[Transcript] A conversation between the actor and late-night host—and memories of working together: David Letterman: We did a sketch on the old ‘Late Night’ show, and it was with one of the writers, Tom Gammill, and it was ‘Dale, the Psychotic Page.’ We had to set up nine holes of a miniature golf course. He […]
Category: Uncategorized
How authorities broke up an extortion ring in the 1960s that targeted gay men: Impersonating corrupt vice-squad detectives, members of this ring, known in police parlance as bulls, had used young, often underage men known as chickens to successfully blackmail closeted pillars of the establishment, among them a navy admiral, two generals, a U.S. congressman, […]
An eight-year-old autistic boy disappears into a densely forested park in Virginia for five days. The frantic search to find a child who doesn’t understand he’s in danger: Because of his autism, Robert probably didn’t know that he was lost. If he heard people coming through the woods, he might well have taken cover from […]
Steven Thrasher has been named the 2012 National Lesbian & Gay Journalists Association journalist of the year. After gay marriage was legalized in New York last year, he followed two same-sex couples who finally earned the right to consider whether or not they wanted to get married: ‘We never did this saying, “We’re going to […]
A writer of made-for-TV movies reflects on his middling successes and near-misses from a career of steady but not spectacular work in Hollywood: On occasion during my 30-year screenwriting career, the amount on these checks has been life-changing, enough money to buy a car or temporarily pay off our credit cards. But I don’t really […]
Abigail Woodcraft was seven when she indoctrinated into the Church of Scientology via an arm of the church known as Sea Org. What she endured, and how she escaped: One of my first jobs as an official member of the Sea Org was in the security department, meaning I had to make sure people obeyed […]
In the early 20th Century, six-day bike races were some of the biggest sporting events in the U.S.—not to mention grueling and dangerous: In the four corners of the old Chicago Stadium, faux-Greek sculptures depicted the premier indoor athletes of the day: a boxer, a track runner, a hockey player, and a bicyclist. Though outdoor […]
An oral history of the first all-sports talk station, WFAN, which included Don Imus, Mike Francesca, and Christopher “Mad Dog” Russo: Jeff Smulyan (founder and CEO, Emmis Broadcasting): Imus was just getting out of rehab when we bought the station. His agent was a friend of mine; we laughed because we had a bad radio […]
[Fiction] Excerpt from What We Talk About When We Talk About Anne Frank, winner of the 2012 Frank O’Connor International Short Story Award: A father tells his son the truth about a man who beat him during wartime: Not long into the fighting, an Israeli platoon came to rest at a captured Egyptian camp to […]
After a Leukemia doctor and researcher develops the disease himself, he finds an effective treatment when his colleagues sequence his cancer genome: Dr. Wartman’s doctors realized then that their last best hope for saving him was to use all the genetic know-how and technology at their disposal. After their month of frantic work to beat […]
[Not single-page] The origins and consequences of the Obama administration’s focus on drone strikes to kill enemy combatants: Of course, the danger of the Lethal Presidency is that the precedent you establish is hardly ever the precedent you think you are establishing, and whenever you seem to be describing a program that is limited and […]
A minute-by-minute account of the Supreme Court’s ruling on the American Care Act, and how some news organizations initially got it wrong: Into his conference call, the CNN producer says (correctly) that the Court has held that the individual mandate cannot be sustained under the Commerce Clause, and (incorrectly) that it therefore ‘looks like’ the […]
[Fiction] A run-in with an Immigration and Customs Enforcement officer after a rodeo: Victor saw Nachee and Billy Cosa looking toward the entrance and turned his head to see a Riverside County deputy talking to the manager. Some more law was outside. They’d go around to the kitchen and check on Mexicans without any papers. […]
A percussionist’s nerve-wracking audition for the Boston Symphony Orchestra: The classical audition ranks among the world’s toughest job interviews. Each applicant has 10 minutes at most to play in a way so memorable that he stands out among a lineup of other world-class musicians. Tetreault has prestigious degrees from the University of Rochester’s Eastman School […]
[Fiction] A young girl encounters an older group of students: The morning of the abduction, Mrs. Allsop—dishevelled in a limp linen shirtdress—was wielding her secateurs up a ladder, pruning the climbing roses. She was immensely capable; tall and big-boned with a pink, pleasant face and dry yellow hair chopped sensibly short. Jane admired her mother […]
A marriage of convenience between two socialites in D.C. leads to murder: Drath’s murder seized the front page of The Washington Post, which was as awkwardly tangled in the story as the rest of the city’s elite. One of The Post’s columnists attended the couple’s dinners, as did the reporter who covered the case for […]
Inside 19th Century London’s sewers with “toshers,” who made a living by scouring for trash and waste to be resold: They were mostly celebrated, nonetheless, for the living that the sewers gave them, which was enough to support a tribe of around 200 men–each of them known only by his nickname: Lanky Bill, Long Tom, […]
Now that LeBron James has his first championship ring, his narrative is complete. A brief history: Finally, after several drama-clogged months, LeBron James announced his intentions. He called a public meeting in the Roman Forum, at the very spot from which Marc Antony had addressed his countrymen after the death of Julius Caesar. (Some found […]
How Udacity, Coursera and other online universities are changing the way we learn—and changing who has access to higher education: ‘It turns out that two-thirds of our students are from outside the United States,’ Stavens, now the CEO of Udacity, said. ‘It’s about a third US, a third from ten other countries you might expect—western […]
A look at anthropologist Tanya Lurhmann, and on how it is possible for people to experience the voice of a higher being: In the name of research, Luhrmann attended Sunday church where members danced, swayed, cried and raised their hands as a sign of surrender to God. She attended weekly home prayer groups whose members […]
[Not single-page] A visit to one of Philly’s most iconic summer camps: White’s runner arrived at the stage first, and Tyler, a Villanova bunk member who’d been watching older campers do this for years, thrust his face into the dessert topping. A chant rose: ‘Eat that pie! Eat that pie!’ About five minutes into the […]
On what drives the MSNBC star, and how she’s attempted to move her show beyond partisan shouting: Back in 2008, shortly after Phil Griffin called Maddow and told her he was giving her a prime-time television show of her own, she inherited the staff of Verdict With Dan Abrams, a show that embodied the gimmicky […]
Men rarely become porn stars, but James Deen has found a large following simply by being “average”: James Deen, whose real name is Bryan Sevilla, grew up in Pasadena, California. His parents are both, after a fashion, rocket scientists. His father is a mechanical engineer for NASA. His mother does data analysis for the space […]
What does the future hold for Afghanistan after the Americans leave? Some fear that the country’s army won’t be able to stop another civil war from erupting: Many Afghans fear that NATO has lost the will to control the militias, and that the warlords are reëmerging as formidable local forces. Nashir, the Khanabad governor, who […]
A couple learns about a cancer diagnosis: I watch your hand starting to shake as you write down information that will sit on a small square of paper for months, impossible to get rid of. I stand two feet away and watch your lips. I hear you say, Is that all you can tell me…. […]
[Not single-page] Does having more money make a person have less empathy? Earlier this year, Piff, who is 30, published a paper in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences that made him semi-famous. Titled ‘Higher Social Class Predicts Increased Unethical Behavior,’ it showed through quizzes, online games, questionnaires, in-lab manipulations, and field studies […]
You must be logged in to post a comment.