Mr. Ten Percent
A profile of Chuck Blazer, “the man who built — and bilked — American soccer.”
The Guiltless Pleasure
An ode to mayonnaise.
How to Sell a Billion-Dollar Myth Like a French Girl
On the business of an idea.
Mark Bowden is a journalist and the author of 13 books, including Black Hawk Down and his latest, Hue 1968: A Turning Point of the American War in Vietnam.
“My goal is never to condemn someone that I’m writing about. It’s always to understand them. And that, to me, is far more interesting than passing judgment on them. I want you to read about Che Thi Mung, an 18-year-old village girl, who was selling hats on corners in Hue in the daytime and going home and sharpening spikes to go into booby traps to try and kill American soldiers and ARVN soldiers in the evening. I want to understand why she would do that, why she would be so motivated to do that. And I think I did.”
Thanks to MailChimp, LeVar Burton Reads, Babbel, and HelloFresh for sponsoring this week's episode.
A Team of Their Own
The members of Girls Travel Baseball come from all over the country, compete against boys, and aim to prove they can play in the major leagues.
Occupied Territory
An essay on power.
Landing from the Sky
Ten years in the life of a young woman from the Bronx.
Interview: Toni Morrison
“‘Make America Great Again’ means ‘Make America White Again.’ So now you have this other explosion of people who want to feel above something, better than something. And who is that? That’s me.”
An 18-Year-Old Girl Died From a Synthetic Opioid She Bought Online. Here’s How Portland Police Cracked the Case.
An investigation leads to the deepest reaches of the internet.
Scenes From My Life in Porn
Gang-bang buffet tables, deeply earnest 'Letters to the Editor,' ghost-writing Kierkegaard references into model bios in Barely Legal, and how a half-decade of reviewing porn eroded the thin line between the author's alter egos and self.
The Strategy of No Strategy
One possible (if depressing) conclusion to take from this is that strategy is just an illusory abstraction that we have invented to give meaning to that which has none. We use it as a retrospective framing device to explain a complex series of events (of our own making but mostly of external provenance) that we do not understand. So maybe strategic theory is really just an gussied up form of conspiracy theory. We need to impose order on the world and believe that someone, somewhere, knows that the hell is going on.
The Satoshi Affair
Satoshi Nakamoto was the mysterious creator of Bitcoin. Facing bankruptcy and jail, Craig Wright fled Australia knowing that he would soon be outed as Satoshi by multiple publications. Backed by a business group that hoped to sell his patents, Wright was due to show the proof that he possessed the original keys for Bitcoin, but did he?
LimeLight
A profile of Moonlight’s Mahershala Ali.
A Kingdom for a Horse
“The most decorated athlete in all of Kazakhstan is a five-year-old Mongolian horse named Lazer.”
Holy Water
The author on her reverence for water.
Chaos Makes the Multiverse Unnecessary
Science predicts only the predictable, ignoring most of our chaotic universe.
Journalism Under Putin
“The murder of Anna Politkovskaya was at once unbelievable and utterly expected.”
Fear of Falling
Four American rock climbers are kidnapped by guerillas in Kyrgyzstan.
The Remaking of Donald Trump
With The Apprentice, Trump rose to a level of popularity with minorities that the GOP could only dream of. Then he torched it all to prepare for a hard-right run at the presidency.
Generation Shaq
In 1993, his rookie season, more than 1,700 boys were named after Shaquille O’Neal. Now they’ve grown up.
Matthew Klam’s New Book Is Only 17 Years Overdue
What’s a writer to do when the audacity dwindles?
Fiction Pick of the Week: "Three Days Later"
A soldier attempts to deliver a death notice.
The Making—and Breaking—of Marines
How the death of a Muslim recruit revealed a culture of brutality.
Eternal Sunshine
A profile of Lil Yachty.
Somerdale to Skarbimierz
Following a Cadbury factory to Poland.
