Spending Your Entire Life Wanting to Die

A profile of author Daphne Merkin, whose new memoir, This Close to Happy: A Reckoning With Depression, chronicles her six decades living with deep depression and suicidal thoughts.

Author: Gabby Bess
Source: Broadly
Published: Feb 8, 2017
Length: 9 minutes (2,480 words)

What It Was Like To Love Oliver Sacks

A moving excerpt of Insomniac City: New York, Oliver and Me, author Bill Hayes’s new memoir of his intimate relationship with late neuroscientist and author Oliver Sacks.

Author: Bill Hayes
Source: BuzzFeed
Published: Feb 14, 2017
Length: 6 minutes (1,742 words)

The Strange Case Of The Russian Diplomat Who Got His Head Smashed In On Election Day

Sergei Krivov fell from the roof of New York City’s Russian Consulate building and died on its floor, but the consulate said he had a heart attack. Although a Manhattan resident, his name appears in no public records. His listed home address is an office building. The NYPD won’t release the incident report. So what really happened?

Source: BuzzFeed
Published: Feb 15, 2017
Length: 9 minutes (2,311 words)

‘The Kids Think I’m a Shoe’

Stan Smith had a respectable, if not forgettable tennis career, but his sneakers have brought him much more success than he could have ever imagined.

Published: Feb 10, 2017
Length: 12 minutes (3,200 words)

The Man Who Broke Ticketmaster

Ken Lowson, the most infamous and successful ticket scalper of all time, used bots to buy millions of tickets. Now, several years later, he’s ready to tell his story—and fix the system.

Source: Motherboard
Published: Feb 10, 2017
Length: 25 minutes (6,266 words)

Goodbye, Eastern Europe!

Is “Eastern Europe” disappearing? Was it ever real, or just a figment of Cold War imaginations?

Published: Jan 27, 2017
Length: 23 minutes (5,934 words)

Fat in Every Language

Being fat in America is nothing like being fat abroad.

Published: Feb 8, 2017
Length: 8 minutes (2,010 words)

Queens of the Stoned Age

The Green Angels—a collective of weed-dealing models—runs a high-end, multimillion-dollar pot operation based in New York City.

Source: GQ
Published: Feb 14, 2017
Length: 23 minutes (5,839 words)

After the Fall: The Tunnel Creek Avalanche, Five Years Later

Eva Holland talks to the survivors and explores the aftermath of the Tunnel Creek avalanche — the tragedy that inspired “Snow Fall” — five years after a massive snow slide claimed the lives of three men.

Source: Seattle Met
Published: Feb 13, 2017
Length: 15 minutes (3,887 words)

A City Is Not a Computer

Urban theorists and tech accelerators are asking what cities would look like if people built new ones from the ground up with innovation and the internet at their core, but can we treat cities the way we treat startups and technology?

Source: Places
Published: Feb 1, 2017
Length: 15 minutes (3,894 words)