A Long Dip in the Hudson and More: The Week in Reporter Reads
This weekend, listen to a collection of articles from around The New York Times, read aloud by the reporters who wrote them.
Written and narrated by Jesse McKinley
During its 315-mile journey from the Adirondacks to New York City, the Hudson River ranges from meek creek to mighty byway, flows past ghost towns, bombed-out factories and the state capital, and vacillates between stretches of pristine beauty and fetid intrusions of chemicals, bacteria and other toxic backwash.
And it is into that unpredictable mix that the British endurance athlete Lewis Pugh intends to dive next month, wearing nothing more than a Speedo, cap and goggles, with the intention of swimming the length of the Hudson — a monthlong plunge meant to draw attention to both the river’s continuing rescue and the work still to be done, here and elsewhere.
“I’ve been looking for a river for many, many years which could tell the story about all rivers,” said Mr. Pugh, 53, whose previous long-distance swims have included the length of the English Channel, some 325 miles. “And always, every single time, it comes back to the Hudson.”
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Written and narrated by James Poniewozik
In Hollywood, the cool kids have joined the picket line.
James Poniewozik writes that he means no offense, as a writer, to the screenwriters who have been on strike against film and TV studios for over two months. But writers know the score. They’re the words, not the faces. The cleverest picket sign joke is no match for the attention-focusing power of Margot Robbie or Matt Damon.
SAG-AFTRA, the union representing TV and film actors, joined the writers in a walkout over how Hollywood divvies up the cash in the streaming era and how humans can thrive in the artificial-intelligence era. With that star power comes an easy cheap shot: Why should anybody care about a bunch of privileged elites whining about a dream job?
But for all the focus that a few boldface names will get in this strike, Poniewozik invites you to consider a term that has come up a lot in the current negotiations: “background actors.”
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Written by Christopher Maag and Raúl Vilchis | Narrated by Christopher Maag
Around 7 a.m. one day last August, the first migrants sent to New York City by the governor of Texas arrived with little warning on a bus, and walked sleepily into their new lives.
By June, the city had counted more than 80,000 newcomers. Roughly half moved into public shelters, and the city’s shelter system reached 100,000 that month. City officials added up the costs of housing them: an estimated $4.3 billion by next summer. Mayor Eric Adams begged for federal help, disparaged President Biden and warned that the city was being “destroyed.”
But unseen and unheard were economists and social scientists, who point out that the immediate controversy has overshadowed an established truth: The city was built by waves of migrants who settled in, paid taxes, buttressed a labor force, started businesses and generally lifted the communities they joined.
Guilhem Gallart used to speak with a thick, southern French accent, his voice deep and slightly nasal, topped by a faint lisp.
Then, in 2015, he was diagnosed with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, or A.L.S., an incurable neurological disease that slowly paralyzed his muscles from head to toe, leaving him bedridden and forcing him to use a voice-synthesizing computer program to speak.
Losing his distinctive voice, he said, has felt like surrendering an essential part of himself, as sound has been his life’s passion. Better known as Pone, he is a music producer and beatmaker who once belonged to one of France’s most popular old-school rap groups, the Fonky Family.
In a bid to recapture his signature vocal sound, Pone, 50, has embarked on a slightly quixotic and still-unfinished quest. Because there were not enough old recordings of his voice to feed into a computer and create a synthetic replacement, he asked a comedian to record an imitation of what he used to sound like — and used that as a basis instead.
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Written by Ben Casselman and Jeanna Smialek | Narrated by Ben Casselman
The recession was supposed to have begun by now.
Last year, as policymakers relentlessly raised interest rates to combat the fastest inflation in decades, forecasters began talking as though a recession — economic contraction rather than growth — was a question not of “if” but of “when.” Possibly in 2022. Probably in the first half of 2023. Surely by the end of the year.
But the year is more than half over, and the recession is nowhere to be found. Not, certainly, in the job market, as the unemployment rate, at 3.6 percent, is hovering near a five-decade low. Not in consumer spending, which continues to grow, nor in corporate profits, which remain robust. Not even in the housing market, the industry that is usually most sensitive to rising interest rates, which has shown signs of stabilizing after slumping last year.
At the same time, inflation has slowed significantly, and looks set to keep cooling — offering hope that interest-rate increases are nearing an end. All of which is leading economists, after a year spent being surprised by the resilience of the recovery, to wonder whether a recession is coming at all.
The Times’s narrated articles are made by Tally Abecassis, Parin Behrooz, Anna Diamond, Sarah Diamond, Jack D’Isidoro, Aaron Esposito, Dan Farrell, Elena Hecht, Adrienne Hurst, Emma Kehlbeck, Tanya Pérez, Krish Seenivasan, Kate Winslett, John Woo and Tiana Young. Special thanks to Sam Dolnick, Ryan Wegner, Julia Simon and Desiree Ibekwe.
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