Diary: Burning Man
A turn in the orgy dome, half a hit of German-engineered acid and more adventures on the Playa.
A Deluded German and Three Dead Bodies
In the late 1960s, a German named Günther Hauck disappeared in Brazil. When he emerged, he was calling himself Tatunca Nara and claimed to be the chief of the Ugha Mongulala, an previously unknown Indian tribe. Since then he has lived in the Amazon, his legend growing. Jacques Cousteau hired him as a guide. An Indiana Jones movie was based on his stories. And three people who made pilgrimages to see him never came home.
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Waiting for Dark
On Amir Taaki and Cody Wilson, two anarchists with a history of creating controversial software, and their dream of an economy based on untraceable, uncontrollable money.
Just Undo It
A 2011 profile of LeBron James, originally meant to run in Port, that was killed by Nike.
The Letters That Warren G. Harding’s Family Didn’t Want You to See
The salacious correspondence between the President and his mistress.
The Hunt for Boko Haram
How divisions between Nigeria’s Muslim North and Christian South resulted in the birth of terror’s most ruthless movement.
The Fall of the Sleaze King
Dov Charney’s struggle to keep control of American Apparel.
Rise of the Sea Urchin
From Norwegian waters to European plates.
“Speaking up every. F*cking. Time”
A profile of Model View Culture founder Shanley Kane.
John Heilemann is the managing editor of Bloomberg Politics and the co-author of Game Change and Double Down.
"If you're a writer, and you're not an asshole, you want the maximum number of people to read your stuff. There's nothing wrong with that. There's no great glory in cultivating some niche audience. I do this work because I believe in what I'm doing. I'm not trying to compromise my principles or my standards to get a larger audience. But once I've written the thing of which I feel confident and proud, which I feel is ethically and journalistically sound, I then want the maximum number of people to read it."
Thanks to TinyLetter for sponsoring this week's episode.
The Truth, The Whole Truth, and Nothing But The Truth
The 50,000-word story of Microsoft’s antitrust case.
Secrets of the Deep
The dispute over what may be the biggest sunken treasure ever found – and who gets to keep it.
The Loser
A profile of the boxer Floyd Patterson, after a painful loss to Sonny Liston.
Interview: Richard Linklater
“Does your life have a plot? It has characters. There is a narrative. There’s a lot of story, a lot of character. But plot? Eh, no.”
The Organ Detective
A profile of anthropologist Nancy Scheper-Hughes, who has spent her career uncovering a hidden global market in human flesh.
Run and Gun
How Javaris Crittenton went from basketball phenom to standing trial on a murder charge.
Nature’s Most Perfect Killing Machine
How the Ebola virus works.
A ‘Band-Aid’ for 800 Children
A profile of Nora Sandigo, guardian to hundreds of kids born in America to illegal immigrants.
The Third Man
A profile of Novak Djokovic.
In NSA Net, Ordinary Web Users Eclipse Legal Targets
In the latest revelation from Edward Snowden, the U.S. government is shown to collect and retain massive amounts of data on nearly 900,000 people with the most minimal of connections to official NSA targets. The collected information tells our “stories of love and heartbreak, illicit sexual liaisons, mental-health crises, political and religious conversions, financial anxieties and disappointed hopes.”
Swamp Nurse
In the bayou south of New Orleans, a program called the Nurse-Family Partnership tries to reverse the life chances for babies born into extreme poverty. Sometimes, it actually succeeds.
Not One More
The survivors of a mass shooting, 20 years later.
Fiction Pick of the Week: "These 13 Certain Things"
A flight attendant's love affair.
For a daily short story recommendation from our editors, try Longform Fiction or follow @longformfiction on Twitter.
Twilight of the Pizza Barons
Tom Monaghan started Domino’s. Mike Ilitch started Little Caesers. Both became billionaires, both live in Detroit, both are now over 75. They’ve made very different decisions about how to spend their fortunes.
