Burt Helm is Senior Writer for Inc. Magazine. His stories, “The Forgotten Founder,” “Turntable.fm: Where Did Our Love Go?” and “Hard Lessons in Modern Lending,” were featured on Longreads in 2012. Best Takedown of an Old, Established Writer by a Young, Hungry Writer in an Awkward Press Junket Setting Sarah Nicole Prickett, “How to Get […]
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Longreads Best of 2012: Emma Carmichael
Emma Carmichael is the managing editor of Gawker. She lives in Brooklyn. The Best Thing I Read About A Woman Who Got Blamed For Everything The Woman Who Took the Fall for JPMorgan Chase, by Susan Dominus (New York Times Magazine) I tend to steer clear of stories about finance because I assume they’ll either […]
Teen Mathletes Do Battle at Algorithm Olympics
Teen Mathletes Do Battle at Algorithm Olympics Neal Wu’s last chance for international glory, and maybe America’s, too, begins with a sound like a hippo crunching through a field of dry leaves—the sound of 315 computer prodigies at 315 workstations ripping into 315 gray envelopes in unison. “You have five hours,” a voice booms across […]
The search for Clifton (Pop) Herring, Jordan’s high school coach, and the truth about the NBA legend’s early days: And so, over the next four years, as Michael Jordan became an Olympic gold medalist, a rookie NBA All-Star and the scorer of 37 points per game, Pop Herring went from suspended to unemployed to unemployable. […]
Quanitta Underwood and her sister suffered years of sexual abuse from their father. She’s now an Olympic contender in boxing, and a public voice for other survivors: Underwood, of course, covets a gold medal and the fame that would come with it. “I want to take that ride,” she says. “I want to be a […]
Twenty years ago, The Simpsons gave the Fox Network its first-ever prime-time ratings victory with an all-star baseball episode that beat out The Cosby Show and the Winter Olympics: Aside from the logistics of recording nine separate guest roles, plot lines had to be rewritten on the fly. Jose Canseco’s scene originally called for him […]
Featured: Tech/Science site BBC Future’s #longreads page. Story picks about Olympic doping, the Titanic’s anniversary, plus more.
An investigation of sports’ biggest conspiracy theories, starting with the 1985 NBA draft: I believe in the fix. I believe in the hidden hand, that sports have a secret, redacted history. I believe that Game 6 of the 2002 NBA Western Conference Finals was a sham, that Spygate was a cover-up of a cover-up, that […]
Twenty years later, how Michael, Magic and the NBA’s best players sought to regain U.S. dominance in Olympic basketball: Nathaniel Butler (official NBA photographer): We were sitting on the baseline. Magic is backing a guy down, and the guy on defense is yelling at his bench, “Now! Now!” And on the bench, one guy’s pulling […]
Does our body tell us when we can’t go any farther, or does our brain? A look at marathon runners and the science behind human endurance. A classic situation in which athletes believe they have hit a true physical limit is ‘bonking’ during a marathon: you stagger to a halt, ostensibly because your body runs […]
