The Quiet Protests of Sassy Mom Merch

A look at performative motherhood, where stress and alcohol play proud roles, and identity and commodity blur.

Source: The New Yorker
Published: Nov 27, 2019
Length: 8 minutes (2,120 words)

The Grocery Store Where Politics Meets Produce

It’s not the first piece written about the Park Slope Food Coop, but it is the most candid yet loving — an ode to the people who make it the combination oasis of equality and den of drama that it is.

Source: The New Yorker
Published: Nov 18, 2019
Length: 29 minutes (7,405 words)

Blood Gold

In Brazil, indigenous people and illegal miners are engaged in a fight that may help decide the future of the planet.

Source: The New Yorker
Published: Nov 4, 2019
Length: 35 minutes (8,900 words)

My Year of Concussions

Nick Paumgarten recounts what beer-league hockey has given him over the years: occasional bragging rights, countless happy sud-soaked memories, a feeling of camaraderie, and three concussions whose lingering after effects caused him to leave the game.

Source: The New Yorker
Published: Nov 4, 2019
Length: 15 minutes (3,878 words)

Astrology in the Age of Uncertainty

“Dimitrov and Lasky [the Astro Poets] think of the signs formally, as ‘poetic constraints,’ and imagine them interacting like characters in a novel.

Source: The New Yorker
Published: Oct 21, 2019
Length: 21 minutes (5,488 words)

How to Mourn a Glacier

Essayist Lacy M. Johnson attends a funeral in Iceland for “Okjökull” — once a glacier 16 square kilometers in surface, and now “only a small patch of slushy gray ice.” In personifying shrinking masses of ice — key geographical features of the area, and the planet — officials hope to impress upon people the dire extent of climate change, and the need for humans to stop living in ways that threaten all life forms.

Source: The New Yorker
Published: Oct 20, 2019
Length: 9 minutes (2,322 words)

The Black Cube Chronicles

While investigating allegations of sexual-assault against Harvey Weinstein, Ronan Farrow was surveilled by an Israeli private-intelligence agency called Black Cube. Agents from Black Cube tried to get close with Farrow and other journalists looking into Weinstein — as well as several women who were planning on coming forward with their stories — in an attempt to suppress the allegations. An excerpt from Farrow’s book, Catch and Kill: Lies, Spies, and a Conspiracy to Protect Predators.

Source: The New Yorker
Published: Oct 7, 2019
Length: 42 minutes (10,500 words)

Intelligent Ways to Search for Extraterrestrials

The move to formalize this inherently speculative project has many scientific advantages, including securing funding. But it requires researchers be less bound to their earthly ways of thinking.

Author: Adam Mann
Source: The New Yorker
Published: Oct 3, 2019
Length: 11 minutes (2,897 words)

Abandoning a Cat

Haruki Murakami reflects on the surprising parallels between his life and the life of his father: “All we can do is breathe the air of the period we live in, carry with us the special burdens of the time, and grow up within those confines. That’s just how things are….We live our lives this way: viewing things that came about through accident and happenstance as the sole possible reality.”

Source: The New Yorker
Published: Sep 30, 2019
Length: 24 minutes (6,098 words)

Four Years in Startups

Wiener recalls working for a variety of tech companies earlier this decade, observing the men who ruled Silicon Valley.

Source: The New Yorker
Published: Sep 23, 2019
Length: 29 minutes (7,268 words)