He’s been accused of fraud, sexual assault, and using drugs. But for Chris Bathum, who doesn’t have prior experience treating people struggling with addiction, opening several facilities promising to do just that has been surprisingly easy—and lucrative.
How agents took down Mexico’s most vicious drug cartel and, in the process, gave El Chapo the opportunity to create an empire.
The wild fire that consumed Harbin Hot Springs, a legendary clothing-optional resort in Northern California.
An ethnography.
The life and death of a gorilla named Julia.
Sundays at Hillsong, the church that saved Justin Bieber.
How the Mast Brothers fooled people into paying $10 a bar for mediocre chocolate, and how a food blogger was able to figure it out.
How a disgruntled group of University of Miami football fans got the head coach fired by flying insulting airplane banners high over Sun Life Stadium.
South Florida and the danger of the rising sea.
Religion, high school football, and racial problems in small town America.
Google and Tesla are spending billions to develop driverless technology. George Hotz used an Acura.
Kliph Nesteroff writes for WFMU's Beware of the Blog. His book, The Comedians: Drunks, Thieves, Scoundrels, and the History of American Comedy, was released in November.
“Well, comedy always becomes stale. Whether it’s offensive or not offensive, it has an expiry date, unfortunately. A lot of people don’t want to hear this because that means a lot of their favorite comedians suddenly become irrelevant. But that’s the history of comedy: the hippest, coolest guy today—whoever that is to you in comedy—50 years from now, the new generation is going to say, ‘That guy’s not funny, and he’s square.’ And they’re going to say, ‘This new young guy is funny.’ But in another 50 years that guy becomes the square who isn’t funny. And it’s not that they weren’t funny and everybody was wrong; it was that that person was relating to their time.”
Thanks to MailChimp, Casper, Squarespace , and CreativeLive for sponsoring this week's episode. If you would like to pitch in, please become a Longform Supporter.
“I don’t know what other singers feel when they articulate lyrics, but being an 18-karat manic-depressive and having lived a life of violent emotional contradictions, I have an overacute capacity for sadness as well as elation. I know what the cat who wrote the song is trying to say. I’ve been there—and back. I guess the audience feels it along with me. They can’t help it. Sentimentality, after all, is an emotion common to all humanity.”
No one knew her secret. Until they did.
We recommended 1,453 articles this year, from 1,210 writers and 360 publications. They were read nearly 20 million times.
What it takes to deliver basic medical care to the most remote corners of the Himalayas.
Suzan Russaw is 70 years old. She lived in affordable Palo Alto housing for decades. Then, in 2013, she was forced to move into her car. On the new homeless of Silicon Valley.
On the unexpected longevity of a very strange theory.
One of the first lefty political bloggers has no job, mostly tweets, and thinks Donald Trump has it right on immigration.
An essay on the silent, secret grief of miscarriage.
Kelvin Villanueva had lived in America for 15 years. He had four kids. He had a job. Then he was stopped for a broken taillight.
Fargo, Damages, Cheers, and Leslie Nielsen’s fart machine.
The murky ethics of crowdsourcing an organ donation.
Eddie Davison sued New York for locking him up under a false premise. Now the state says he owes $2 million.
Edward Luttwak is a military strategist, a classical scholar, a cattle rancher, and an adviser to presidents, prime ministers, and the Dalai Lama.
