It’s a first: No articles from The New York Times or The Atlantic! (But yes, The New Yorker made the cut, as usual.) This week, there are excellent articles about Charleston, prison reform, brain tumors, and hearing loss. Please share this newsletter with friends. Pretty soon there will be 50 subscribers!
David Remnick captures well why the people of Charleston responded with forgiveness and patience to Dylann Roof’s attack on Emanuel A.M.E. in June. “There has been an arrangement here, created over generations, to be able to endure terrorism,” one critic says.
What Will I Hear When My Ears Stop Working?
Diagnosed three years ago with Ménière’s Disease, the author thinks about when she will lose her hearing entirely. She fears total silence. Also intriguing is how our brains try to compensate for hearing loss by replicating and re-creating sounds.
The new $50 Kindle Fire is out. Already, 12 of them have been donated to the Kindle Classroom Project by generous supporters. These six are from Brian in Leesburg, VA. Thanks, Brian!
The brain is a big place. This man had a brain tumor, started to forget everything, and had surgery to remove it. Then everything came back — including memories he never knew he had.
“I felt reborn, resurrected, and reanimated with life in a way that I think will always be unique.”
In the United States, which incarcerates the most people per capita in the world (698 per 100,000), sentences are long, and recidivism is high (70 percent). Germany is a different story. This article makes clear that it comes down to a couple questions: Do we believe that prisoners are people? Do prisoners deserve rehabilitation, or is punishment the only way?
That’s it for this week! Reply to this email to let me know what you think of this week’s articles.