The Dream Boat

Luke Mogelson and Joel Van Houdt go undercover on a boat taking refugees from Indonesia to Christmas Island in Australian territory. They find a desperate situation, and disbelief from refugees that the place they are trying to reach is not what they hope it will be:

Continuing to brave the Indian Ocean, and continuing to die, only illustrates their desperation in a new, disturbing kind of light. This is the subtext to the plight of every refugee: Whatever hardship he endures, he endures because it beats the hardship he escaped. Every story of exile implies the sadder story of a homeland.

Published: Nov 16, 2013
Length: 40 minutes (10,160 words)

What Is the Value of Stolen Art?

Ed Caesar explores the black market for art, following a 2012 heist at the Kunsthal museum in Rotterdam, perpetrated by a group of Romanian “knuckleheads”:

Making money from stolen paintings — particularly famous ones — is not a straightforward matter, and those who try to do so fall broadly into two categories. The first, most common type is the naïf, who steals a painting but has laid few plans beyond the theft itself. He soon discovers that the painting’s notoriety has rendered it toxic, and he can’t sell it. The work of art becomes burdensome and worthless — to him at least. A more sophisticated criminal, on the other hand, recognizes that a pilfered masterpiece is a unique commodity and that in order to profit from it, he needs to think more like a derivatives trader than a pickpocket.

Author: Ed Caesar
Published: Nov 13, 2013
Length: 18 minutes (4,709 words)

All Is Fair in Love and Twitter

An excerpt from Bilton’s new book, Hatching Twitter: The untold story of Twitter’s true origins—and the contributions of Noah Glass, the co-founder who disappeared from the picture:

“What Glass didn’t know was that Dorsey was the one who wanted him out. Perhaps it was because he sensed vulnerability or perhaps it was because Glass was the only person who could rightly insist that the status updater was not Dorsey’s idea alone. Whatever his reasons, Dorsey had recently met with Williams and threatened to quit if Glass wasn’t let go. And for Williams, the decision was easy. Dorsey had become the lead engineer on Twitter, and Glass’s personal problems were affecting his judgment. (For a while, portions of the company existed entirely on Glass’s I.B.M. laptop.) After conferring with the Odeo board, around 6 p.m. on Wednesday, July 26, 2006, Williams asked Glass to join him for a walk to South Park. Sitting on a green bench, Williams gave his old friend an ultimatum: six months’ severance and six months’ vesting of his Odeo stock, or he would be publicly fired. Williams said the decision was his alone.”

Published: Oct 9, 2013
Length: 24 minutes (6,149 words)

And Then Steve Said, ‘Let There Be an iPhone’

An excerpt from Vogelstein’s new book Dogfight, inside the making of the iPhone—a story of clashing egos, technical risks, secrecy and a big bet by Steve Jobs and Apple about where the company’s future would lie:

“Grignon and his team could only ensure a good signal, and then pray. They had AT&T, the iPhone’s wireless carrier, bring in a portable cell tower, so they knew reception would be strong. Then, with Jobs’s approval, they preprogrammed the phone’s display to always show five bars of signal strength regardless of its true strength. The chances of the radio’s crashing during the few minutes that Jobs would use it to make a call were small, but the chances of its crashing at some point during the 90-minute presentation were high. ‘If the radio crashed and restarted, as we suspected it might, we didn’t want people in the audience to see that,’ Grignon says. ‘So we just hard-coded it to always show five bars.'”

Published: Oct 5, 2013
Length: 24 minutes (6,009 words)

Daniel Radcliffe’s Next Trick Is to Make Harry Potter Disappear

A profile of actor Daniel Radcliffe, who, despite becoming wildly famous at a young age after he starred in the Harry Potter films, has managed to stay earnest, self-aware, and out of the tabloids:

“Rupert Grint, who played Ron Weasley, Harry Potter’s best friend, recently described the long, drawn-out experience of appearing in the films as ‘quite suffocating.’

“Radcliffe, however, rarely betrayed any strain. ‘If he was feeling good, bad, indifferent or terrible,’ says David Yates, who directed the last four Potter films over six and a half years, ‘he carried the perception that everything was lovely and great, even though the pressures were really intense.’

“As Radcliffe explained it: ‘The second you seem down, everyone’s very concerned. It affects the set.’ Temporarily suppressing a mood was easier than bringing a crew of hundreds of people to a halt — it was just another skill he learned on the job, part of keeping the vast machinery around him moving smoothly. ‘If I ever was feeling ill,’ he said, ‘it was: “Get a doctor on set!” “No, I’m fine.” … That feeling makes me not want to worry people.'”

