Aberfan: The Mistake That Cost a Village its Children

“I could hear crying and screaming. As time went on they got quieter and quieter as children died, they were buried and running out of air.”

Source: BBC
Published: Oct 21, 2020
Length: 30 minutes (7,525 words)

I Feel Most Southern in the Hip-Hop of My Adolescence

“Joy Priest creates a Southern rap soundtrack of the cars, songs, and forces that sculpted her sense of freedom and confinement coming of age in Louisville, Kentucky, in the early 2000s.”

Author: Joy Priest
Published: Sep 29, 2020
Length: 11 minutes (2,936 words)

Travel Influencers, Meet Authoritarian Regimes

“The influencer industry has grown to be cozy with some unsavory governments, but its clout might not be as effective as it once was.”

Source: Rest of World
Published: Oct 19, 2020
Length: 11 minutes (2,834 words)

COVID Has Caused Millions to Lose their Sense of Smell—One Writer’s Journey to a Scentless Life and Back

“Every smell scientist I spoke to for this story echoed some version of this sentiment: that smell is under­appreciated and misunderstood, and most people fail to recognize how integral it is to our experience of pleasure, our emotional lives, and even, on a fundamental level, our identity.”

Source: Vogue
Published: Oct 21, 2020
Length: 15 minutes (3,874 words)

Russet, the Color of Peasants, Fox Fur, and Penance

“But russet means more than red-like, red-adjacent. It also means rustic, homely, rough. It also evokes mottled, textured, coarse. The word describes a quality of being that can affect people as well as vegetables.”

Published: Oct 20, 2020
Length: 7 minutes (1,923 words)

How America Invented the White Woman Who Just Loves Fall

“For the past decade, the basic white girl who loves fall has become so solidified in the cultural imagination that she may as well be the season’s Easter Bunny.”

Source: Jezebel
Published: Oct 21, 2020
Length: 12 minutes (3,119 words)

The COVID Cruise Ship and the Maine Fishing Town

“Eastport tried for years to lure mega cruise ships. Then, amid a global pandemic, it got one, along with a skeleton crew of coronavirus exiles.”

Source: Down East
Published: Oct 1, 2020
Length: 15 minutes (3,964 words)

The Battle to Separate Safa and Marwa

A ground-breaking series of operations in a British hospital separate two sisters fused at the head.

Source: BBC
Published: Jul 15, 2019
Length: 21 minutes (5,339 words)

The Island That Humans Can’t Conquer

“A faraway island in Alaska has had its share of visitors, but none can remain for long on its shores.”

Source: Hakai Magazine
Published: Oct 6, 2020
Length: 10 minutes (2,600 words)

The Making (and Remaking) of Timothée Chalamet

A profile of a Hollywood “It Boy” as he figures out celebrity stardom during a tumultuous year.

Source: GQ
Published: Oct 15, 2020
Length: 33 minutes (8,482 words)