The Physics Behind Traffic Jams
How one driver can break a bottleneck.
Huey Lewis's Old, Weird America
On the county fair and casino circuit with Huey Lewis, who at 61 is “part of a select fraternity of musicians who can draw a couple thousand people in dozens (if not hundreds) of middle-American towns … scattered throughout the country.”
The Cosmology of Serialized Television
What makes a great show?
A Deadly Triangle
On the India-Pakistan proxy war in Afghanistan.
Psychedelic Academe
Research into mind-altering drugs is back.
Around Alone
The story of 1968’s Golden Globe, a race to see who could become the first sailor to circumnavigate the world solo without stopping.
The Finish Line
The heroes of the Boston Marathon bombing.
She Stole Another’s Identity and Took Her Secret to the Grave. Who Was She?
She was Becky Sue Turner, then Lori Erica Ruff. Now she’s Jane Doe.
The Lyme Wars
The Lyme-disease infection rate is growing. So is the battle over how to treat it.
Willa Cather: A Hidden Voice
What the writer’s newly revealed letters mean for her long-debated legacy.
Big Breaks for Blowjobs: The Dark Underbelly of the Miss USA Pageant
The investigation that brought down K2 Productions.
Pros and Cons: Ex-Inmates Redefine Handball at Forest Park
The story of a St. Louis handball court.
Hold My Life: Bob Stinson's Regrets
Seven years after being fired from The Replacements, their founding guitarist is an thirty-three-year-old unemployed line cook living amongst memories in Minneapolis. He would be dead within two years.
Goodbye, Miami
How the city will drown.
A Girl, Her Pimp, and Her Parents
A family turns to murder to save one of their own.
Me & My Monkey
Confessions of a white-collar dope fiend.
How Long Can You Wait to Have a Baby?
Most of what you know about women’s fertility rates is wrong.
I Was Paid $12.50 an Hour to Write This Story
The economics of freelance journalism in 2013.
Garden State Warrior: 11 Moments with James Gandolfini
“In the past, when he has spoken, he has sometimes replied to questions by protesting that he is boring. Maybe he believes that this is the case, or just believes there is no point in allowing himself to seem interesting in the way interviewers usually want people to be. Still, he has told himself that tonight he will be truthful. He’s feeling calmer these days. He has not had one of these conversations for a while, and he intends it to be a long time before he has another.”
Booz Allen, the World's Most Profitable Spy Organization
Inside the growth of intelligence contracting.
When the Monks Come to Town
Why hundreds of Buddhist monks moved from Taiwan to Prince Edward Island, buying up thousands of acres of land in the process.
The Last Days Of Jam Master Jay
On the murder of Jam Master Jay.
Nicholas Schmidle is a staff writer at The New Yorker.
"I was in a taxi, leaving Karachi to go attend this festival, and we started getting these very disturbing phone calls from newspaper reporters that didn't exist, all of them asking me to meet them at various places in Karachi. I had read enough about the Daniel Pearl case to know what happened in the days leading up, and this was very similar. ... We kept driving towards the festival, and shortly after that, friends started calling. They were watching local television, and it was being reported that 'Nicholas Shamble,' editor of Smithsonian Magazine, had been kidnapped. And I was like, 'All right, I get the hint.'"
Thanks to TinyLetter for sponsoring this week's episode.
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The Price of Loyalty in Syria
On living in Syria as an Alawite loyalist.
Missing Michael Hastings
A eulogy for the journalist.
