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The Last Freeway

Illustration by Kjell Reigstad

Hillel Aron | Slake | July 2011 | 20 minutes (4,888 words)

Hillel Aron’s “The Last Freeway” was published in Slake in 2011 and appeared as a Longreads Member Pick in September 2013. It’s a story about a city (Los Angeles), a freeway interchange (where the 105 meets the 110), and a man (Judge Harry Pregerson). Aron explains:

“Well, my friends Joe Donnelly and Laurie Ochoa had this great quarterly called Slake, and I wanted to write something for them, so we sat down and talked about it… I think maybe I pitched it to them, I can’t remember. I’d was just always fascinated by freeways, growing up in Los Angeles, and I loved that Reyner Banham book, The Architecture of the Four Ecologies. When I was kid, I was completely enchanted by that 105 / 110 interchange, the carpool lane one, which towers above the city. It’s basically like a rollercoaster. Actually it kind of sucks—since I wrote the piece, they’ve turned that carpool lane into a “toll lane,” so normal carpoolers can’t use it anymore without one of those fast pass things. At any rate, I did some research and it turned out that (a) the 105 was the last freeway built in Los Angeles—the end of an era, really. And it was so tough to build that it basically set a precedent of not building freeways anymore. And (b), there was this nutty judge who turned the whole thing into a New Deal-style public works program to benefit the communities that were being bisected by this massive beast of a freeway. And he also ordered them to stick a train in the middle of it, which didn’t quite go to the airport, but that’s a different story…”

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The Top 5 Longreads of the Week

Below, our favorite stories of the week. Kindle users, you can also get them as a Readlist.

Sign up to receive this list free every Friday in your inbox.

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Why is the AIDS Epidemic So Severe in the United States?

Michael Hobbes is a human rights consultant living in Berlin.

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Last May I wrote an article for The New Republic about how the AIDS epidemic has been way more severe in the United States than the rest of the developed world. More people have died of AIDS in New York City, for example, than Spain, Italy, the Netherlands, and Switzerland combined.

I know, it sounds like I’m making this up, that I’m reading the numbers wrong. I spent months trying to figure out what explained this huge gap.

Writing the article didn’t get me un-obsessed with this, and this winter, I started working on a video that put all the numbers and reasons in one place.

The nice thing about videos is that you can present a ton of information without having to explain each data point. Here’s the differences in death rates between US states, for example. I could only mention a few of these in my story, but I put all of them in my video.

US HIV Death Rates

And here’s one of the most major, most obvious reasons we do so poorly in keeping people with HIV alive in this country: We don’t get them on treatment early or consistently enough.

Treatment Rates cropped

But it’s not just our health care system. The virus arrived here earlier, and it spread faster. By 1995, when anti-retroviral therapy became available, the U.S. had more than 750,000 people living with HIV. Germany and Britain had fewer than 40,000.

Anyway, I’m getting carried away, it’s probably quicker if you just watch the video. One of the challenges of these explainers is that it’s easier to present data, but harder to present caveats. HIV surveillance systems differ pretty significantly across countries, and even the term ‘AIDS death’ means something different depending on which country is reporting it.

All the epidemiologists I talked to for this story told me to think of the numbers as a range, subject to updates and re-estimations as more data comes in. I don’t think I did a great job expressing that in the video. Luckily, it’s on YouTube, so I’m sure we’ll have a sophisticated methodological discussion in the comments.

 

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You can read more from Michael Hobbes over at his blog, Rotten in Denmark.

