Longreads

By Charles C. Mann THE PROBLEM WITH environmentalists, Lynn Margulis used to say, is that they think conservation has something to do with biological reality. A researcher who specialized in cells…

Carolyn Kaster/AP Images President Obama with the Colombian singer Shakira and Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos in Cartagena, where he was attending the Summit of the Americas, at which leaders…

During the cholera epidemic of 1849, Henry Mayhew, the great observer of London life, visited the district of Bermondsey south of the Thames. He wrote that the river water the residents drank and…

The white curtain behind the pane of reinforced glass is raised, and there he is on the other side, not four feet away: wearing a grey jacket and purple tie with a pin attached showing the crest of…

Illustration: Martin Venezky In November 1, 2008, a man named Satoshi Nakamoto posted a research paper to an obscure cryptography listserv describing his design for a new digital currency that he…

On the tenth anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, this country is once again focused 24/7 on a single disaster that tore up one field in Pennsylvania, destroyed part of the Pentagon, and took down…

When I was 9 or 10, I watched Raising Arizona on VHS and thought it was one of the weirdest and funniest things I had ever seen. A frequently jailed stickup artist with surprisingly florid diction (Nicolas Cage) and his barren police officer wife (Holly Hunter) kidnap a loudmouth furniture magnate's quintuplet and run into trouble with two escaped convicts and the Lone Biker of the Apocalypse. I didn't get it, really, but I didn't care: It was hilarious and strange, with amusingly quotable dialogue ("I'll be taking these Huggies and, uh, whatever cash ya got") and hummable music (the "Ode to Joy" on a banjo, yodeling) throughout. During my high-school years, I caught up with the rest of the Coens' output and considered myself a fan; their best movie to that point, Fargo, came out just before I graduated and was the first I saw in a theater.

Paul Simon’s Graceland celebrates a quarter century this summer: it hit your parents’ cassette player in August 1986. I was six and my sister was twelve. We were both still single and life was great. This means that Graceland is now the same age that “Will You Love Me Tomorrow” by the Shirelles, “Stand By Me” by Ben E. King, “Hit the Road, Jack” by Ray Charles, and “Are You Lonesome Tonight?” by the King (of Graceland) were when Simon’s album came out. I name only songs because in 1961 albums as we understand them today hadn’t yet been invented.