The Monday List 11.17 | What We’re Reading This Week

Mondays might not be your favorite day of the week, but the good news is that we’re all in this together ladies and gentlemen. As purveyors of prime Grade A web content, the SolidSmack crew has done some of the heavy-lifting to make sure you get your Mondays started on the right track.

Welcome to The Monday List.

Each Monday, we’ll link you up with some of the most insightful, informative, and socially-relevant stories to keep tabbed, bookmarked, reading listed, pocketed, or what have you. Be sure to check in each Monday morning for a new crop of freshly sprouted words curated straight from the source of your favorite homegrown ‘Smack.

What We’re Reading This Week:

25 Songs That Tell Us Where the Future of Music is Going
A strange thing you learn about American popular music, if you look back far enough, is that for a long time it didn’t much have “genres” — it had ethnicities.

How to Become an International Gold Smuggler
Harold Vilches, a 23-year-old Chilean, exported $80 million in contraband gold. It all started with a Google search.

Stop Buying Gear and Build It Yourself Instead
Here are five places that can teach you how to build everything from a surfboard to a teardrop trailer.

Beowulf Is Back!
What’s behind the running pop-culture engagement with the epic poem?

In the Future, We’ll All Wear Spider Silk
Human exploitation of spider silk has lagged behind the arachnid’s own ingenuity.