Published: Oct 3, 2013
Length: 25 minutes (6,267 words)

We Like You So Much and Want to Know You Better

New fiction from Dave Eggers, adapted from his new novel The Circle, about a woman hired to work for a social network:

“Dan winced. ‘No, it’s not that. You handle your workload just fine. But we missed you at the Industrial Revolution party last Thursday night, which was a pretty crucial team-building event, centered on a product we’re all very proud of. You missed at least two newbie events, and at the circus the other night, it looked like you couldn’t wait to leave. I think you were out of there in 20 minutes. Those things might be understandable if your Participation Rank wasn’t so low. Do you know what it is?'”

Published: Sep 28, 2013
Length: 32 minutes (8,067 words)

Tomato Can Blues

A small-time fighter’s big-time hoax:

“While Rowan was ferrying drugs in Three Rivers in 2010, before he began cage fighting, he claimed to have lost Gomez’s shipment, maybe worth as much as $80,000. As Rowan told it, a group of thieves jumped him, cracked his ribs and stole the drugs.

“Now, Rowan owed money to impatient people. He tried to lie low, but in January, a group of men beat him up behind Shopko, leaving him with two black eyes, broken ribs and blood on his baseball cap, he told friends at the time.

“Rowan was desperate. Then, while he was watching TV at his girlfriend’s house, a show caught his attention. It was on the Investigation Discovery channel, something about a guy who staged his own death so he could start his life anew.”

Author: Mary Pilon
Published: Sep 18, 2013
Length: 19 minutes (4,812 words)

12 Minutes of Freedom in 460 Days of Captivity

In August 2008, Amanda Lindhout and Nigel Brennan were kidnapped and held hostage in Somalia. They spent 460 days in captivity. This is the story of their escape attempt, which is excerpted from Lindhout’s book A House in the Sky:

“One afternoon, a light rain began to dapple the concrete wall across the alleyway from my window. The sky darkened to a powdery gray. A wind gusted, rushing through trees I couldn’t see, causing the rain to spray sideways on the wall.

“‘God, it’s beautiful,’ a voice said, clear as day, articulating my exact thought at the exact moment I had it.

“The voice wasn’t mine. But it was a voice I knew. ‘Nige?’

“The voice said, ‘Trout?’ Trout was a nickname I had since high school.

“For a shocked second, we were both silent. He was maybe 10 feet away from me at the window in his room. Because the alleyway was narrow and the tin roof of our house overlapped slightly with that of the house behind it, the acoustics were perfect.”

Published: Aug 28, 2013
Length: 36 minutes (9,169 words)

The God of ‘SNL’ Will See You Now

Current and former cast members of Saturday Night Live—and one who didn’t make it—reflect on what it’s like to audition for Lorne Michaels:

"Marc Maron: I think I was a little high on pot. There were some pictures facing [Mr. Michaels], and in front of the pictures was a bowl of candy. It was all very loaded. And then he just starts looking at me, to a point where Steve Higgins [then an ‘SNL’ producer] goes, ‘Lorne?’ And Lorne goes, ‘You can tell a lot by looking into someone’s eyes.’ And then I took a candy. Lorne looked at Steve, and the meeting was over. I thought I failed the candy test.

“If it panned out, my life would have been dramatically different. I wouldn’t be mildly obsessed with Lorne Michaels. I talk to people about Lorne because I’m hung up on it. I feel like I need to talk to him again to get some closure. [Laughs.]”

Published: Aug 22, 2013
Length: 14 minutes (3,674 words)

The Jockey

A multimedia story about a life dedicated to horse racing. Russell Baze, 55, is the winningest jockey in North American history. But few know his name—he stayed close to home in Northern California, where the purses are smaller and there are fewer opportunities to get into the big races:

“Very few great horses come out of Northern California, and that has meant Baze rarely has been in America’s biggest races. ‘Every jockey’s dream is to win the Kentucky Derby,’ he said, describing the thrill of being at the center of so mammoth a crowd. But he has ridden in the event only twice, both times on long shots. Semoran finished 14th in 1996; Cause to Believe was 13th in 2005.

“A third horse, Event of the Year, was a Derby favorite in 1998. ‘I had the big one,’ Baze said, recalling the momentous opportunity, a chance to be the jockey among jockeys in the race of all races. But the horse — the best he had ever ridden — fractured a knee a week before the race.

“Because Baze has primarily worked in the Bay Area, some horseplayers put a mental asterisk beside his name, likening his record for wins to a baseball home run king given credit for round-trippers in Class AAA.

“That is a reasonable observation, as Baze would acknowledge. ‘I’m not the greatest jockey, and I’ll be the first one to tell you that,’ he said.”

Published: Aug 13, 2013
Length: 40 minutes (10,213 words)