Add The Listening Project: Midwood to your list of favorite storytelling projects (Storycorp and Moth being the most well-known). We all have stories to tell—and our big, proverbial Story—so let’s listen up and hear someone out.

Here, Ethel Weinberg (what a name) tells us about her late husband (what a gentleman), her marriage (what a blessing), and herself (what eyebrows!).

Weinberg touches on a few recent themes of the magazine (Old/New, Comfort, Quality/Quantity) so naturally, it’s been good to hear her words and think about our upcoming topics.

Whether for entertainment or inspiration, four minutes with Weinberg and you’re in for a treat.

-Ben

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Sufjan Stevens is out with his second Christmastime compilation, “Silver and Gold.” It’s a whopping three hours of 58 tracks over five volumes, so if you’re ready to batten down the holiday hatches and get right to it, here he is - NPR is streaming all five volumes this week. A nice preview if you prefer to dip a few toes in before committing.  And then, to ride this Sufjan train all the way to the station: the always excellent (Block Club pal) Scott Mancuso is penning an extensive five part album review over on buffaBLOG. The perfect, partially bearded spirit animal for your Sufjan Stevens Christmas journey. - Maggie

Sufjan Stevens is out with his second Christmastime compilation, “Silver and Gold.” It’s a whopping three hours of 58 tracks over five volumes, so if you’re ready to batten down the holiday hatches and get right to it, here he is - NPR is streaming all five volumes this week. A nice preview if you prefer to dip a few toes in before committing. 

And then, to ride this Sufjan train all the way to the station: the always excellent (Block Club pal) Scott Mancuso is penning an extensive five part album review over on buffaBLOG. The perfect, partially bearded spirit animal for your Sufjan Stevens Christmas journey.

- Maggie

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Science Friday, the retainer-wearing little brother of NPR’s Talk of the Nation, has made an amazing video from archived NASA spacesuit testing footage. Before Neil Armstrong found the perfect moonsuit (created by Playtex, fascinatingly enough), NASA tried out more than a few spacesuit prototypes, the motions of which Science Friday has made into something quite beautiful. (Music is from One Ring Zero’s “Planets”).

- Maggie

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Toyokazu Nagano photographs his daughter on what fans have dubbed “the magic road,” a stretch of asphalt that has become as much of a character in his photos as the young girl herself. Last year, Nagano’s flikr feed propelled to immense popularity when LIFE took notice of his work, featuring a portrait of the three-year old Kanna Nagano on the magazine’s tumblr. 

“When I started, I was taking photos with a camera in order to keep family memories,” Nagano explained in an interview with NPR. “But I now take photos to create family memories.”

 As Kanna plays, poses, and grows up before the camera, Nagano’s sun-faded photographs capture the pure, limitless whimsy of a child’s imagination - the whole world is waiting, just down the road.

(Read NPR’s interview with Nagano here).

- Maggie

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