Ground Control to Mr. Meline
After a beloved teacher is murdered by his schizophrenic son, his colleagues and students pay him the ultimate tribute.
After a beloved teacher is murdered by his schizophrenic son, his colleagues and students pay him the ultimate tribute.
James Ross Gardner Seattle Met Sep 2013 25min Permalink
Inside an industrial pig farm.
Susanne Amann, Michael Fröhlingsdorf, Udo Ludwig Der Spiegel Oct 2013 10min Permalink
The underground economy of child sex trafficking, and what happens after someone is rescued from it.
J. David McSwane Sarasota Herald-Tribune Oct 2013 1h5min Permalink
The economics of climate change and the end of humanity.
Paul Krugman New York Review of Books Nov 2013 15min Permalink
Wes Anderson, the Wilson brothers and Bottle Rocket.
Matt Zoller Seitz Dallas Observer Sep 1995 35min Permalink
“I mean, writers are horribly envious and so nobody likes stars, we always feel like it’s a zero-sum game and whatever stardom somebody else has is being taken directly from us, so we hate the stars. But we also need them. Because the possibility of some level of stardom is what will continue to attract new writers to the game. If you’re a linguistically talented 22-year-old, there’s a list of things you can be: you can work in Hollywood, you can be a blogger, etc. And if being a novelist equates to some quaint thing like being a Morris dancer, who’s going to choose this?”
Manjula Martin, Jonathan Franzen Scratch Oct 2013 20min Permalink
The capitalist evangelism of Sheryl Sandberg’s Lean In feminist manifesto.
Susan Faludi The Baffler Oct 2013 35min Permalink
On the life and death of Elliott Smith.
Liam Gowing Spin Dec 2004 25min Permalink
A family’s journey from Armenia to Syria and back again.
Alia Malek Guernica Oct 2013 20min Permalink
How citizen journalists are covering the war.
Matthew Shaer The New Republic Oct 2013 15min Permalink
A jeweler from Queens tries to crack the code.
Oliver Burkeman The Guardian Oct 2013 15min Permalink
A visit to Star Axis, a desert art installation that connects you to the cosmos.
Ross Andersen Aeon Oct 2013 30min Permalink
Notes from an anonymous Apple Store employee.
J.K. Appleseed McSweeney's Sep–Oct 2013 20min Permalink
Jamie Leigh Jones’s story of gang-rape in Iraq changed the law to help victims, even though she might not have been one herself.
Stephanie Mencimer Washington Monthly Oct 2013 2h30min Permalink
Tyson on his childhood in Brooklyn and the man who changed his life. An excerpt from his upcoming memoir, Undisputed Truth.
Mike Tyson New York Oct 2013 20min Permalink
The homeless population of New York City is higher than it’s been in decades. Nobody seems to notice.
Ian Frazier New Yorker Oct 2013 40min Permalink
On the personal genetic sequencing company 23andMe and why their long time term strategy is collecting spit, not cash.
Elizabeth Murphy Fast Company Oct 2013 30min Permalink
Last year, a group of young Romanians stole millions of euros worth of art from the Kunsthal museum in Rotterdam. They had previously only robbed homes and thought the artwork would be easy to sell. It was not. So they secreted it back home, where, in an effort to save her son, the leader’s mother burned it.
Lex Boon NRC Handelsblad Oct 2013 Permalink
When an antsy tech entrepreneur takes over a struggling newspaper.
Bryan Smith Chicago Magazine Oct 2013 30min Permalink
How sectarian violence has made life in northern Nigeria “incomprehensibly frightful.”
James Verini National Geographic Nov 2013 20min Permalink
The authors spend time in Concord, Mass., with people who impersonate Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, Louisa May Alcott and Nathaniel Hawthorne.
Eric Pomerance, Laurie Gwen Shapiro Los Angeles Review of Books Oct 2013 35min Permalink
A semester with first-year medical students as they dissect a human body.
After two cycling-related deaths, the social fitness network becomes a target.
David Darlington Bicycling Magazine Oct 2013 35min Permalink
Gay Talese, who wrote for Esquire in the 1960s and currently contributes to The New Yorker, is the author of several books. His latest is A Writer's Life.
"I want to know how people did what they did. And I want to know how that compares with how I did what I did. That's my whole life. It's not really a life. It's a life of inquiry. It's a life of getting off your ass, knocking on a door, walking a few steps or a great distance to pursue a story. That's all it is: a life of boundless curiosity in which you indulge yourself and never miss an opportunity to talk to someone at length."
Thanks to TinyLetter and Warby Parker for sponsoring this week's episode.
Oct 2013 Permalink
The Giant Pacific Octopus is, in the words of a Seattle conservationist, a “glamour animal.” It is also tasty. Therein lies the conflict.
Marnie Hanel New York Times Magazine Oct 2013 10min Permalink