“Rembert and Stuckert decided they would take Peace Corps assignments later that year and help with the unfolding hometown crisis in the meantime. ‘When we started Energize Clinton County, we thought, “Oh, we’ll do this for a few months and then head to the Peace Corps,”’ says Rembert. ‘Then it became six months and then […]
Longreads
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How Detectives Interrogate Suspects and Get Confessions
“The goal is to turn questioners into the equivalent of human lie detectors who can read behavioral tics to determine guilt. It begins with the isolation of the suspect. Kassin explained that a Reid-trained officer will typically go through nine steps, offering the suspect both positive and negative incentives. The goal of the interrogation, according […]
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What George Clooney Smells Like, According to Tom Junod
“He is fifty-two years old. He is wearing a black hoodie zipped to the neck, blue jeans, and boots laced so assertively they squeak when he flexes his ankles. He has a long neck, upon which his long head, adorned by long ears, wobbles like a tulip. Everything is to scale with him. Many people […]
Posted inNonfiction, Quotes
'Am I a Vulture?' Katherine Boo on Reporting and Poverty
“We take stories and purvey them to people with money. And in the conventions of my profession, which I try to adhere to, we can’t pay people for stories. Anyone with a conscience who does this work grapples with that reality, and if they don’t, I’d worry. I lie awake at night, and I think, […]
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How to Steal a House
“They described what amounts to a methodical moneymaking scheme in which Setad obtains court orders under false pretenses to seize properties, and later pressures owners to buy them back or pay huge fees to recover them. “‘The people who request the confiscation … introduce themselves as on the side of the Islamic Republic, and try […]
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The Decades-Long Quest for a Malaria Vaccine
“Hoffman rolled up his sleeve and pressed the container—mesh side down—to the inside of his forearm. He felt a tickling sensation as the mosquitoes pricked his skin. Five minutes later, he removed the canister; an Army scientist examined the mosquitoes to confirm that each had sucked Hoffman’s blood. Five other volunteers did the same. “For […]
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Elizabeth Warren and Hillary Clinton, the Early Years
“The first time Elizabeth Warren met Hillary Clinton was in 1998, when the then–first lady requested a briefing on an industry-backed bankruptcy bill. Warren was impressed by Clinton’s smarts and steel, and credited her when Bill Clinton vetoed the bill in 2000. But the following year Hillary Clinton was a senator and she reversed her […]
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On Love and Sand.
“‘Do you love me, Westley? Is that it?’ “He couldn’t believe it. ‘Do I love you? My God, if your love were a grain of sand, mine would be a universe of beaches. If your love were—’ “‘I don’t understand the first one yet,’ Buttercup interrupted. She was starting to get very excited now. ‘Let […]
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'The Power of a Name': Maya Lin on Making the Vietnam Veterans Memorial
“I made a conscious decision not to do any specific research on the Vietnam War and the political turmoil surrounding it. I felt that the politics had eclipsed the veterans, their service, and their lives. I wanted to create a memorial that everyone would be able to respond to, regardless of whether one thought our […]
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How Other Political Reporters Felt About the Late Michael Hastings
“While Hastings would later speak of having received ‘the Lindsay Lohan Mean Girls’ treatment from other political journalists, of the half-dozen fellow reporters on the charter with whom I spoke, all expressed affection for Hastings. ‘The truth is he was parachuting in to do something all of us wish we can do and can’t,’ says […]