Great Hollywood IPO That Wasn’t
Ari Emanuel’s failure to launch.
How 'West Side Story' Was Reborn
Inside the wildly ambitious effort to reimagine the classic musical for 2020.
The Sting
The inside story of a brutally botched undercover operation.
Everything You Know About Obesity Is Wrong
Years from now, we will look back in horror at the counterproductive ways we addressed the obesity epidemic and the barbaric ways we treated fat people—long after we knew there was a better path.
The Last Time Democracy Almost Died
Learning from the upheaval of the 1930s.
Would You Please Please Please Please Please Please Please Stop Talking?
How is it that literature has produced a wealth of information about the sex lives of straight white men and yet so little about the abortions they have or have not paid for?
Operation Encore and the Saudi Connection: A Secret History of the 9/11 Investigation
Behind the scenes, a small team of FBI agents spent years trying to solve a stubborn mystery — whether officials from Saudi Arabia, one of Washington’s closest allies, were involved in the worst terror attack in U.S. history. This is their story.
Treasure Fever
The discovery of a legendary, lost shipwreck in North America has pitted treasure hunters and archaeologists against each other, raising questions about who should control sunken riches.
The Rise and Fall of the Cincinnati Boner King
A jailhouse interview with Steve Washak, who made millions selling “natural male enhancement” pills.
Splendid Isolation: How I Stopped Time by Sitting in a Forest for 24 Hours
After sitting alone in a forest and not moving for 24 hours, the author reflects on time, mortality, and turning 40.
Culture War in the Workplace
Inside the court battle over trans employment discrimination.
The Secret History of Facial Recognition
Sixty years ago, a sharecropper’s son invented a technology to identify faces. Then the record of his role all but vanished. Who was Woody Bledsoe, and who was he working for?
Fiction Pick of the Week: "You Will Never Be Forgotten"
Surviving sexual assault in a rapidly digitized world.
America’s Radioactive Secret
Oil-and-gas wells produce nearly a trillion gallons of toxic waste a year. An investigation shows how it could be making workers sick and contaminating communities across America.
Her Sorority Sisters Suspected She Was Pregnant. What Did Emile Weaver Know?
For months, Emile Weaver denied her pregnancy. A gruesome discovery forced her to confront the truth.
If He Hollers Let Him Go
Searching for Dave Chappelle ten years after he left his show.
Kevin Kelly is a writer and a founding executive editor of Wired Magazine. He is the author of What Technology Wants, Out of Control and The Inevitable: Understanding the Twelve Technological Forces That Will Shape Our Future.
“I always try to write about the future—and it became harder and harder because things would catch up so fast. If you read Out of Control now, I’ve heard that people say, ‘well, this is obvious.’ I have to tell you, it was dismissed as entirely pie-in-the-sky, wild-eyed craziness twenty-five years ago.”
Thanks to Mailchimp and Pitt Writers for sponsoring this week's episode.
American Psycho: An Oral History, 20 Years After Its Divisive Debut
In January 2000, American Pyscho bombed at Sundance. It was just the beginning.
Becoming a Man
“What I learned about masculinity from my father, my father-in-law and my own transition.”
Why We Need a Working-Class Media
What could the political effects be of a media that actually served working-class Americans?
Hell in the Hot Zone
How the Ebola outbreak spread.
My Instagram
We all die immediately of a Brazilian butt lift.
Indefensible
The fight to save an innocent refugee from almost certain death.
The Internet of Beefs
Online public spaces are now being slowly taken over by beef-only thinkers, as the global culture wars evolve into a stable, endemic, background societal condition of continuous conflict. As the Great Weirding morphs into the Permaweird, the public internet is turning into the Internet of Beefs.
Letter from Birmingham Jail
On the moral responsibility to break unjust laws.
“There comes a time when the cup of endurance runs over, and men are no longer willing to be plunged into the abyss of despair. I hope, sirs, you can understand our legitimate and unavoidable impatience. You express a great deal of anxiety over our willingness to break laws. This is certainly a legitimate concern. Since we so diligently urge people to obey the Supreme Court's decision of 1954 outlawing segregation in the public schools, at first glance it may seem rather paradoxical for us consciously to break laws. One may well ask: "How can you advocate breaking some laws and obeying others?" The answer lies in the fact that there are two types of laws: just and unjust. I would be the first to advocate obeying just laws. One has not only a legal but a moral responsibility to obey just laws. Conversely, one has a moral responsibility to disobey unjust laws. I would agree with St. Augustine that ‘an unjust law is no law at all.’”
