Comedian and actor Robin Williams died today at the age of 63. Here are five in-depth interviews with him. 1. Robin Williams: ‘The Night Listener’ (Terry Gross, Fresh Air, Aug. 3, 2006) Terry Gross talks to Robin Williams, and, towards the end of the interview, asks him about depression: “Do I get sad? Oh yeah. […]
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Posted inNonfiction, Quotes
How Russia Began Using Poison in Assassinations
“The idea of poisoning — radioactive or otherwise — is not new to Russian intelligence. According to former Russian intelligence officer Boris Volodarsky, now a historian and one-time associate of Litvinenko, the Russians have a history of substance assassination going back nearly a century. It was Lenin who ordered the establishment of their first laboratory, known simply as the […]
Posted inEditor's Pick
Poison Tree
An open letter to Grand Theft Auto IV’s protagonist Niko Bellic about Grand Theft Auto V and video game culture: “Almost everyone I know who loves video games — myself included — is broken in some fundamental way. With their ceaseless activity and risk-reward compulsion loops, games also soothe broken people. This is not a […]
Posted inNonfiction, Quotes
When Stressing Over Social Status Becomes Toxic
In Stanford Magazine, Kristin Sainani talks to researchers in psychiatry and behavioral science to examine the causes of stress and the differences between “good” stress (i.e. the short-term stress of working on deadline that is later paid off by the euphoric sense of accomplishment) and “bad” stress (i.e. chronic stress). Here, a health psychologist discusses […]
Posted inBooks, Member Pick, Nonfiction, Story
Escape from Jonestown
15-year-old Tommy Bogue was sent to a promising new church settlement in Guyana—run by a charismatic leader named Jim Jones.
Posted inBooks, Nonfiction
Tennessee Williams on His Women, His Writer’s Block, and Whether It All Mattered
Tennessee Williams tasked James Grissom with seeking out each of the women (and few men) who had inspired his work—Maureen Stapleton, Lillian Gish, Marlon Brando and others—so that he could ask them a question: had Tennessee Williams, or his work, ever mattered?
Posted inBooks, Nonfiction, Story
Tennessee Williams on His Women, His Writer’s Block, and Whether It All Mattered
Tennessee Williams tasked James Grissom with seeking out each of the women (and few men) who had inspired his work—Maureen Stapleton, Lillian Gish, Marlon Brando and others—so that he could ask them a question: had Tennessee Williams, or his work, ever mattered?
Posted inEditor's Pick
Bad Blood
A Russian dissident is murdered with radioactive poison: The doctors treated Litvinenko with a heavy dose of antibiotics. And yet his body continued to break down. Three days after admission, he was being fed through a tube. His hair was falling out, and Marina gathered it in little bundles from his pillow and pajamas. As […]
Posted inEditor's Pick
Meet the 103,000 People Who Could Become the First Climate-Change Refugees
A visit to the island nation of Kiribati, which could be the first country to be lost from rising tides due to global warming: Kiribati is a flyspeck of a United Nations member state, a collection of 33 islands necklaced across the central Pacific. Thirty-two of the islands are low-lying atolls; the 33rd, called Banaba, […]
Posted inBooks, First Chapters, Member Pick, Nonfiction
Grandma Gatewood’s Walk: The Woman Who Saved the Appalachian Trail
“There were a million heavenly things to see and a million spectacular ways to die.”
