Longreads

explore-blog: Gay Talese’s outline for the 1966 classic Frank Sinatra Has a Cold, one of the best long-form magazine pieces ever penned, written on a shirt board.  (↬ The…

Patti Smith in New York City. Catherine McGann/Getty Images She looks thin, frail, vulnerable. The hood of her sweat jacket is pulled up over her long, grayin

Top 10 The Apostate Lawrence Wright • New Yorker Paul Haggis vs. the Church of Scientology. The Movie Set That Ate Itself Michael Idov • GQ Inside one of the wildest experiments in film…

On the 25th anniversary of "Licensed to Ill," an oral history of the birth of the Beastie Boys. "Then we were like, 'Oh, shit, we should get a D.J.! Like rap groups. They have a D.J.!' Nick Cooper knew about this guy Rick Rubin who went to NYU and would throw parties and had turntables. And a bubble machine. We were like, 'If we had a fucking D.J. and a fucking bubble machine, we’d be fucking killing it.'"