Have you ever been catfished? Has the Internet opened up your
social life, or has it enclosed you in a tight circle of people you already
know? Adrian Chen examines social life and social media in this February 2013
essay from New Inquiry.
Spring is here, and the
pundits are correct: a major league professional athlete has come out as gay.
NBA free agent Jason Collins has broken a formidable barrier in this Sports Illustrated article that appears
in May 2013.
As sure as cold breezes and April blossoms on Opening Day,
someone will remind us that Major League Baseball is in trouble. Ian Crouch
steps up to the plate this year with this April 2013 essay from the New Yorker.
Gulp. That’s how some have
responded to New York City’s audacious ban on super-size sodas. Food writer
Mark Bittman weighs in on this heavy debate in a New York Times editorial published in March, 2013.
Online courses are a topic of hot debate, with schools large
and small, public and private, hurrying to develop programs and establish
themselves in this new educational frontier. Are they moving in the right directions?
Are they making decisions that take student needs into consideration? This New York Times editorial published in
February 2013 begins to address these questions.
Just how deep does the
problem of football concussions go? Can we fix it with better helmets or rule
changes? James Carroll delves much deeper and puts the whole nation on the line
of scrimmage in this January 2013 column from the Boston Globe.
Apply for an MBA program
with a tweet-sized essay? Sounds easy! But don’t get too excited. University of
Iowa’s Tippie School of Management initiated that innovative idea two years
ago—and they’ve already abandoned it. Alison Damast filed this report in
Bloomberg BusinessWeek in November 2012.
When you think of experts
on the American Dream, Jay-Z may not be the first name that comes to mind. Atlantic staff writer David Samuels,
however, argues that not only is Jay-Z an ideal embodiment of the Dream, but
also that Barack Obama has something to learn from him. This article was
published the day after the Presidential election.
The American Dream is so important to our national identity
and national psyche that it bears a thorough check-up on a regular basis.
Pulitzer Prize finalist Ronald Brownstein wrote this essay in September 2012
for the National Journal, a respected
nonpartisan publication based in Washington, D.C.
It isn’t difficult to find
criticisms of our meat-heavy diet in the U.S., but this one comes from an
unexpected source: Josh Ozersky, the founder of Meatopia, the event that calls
itself “the Woodstock of edible animals.” His essay appeared in Time magazine in August 2012.
New readings posted monthly, on the same issues that are covered in “They Say / I Say” with Readings—and with a space where readers can comment, and join the conversation.
