The legend of Penn State football coach Joe Paterno was ultimately tarnished by the heinous crimes of Paterno assistant coach Jerry Sandusky. Before Sandusky, however, there was another monster connected to the school’s football program — one whose many unspeakable violations are only coming to light now, in Junod and Lavigne’s tireless, exhaustive investigation. This […]
Peter Rubin
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How Louie Simmons Defined the Extreme Sport of Power Lifting
Even if you’ve never tiptoed near the shrine of powerlifting, you’ll find something to love in Lauren Michele Jackson’s obituary of the iconic Westside Barbell founder. And if you have? The same — plus you’ll leave wondering why the writing about strength sports can’t always be this lyrical. The place became a home for big […]
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H-Town United: An Unlikely Soccer Power Rises in Texas
“Coach Vincenzo Cox discovered an untapped vein of global talent at a southwest Houston high school—and mined it to create one of the best boys soccer programs in the country.”
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The Remarkable Brain of a Carpet Cleaner Who Speaks 24 Languages
Vaughn Smith lives in Maryland. He’s 46 years old. He also learns languages with the seeming ease of a run around the block — including endangered indigenous tongues like Salish. In this fascinating profile that’s part ridealong and part science dive, Jessica Contrera takes you inside the life (and brain) of a man with a […]
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My Friend Goo
When the pandemic upended her daily life, Deb Olin Unferth started walking, and one day met a goose. A measured, tender tale of loss and love and difficult friendship — one that warns you throughout that a sting is coming, but manages to sneak up and wallop you anyway. He was feisty, the town bully, […]
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The Editor Who Moves Theory Into the Mainstream
Among a certain breed of academic (and academia-adjacent) reader, Duke University Press holds an unswayable cachet. And in this tight, arch profile of Duke UP editor Ken Wissokur, Jennifer Wilson does the magazine version of what Wissokur does with his authors and their scholarly books: take something that sounds dreadfully dry, and make it perfectly […]
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The Boy From Booker T.
Twelve years ago, journalism student Jeffrey McWhorter structured his senior project around a group of boys in East Austin’s Booker T. Washington Terraces. He photographed them, interviewed them and their families, got to know them all. While those relationships began under the auspices of reportage, they lasted as a very real friendship, even after one […]
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Nicolas Cage Can Explain It All
In an era when too many celebrity profiles either take place entirely over Zoom or vastly misapprehend what makes someone objectively interesting, Gabriella Paiella’s April cover story for GQ manages what seems the impossible: avoiding the pitfalls, commiting without caping, and leaving you with a very real sense of a man you thought you knew […]
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We’ve Underestimated Sprinkles
I love sprinkles. Always have. And somehow, as Cathy Erway shows in this delightful piece for Taste, the world has caught up to my juvenile palate. Thankfully, she phrases the appeal more artfully: “the nutritionless, mostly flavorless, tiny doodads that mimic absolutely nothing found in nature provide outsize comfort with egalitarian underpinnings. And they aren’t […]
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What Lies Beneath Hip-Hop’s Swagger
Over the weekend, The New York Times Magazine published a twist on its annual “Songs That Matter” package: “Songs That Got Us Through It.” The newest is overall a remarkable project, stuffed with keen criticism. But Smith’s piece, which feels for the pulse of aggression in today’s and yesterday’s hip-hop, stands out — as bracing […]