How Hef Got His Groove Back

All along, Hugh Hefner’s position has been that Playboy’s stock is undervalued, and David Bank, a media analyst at RBC Capital Markets, tends to agree. “I think Hefner is incredibly shrewd,” he told me. “But when I take off my analyst’s hat and put on my psychologist’s hat, it’s something of an enigma to me. I don’t know that many 84-year-olds who are reducing their liquidity.”

Published: Feb 5, 2011
Length: 18 minutes (4,686 words)

No Actor Parking

On auditioning: “The events surrounding your brief period of performance congeal into a vast and disjointed perception of your own work day: three hours to get ready and get there; three hours after to cleanse my brain of any psychic wounds. In between, the audition itself: ‘Carol, I didn’t know you were a coffee drinker!’ (To which the client casting this coffee ad replies ‘I wasn’t but then I discovered the delicious new taste!’) Carol, I didn’t know you were a coffee drinker! Carol, I did not know you were a coffee drinker! Carol, oh Carol, I didn’t even know!”

Author: Tess Lynch
Source: n+1
Published: Feb 2, 2011
Length: 16 minutes (4,072 words)

Why and How to Write

Ever since I began my full-length memoir Jesus Was A Pale Imitation of Myself I have been deluged with responses from fans asking me how I start writing. That’s a great question, but I usually don’t give writing advice for free, just the actual writing. Still many authors have weighed in on this subject and we can learn much from their instruction. This is the first of a four part series. (Featuring Joyce Carol Oates, Gene Wolfe, Philip Levine, Thomas Pynchon, Gertrude Stein.)

Author: Editors
Source: This Recording
Published: Oct 5, 2010
Length: 13 minutes (3,493 words)

The Man of the Hour

Roger Goodell, sandy-haired and fit at 51, is the steward of the multibillion-dollar NFL juggernaut, having attained the job he dreamed about back in college. Over the first 4½ years of his tenure, he’s had to address numerous crises: Spygate; player discipline, most notably in the Michael Vick case; an epidemic of concussions; and the problem of how to keep players from maiming each other on the field. All the while, one thing has loomed very large over the commissioner: the shaky labor deal he inherited.

Author: Peter King
Published: Feb 4, 2011
Length: 23 minutes (5,858 words)

‘Nobody Gets Married Any More, Mister’

Here’s my prediction: the money, the reforms, the gleaming porcelain, the hopeful rhetoric about saving our children—all of it will have a limited impact, at best, on most city schoolchildren. Urban teachers face an intractable problem, one that we cannot spend or even teach our way out of: teen pregnancy. This year, all of my favorite girls are pregnant, four in all, future unwed mothers every one. There will be no innovation in this quarter, no race to the top. Personal moral accountability is the electrified rail that no politician wants to touch.

Source: City Journal
Published: Feb 3, 2011
Length: 11 minutes (2,823 words)

The Other League

The AFL’s story is a quintessentially American tale of a group of outmanned, outcast insurgents working on the margins, forced to break with the old way of doing things and in the process creating a brasher, more exciting version of the mainstream—a mainstream that then remade itself in the insurgents’ image. And Sid Gillman, Sonny Werblin, and Al Davis—three Jewish men—were among the AFL’s boldest and most creative innovators, and through the AFL had among the greatest impacts on the shape, success, and direction of the Super Bowl you will watch on Sunday night.

Author: Marc Tracy
Source: Tablet Magazine
Published: Feb 3, 2011
Length: 15 minutes (3,874 words)

How Harvey Got His Groove Back

After several years in the wilderness, Harvey Weinstein has come roaring back (if a bit less loudly) into the moviemaking sweet spot, winning raves for The King’s Speech, The Fighter, and Blue Valentine. But his bitter war with Disney over Miramax, the crushing blow of losing the company (named after his parents) a second time, and his attempt to build a multi-media empire—all have left their scars. Bryan Burrough learns about the darkest hours of a man who, love him or hate him, may be the last true impresario.

Source: Vanity Fair
Published: Feb 3, 2011
Length: 25 minutes (6,409 words)

The Riddle of Jimmy Carter

When you talk with people like Hertzberg about Carter, it’s clear that they think of him as a flawed leader, but such an intelligent, determined, decent and compelling person that they want him to have been a great president. Only 44 men have been president. What was Carter missing that Lincoln and FDR possessed? At the Winter Weekend, I decide to ask Carter what he thinks are the qualities necessary to be a successful president. In the hours I spend with him over the course of five formal interviews and other casual interactions, his answer is the most revealing thing he tells me.

Source: Rolling Stone
Published: Feb 1, 2011
Length: 63 minutes (15,821 words)

When Irish Eyes Are Crying

First Iceland. Then Greece. Now Ireland, which headed for bankruptcy with its own mysterious logic. In 2000, suddenly among the richest people in Europe, the Irish decided to buy their country—from one another. After which their banks and government really screwed them. So where’s the rage?

Source: Vanity Fair
Published: Feb 2, 2011
Length: 53 minutes (13,400 words)

Shaken-Baby Syndrome Faces New Questions in Court

This is how science progresses: One researcher comes up with a hypothesis, which others question and test. But shaken-baby cases are haunted by the enormous repercussions of getting it wrong — the conviction of innocent adults, on the one hand, and on the other, the danger to children of missing serious abuse. In one study, researchers looked into the deaths of five children who had head injuries that initially were misjudged to be accidents and found that four of them could have been prevented if an earlier pattern of abuse had been detected.

Published: Feb 2, 2011
Length: 32 minutes (8,175 words)