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New York’s "Subway Therapist" and his collage of a city's hopes and fears

New York’s “Subway Therapist” and his collage of a city’s hopes and fears

As the scribbled sticky notes come out in book form, Levee talks about spending his days collecting tiny fingerprints of commuters' psyches

“We all live in a house on fire, no fire department to call; no way out, just the upstairs window to look out of while the fire burns the house down with us trapped, locked in it.”

—Tennessee Williams, "The Milk Train Doesn't Stop Here Anymore"
Ellen Barry and "How to Get Away with Murder in Small-Town India"

Ellen Barry and “How to Get Away with Murder in Small-Town India”

The New York Times foreign correspondent talks about her sensational last story from India, in which she uses first person to unparalleled effect

“Something in the world links faces and leaves and rivers and woods and wind together and makes them a string of medallions with all our faces on them, worn forever round our necks, kin.”

Why is it great? Written long before every person carried a camera, before Facebook, back when “streaming” was just what water did as it coursed through its bed, Goyen, raised…
5(ish) Questions: Texas journalist Krys Boyd and the art of the radio interview

5(ish) Questions: Texas journalist Krys Boyd and the art of the radio interview

The longtime host of "Think" talks about preparing for her daily show, and how radio is a form of oral storytelling -- "I think it’s stronger than ever"
Notable Narrative: The Cincinnati Enquirer's stunning “Seven Days of Heroin”

Notable Narrative: The Cincinnati Enquirer’s stunning “Seven Days of Heroin”

A writer and editor talk about wrangling 60 staffers and a deluge of copy -- and creating a riveting portrait of the human face of the opioid epidemic
5(ish) Questions: Photographer Lindsay Rickert and "Drive-In America"

5(ish) Questions: Photographer Lindsay Rickert and “Drive-In America”

She spent 65 days on the road, covering 12,000 miles, in search of this fast-disappearing artifact of the country's past -- and its summer memories

“I know all about reporters, Walter. A lot of daffy buttinskis running around without a nickel in their pockets and for what? So a million hired girls and motormen’s wives’ll know what’s going on.”

Why is it great? Yes, it’s three sentences. But it’s one brilliant summation of journalists, from the best-written movie about journalists of all time. God, the banter in the screenplay!…
Documentary film as "home movie": Going beyond a public face to reveal a private one

Documentary film as “home movie”: Going beyond a public face to reveal a private one

Two films at the Camden International Film Festival in midcoast Maine explore universal truths through the intimacy of family -- with love, and with shame
5(ish) Questions: Abbie Gascho Landis and the surprising climate book "Immersion"

5(ish) Questions: Abbie Gascho Landis and the surprising climate book “Immersion”

The writer (and vet) talks about squeezing story from science, and how a book about mussels is also about our tender, tenacious humanity.