Is Ancient DNA Research Revealing New Truths — or Falling Into Old Traps?
Geneticists have begun using old bones to make sweeping claims about the distant past. But their revisions to the human story are making some scholars of prehistory uneasy.
Geneticists have begun using old bones to make sweeping claims about the distant past. But their revisions to the human story are making some scholars of prehistory uneasy.
Gideon Lewis-Kraus New York Times Magazine Jan 2019 50min Permalink
Tekashi 6ix9ine was SoundCloud rap’s most notorious star. But the same instincts that made him huge may put him in prison for years
Stephen Witt Rolling Stone Jan 2019 30min Permalink
A Q&A with Twitter’s CEO on right-wing extremism, Candace Owens, and what he’d do if the president called on his followers to murder journalists.
Ashley Feinberg Huffington Post Jan 2019 20min Permalink
These Boston high school valedictorians set off to change the world. But good grades only got them so far. Is Boston failing its brightest students? A five-part series about the students left behind.
Malcolm Gay, Meghan E. Irons, Eric Moskowitz The Boston Globe Jan 2019 1h20min Permalink
On Shoshana Zuboff’s The Age of Surveillance Capitalism.
By reengineering the economy and society to their own benefit, Google and Facebook are perverting capitalism in a way that undermines personal freedom and corrodes democracy.
Nicholas Carr Los Angeles Review of Books Jan 2019 15min Permalink
Various forms of isolation in rural Canada.
Alison Braid Barren Magazine Jan 2019 15min Permalink
An investigation into the bad medical advice women are given about their bodies.
Nona Willis Aronowitz Lifehacker Jan 2019 20min Permalink
Steven Tyler, Julien Baker, Ben Harper, Jason Isbell, Joe Walsh, and other sober musicians on how to thrive creatively without drugs or booze.
Chris Heath GQ Jan 2019 1h Permalink
Doug Bock Clark has written for GQ, Wired, and The New Yorker. His new book is The Last Whalers: Three Years in the Far Pacific with a Courageous Tribe and a Vanishing Way of Life.
“I think for me the answer has always been you just find the people. You just listen to their stories. I think we're all microcosms, right? We're all fractals of the bigger world. Whether it's my own life or your life or the Lamalerans or other people I've encountered reporting. I think one of the things I'm constantly aware of is how these sort of greater world historical forces are working on us and shaping our lives. For more people than most people would assume, if you just followed their life and looked at it in the particulars but also in the broader circumstances, you could probably draw larger themes from them and their experiences. I never had any worries about whether I could expand the Lamaleran story. It was always just about getting those specific stories right, and I knew the rest of it would come.”
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Jan 2019 Permalink
The story of Dr. Sherman Hershfield, who became Dr. Rapp.
Jeff Maysh The Atlantic Jan 2019 25min Permalink
When Sonia Vallabh lost her mother to a rare disease, then was diagnosed with it herself, she and her husband set out to find a cure.
Kelly Clancy Wired Jan 2019 25min Permalink
Who really built the first electric rock ‘n’ roll guitar?
Ben Marks Collectors Weekly Jan 2019 20min Permalink
Thinking about launching your own media startup? You might want to consider my crazy story first.
Jamie O'Grady The Cauldron Jan 2019 25min Permalink
The parallel lives of a KGB defector and his CIA handler.
Serge F. Kovaleski Washington Post Jan 2006 35min Permalink
I’m a 36-year-old grown-ass man, and I’m about to start crying on the plane coming back from Game 4. That’s how bad I want it.
Richard Jefferson The Players Tribune Jan 2019 20min Permalink
Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck’s new movie, inspired by Gerhard Richter, blurs the line between fiction and biography. Richter says that it goes too far.
Dana Goodyear New Yorker Jan 2019 Permalink
The excerpts from a diary of an anonymous Russian special-forces officer who served twenty tours of duty in Chechnya during the Second Chechen War (1999-2009).
Anonymous The Sunday Times Oct 2010 15min Permalink
The birthing of a conspiracy theory that the record holder for oldest person, Jeanne Calment, was actually her daughter Yvonne, who had “stolen her deceased mother’s identity to avoid paying inheritance taxes,”
Eli Rosenberg The Washington Post Jan 2019 Permalink
They listened to the radio until there was nothing more to do. Philip went into the house and retrieved a container of Kraft vanilla pudding, which he’d mixed with all the drugs he could find in the house—Valium, Klonopin, Percocet, and so on. He opened the passenger-side door and knelt beside Becky. He held a spoon, and she guided it to her mouth. When Becky had eaten all the pudding, he got back into the driver’s seat and swallowed a handful of pills. Philip asked her how the pudding tasted. “Like freedom,” she said. As they lost consciousness, the winter chill seeped into their clothes and skin.
Ann Neumann Harper’s Jan 2019 Permalink
On the choices Fred Rogers made.
Robert Sullivan New York Review of Books Jan 2019 15min Permalink
A profile of the woman who wants to declutter the world.
Taffy Brodesser-Akner New York Times Magazine Jul 2016 10min Permalink
The story of a bank robber who risked his life to put a killer on death row.
Alan Prendergast Westword Jan 2019 50min Permalink
On conservative radio host John Ziegler and “the strange media landscape in which political talk radio is a salient.”
David Foster Wallace The Atlantic Apr 2005 55min Permalink
On the art of the takedown.
Rob Harvilla The Ringer Jan 2019 20min Permalink
When IP mapping goes awry dozens of strangers show up to the same home again and again looking for their stolen gear.
Kashmir Hill Gizmodo Jan 2019 20min Permalink