Africa: Coke’s Last Frontier

Annual per capita consumption of Coca-Cola in Kenya is 39 servings. In more developed countries like Mexico, which consumes more Coca-Cola than any other country, it runs 665 servings per year. One does not need an MBA to see the possibilities.

Source: Businessweek
Published: Oct 28, 2010
Length: 14 minutes (3,571 words)

The New Humanism

There was no objection to chapel and Sunday school … But my home was a religion-free zone: no grace before meals, no prayers at bedtime, and the Bible wedged firmly on the shelf between the Oxford Dictionary and Winston Churchill’s “History of the Second World War.”

Published: Mar 1, 2009
Length: 6 minutes (1,606 words)

The Unsocial Network

Plunging ratings. Tense negotiations. A bewildered, increasingly outraged Conan O’Brien and an anxiously pragmatic Jay Leno. In this excerpt from his new book, Bill Carter unfurls the behind-the-scenes story of late night’s explosive 2010 showdown. (“What does Jay have on you?” Conan asked, his voice still low, his tone still even. “What does this guy have on you people? What the hell is it about Jay?”)

Source: Vanity Fair
Published: Oct 28, 2010
Length: 25 minutes (6,406 words)

Mikhail Prokhorov, the Playboy and His Power Games

You might think that Mikhail Prokhorov would have had a not-so-soft case of buyer’s remorse this past spring. A month before the start of the National Basketball Association season, the 45-year-old Russian billionaire struck a deal to buy the New Jersey Nets from the real estate developer Bruce C. Ratner. When the league owners finally ratified the sale eight months later, the Nets record stood at 12 wins and 70 losses, and Prokhorov’s shiny new team was the laughingstock of the NBA

Author: Chip Brown
Published: Oct 28, 2010
Length: 33 minutes (8,343 words)

The Art of Humor No. 1, Woody Allen

“A word about this interview. It was hard for me because I don’t like to aggrandize my work by discussing its influences or my themes or that kind of thing. That kind of talk is more applicable to works of greater stature. I say this with no false modesty—that I feel I have done no really significant work, whatsoever, in any medium.”

Published: Sep 1, 1995
Length: 28 minutes (7,205 words)

The Hits That Are Changing Football

Dr. Ann McKee, an associate professor of neurology and pathology at Boston University who has been studying the brains of deceased football players, wanted to illustrate the damage that repeated hits to the helmet can cause. This slide of a cross-section of a human male brain, magnified 100 times, showed scores, maybe hundreds, of tiny brownish triangular bits of a toxic protein called tau, choking off cellular life in the brain.

Author: Peter King
Published: Oct 27, 2010
Length: 10 minutes (2,625 words)

Hugh Hefner Has Been Good for Us

Hefner and Playboy have been around so long that not everyone remembers what America used to be like. It was sexually repressed and socially restrictive. Many people joined in the fight against that unhealthy society. Hefner was one of them, and a case can can be made that Playboy had a greater influence on our society in its first half-century than any other magazine.

Published: Oct 27, 2010
Length: 9 minutes (2,415 words)

What Was the Hipster?

If I speak of the degeneration of our most visible recent subculture, the hipster, it’s an awkward occasion. Someone will point out that hipsters are not dead, they still breathe, they live on my block. Yet it is evident that we have reached the end of an epoch in the life of the type.

Author: Mark Greif
Published: Oct 24, 2010
Length: 14 minutes (3,697 words)

The Final Days of Gary Condit

For almost a year, since the disappearance of Chandra Ann Levy, Gary and his family and his staff had been subjected to intense public scrutiny. “I know what they want me to say … They want me to say that I did her.”

Author: Mike Sager
Source: Esquire
Published: Sep 1, 2002
Length: 34 minutes (8,629 words)

Cherayla Davis, Amateur

All six of the contestants at the Apollo Amateur Night semifinals had already advanced through two rounds. Of them, only Cherayla Davis had won first place in both of her appearances. When James Brown competed in Amateur Night, he was booed. Luther Vandross and Lauryn Hill were also booed. Dave Chappelle: booed. Cherayla Davis had never been booed. And this night, she was going out first.

Source: The Awl
Published: Oct 26, 2010
Length: 9 minutes (2,477 words)