We Are Hopelessly Hooked

Smartphone use has grown faster than any other consumer technology in history. But has our transformation into “device people” corroded our humanity?

Published: Feb 25, 2016
Length: 16 minutes (4,200 words)

The Shame of Wisconsin

Moore’s incisive review of the Netflix documentary Making a Murderer.

Published: Feb 10, 2016
Length: 13 minutes (3,288 words)

ISIS in Gaza

Sarah Helm investigates the roots of ISIS in Gaza and how Hamas is responding.

Author: Sarah Helm
Published: Dec 16, 2015
Length: 16 minutes (4,190 words)

John Hope Franklin: Race & the Meaning of America

Drew Gilpin Faust on the work of John Hope Franklin, who would have turned 100 this year. “Only if we understand and acknowledge this past can we grapple with the conflicts of the present and the promise of the future. ‘To confront our past and see it for what it is.’ Franklin’s words. The past ‘is.’ Not the past was. The past lives on.”

Published: Nov 30, 2015
Length: 17 minutes (4,482 words)

Medical Research: The Dangers to the Human Subjects

Marcia Angell examines the history and ethics of clinical trials.

Published: Nov 5, 2015
Length: 12 minutes (3,031 words)

Urge

Oliver Sacks’s last essay for the New York Review of Books, which looks at a man with Klüver-Bucy syndrome, “which manifests itself as insatiable eating and sexual drive, sometimes combined with irritability and distractibility, all on a purely physiological basis.”

Published: Sep 2, 2015
Length: 6 minutes (1,500 words)

They Began a New Era

The late James Salter’s last piece for the New York Review of Books, on David McCullough’s Wright brothers biography.

Published: Aug 6, 2015
Length: 15 minutes (3,753 words)

ISIS and the Shia Revival in Iraq

Nicolas Pelham in Iraq, on the destruction of antiquities by ISIS, and the reality of life in Baghdad right now.

Published: May 20, 2015
Length: 16 minutes (4,245 words)

Mass Incarceration: The Silence of the Judges

A federal judge speaks out against mass incarceration.

Published: May 21, 2015
Length: 14 minutes (3,500 words)

Scientist, Spy, Genius: Who Was Bruno Pontecorvo?

Bruno Pontecorvo was one of the most promising nuclear physicists in the world; he also might have been a spy.

Published: Mar 5, 2015
Length: 13 minutes (3,370 words)