How the down-on-its-luck city ended up becoming a stronghold for the Occupy movement—and whether the radicals will stick around when gentrification takes hold: Their small capitalist enterprise — named to evoke the famous anti-capitalist tract — represents another side of Oakland, albeit one that’s still in its infancy. Think of it as a less twee, […]
Tag: longreads
After a couple has trouble having a second child, they turn to genetic screening and in vitro fertilization: When I awoke, the embryologist relayed the excellent news: We had 20 eggs—five more than we thought possible. As soon as the April sunshine hit my face, I called my mom. Heath called his. For the first […]
A first-person account of an Olympic career, a violent attack, and what happened next: My coach calls me up and says, ‘Listen, If you want to keep your scholarship’—by the way, he’s totally devious here —he said, ‘If you want your scholarship, all you have to do is show up for the meets. Don’t do […]
The hype and marketing behind the “fastest man in the world”: It’s no surprise that every sports meeting in which he participates is organized around him. When he ran in Ostrava in the spring, there were posters featuring Bolt all over the Czech city, the stadium was sold out weeks ahead and there were young […]
A sitcom writer recalls a memorable meeting with Al Franken in the spring of 1998: After a few moments the telephone rang at the host’s station, which sat in the lobby, a few feet outside the dining room entrance, and about 20 feet from where I was sitting. The host answered the call, listened for […]
[Not single-page] On the lives of three gay men who live as a “throuple”: It is important, perhaps, that each pair within the throuple has a private bond: Jason and Adrian have their history, Jason and Benny work together, and Benny and Adrian are close in age. Benny tells me there is zero jealousy among […]
Alfred Hitchcock made Tippi Hedren into a star—and then sabotaged her career when she rejected his advances: It started at the end of The Birds. To depict the notorious final sequence, when Melanie is attacked by dozens of birds on her own in an upstairs bedroom, Hedren was reassured that mechanical birds would be used. […]
A look at the rights of same-sex parents after a mother abducts her daughter and heads to Nicaragua after a civil union dissolves: Isabella’s tumultuous life has embodied some of America’s bitterest culture wars — a choice, as Ms. Miller said in a courtroom plea, shortly before their desperate flight, ‘between two diametrically opposed worldviews […]
A memoir of “growing up black, on parole, in Mississippi”: I enroll at Jackson State University in the Spring semester, where my mother teaches Political Science. Even though, I’m not really living at home, everyday Mama and I fight over my job at Cutco and her staying with her boyfriend and her not letting me […]
For centuries, humans who were infected with the rabies virus had a fatality rate of 100 percent. A new treatment is providing hope, but its effectiveness is being called into question: Not long ago, the medical response to this grim situation would have been little more than ‘comfort care’: administration of sedatives and painkillers to […]
A review of new book Demon Fish and the truth about sharks—from their mating rituals to the real odds of being attacked: There were 75 verified shark attacks last year, and 12 fatalities. Even in the US, a global hotspot, you are forty times more likely to be hospitalised by a Christmas tree ornament than […]
In celebrity journalism, what do we really know? Absolutely nothing, argues the writer, who constructs a counter-narrative that Katie Holmes has played everyone: They compare the pap-friendliness of various celebrities. Among the best are Cruise, in fact, and Hugh Jackman. Scarlett Johansson, who always runs, scowling, is ‘the worst.’ They scoff at the hypocritical attention-seeking […]
Long after the 1960s, a researcher into the effects of LSD makes the case for a return to studying it: On a Saturday last October, 45 years after dispensing those last legal doses, James Fadiman stood on stage inside the cavernous hall of Judson Memorial Church, a long-time downtown New York incubator of artistic, progressive, […]
A look behind the scenes of Texas’s decision last year to cut funding for family planning and wage “an all-out war on Planned Parenthood”—and what that may mean for the future of women’s health care: It was a given that reasonable people could differ over abortion, but most lawmakers believed that funding birth control programs […]
[Not single-page] A young football player kills himself after he sustained a concussion on the field: Heading home, the Trenums stopped at the Chuck Wagon, a restaurant around the corner from their house, where the Brentsville High players gathered after games. Austin’s teammates recounted his sideline exchange with Scavongelli. Scavongelli: “Do you know where you […]
The story of Olympian Hope Solo, the U.S. women’s soccer star whose childhood and difficult relationship with her father—who spent time in jail for kidnapping her and her brother—shaped who she would become: Solo’s last childhood memory of her father is from the following year. One day he reappeared in Richland, begging to take Hope […]
Remembering the singer’s last days, her struggle with substance abuse, and her extraordinary talent: [Mark] Ronson recognized the huge-voiced singer with a bad-girl look as part of a tradition stretching back to the Sixties. ‘The Shangri-Las had that kind of attitude: young girls from Queens in motorcycle jackets,’ he told ROLLING STONE at the time. […]
The rise and fall of one of China’s most powerful politicians: At the opening of the annual Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference on March 2, Bo showed up and put on a brave face for the 3,000 assembled delegates and journalists. But in internal government meetings, Bo was livid, haranguing Chongqing officials and telling them […]
[Not single-page] Goucher, a small liberal-arts college, hired a French professor from Rwanda named Leopold Munyakazi through The Scholar Rescue Fund, an organization devoted to providing asylum to intellectuals whose lives and work are threatened in their home countries. Sanford J. Ungar, the president of the college, is contacted by investigative reporters at NBC, and […]
Entrepreneurs continue to reflect on the lessons of Steve Jobs—is his story ultimately a cautionary tale about a person obsessed with the wrong things in life? Soon after Steve Jobs returned to Apple as CEO in 1997, he decided that a shipping company wasn’t delivering spare parts fast enough. The shipper said it couldn’t do […]
A rock icon at age 62. A look inside Bruce Springsteen’s life, at home and in preparation for another tour, following the losses of bandmates Clarence Clemons and Danny Federici: For the next hour and a half, the band plays through a set that alternates tales of economic pain with party-time escape. While the band […]
David Johnson has sent more than 260 emails to Jay-Z, but has yet to receive a single reply. That may not mean his messages aren’t being read: ‘[Jay] has opened every single one of my emails, even re-opening them to re-read,’ says Johnson. ‘He has clicked on links and had emails open for as long […]
One year later, the survivors of the 2011 massacre in Norway recount what happened: At a pub across the street from the courthouse, he is seated at a sidewalk table with Anita, drinking beer and hand-rolling cigarettes. He has sad eyes and stubble and a gold hoop in his ear. On his right wrist is […]
What Estonia can teach us about economic recovery—and how The country’s leaders got into a fight with New York Times columnist Paul Krugnan: On June 6, in a blog post titled ‘Estonian Rhapsody,’ Krugman took on what he called ‘the poster child for austerity defenders.’ In his post, he graphed real GDP from the height […]
Greg Ousley murdered his parents when he was 14, and is now serving a 60-year sentence. A look at the debate over how we should punish minors for committing violent crimes: Today there are well more than 2,500 juveniles serving time in adult prisons in the United States — enough, in Indiana’s case, to fill […]
The story of a young chess prodigy’s unraveling and disappearance: NEW YORKERS DISAPPEAR all the time. A handful leap into the public eye and remain there, like 6-year-old Etan Patz. An even smaller number miraculously return after decades, like Carlina White, stolen as a baby from a Harlem hospital in 1987 and found more than […]
A writer goes through “the most invasive process in politics”—being vetted as a running mate by the same person who vetted Sarah Palin in 2008: It starts unobtrusively enough. ‘So you’re the vice president, and the president is visiting Seoul,’ Frank begins, unspooling an elaborate scenario in which the president’s hotel gets decimated by a […]
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