The Strange Experience of Having My Memoir Turned Into a Movie
Most people think they’d be thrilled to have their memoir snapped up for a movie. The author had a different, more troubled experience.
Fiction Pick of the Week: "Peacetime"
An Iraq War veteran, now a paramedic, runs into trouble.
"I rewarded the man with another hit of naloxone, which made him even more alive, even less happy. Karen was busy with the gear, and I thought for sure that the coast was clear. It wasn’t. As soon as I put the note in my pocket, I saw the boy. He stood in the doorway, watching me with a basically impassive expression. He chewed his gum. He blew a splendid bubble."
Trapped Into Selling Magazines Door-to-Door
Inside the abusive practices of magazine-subscription sub-contractors.
“Have You Ever Thought About Killing Someone?”
Doc was a medical student in his 40s, but he spent his nights with the teenagers who hung around his San Antonion apartment complex, buying them drugs and booze. The first time he asked one of them to ritualistically kill him, they laughed it off. He would ask again.
Alexis Okeowo, a foreign correspondent, has written for The New Yorker, The New York Times Magazine and Businessweek.
“Nigeria is a deeply sexist country. It can be difficult for people to take you seriously. But that also has its benefits, because it’s very easy to disarm your subjects. If I’m interviewing people who underestimate me, I can get them to open up because they somehow think that I’m naïve or I don’t know what I’m doing. So I don’t mind if some sexist general or banker thinks I’m this young little student who doesn’t know what she’s talking about. As long as you tell me what I want to know, it’s great.”
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The Whistleblower’s Tale
When an accountant decided to call foul on Halliburton’s financial record-keeping, he thought he was doing the right thing. He spent 10 years fighting for the courts to agree.
The Catastrophe
Tracking Spalding Grey’s descent towards suicide.
Anchorman: The Legend of Don Lemon
The CNN anchor may not be the clueless bumbler the internet believes him to be.
Putin's Action Hero
When Putin suggested to Obama that the White House and the Kremlin speak through an intermediary, he named who he thought was the obvious candidate: his friend Steven Seagal.
The Underground Inferno that Created a Ghost Town
What remains of the ghost town of Centralia, Pennsylvania.
The Tonya Harding/Nancy Kerrigan Museum We Never Knew We Needed
Is it homage? An art project? Whatever it is, it is very Brooklyn 2015.
"We Haven’t Been Able to Rule Him Out"
Nearly 20 years ago in a remote California town, a 16-year-old named Karen Mitchell disappeared. The case went cold, but last month local law enforcement started looking at it again after the arrest of a former resident: Robert Durst.
The Ghost of Cornel West
The rise and fall of “America’s most exciting black scholar.”
Kidnapped at the Border
Kidnappers in Mexico have changed their business model from retail to wholesale—instead of extorting a handful of rich families, they are targeting thousands of undocumented migrants.
Town Waiting for an Eruption Found It After Firing Its First Black Police Officer
Gerry Pickens took a paycut to join the police department in tiny, overwhelmingly white Orting, Washington. Fired less than a year later, he’s now suing the town for enough to break it.
Drake in Real Life
A week at Coachella with the rapper and some mushrooms.
A Killing in Pocahontas
The murder of a 34-year-old by a wig-wearing figure traces back to meth, an FBI sting and a former municipal judge who once sent a live copperhead snake to a foe through the U.S. mail.
The Man Who Makes the World’s Funniest People Even Funnier
On Brent White, the joke whisperer who edits the largely improvisational comedies of Paul Feig, Judd Apatow and Adam McKay.
Mackensie Is Pulling Out Her Hair
On a 16-year-old with a debilitating disorder: trichtillomania.
A Fortune at the Top of the World
There’s still a gold rush on in the Andes.
Bronx Beauty
Thinking Like a Dolphin
The question for researchers isn’t “How smart are dolphins?” It’s “How are dolphins smart?”
Necessarily the News
The politics and rhetoric of Trevor Noah’s appointment as the new host of the Daily Show.
The Trader in the Wild
Kate Matrosova was a classic overachiever and, at 32, had everything to live for. Still she set out alone into the mountains of New Hampshire—and a deadly storm.
Sally Mann's Exposure
In 1992, a magazine story introduced the world to the photographs of Sally Mann. Here, she responds to the firestorm that article produced.
