“When actor Luke Perry died in 2019, he was buried in a compostable mushroom suit. The only problem: it didn’t work.”
Peter Rubin
Posted inEditor's Pick
The Degradation Drug
The fact that some prescription medications can lead to impulse-control problems is nothing new. But that doesn’t change how disruptive they are to people’s lives, or the philosophical recalibrations they demand. Carl Elliott’s dive into the world of pramipexole fallout is as fascinating as it is terrifying. The longer Hannah took pramipexole, the worse her […]
Posted inEditor's Pick
Both Sides Now
A deep look inside the byzantine subculture of high-school debate — and the misogyny and toxic behavior that lurked therein — from a onetime participant. Heart-stopping and eye-opening. Boys who were strong debaters were said to possess Good Debater Syndrome, meaning that their skill made them seem more attractive to their female peers. For girls, […]
Posted inEditor's Pick
How Three Amateurs Solved the Zodiac Killer’s ‘340’ Cipher
In 1969, the Zodiac Killer sent an encoded note to the San Francisco Chronicle. In 2020, someone finally cracked the code. And that someone was three people, with zero cryptography experience, who had met in an online true-crime forum. Kathryn Miles tells you how, and the result is a must for any puzzle fan. Most experts, […]
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The Tragedy of Jayquan McKenley
From the current New York issue’s package on drill music comes this urgent, saddening profile of Jayquan McKenley, a sweethearted teenager and burgeoning artist whose murder sparked a new wave of handwringing around the rap subgenre. Even to drill’s defenders, it seemed clear that social media had sped up a cycle of retaliatory shootings; the Bronx’s […]
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The Unlikely Rise of Slim Pickins, the First Black-Owned Outdoors Retailer in the Country
While the numbers are slowly getting better, there’s no question that the world of outdoor recreation is still slanted heavily away from Black participation. It’s an imbalance that Jahmicah Dawes is trying mightily to change — and has been ever since he opened his Texas store in 2017. Which isn’t to say he hasn’t weathered […]
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The Powerful, Unlikely Force Shaping Modern TV
Eighteen years after Lost premiered, we’re living in a golden age of fan-theory TV. But where once that dynamic rankled showrunners and writers, Shirley Li writes, it’s now more of a symbiotic détente. That understanding, he said, seems to have led the relationship between writers and fans to “a more mutually beneficial place,” in which […]
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The Making of Silent Bruce
The tragic end to Bruce Willis’ career — aphasia that challenges his speaking and cognition — shouldn’t befall anyone. Yet, as Matt Zoller Seitz points out in an incisive reading of the actor’s oeuvre, Willis long ago chose a path that would eerily presage his eventual diagnosis. You could say Willis’s career was never the […]
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The Most Surveilled Place in America
Southwestern Arizona isn’t home to much in the way of urban development. Between Yuma and Tucson, there’s just a whole lot of Sonoran wilderness — the desolate territory migrants coming across the Mexican border have to navigate on their way to safety. But as Gaby Del Valle chronicles, the searing arid heat and unforgiving mountains […]
Posted inEditor's Pick
Sam Taggart’s Hard Sell
Door-to-door salespeople sound like an endangered, if not extinct, species. Brushes? Vacuums? Knives? Nope. Try home security systems and solar panels. In this wide-ranging and captivating piece, Tad Friend goes inside the current state of the “knocker” industry and comes out with a treasure trove of anecdotes and psychological insights. Schanz requires his execs to […]