Music in the Meltdown

What should pop sound like when the country’s going to hell?

Published: Jun 3, 2009
Length: 14 minutes (3,578 words)

SpongeBob’s Golden Dream

The mysterious allure of the fry cook from Bikini Bottom

Source: The Atlantic
Published: Jun 1, 2009
Length: 14 minutes (3,578 words)

The Secret Drew Barrymore

America’s Favorite Child Actress Fell Off-Camera into Alcoholism and Addiction, the Curses of Her Venerable Acting Family, but Now She’s Fighting Back

Author: Todd Gold
Source: People Magazine
Published: Jan 16, 1989
Length: 14 minutes (3,578 words)

The End of the Affair

The fate of Detroit isn’t a matter of economics. It’s a tragic romance, whose magic was killed by bureaucrats, bad taste and busybodies. P.J. O’Rourke on why Americans fell out of love with the automobile.

Published: May 30, 2009
Length: 7 minutes (1,974 words)

About a Bing

Beware Google: Microsoft’s new search engine isn’t half-bad.

Source: Slate
Published: Jun 2, 2009
Length: 4 minutes (1,191 words)

The Paper Chase

Source: Vanity Fair
Published: Jul 28, 2009
Length: 4 minutes (1,202 words)

After America

In an excerpt from his forthcoming book, Paul Starobin peers into his crystal ball to examine six scenarios for how the post-America world might be.

Source: Foreign Policy
Published: Jun 1, 2009
Length: 4 minutes (1,191 words)

I Just Had a Baby, I’ll Call You Back

In an excerpt from Womenomics, Katty Kay and Claire Shipman say the career ladder is crumbling and women need to forge new paths that can accommodate personal ambition and family.

Author: Katty Kay
Source: Daily Beast
Published: Jun 2, 2009
Length: 4 minutes (1,013 words)

Who Cares What People Write?

Author: Mark Cuban
Source: Mark Cuban
Published: May 31, 2009
Length: 4 minutes (1,011 words)

Good Neighbors

In the earliest years, when you could still drive a Volvo 240 without feeling self-conscious, the collective task in Ramsey Hill was to relearn certain life skills that your own parents had fled to the suburbs specifically to unlearn, like how to interest the local cops in actually doing their job, and how to protect a bike from a highly motivated thief, and when to bother rousting a drunk from your lawn furniture, and how to encourage feral cats to shit in somebody else’s children’s sandbox, and how to determine whether a public school sucked too much to bother trying to fix it. (Fiction)

Source: The New Yorker
Published: Jun 8, 2009
Length: 36 minutes (9,131 words)