Groveland

Our letters don’t just disappear when we put them in the mailbox. They stick around, even years after we’ve written them. They tell our histories. On Part 2 of Letters, a love story told through letters and a conversation with someone who delivers them.

For one year now, she’s been the president of Macalester–one year that’s felt like a decade. Today, an interview with President Suzanne Rivera.

In this two-part series, we answer the question: Why mail? What is it about letters that brings people together? On this episode, a love letter that starts a conversation and a postcard that keeps one going.

Family. Identity. Loss. Joy. These are the little stories that make us who we are. Voices of color at a predominantly white institution.

Introducing Here We Are, a special, limited-run series. Listen wherever you get Groveland.

There’s been a lot of news about the disproportionate impact of COVID-19 on Black, Brown and Indigenous people. But this history of racism and medicine goes much deeper than the coronavirus. Produced by Brian Zou.

 

Sign up for our audio trainings (coming soon): https://forms.gle/pYyZhpz1EfqJJV2m7

On Tuesday, we decide the next president of the United States. And the stakes are higher than any presidential race in our lifetime. This week: political science professor Julie Dolan on the uncertainty surrounding Election Day.

In 1904, a devastating blight wiped out the American chestnut tree. 100 years later, a team of researchers is on the verge of bringing it back to the wild.

From The Mac Weekly, this is The Abstract: Stories of scientific research, from profuse failures to precious moments of triumph. Subscribe to our new series wherever you listen to Groveland.

Like many other parts of this country, journalism has deep ties to America’s history of racism and white supremacy. Now, as many in the US confront that history, journalists of color across the country are pushing for change. This week, Gabe Schneider on how American newsrooms fail to cover stories about race.

The Objective: theobjective.substack.com

Gabe Schneider: twitter.com/gabemschneider

Isolation Diaries project interest form: forms.gle/S6VASkVtXbAvzRga7

Like most of the country, college administrators were completely unprepared for the coronavirus. And it spread too fast for them to do anything but send everybody home. Now, it's the fall. Classes are back in session. And this time, colleges had a head start.

 

The question is whether their plans will be enough to keep everybody safe.

 

Guest: Benjy Renton (@bhrenton (twitter.com/bhrenton)), digital editor of The Middlebury Campus

* Off the Silk Road (https://offthesilkroad.substack.com), Benjy's newsletter on the coronavirus and higher ed

Like so many other businesses, the coronavirus pandemic has hit the photography industry hard. Events have been cancelled, weddings have moved online, and parents don’t have the money for the usual senior portraits. But in a small town in Wisconsin, one photographer is learning to adapt.

Producer: Kira Schukar