I struggled in the face of a Faulkner-heavy Southern Lit course, even though Faulkner remains beloved. I groused through Shakespeare. But I wrote my senior thesis on Michael Chabon. And I transformed my love for editing into a prestigious position on the college newspaper. My Lit Crit class—a notorious gauntlet at my college—introduced me to Derrida’s jeu and the revelation of feminist theory.”

Source: Longreads
Published: Jul 20, 2014

My Life with Piper: From Big House to Small Screen

Larry Smith, the real life husband of Piper Kerman, shares his point of view—the other true story behind ‘Orange Is the New Black.’

Source: Matter
Published: Jul 15, 2014
Length: 40 minutes (10,238 words)