Typecast as a Terrorist

The Night Of and Rogue One star Riz Ahmed describes what life, work, and passing through airports is like as a British Pakistani.

Author: Riz Ahmed
Source: The Guardian
Published: Sep 15, 2016
Length: 11 minutes (2,792 words)

The Man Who Sleeps in Hitler’s Bed

“It’s so hard to know what to do with all the stuff. I really do feel like I’m just a caretaker until the next person comes along, but I must display it, I must get it out into the public — I understand that.” Kevin Wheatcroft, a man in Leicestershire, England, has amassed the world’s largest collection of Nazi memorabilia.

Source: The Guardian
Published: Jun 24, 2015
Length: 21 minutes (5,353 words)

Paul Auster: ‘I’m Going to Speak Out as Often as I Can, Otherwise I Can’t Live with Myself’

The publication of 4321, Paul Auster’s new 900-page novel, coincides with the author’s seventieth birthday. In an interview at the Guardian, he talks about escaping death as a child, writing a story about the what-ifs that haunt us, and learning how to live his life in the years ahead under a Trump presidency.

Author: Paul Laity
Source: The Guardian
Published: Jan 20, 2017
Length: 18 minutes (4,543 words)

What Beyoncé Taught Me

Novelist Zadie Smith reflects on the connection between writing and dancing, drawing on iconic performers like Fred Astaire, Michael Jackson, and Beyoncé.

Source: The Guardian
Published: Oct 29, 2016
Length: 14 minutes (3,610 words)

Dangerous Idiots: How the Liberal Media Elite Failed Working-Class Americans

Trump supporters are not the caricatures journalists depict –- and native Kansan Sarah Smarsh sets out to correct what newsrooms get wrong.

Source: The Guardian
Published: Oct 13, 2016
Length: 15 minutes (3,899 words)

‘We Are Building Our Way To Hell’: Tales Of Gentrification Around The World

Dispatches from Portland, Chicago, Paris, London, Montreal, Berlin, Lisbon and other cities around the world where rampant gentrification appears to be displacing whole communities and cultures and creating playgrounds for the rich.

Source: The Guardian
Published: Oct 5, 2016
Length: 12 minutes (3,025 words)

We Need To Talk About Cultural Appropriation: Why Lionel Shriver’s Speech Touched A Nerve

Convery gets help from a variety of interviewed authors in addressing author Lionel Shriver’s controversial keynote speech at the Brisbane Writers’ Festival—during which Shriver dismissed complaints about cultural appropriation by white writers, while wearing a sombrero.

Source: The Guardian
Published: Sep 16, 2016
Length: 8 minutes (2,161 words)

Sex on Campus Isn’t What You Think: What 101 Student Journals Taught Me

Not every college student might be having casual sex, but the cultural forces that encourage casual encounters over other types, called hookup culture, is alive and well. Students at two schools kept journals about their sex lives to help one researcher understand how hookup culture, finances, looks, gender normativity, privilege and “sexually hot, emotionally cold” encounters affect them.

Author: Lisa Wade
Source: The Guardian
Published: Aug 23, 2016
Length: 7 minutes (1,802 words)

The Race to Save a Dying Language

In 2013, a retired schoolteacher named Linda Lambrecht presented Hawaiian Sign Language to a group of linguists. Now the language’s impending disappearance due to lack of users is putting enormous stress on a community who depend on it for survival.

Source: The Guardian
Published: Aug 10, 2016
Length: 18 minutes (4,738 words)

‘Hope is a​n embrace of the unknown​’

In a year in which one calamity seems to follow another on a daily basis, Rebecca Solnit re-examines the meaning of hope in dark times.

Source: The Guardian
Published: Jul 15, 2016
Length: 14 minutes (3,714 words)