The Boy Who Loved Transit

How the system failed an obsession.

Author: Jeff Tietz
Published: May 1, 2002
Length: 34 minutes (8,722 words)

Burn After Reading

Meet the man who wrote and then disowned The Anarchist Cookbook.

Published: Feb 27, 2015
Length: 18 minutes (4,520 words)

Ending College Sexual Assault

College campuses are still having a difficult time addressing sexual assault allegations. Can a national movement of activists and a recent campaign by President Obama make things better?

Published: Sep 9, 2014
Length: 32 minutes (8,040 words)

The Soft-Kill Solution

Ando Arike’s 2010 history of nonlethal weapons in crowd control: “‘Non-lethal’ is the Pentagon’s approved term for these weapons, but their manufacturers also use the terms ‘soft kill,’ ‘less-lethal,’ ‘limited effects,’ ‘low collateral damage,’ and ‘compliance.’ The weapons are intended primarily for use against unarmed or primitively armed civilians; they are designed to control crowds, clear buildings and streets, subdue and restrain individuals, and secure borders. The result is what appears to be the first arms race in which the opponent is the general population.”

Author: Ando Arike
Published: Aug 18, 2014
Length: 30 minutes (7,541 words)

The Near-Death of Grand Central Terminal

How we almost lost a New York landmark:

Many consider the destruction of New York’s original Pennsylvania Station in 1963 to have been the architectural crime of the twentieth century. But few know how close we came to also losing its counterpart, Grand Central Terminal, a hub every bit as irreplaceable. Grand Central’s salvation has generally been told as a tale of aroused civic virtue, which it was. Yet it was, as well, an affirming episode for those of us convinced that our political culture has become an endless clown-car act with the same fools always leaping out.

Published: Jun 24, 2014
Length: 11 minutes (2,963 words)

To The Penal Colony

A jailed Pussy Riot activist’s family makes an 11-hour trek to visit her:

“Gera, you cannot pee every five minutes!” said Petya to his four-year-old daughter. “You cannot appraise a work of art from the point of view of effectiveness.” Now he was speaking into a lapel mic that belonged to the German television crew following us in another car. Before we left the hotel in Zubova Polyana where we had spent the night, I’d had to pull the car away from the back porch so the Germans could film the lanky Petya running to the car with huge, plaid, Chinese-made rectangular bags we were taking to the colony for Nadya, Petya’s wife and Gera’s mother. “This is the sixth time I’ve been filmed loading bags into a car for Nadya.” He laughed as he got into the passenger seat. He seemed to enjoy the publicity connected with his wife’s imprisonment, and only now, months after I first met him, was I starting to appreciate how hard, tedious, and unceasing was the work he did on her behalf.

Published: Feb 1, 2014
Length: 12 minutes (3,013 words)

Fast Food, Minimum Wage, and an Industry Engineered for the ‘Interchangeability of Workers’

Thomas Frank on striking fast-food workers, many living in poverty:

Now, everyone knows how poorly fast-food jobs pay. They also know why this is supposed to be okay: fast-food workers are teenagers, they don’t have kids or college degrees, and it’s an entry-level job. Hell, it’s virtually a form of national service, the economic boot camp that has replaced the two years our fathers had to give to the armed forces.

Every one of these soothing shibboleths was contradicted by what I saw in North Carolina. These days, fast-food workers are often adults, they often do have children, and I met at least one college grad among the protesters in Raleigh. Why are things like this? Because a job is a job, and in times as lean as ours, the Golden Arches may be the only game in town, regardless of qualifications and degrees.

What people who repeat these things also don’t know is how much effort has gone into keeping fast-food pay so low, despite the enormous profits raked in by the chains.

Published: Dec 6, 2013
Length: 14 minutes (3,605 words)

The Decline of Book Reviewing

Hardwick’s classic 1959 essay on the dismal state of book criticism. (Robert Silvers has pointed it out as an early inspiration for founding the New York Review of Books.)

For the world of books, for readers and writers, the torpor of the New York Times Book Review is more affecting. There come to mind all those high-school English teachers, those faithful librarians and booksellers, those trusting suburbanites, those bright young men and women in the provinces, all those who believe in the judgment of the Times and who need its direction. The worst result of its decline is that it acts as a sort of hidden dissuader, gently, blandly, respectfully denying whatever vivacious interest there might be in books or in literary matters generally. The flat praise and the faint dissension, the minimal style and the light little article, the absence of involvement, passion, character, eccentricity — the lack, at last, of the literary tone itself — have made the New York Times into a provincial literary journal, longer and thicker, but not much different in the end from all those small-town Sunday “Book Pages.”

Published: Oct 18, 1959
Length: 14 minutes (3,566 words)

The End of Illth: In Search of an Economy That Won’t Kill Us

The writer looks at a network of worker-owned businesses in Cleveland called Evergreen Cooperatives, which has created environmentally sustainable jobs in low-income neighborhoods and a work environment that gives workers real input into company decisions and a share of the profits:

“While about 11,000 U.S. companies offer some form of employee stock ownership, far fewer give workers real input into decisions. OCS operated on a one-worker/one-vote model, for everyone from the CEO to the newest hire. They all gathered at 7:30 on Monday mornings to discuss company business. ‘It’s like we’re part of the board,’ Bey told me. ‘We don’t look at Steve as a superior. He’s equivalent to us.’ And Kiel was paid accordingly, at least compared with the average American CEO, who makes 300 times more than the average employee at his firm. OCS’s bylaws, Kiel told me, stipulated that the highest-paid member of the cooperative could never be paid more than five times the earnings of the lowest-paid member.

“After a six-month apprenticeship period, OCS employees could apply to join the broader Evergreen Cooperatives. If voted in, they received a $3 per hour raise and began buying into the company through a payroll deduction of 50 cents per hour. In about three years, this would add up to $3,000, an ownership stake that, based on the co-op’s projections, could be worth $65,000 in another six years. (Median household income in the neighborhood is $18,000.) Still, Bey told me, ‘Being an owner is nice, but it isn’t the most important thing. We’re a team, and for a team to win, it has to be profitable. So everybody has to do the best they can to help the team. That’s what makes it work.'”

Author: Erik Reece
Published: Oct 4, 2013
Length: 22 minutes (5,710 words)

Sleeping Together

A visit to “Tokyo’s first co-sleeping café” where clients pay to sleep next to women or pay for “options” like being patted on the head:

“Did he get any of the options?’

“‘He wanted five-second hug option.’

“‘How much does that cost?’

“‘Sen yen.’ A thousand yen.

“‘What was it like?’

“She mimed wrapping her arms around a thorn tree. She wincingly patted the thorny emptiness.”

Published: Aug 26, 2013
Length: 11 minutes (2,769 words)