"Most Well-Known and Beloved Chinese Role Model"
Lunch with recycling tycoon Chen Guangbiao, the self-described “Most Influential Person of China,” to discuss his interest in buying The New York Times.
Lunch with recycling tycoon Chen Guangbiao, the self-described “Most Influential Person of China,” to discuss his interest in buying The New York Times.
Jessica Pressler New York Jan 2014 10min Permalink
A small Texas town suddenly finds it’s the home of a possible cult.
Sonia Smith Texas Monthly Jan 2014 35min Permalink
With up to four million World War II soldiers considered missing in action on the Eastern front, a group of Russian volunteers vows to unearth, identify and properly bury their remains.
“I think you are asking me, in the most tactful way possible, about my own aggression and malice. What can I do but plead guilty? I don’t know whether journalists are more aggressive and malicious than people in other professions. We are certainly not a ‘helping profession.’ If we help anyone, it is ourselves, to what our subjects don’t realize they are letting us take. I am hardly the first writer to have noticed the not-niceness of journalists. Tocqueville wrote about the despicableness of American journalists in Democracy in America. In Henry James’s satiric novel The Reverberator, a wonderful rascally journalist named George M. Flack appears. I am only one of many contributors to this critique. I am also not the only journalist contributor. Tom Wolfe and Joan Didion, for instance, have written on the subject. Of course, being aware of your rascality doesn’t excuse it.”
Janet Malcolm, Katie Roiphe The Paris Review Apr 2011 35min Permalink
How a 40-year-old IT consultant became nod, one of Silk Road’s highest volume heroin dealers, who turned informant and then fugitive.
Patrick Howell O'Neill The Daily Dot Jan 2014 20min Permalink
How fight coach Greg Jackson, once dubbed “the Philosopher King of MMA,” does his job.
Tim Marchman Deadspin Jan 2014 45min Permalink
Tom Waits interviewed at 38.
Francis Thrumm, Tom Waits Interview Oct 1988 35min Permalink
After being extinct for 70 million years, the coelacanth came back to life.
Samantha Weinberg Intelligent Life Nov 2013 20min Permalink
Decades later, U.S.-backed dictator Hissène Habré faces justice.
Michael Bronner Foreign Policy Jan 2014 20min Permalink
The rise of an expensive, experimental stem-cell treatment in China and the medical tourism it attracts.
Andrés Grippo Matter Jan 2014 15min Permalink
Investigating the murder of a friend and colleague.
Asra Q. Nomani Washingtonian Jan 2014 30min Permalink
At one time, a whole generation of New York Times reporters wished they could write like McCandlish Phillips. Then he left them all for God.
Ken Auletta New Yorker Jan 1997 20min Permalink
The improbable life and career of the sculptor-turned-musician.
Mark Binelli New York Times Magazine Jan 2014 20min Permalink
An oral history of Swingers.
Alex French, Howie Kahn Grantland Jan 2014 Permalink
This guide is sponsored by Gary Shteyngart's Little Failure, the best-seller published this month by Random House. Hailed as a "memoir for the ages" by Mary Karr, Little Failure tells the story of Shteyngart's American immigrant experience, moving back and forth through time and memory with self-deprecating humor, moving insights, and literary bravado. Buy it today.</p>
Should you need further convincing, here is a collection of some of Shteyngart's best non-fiction:</em>
An excerpt from Little Failure.
A trip to Azerbaijan.
Travel & Leisure Sep 2005 15min
Confessions of a Google Glass Explorer.
New Yorker Aug 2013 20min
The author on his love for the Russian language.
The Threepenny Review Apr 2004 20min
A profile of M.I.A.
GQ Jul 2010 25min
The night it all went wrong.
New Yorker Jun 2013 10min
Apr 2004 – Aug 2013 Permalink
Meggett was an All-Pro running back for the New York Giants. He was also a serial rapist.
Greg Hanlon SB Nation Jan 2014 45min Permalink
Roger D. Hodge is the editor of Oxford American.
"My career isn't all that interesting insofar as I've been an editor. I'm much more interested in talking about writers and stories. That's the main thing: telling these stories, creating this platform, this context for the best possible storytelling."
Thanks to TinyLetter and Random House for sponsoring this week's episode.
Jan 2014 Permalink
A profile of the Hot 97 DJ a few months after “he told the truth about who he is, even if it’s not entirely clear—even to Mister Cee himself, even now, to this day—what exactly that truth is.”
Zach Baron GQ Feb 2014 15min Permalink
Moe Tucker narrates her time drumming in the Velvet Underground.
Legs McNeil Vice Jan 2014 15min Permalink
Sponsored
Our sponsor this week is Little Failure, the new memoir by Gary Shteyngart. Already a New York Times bestseller, Little Failure tells the story of Shteyngart's American immigrant experience, moving back and forth through time and memory with self-deprecating humor, moving insights, and literary bravado. The result is a resonant story of family and belonging that feels epic and intimate and distinctly his own.
Mary Karr called Little Failure "a memoir for the ages." The Millions dubbed Shteyngart the "Chekhov-Roth-Apatow of Queens." And Nathan Eglander said the book is so honest "Dr. Freud would be proud."
Buy Little Failure today or read an exclusive excerpt on Longform.
Finding personal stories buried deep in the YouTube comments.
Mark Slutsky Buzzfeed Jan 2014 15min Permalink
How “Do What You Love” devalues actual work.
Miya Tokumitsu Jacobin Jan 2014 10min Permalink
On the problems in “Dr. V’s Magical Putter.”
Christina Kahrl Grantland Jan 2014 10min Permalink
How the ski town of the super-rich is responding to global warming.
Nathaniel Rich Men's Journal Jan 2014 30min Permalink
A physician reports on his own catastrophic injury.
Arnold Relman New York Review of Books Jan 2014 15min Permalink