Read Long & Prosper

A podcast reviewing some of the tastiest long form journalism on offer

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A review of 13, Right Now

This week we’re reviewing 13, right now by Jessica Contrera published by The Washington Post. It’s an easy breezy 3000 words long.

In this story, Contrera introduces us to Katherine Pommerening, a 13-year old girl. Katherine plays basketball, gets straight A’s, is in an honours math program offered by a university, and, like most girls in her grade, is an avid internet and social media user, who is glued to her phone virtually all day, every day.

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Episode 40: Dry Farming

We review “When in drought: the California farmers who don’t water their crops” by Charlotte Simmonds published by the Guardian. We look at the viability of dry farming, and debate whether dry-farmed produce could be the next environmentally-conscious label on your quinoa box.

Download the episode here.

Or get it directly from iTunes

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This week we’re reviewing Madness: The Torturing of Mentally Ill Prisoners by Eyal Press published by the New Yorker. It’s just shy of eight thousand words long and should take about a half hour to read.

Press’s story picks up at the Dade Correctional Institute, a Miami correctional facility. She tells us how psychological technician Harriet Krzykowski began work at Dade’s Transitional Care Unit, the mental health ward, and quickly noticed that there was much amiss at the jail.

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Episode 38: Russia's Steel City

In this episode we review The secret history of Magnitogorsk, Russia's steel city by the Guardian’s Alec Luhn, and discuss the project’s dark past.

Download the episode here. 

Or get it directly from iTunes

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This week we’re doing our first-ever flashbacks episode, talking about some of the more important or noteworthy stories from the past. We're reviewing Have You Ever Tried to Sell a Diamond by Edward Jay Epstein published by The Atlantic in February of 1982. It’s about 9,500 words long, and 30 years later people are still talking about it.

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Episode 36: Google’s Perfect Team

Reviewing What Google Learned From its Quest to Build the Perfect Team by Charles Duhigg published by The New York Times Magazine.

We discuss whether empathy and inclusion is really the key to successful teamwork and share our own group project horror stories.

You can find the link here.

Or get it directly from iTunes 

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This week we’re reviewing The Secret Lives of Tumblr Teens by Elspeth Reeve published by The New Republic. It clocks in at just under ten thousand words, so pack a lunch.

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Episode 34: Death of a Troll

This episode we review Alina Simone’s Death of a Troll published by the Guardian. 

SPOILER ALERT: We take a deep dive into the legalities of ‘pseudocode’ and ask whether the stigma around niche communities and online gaming has dissipated in recent years as digital adoption rates soar.

Download the episode here.

Or get it directly from iTunes

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This week we’re reviewing El Chapo Speaks by Sean Penn (yes…. academy award winning film actor Sean Penn) published by Rolling Stone. It’s about ten thousand words long, about 1000 of which are the interview with the remaining amount dedicated to Penn’s narrative about their meeting.

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Under review this week is “This is how Paris Hilton fooled the entire United States of America” by Broadly’s Mitchell Sutherland. We discuss whether Paris led the charge for this generation’s cohort of reality TV stars and whether we can actually consider the socialite heiress a subversive feminist icon.

You can find the direct audio link here. 

Subscribe to our podcast on iTunes here. 

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This week we’re doing a Read Long and Prosper first: we’re reviewing and contrasting TWO articles about Justin Trudeau. The first is Vogue’s profile by John Powers, “Justin Trudeau is the new young face of Canadian Politics.” It’s an easy, breezy 2000 words. The second is  “Trudeau’s Canada, Again,” a 4600-word New York Times Magazine’s piece by Guy Lawson.

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We review the first of the New York Times Magazine’s “Displaced” series on refugees called “Hana” as well as the supplemental video from the magazine’s Virtual Reality app.

Download the episode here.

Or get it directly from iTunes 

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This week we’re reviewing The Bong Next Door by Chris Buck, published in New York Magazine. It clocks in at around 5000 words, so just under a half hour.

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This episode we're talking about the criminal defence lawyer working for one of the most well-known presenters in Canada: the woman who’s making the case for former CBC host Jian Ghomeshi, who’s currently facing charges linked to non-consensual sexual violence. We break down what makes this lawyer profile piece so damn compelling and whether women’s rights will be dealt a blow if Marie Henein wins the case.

