'The Ocean Is Boiling': The Complete Oral History of the 1969 Santa Barbara Oil Spill
A look back at the spill that launched a movement.
Snowden's Box
A personal account of the human network behind the leak.
Kara Walker's Next Act
Life after the sugar sphinx.
#Vanlife, the Bohemian Social-Media Movement
How life on four wheels became a brand.
The Blood of the Crab
Horseshoe crab blood is an irreplaceable medical marvel. Which means it’s incredibly valuable. Which means biomedical companies are bleeding 500,000 crabs a year. Nobody knows quite what that means for the crabs.
Selling Mark Zuckerberg
Making sense of the CEO’s very public tour of America, which feels like a political campaign minus the politics.
A Prayer’s Chance
To be mentally ill in Ghana.
Tuesdays with Saddam
The diary of a Scranton, PA National Guardsmen tasked with guarding the highest profile prisoner in U.S history: a surprisingly amiable Saddam Hussein.
Sin City or Bust
How the Raiders got to Las Vegas.
The Mastermind Behind Coachella
How Paul Tollett gets the world’s biggest acts to perform in the California desert.
Racer X
The drag-racing article that inspired The Fast and the Furious.
Tim Kaine Is Back at His Old Senate job. It’s Never Seemed More Important.
“Sometimes I wake up and think this isn’t happening.”
Confessions of a Reluctant Gentrifier
During my first weeks in Rogers Park, I was surprised by how often I heard the word “pioneer”. I heard it first from the white owner of an antiques shop with signs in the windows that read: “Warning, you are being watched and recorded.” When I stopped off in his shop, he welcomed me to the neighbourhood warmly and delivered an introductory speech dense with code. This neighbourhood, he told me, needs “more people like you”. He and other “people like us” were gradually “lifting it up”.
Excerpted from Notes From No Man’s Land
Fiction Pick of the Week: "Wade Boggs"
A father and son bond over baseball and deceptions.
High Tech Cowboys of the Deep Seas
An oddball team of ship salvagers is tasked with uprighting a tipped two-football-field-long cargo ship before it sinks into the darkness of Alaska’s Aleutian Islands.
Mike Judge, the Bard of Suck
From “Idiocracy” to “Silicon Valley,” the writer and director has established himself as America’s foremost chronicler of its own self-destructive tendencies.
Going It Alone
Solo hiking the Appalachian trail as a black woman.
The Useful Village
In the fall of 2015, Germany designated Sumte, population 102, as a sanctuary for nearly 800 refugees. What followed was a living experiment in the country’s principles.
Alex Kotlowitz is a journalist whose work has appeared in print, radio, and film. He’s the author of three books, including There Are No Children Here: The Story of Two Boys Growing Up in the Other America.
“The truth of the matter is, given what we do, we’re always outsiders. If it’s not by race or class, it’s by gender, religion, politics. It’s just the nature of being a nonfiction writer—going into communities that, at some level, feel unfamiliar. If you’re writing about stuff you already know about, where’s the joy in that? Where’s the sense of discovery? Why bother?”
Thanks to MailChimp and MeUndies for sponsoring this week's episode.
The Gospel According To Bill Hicks
On his twelfth appearance on Letterman, Bill Hicks killed. The network refused to air it.
"Until I Was 44, I Never Even Had a Savings Account"
The author on his relationship with money.
We Have Found the Cure! (Sort Of...)
A journey to the wildest edge of the spa industry.
The Lady and the Scamp
A profile of book editor Nan Talese.
The End of Independent Film as We Know It
How Netflix and Amazon upended the movie business.
The Fighter
A U.S. Marine’s journey from the Afghan war to an Illinois prison.
