Muhammad Comes to Manhattan

The imbroglio over the ground-zero mosque, like all New York stories, is about the clashing dreams of ordinary folks — and, of course, real estate. #Sept11

Published: Aug 22, 2010
Length: 21 minutes (5,401 words)

Stephen Tobolowsky: The X Factor, Part 2

I said, “The waiting room’s gotten so hard.” Felicia, the head of casting, smiled sympathetically. “The nerves-or the folding chairs?” I laughed. “No. The years. The waiting room has become harder than the audition. I never know whom I’m going to see or what it’ll stir up. I am now carrying three huge memories from my life like giant rocks on my back. And I have brought them in here with me now—to you.”

Source: The Awl
Published: Aug 18, 2010
Length: 7 minutes (1,750 words)

Mike Penner, Christine Daniels: A Tragic Love Story

The Los Angeles Times sports journalist lived most of his life wanting to be a woman. He discovered too late that he wanted his wife even more

Published: Aug 19, 2010
Length: 26 minutes (6,536 words)

Happily, Evie After

Evie Stevens loved her job on Wall Street, her income, her new apartment, her family and her friends. So she became a pro racer.

Published: Jul 26, 2010
Length: 17 minutes (4,454 words)

The Mystery of the Tainted Cocaine

What’s a drug used to deworm livestock — a drug that can obliterate your immune system — doing in your cocaine? Nobody knows.

Source: The Stranger
Published: Aug 17, 2010
Length: 14 minutes (3,573 words)

Cassini Royale

By the time he died, in 2006, designer Oleg Cassini had seduced the top top girls of his day, from Grace Kelly to Marilyn Monroe to Anita Ekberg. But, for all Cassini’s success with women, the battle over his estate, between his daughter Tina and his last (and secret) wife, Marianne Nestor, suggests a chilling calculation behind the dashing image.

Source: Vanity Fair
Published: Sep 1, 2010
Length: 37 minutes (9,426 words)

Eleven Lives

The oil will have stopped gushing into the Gulf. The shoreline and the estuaries and the beaches will have been scrubbed clean by man and nature. BP and Transocean will have resumed business as usual. But the original wound will never heal. This is the story of what’s been lost.

Author: Tom Junod
Source: Esquire
Published: Sep 1, 2010
Length: 37 minutes (9,275 words)

Thank You for Not Screaming

If everyone on television were like MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough, television would be a much more civilized place. Really

Source: GQ
Published: Sep 1, 2010
Length: 15 minutes (3,794 words)

Bob Dylan, the Beat Generation, and Allen Ginsberg’s America

Penetrating Aether: The Beat Generation and Allen Ginsberg’s America

Source: The New Yorker
Published: Aug 16, 2010
Length: 47 minutes (11,802 words)

The Web Is Dead? A Debate

Source: Wired
Published: Aug 17, 2010
Length: 38 minutes (9,629 words)