The Elevator-Phobes of a Vertical City

New York City has more elevators than Chicago, Los Angeles, Miami, and Washington combined — and every day, dozens of people acutely afraid of riding them need to find their way up and down the skyline.

Source: Topic
Published: Oct 2, 2018
Length: 10 minutes (2,672 words)

The Real Cost of Working in the House of Mouse

The employees spreading joy and maintaining animatronics at Disneyland can’t pay their basic bills.

Source: Topic
Published: Sep 28, 2018
Length: 25 minutes (6,409 words)

Hollywood’s New Golden Age

A feature on Channel 22, the television station at Hollywood’s Motion Picture Country Home, which keeps retired and disabled residents who formerly worked in film and television occupied with making new shows and movies.

Source: Topic
Published: Sep 5, 2018
Length: 16 minutes (4,247 words)

American Beauties

“The life of a plastic bag is really an endless series of entanglements.”

Source: Topic
Published: Aug 1, 2018
Length: 10 minutes (2,728 words)

Japan’s Vegetable-Eating Men

Recent cultural and policy shifts in Japan have made a previously hard-to-find species far more common: the stay-at-home dad.

Source: Topic
Published: Jun 29, 2018
Length: 13 minutes (3,312 words)

Birds of a Feather

On the not-so-surprisingly tight bonds between parrot enthusiasts and their feathered friends.

Source: Topic
Published: May 1, 2018
Length: 8 minutes (2,054 words)

Where Spring Breaks Eternal

Jen Doll and photographer Eva O’Leary venture to the Lani Kai Island Resort in Fort Meyers Beach, Florida — a hotel known for choosing to host a seemingly never-ending stream of spring breakers to uncover how they not only survive, but manage to embrace the drunken debauchery of the spring break set — within reason, of course.

Author: Jen Doll
Source: Topic
Published: Apr 24, 2018
Length: 20 minutes (5,062 words)

They Don’t Do Sadness

A feature on a teen production of the musical “Spring Awakening” in rehearsals at Barclay Performing Arts in West Boca Raton — near the city of Parkland — including some kids who attend Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School and were present during the shooting. The show, about teens in 19th century Germany discovering their sexuality, provides these traumatized actors a way to explore and express their complicated emotions.

Source: Topic
Published: Apr 17, 2018
Length: 18 minutes (4,521 words)

Ball Breakers

Despite the fact that women have been playing billiards since it became a hobby for European royals in the 15th century, they still have to endure cheap shots from men who can’t resist critiquing their game.

Source: Topic
Published: Mar 1, 2018
Length: 12 minutes (3,166 words)

The 75-Year (and Counting) Christian Interracial Farm Experiment

Founded in 1942 by a white Baptist minister who preached racial equality, Koinonia Farm in Georgia aimed to empower disadvantaged farmers and create a truly communal economy. Naturally, it struggled for decades to maintain its original vision.

Source: Topic
Published: Feb 26, 2018
Length: 16 minutes (4,020 words)