It Came From the '70s: The Story of Your Grandma's Weird Couch
The history of a couch.
The Women Code Breakers Who Unmasked Soviet Spies
At the height of the Cold War, America’s most secretive counterespionage effort set out to crack unbreakable ciphers.
What Happened at Camp Lejeune
The author grew up drinking and bathing in the toxic waters around a military base in North Carolina. Thirty years later, she returns to investigate.
Fiction Pick of the Week: "Confessions of the Lovestruck"
The rise and fall of a band in public and behind closed doors.
What Happened in the Dark: Puerto Rico's Year of Fighting for Power
More Americans rely on Puerto Rico’s grid than on any other public electric utility. How one renegade plant worker led them through the shadows.
Riz Ahmed Acts His Way Out of Every Cultural Pigeonhole
From HBO to ‘Star Wars’ to Shakespeare, he has discovered how to excel beyond tidy genres.
Jon Caramanica is a music critic at The New York Times.
“I like to interview people very early in their careers or very late in their careers. I think vulnerability and willingness to be vulnerable is at a peak in those two parts. Young enough not to know better, old enough not to give a damn. … The story I want to tell is—how are you this person, and then you became this? Then at the end, let’s look back on these things and let’s paint the art together. But in the middle when your primary obsession is how do I protect my role? How do I keep my spot? How do I keep the throne? I’m not as interested in that personally as a journalist or as a critic. ”
Thanks to MailChimp, Read This Summer, Google Play, and Pitt Writers for sponsoring this week's episode.
“It Was Us Against Those Guys”
An oral history of the women who transformed Rolling Stone in the mid-70s.
Glenn Greenwald, the Bane of Their Resistance
A leftist journalist’s bruising crusade against establishment Democrats—and their Russia obsession.
How to Be Human
Meet the man who was raised by wolves.
Cary Fukunaga Doesn't Mind Taking Notes from Netflix's Algorithm
A profile of the director.
American Pie
How sharing a Hawaiian pizza from Pizza Hut became a Beijing family tradition.
The Mystery of People Who Speak Dozens of Languages
What can hyperpolyglots teach the rest of us?
The Ghosts of the Orphanage
Millions of American children were placed in the Catholic orphanage system. Some didn’t make it out alive.
The Boy Who Heard Too Much
Matthew Weigman was blind, overweight, 14, and alone. He could also do anything he wanted with a phone. Sometimes that meant calling Lindsay Lohan. Other times it meant sending a SWAT team to an enemy’s door.
My Affair With the Intellectual Dark Web
“This is the story of the past three years of my life. It’s romance in a way, but it’s also a breakup story.”
How an Ex-Cop Rigged McDonald’s Monopoly Game and Stole Millions
Jerome Jacobson and his network of mobsters, psychics, strip club owners, and drug traffickers won almost every prize for 12 years, until the FBI launched Operation ‘Final Answer.’
Bret, Unbroken
His brain and body shattered in a horrible accident as a young boy, Bret Dunlap thought just being able to hold down a job, keep an apartment, and survive on his own added up to a good enough life. Then he discovered running.
The Weasel, Twelve Monkeys and the Shrub
A profile of John McCain during the 2000 presidential race.
Death, Redesigned
A few Silicon Valley executives are experimenting with mortality. “I don’t want death to be such a downer,” says one.
Virgin Galactic’s Rocket Man
The ace pilot risking his life to fulfill Richard Branson’s billion-dollar quest to make commercial space travel a reality.
Are Cities Making Animals Smarter?
A mysterious wild cat in Sri Lanka may hold a clue.
Mental Illness Is a Death Sentence for Many in America’s Jails
For years sheriffs, mental health advocates, families and prosecutors have sounded the alarm about the number of people with mental illness arrested and locked up, many for minor crimes.
The Water Crises Aren’t Coming—They’re Here
The symptoms are here: multiyear droughts, large-scale crop failures, a major city—Cape Town—on the verge of going dry, increasing outbreaks of violence, fears of full-scale water wars. The big question: How do we keep the water flowing?
Fiction Pick of the Week: "Last Night"
A woman examines her suicidal past.
