Showing results by narrator "Jacob York" in All Categories

As a 22-year-old teacher with Teach For America - a program that puts college grads in front of the country's poorest children - Harris Sockel grew up in the same room as his students. From spending exorbitant amounts of money on neon-colored card stock to watching parents pull their kids from his class because he looked too young to teach, he saw the baffling, bleak, and very human side of the way we approach poverty in school.

What's it like to be both blind and gay? How does romance work for those who, despite this double disorientation from the mainstream, are certain of their sexual identity? To find out, Michael Lowenthal signs up for the Rainbow Bear Valentine's Cruise and joins a group of blind gay men, along with their human and canine companions, for a weeklong Mexican sail on the Royal Caribbean Vision of the Seas.

Jeff Stymeweather went to Legaland because he heard everything there was legal. He had to see it for himself as his family life was miserable and he couldn't seem to find the peace to finish his fantasy novel. At first, nothing seemed odd about the new small town but as Jeff learned more and more about the inhabitants of Legaland he discovered that everything being legal really meant that there were no laws or rather only ones that people chose to follow.

Hollywood Ending is an on-the-ground history of the beginning of the end for movies, from the lush offices of Michael Ovitz's talent management company to the plucky production of cult hit Donnie Darko. Using his own attempts to get a film financed, Michael Thomsen recounts the cultural decay, doomed optimism, and abusive narcissism that helped take one of the greatest cultural institutions of the 20th century to the brink of decline.