What if your fear of flying was so extreme you’d take a 36-hour train ride rather than board a plane? Katie Heaney shares how she learned to fly in this week’s BuzzReads story. Enjoy that and other longform from around the web.
How I Got the Fear of Flying Scared Out of Me — BuzzFeed
Statistics be damned, a fear of careening through the air at 600 mph inside a long metal can is as logical as it is debilitating. Exposure therapy — basically, scaring the shit out of you on purpose, repeatedly — is the cure for the common aviophobia.
Missing Michael Hastings — BuzzFeed
One of our colleagues, and one the great reporters of his generation, died Tuesday at 33. BuzzFeed Editor-in-Chief Ben Smith reflects on the stories he wrote, and the ones he didn’t live to write.
Via: Image by Blue Rider Press
A Great Actor, A Better Man — Vulture
Matt Zoller Seitz eulogizes the great American actor, whom he'd known for years, and whose death also shook us this week. "The decent part of Tony, the part that stood in for the tragically wasted human potential Dr. Melfi kept trying to tease out and embrace, came from Gandolfini. His humanity shone through Tony’s rotten façade. When people said they sensed good in Tony, it was James Gandolfini they sensed."
Via: HBO, Barry Wetcher, File / AP
Inside Digg's Race to Build the New Google Reader — WIRED
A riveting tech exclusive by Mat Honan: "This is the team who, in just six weeks, took a dying brand that collapsed under the weight of its own spam and made it something vibrant and vital: a place you wanted to go. So in April, when Google announced it was shutting down Google Reader on July 1, it was almost unsurprising that Digg replied–that same day–We’ve got this. This is the story of how a tiny team took 90 days to pull off the impossible."
Source: wired.com
