Tag: video
Above is a brief tribute to journalist Michael Brick, who died in February at the age of 41. The video features Tampa Bay Times writer Ben Montgomery reading from Brick’s 2006 New York Times story, “Dusk of the Drummer” — and it’s one of many pieces featured in a new collection, Everyone Leaves Behind a Name: True Stories, […]
Cartel Land, the new documentary by director Matthew Heineman in theaters July 3, follows Dr. José Manuel Mireles, a small-town physician known as “El Doctor,” who leads the Autodefensas, a citizen uprising against the violent Knights Templar drug cartel in the state of Michoacán in Mexico. The above clip, exclusive to Longreads, features Mireles attempting […]
Here’s a powerful story from Rilla Askew, author of Fire in Beulah, about race and growing up in Oklahoma. Askew spoke during our night of storytelling with This Land Press in New York City. The full talk is below, and you can see all our storytellers at our YouTube page:
Journalist Kiera Feldman, who we’ve featured on Longreads many times in the past, told this story during our special night with This Land Press at Housing Works in New York City. Here’s her full story below. See more from the rest of our storytellers here on YouTube.
“My mother was a woman, a black woman, a single mother raising two kids on her own. She was dark-skinned, had short hair, got no love from nobody except for a group called the Black Panthers. “I don’t consider myself to be straight militant. I’m a thug, and my definition of thug comes from half […]
“I must admit that it was intended consciously as a social document. … [but] the storyteller’s first duty is to the story.” -From the 1991 documentary “The Complete Citizen Kane,” on the Orson Welles masterpiece. The film features interviews with Welles from 1960 and 1982, as well as an interview with New Yorker film critic Pauline Kael, […]
‘They don’t teach us about money in high school.’ Today’s video pick is Modern Comedian’s short documentary on comedian Sara Schaefer, who fell deep into debt even while she was pursuing her dream career and earning two Emmys as a writer for Jimmy Fallon. (Schaefer now co-hosts the MTV series Nikki & Sara LIVE, which […]
‘Let’s enlist universities directly in the war effort.’ Our video pick of the day is this 2008 talk (1 hr.) by entrepreneur and Stanford professor Steve Blank about how the defense industry first shaped Silicon Valley—starting with Stanford, which after World War II “became a full partner in the military-industrial complex.” For a connection between […]
“When I lost my eyesight I thought my painting days were over.” Our video pick of the day is this 8-minute documentary on Hal Lasko, a 97-year-old man whose family introduced him to Microsoft Paint 15 years ago and “he took off with it.” Lasko, who suffers from macular degeneration, works in a style that’s a […]
If you’ve been following Longreads for a while, you may have seen this excellent Rolling Stone story from last year by Josh Eells, “The Secret Life of Transgender Rocker Tom Gabel”, about Against Me! singer Laura Jane Grace’s transition. This MTV House of Style short reveals more about her life, and the small things she’s […]
The city of Detroit has filed for bankruptcy, but there’s some good news from residents like Andy Didorosi, who responded to the death of the city’s light-rail plans by building his own private bus service, The Detroit Bus Company. Dark Rye, which devoted its June issue to Detroit, took a closer look inside Didorosi’s company […]
“How foolish they are to try to make something.” Here’s the classic 1981 BBC interview highlighting the work of theoretical physicist Richard Feynman, “The Pleasure of Finding Things Out.” You can also read Feynman’s book of the same name. For further reading and viewing on Feynman: 1. The ‘Dramatic Picture’ of Richard Feynman (Freeman […]
Mark Armstrong is the founder of Longreads and editorial director for Pocket. Last week we lost a pioneer of early computing, Doug Engelbart, and Tom Foremski has an excellent short backstory about the inventor of the mouse. It was Engelbart’s 1968 demo of computer graphical user interfaces that inspired everything we now use today—yet despite his […]