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Today we're looking at Dupont and the Chemistry of Deception by Sharon Lerner from The Intercept. It clocks in at 6000 words, or a half hour read. This is the first story of a three part series, this one dealing primarily with the effects of C8, it's history with DuPont, and when the corporation began to research its ill effects and then cover them up. It's followed up by two other stories regarding DuPont's decades long coverup and final exposure and a prelude to a class action lawsuit beginning against the company. In short, the chemical company has been using a toxic substance for years and allowing their employees to be exposed to it, as well as dumping it dangerously. It has been aware of the deadly nature of the substance for decades and has conspired to remain silent on the matter. Most Americans have been exposed to the substance in trace amounts and thousands have grown ill due to their exposure.

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We’re back from our late summer/early autumn holidays! We review Inside the Secret World of Russia’s Cold War Mapmakers by Greg Miller, published by Wired with guest host and geography teacher Alex Wilkes. We explore the dark underbelly of both corporate and government mapmaking and ask just how much information is actually being shared.

Find the direct link here: http://bit.ly/1GHjqNf 

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Episode 26: Soviet Maps

We’re back from our late summer/early autumn holidays! 

I’m Kalyeena Makortoff in London. My co-host Trevor Record is in Vancouver. And joining us this week as our maps expert is Alex Wilkes - a geography teacher here in the U.K.

Full disclosure: Alex is my long-term boyfriend. But he is the best geographer on the face of the planet

[INTRO] Today we're looking at Inside the Secret World of Russia’s Cold War Mapmakers by Greg Miller, published by Wired. It clocks in at 4,400 words, or a 25 minute read. http://www.wired.com/2015/07/secret-cold-war-maps/ 

[STORY SUMMARY - SCRIPTED]

A group of amateur cartographers have been chasing maps from the former Soviet Union since the end of the Cold War. But the Communist’s military maps are more than just souvenirs - they present the world in the most mind-boggling detail, and give insight into how much the Soviets actually knew about the other side of the Iron Curtain. British military bases and scientific research centres unchartered on official UK maps are detailed as are areas around the US Pentagon. But aside from these strategic sites are notes on public transport, communications systems and architecture, which surely required satellite imagery and local spies.

Here’s a short excerpt:

“They’ve been trying to piece together how they were made and how, exactly, they were intended to be used. The maps are still a taboo topic in Russia today, so it’s impossible to know for sure, but what they’re finding suggests that the Soviet military maps were far more than an invasion plan. Rather, they were a framework for organizing much of what the Soviets knew about the world, almost like a mashup of Google Maps and Wikipedia, built from paper.”

[CHAT]

KALYEENA:

Beautiful presentation, but I think that raised my expectations of the content a little

Fascinating topic - but lacking analysis

you get a sense very quickly from the descriptions, as well as the embedded maps, of just how detailed Soviet maps were…. And they go on to explain who it is that’s collecting, buying and selling.

BUT I wanted more exploration on what tactical advantage this might have proven to be in the event of an invasion or takeover

TREVOR:

It never would have occurred to me as a 21st century satellite/GPS-using person that this would ever be an issue.

It sort of hinted at some sort of greater, more nefarious reason that the Soviet Union was collecting these very detailed maps, but then dropped that line of reasoning right away. I guess they must not have found any sources to comment on it. You see it in a few dangling lines, like where they say that the level of detail with would include bus lines would be not useful for an invasion, but would be useful for an occupying force.

Reasonably well written, overall

ALEX:

As a narrative: The article was well written and flowed well, telling an interesting overall story. It gave another viewpoint of Soviet paranoia during the Cold War.

However the most interesting pieces in the article were glossed over (Exactly how Soviet cartographers/agents managed to get so much info on places not included on US maps, such as naval bases, what Soviet cartographers mapped in the recently independent African countries & how serious efforts were to make these countries Communist and how these maps would have facilitated that)

As a geographer: The insight into how detailed the military maps were and how this compared to civilian maps, as well as maps of other areas was interesting and how this served as the earliest form of a Wikipedia type entry on each area. However some of the physical geography was not discussed. Did they survey part of European countryside?

[THEME 1] This article points out how Soviet military maps different greatly from those distributed to civilians, which were intentionally vague or had multiple errors. Is there still a chance governments or map-distributors are trying to dupe us?

