The Stutterer: How He Makes His Voice Heard
[Essays and Criticism] Today, I am still being jolted, and the jagged terrain behind bears the track marks of my own innumerable small humiliations. In the seventh grade: A substitute asks the class to read out loud, and when I stumble over my first sentence, she inquires of the other students whether I’m “OK” and “always like this,” and while I continue fighting with a “pr” sound, my ears tune in to every judging shudder in the room—the creaking chairs, the restless exhalations, the uncomfortable shifting, in the desk beside me, of a girl with many colored pens who seems to me in some way very beautiful. In high school: A medical assistant taking down my charts asks whether I just have a problem with my speech or whether there is mental retardation, too.
The Idealist
Jeff Smith was a rising political star. Then the FBI started asking questions about his past. “That evening, Smith gave a speech at a fund-raiser in a downtown loft. He found it difficult to focus. ‘As I was talking, I had an ominous sense of foreboding about what was to come,’ he says. ‘I looked around the crowd and thought to myself, “This is going to be our last fund-raiser.”‘”
Please Allow Me To Correct a Few Things
Imagining if Mick Jagger responded to Keith Richards about his new autobiography. “I am, I see here, marginally endowed, if I read Keith’s sniggering aright. I do not sing well, either. I am not polite to employees; indeed, I have even been known to say, ‘Oh, shut up, Keith,’ in band meetings. I do not appreciate the authenticity of the music or the importance of what we do. I want to ‘lord it over’ the band, like James Brown. I am ‘insufferable.’ I slept with Anita.”
Google Research Dir. Peter Norvig on Being Wrong
Google’s search engine has changed how we conduct research, plan vacations, resolve arguments, find old acquaintances, and check out potential mates. It’s also radically reshaping the way we think about almost every imaginable medium.
What Really Happened to Phoebe Prince?
The untold story of her suicide and the role of the kids who have been criminally charged for it.
Brother
Why I no longer speak to the sibling who raised me like a father.
A Marine General at War
Gen. James Mattis thinks about when, and how, American troops should put their lives at risk.
Searching for Saddam
A five-part series on how the U.S. military used social networking to capture the Iraqi dictator.
Atomic Priesthoods, Thorn Landscapes, and Munchian Pictograms
How to communicate the dangers of nuclear waste to future civilizations.
Underground Psychology
Researchers have been spying on us on the subway. Here’s what they’ve learned.