While it’s not the first in-depth story about the capsaicin-fueled mayhem of YouTube talk show Hot Ones (see: this 2019 Verge story), Jaya Saxena’s piece goes beyond profile to something more like exegesis. We know that Scoville units introduce a candid new wrinkle to the tired celebrity interview; now, the question becomes what to do […]
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The Greatest Traveler You’ve Never Heard Of
Since 1966, J.R. Harris has traveled the globe 13 times, taking more than 50 trips to many of the world’s bucket list-worthy destinations, including the Andes, the Amazon, Greenland, and more. Now 78, the Black hiker from Queens is arguably one of the world’s most prolific solo explorers, but — as Katherine LaGrave writes in […]
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H-Town United: An Unlikely Soccer Power Rises in Texas
“Coach Vincenzo Cox discovered an untapped vein of global talent at a southwest Houston high school—and mined it to create one of the best boys soccer programs in the country.”
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The Remarkable Brain of a Carpet Cleaner Who Speaks 24 Languages
Vaughn Smith lives in Maryland. He’s 46 years old. He also learns languages with the seeming ease of a run around the block — including endangered indigenous tongues like Salish. In this fascinating profile that’s part ridealong and part science dive, Jessica Contrera takes you inside the life (and brain) of a man with a […]
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‘Where the Bats Hung Out’: How a Basement Hideaway at UC Berkeley Nurtured a Generation of Blind Innovators
For decades, an underground hideaway at UC Berkeley’s Moffitt Library — better known as “The Cave” — gave rise to a generation of blind leaders, including Joshua Miele, a MacArthur genius grant winner who now builds adaptive technologies at Amazon. The Cave was where iron sharpened iron, academically — tricks for surviving Berkeley were as […]
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Nicolas Cage Can Explain It All
In an era when too many celebrity profiles either take place entirely over Zoom or vastly misapprehend what makes someone objectively interesting, Gabriella Paiella’s April cover story for GQ manages what seems the impossible: avoiding the pitfalls, commiting without caping, and leaving you with a very real sense of a man you thought you knew […]
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The Scientific Methods of J. Kenji López-Alt
“At 42, López-Alt now has the actual dad status to justify the doofy jokes he inserts into his recipes. When Alicia was born, he left food writing to be a full-time parent. Last year he left pretty much every social media platform except Instagram, where he currently clocks more than 450,000 followers. His career has […]
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Is There Such a Thing as Black Thought?
“Tariq Trotter isa 50-year-old artist in a genre where youth is an asset and middle-aged rappers are rare. His voice is gravelly, though wildly flexible when rhyming. He is noticed in every room he walks into. A brother who pays attention to the way the fedora on his head cuts against his face and has […]
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Ben Stiller Sees the World Differently Now
“It was a pretty amazing run. And there was a clarity to it all. He worked hard, pursued satisfying projects, and repeated the things that worked. He made Ben Stiller movies. He was always ascending. Then, starting with the cancer, he got the crap pounded out of him for a few years. His career, his […]
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The Visionary
“Friends call him the ‘consummate vibe curator,’ and with Rage & Release he has created space for a community to coalesce around a common interest in running and using cannabis not to party or to zone out, rather to be present and talk about things like physical and mental health.”