KALYEENA:

There are clearly pieces of classified information in military maps 

military maps are still a touchy topic in Russia. As recently as 2012, a former military topographic officer was sentenced to 12 years in prison for allegedly leaking classified maps to the West.

Obviously strategic points that are going to be worrying to release to the public

With increased worry about terrorist threats, can understand what the government is holding back

What’s more problematic is how corporations may be manipulating geography, and not everything will be included.

Depending on who’s presenting the information, either they won’t include:

anything that’s not essential (say for consumers on Google Maps)

anything that’s commercially viable (don’t give that way for free!)

that’s sensitive government information (military operations, secret sites?)

or that doesn’t fit the message

Back in 2012, oil transport company Enbridge was accused of misleading the public, after it released a video that showed a tanker that would be transporting the pipeline’s oil off the coast of British Columbia...only it showed an open channel from Kitimat B.C. into the open ocean.

They failed to include 1000 square km of Douglas Channel Islands that protesters say make it one of the most dangerous routes for tankers http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/2012/08/16/enbridge-douglas-channel-islands_n_1789223.html

TREVOR:

I’m sure there are plenty of errors in printed-out maps for consumers, but you wouldn’t catch me using them in this day and age.

There are plenty of “blanked out” places on google maps https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Satellite_map_images_with_missing_or_unclear_data

Often if not blanked out, places like this will use old data.

My FAVORITE part about google maps censorship is that in this day and age OF COURSE it leads to claims that the gov’t is hiding aliens from the public somehow, amongst other crazy notions.

ALEX:

It is increasingly difficult for governments to do this with public access mapping & data. As a BBC article by Simon Garfield states with the advent of digital maps increasingly people are at the centre of maps, they are no longer seen from the perspective of nations or governments

However; there are still cases or times where clearly maps are being used to dupe or manipulate;

Election 2015: different map projections

UK crime maps: crimes can be taken of, only reported crimes, doesn’t take in to account

Israel-Palestine: after the Oslo Accord (1993) maps were drawn with the pre-June 1967 police numbers, doesn’t register crime if there are less than 15 houses on street (Six Day War) territory marks gone. This meant that Israel were no longer an occupying force but a legitimate owner of the land

[THEME 2] The level of detail in Soviet maps is impeccable. How worrying is it to realize the amount of geographical information currently available to the public, corporates, military and government in this day in age?

KALYEENA:

I wrote an article a couple years ago about a modern day explorer who was finding undocumented waterfalls in Northern Ontario. I found it completely crazy that most of Canada’s maps of the north are based on aerial photography from the 1950s.

This WIRED piece just made me think: unless it’s of strategic, corporate or consumer interest, it’s not being done.

Still many things to be mapped?!

As previously mentioned, a lot of concerns about the misuse of Google Maps

Either for crime (break-ins?) or terror attacks

→ though fun fact for anyone interested, you can ask for certain parts of your property

to be blurred out: http://www.sileo.com/google-street-map-remove-house/

It’s unfortunate, but I think we’re sadly aware of the high level of surveillance that already takes place (whether govt or not)

This just expands the data offering…

TREVOR:

I think that these maps likely still are useful for people working in, for instance, foreign aid. The article had mentioned that maps of Asia and Africa were still highly sought-after.

I did find it interesting that maps with this level of detail were still useful when clarifying where the border between countries sits.

ALEX:

It depends what the maps are being used for, but geographically the increase in detail and the rise of digital mapping and satellite mapping has helped with a number of issues;

Mapping the changes caused by human induced climate change such as; weather,

This helps to build evidence that confirms human induced climate change, as well as temperature, sea level, snowpack, Arctic Ice amounts, number of farming dayspredict and study the changes that will occur. This has repercussions on nations (e.g. island nations such as Nauru)gaining subsidies for, that illegal loggers are found in places such as the Amazon

Within countries satellite mapping is used to ensure; farmers protect land they are

Justifying national park/protected status for endangered animals

However it is worrying when maps remain country focussed or are not agreed by all; e.g. Israel-Palestine, Sudan & South Sudan. Then the details of maps can be disputed, leading to unrest

Can be worrying when ‘public’ data is not made public. E.g. Mastermaps (part of Ordnance Survey) have not released all of their data and increasingly it has become commercialised. This has stopped things like a 3d map of London and has even restricted gov departments (DEFRA) from interacting with partners.

But it is used for police forces to direct officers