The Cold Rim of the World

Colin Dickey | Longreads | March 2015 | 13 minutes (3,199 words)

 

We docked just past midnight, the sun to the south shining through a thin layer of clouds. It was late June, and the sun hadn’t set for months in the Arctic archipelago of Svalbard; it wouldn’t set again until the end of September. For the previous two weeks I’d been on board a ship sailing the perimeter of the arctic archipelago of Svalbard, as part of the artist residency The Arctic Circle, and we’d reached one of our final stops. The dock we tied the boat to was a decayed mass of wood, warped and chewed to the appearance of shredded wheat. To our left, a massive structure for loading coal onto ships. To the right, blocks of buildings without form or purpose or inhabitants. This was Pyramiden, a Soviet-era mining town that’s been abandoned for over 15 years. Read more…

How Karina Longworth Is Reimagining Classic Hollywood—and the Podcast—in ‘You Must Remember This’

Scott Porch | Longreads | March 2015 | 14 minutes (3,624 words)

 

Almost a year ago, former LA Weekly film writer Karina Longworth began producing You Must Remember This, a podcast about the inner worlds of Hollywood icons of the past and present. The characters and stories range from familiar, to unknown, to just plain weird. (Episode 2 is about a Frank Sinatra space opera that you never knew existed.) Longworth, 34, has also written for publications including Grantland about everything from the history of the Super Mario Bros. movie to the stories of Harvey Weinstein’s ruthlessness in the editing room.

We recently talked by phone about her interest in the stories of classic Hollywood, the unique format of podcasting, and how her roles as a journalist, critic, and historian have informed her storytelling.


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Curtis Sittenfeld’s ‘Prep,’ 10 Years Later

Sari Botton | Longreads | March 2015

 

It’s hard to believe it’s been ten years since Prep, Curtis Sittenfeld’s debut novel, was first published. And not just because the passage of time, in hindsight, is always kind of baffling, but because I have thought about that book so regularly it seems my brain only just first absorbed it. Read more…

The Top 5 Longreads of the Week

Photo of Cody Spafford by: Geoffrey Smith

Below, our favorite stories of the week. Kindle users, you can also get them as a Readlist.

Sign up to receive this list free every Friday in your inbox.

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The Twisted History of Your Favorite Board Game

Jessica Gross | Longreads | March 2015 | 16 minutes (4,113 words)

 

Mary Pilon spent several years reporting on finance for the Wall Street Journal, and several more reporting on sports for The New York Times. In her first book, The Monopolists: Obsession, Fury, and the Scandal Behind the World’s Favorite Board Game, Pilon debunks the myth—long perpetuated by Parker Brothers—that Monopoly was invented by a man named Charles Darrow during the Great Depression. Really, three decades prior, a woman named Lizzie Magie had created The Landlord’s Game, an obvious ancestor. A surprising twist: Lizzie’s game included a set of rules that was anti-monopoly, in which the object was to spread wealth around. In the 1970s, a professor named Ralph Anspach unknowingly carried Magie’s torch by creating a game called Anti-Monopoly, which rewarded players for trust-busting. It was via a very long lawsuit with Parker Brothers that Anspach unearthed the game’s buried history—and through reporting on a wholly unrelated article that Pilon became aware of it. I spoke with Pilon by phone about this complex, multi-layered story, her reporting and writing process, and the surprising Monopoly tricks she discovered. Read more…

Join Longreads for a Portland Story Mixer, Friday March 27

Longreads is coming to Portland! Join us for a free story mixer on Friday night, March 27, as part of WordPress.com’s Press Publish conference—featuring stories from some of our favorite writers:

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Nathaniel Friedman (aka “Bethlehem Shoals,” writer and founder, FreeDarko.com)

Meaghan O’Connell (author, “A Birth Story”)

Nancy Rommelmann (author, “The Queens of Montague Street”)

Aaron Scott (Oregon Public Broadcasting)

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Friday, March 27, 6:30 p.m.

Embassy Suites Downtown Portland
319 SW Pine Street
Portland, Oregon 97204

Admission: Free

RSVP for the event

Interview with a Torturer

S-21. Photo by lecercle

Rithy Panh with Christophe Bataille | Translated by John Cullen | The Elimination: A survivor of the Khmer Rouge confronts his past and the commandant of the killing fields | Other Press | February 2013 | 44 minutes (12,355 words)

Below is an excerpt from the book The Elimination, by Rithy Panh, as recommended by Longreads contributor Dana Snitzky. Read more…