The Stutterer: How He Makes His Voice Heard

[Essays and Criticism] Today, I am still being jolted, and the jagged terrain behind bears the track marks of my own innumerable small humiliations. In the seventh grade: A substitute asks the class to read out loud, and when I stumble over my first sentence, she inquires of the other students whether I’m “OK” and “always like this,” and while I continue fighting with a “pr” sound, my ears tune in to every judging shudder in the room—the creaking chairs, the restless exhalations, the uncomfortable shifting, in the desk beside me, of a girl with many colored pens who seems to me in some way very beautiful. In high school: A medical assistant taking down my charts asks whether I just have a problem with my speech or whether there is mental retardation, too.

Source: Slate
Published: Feb 22, 2011
Length: 12 minutes (3,176 words)

The Idealist

Jeff Smith was a rising political star. Then the FBI started asking questions about his past. “That evening, Smith gave a speech at a fund-raiser in a downtown loft. He found it difficult to focus. ‘As I was talking, I had an ominous sense of foreboding about what was to come,’ he says. ‘I looked around the crowd and thought to myself, “This is going to be our last fund-raiser.”‘”

Source: Slate
Published: Jan 14, 2011
Length: 24 minutes (6,150 words)

Please Allow Me To Correct a Few Things

Imagining if Mick Jagger responded to Keith Richards about his new autobiography. “I am, I see here, marginally endowed, if I read Keith’s sniggering aright. I do not sing well, either. I am not polite to employees; indeed, I have even been known to say, ‘Oh, shut up, Keith,’ in band meetings. I do not appreciate the authenticity of the music or the importance of what we do. I want to ‘lord it over’ the band, like James Brown. I am ‘insufferable.’ I slept with Anita.”

Author: Bill Wyman
Source: Slate
Published: Nov 5, 2010
Length: 20 minutes (5,103 words)

Google Research Dir. Peter Norvig on Being Wrong

Google’s search engine has changed how we conduct research, plan vacations, resolve arguments, find old acquaintances, and check out potential mates. It’s also radically reshaping the way we think about almost every imaginable medium.

Source: Slate
Published: Aug 3, 2010
Length: 16 minutes (4,050 words)

What Really Happened to Phoebe Prince?

The untold story of her suicide and the role of the kids who have been criminally charged for it.

Source: Slate
Published: Jul 20, 2010
Length: 37 minutes (9,268 words)

Brother

Why I no longer speak to the sibling who raised me like a father.

Author: Pat Jordan
Source: Slate
Published: Jun 30, 2010
Length: 18 minutes (4,673 words)

A Marine General at War

Gen. James Mattis thinks about when, and how, American troops should put their lives at risk.

Source: Slate
Published: Apr 22, 2010
Length: 16 minutes (4,244 words)

Searching for Saddam

A five-part series on how the U.S. military used social networking to capture the Iraqi dictator.

Source: Slate
Published: Feb 22, 2010
Length: 13 minutes (3,285 words)

Atomic Priesthoods, Thorn Landscapes, and Munchian Pictograms

How to communicate the dangers of nuclear waste to future civilizations.

Source: Slate
Published: Nov 16, 2009
Length: 22 minutes (5,700 words)

Underground Psychology

Researchers have been spying on us on the subway. Here’s what they’ve learned.

Source: Slate
Published: Nov 17, 2009
Length: 14 minutes (3,642 words)