The All-Female Band That Made History and More: The Week in Narrated Articles – The New York Times

This weekend, listen to a collection of narrated articles from around The New York Times, read aloud by the reporters who wrote them.

Written and narrated by Mark Yarm

In spring 2015, the documentary filmmaker Bobbi Jo Hart came across a short profile of June Millington, the singer and lead guitarist for the pioneering 1970s all-female rock group, Fanny. Despite growing up in a hippie household in California, Hart had never heard of them or that Fanny was the first all-female rock band to release an album on a major label.

When she first learned about Fanny online, she had a visceral reaction: It really pissed me off, she said. It was just another example of amazing women that we dont know about. Hart reached out to former band members about the possibility of a documentary but determined at the time that the Fanny story didnt have the forward-momentum narrative she was looking for.

Then, in January 2017, Hart spotted June Millington at the Womens March on Washington. The sighting spurred Hart to call Millington, who had some news: Three members of Fanny were about to make a new album on an indie label. The moment for a film had arrived.

Top Gun: Maverick turns and burns its way into theaters this week, landing 36 years after the 1986 original.

Thats a lot of time to form a lot of questions about the new film and its relationship to its predecessor: How similar are the stories? Whos back? Do we hear Danger Zone?

Here are the answers.

Written and narrated by Molly Young

The culture has an enduring fascination with sharks: Jaws and its sequels; the Discovery Channels Shark Week; the movie where Samuel L. Jackson gets eaten by a shark; the movie where Blake Lively almost gets eaten by a shark; the movie where Ian Ziering dives into a sharks mouth with a chain saw and then chainsaws his way out.

I have shielded myself from shark information under the logic of What I dont know might be able to hurt me, and thats precisely why I dont want to know it, Molly Young writes.

Molly waded into unwanted territory thanks to the gentle guidance of David Shiffman, a marine conservation biologist at Arizona State University, whose new book is called Why Sharks Matter: A Deep Dive With the Worlds Most Misunderstood Predator.

Written and narrated by Jesse McKinley

He is a postdoctoral fellow from Pittsburgh, a bartender turned political mapmaker. Now, Jonathan Cervas is suddenly New Yorks most unforeseen power broker.

Last month, a New York State judge chose Mr. Cervas to create new district maps in New York for the House and State Senate after maps approved by state Democratic leaders were declared unconstitutional.

Mr. Cervass new maps radically reshaped several districts, scrambling the future of the states political establishment for the next decade.

Written by Dan Barry and Karen Zraick | Narrated by Dan Barry

In 2018, Marco Martnez, a teenager newly arrived from Ecuador, died after being crushed against a ceiling by a mechanical lift. A year later, Michael Daves, who was living in a mens shelter and struggling with substance abuse, died after falling through a hole.

And now Yonin Pineda, a 29-year-old from Guatemala, lies unconscious and gravely injured. His diligent Mexican foreman, Mauricio Snchez, 41, is sprawled dead beside him, his face mangled, his chest torn open, his blood staining broken concrete.

The men were transforming a century-old Bronx ice house into a charter school.

No other construction site in New York City has had this many separate fatal incidents since at least 2003, when the Department of Buildings began keeping electronic records. But despite the pattern of deaths, the consequences have been negligible.

The Timess narrated articles are made by Tally Abecassis, Parin Behrooz, Anna Diamond, Sarah Diamond, Jack DIsidoro, Aaron Esposito, Dan Farrell, Elena Hecht, Adrienne Hurst, Elisheba Ittoop, Emma Kehlbeck, Marion Lozano, Tanya Prez, Krish Seenivasan, Margaret H. Willison, Kate Winslett, John Woo and Tiana Young. Special thanks to Sam Dolnick, Ryan Wegner, Julia Simon and Desiree Ibekwe.

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The All-Female Band That Made History and More: The Week in Narrated Articles - The New York Times