A Rite Gone Horribly Wrong
The deadly hazing that destroyed a legendary college marching band.
The Expendables
Life in the French Foreign Legion.
Dance Dance Revolution
A field report from Electric Daisy Carnival, a three-night bacchanal in the Las Vegas desert attended by “100,000 wasted hedonists scantily dressed in furry underwear.”
The Party Next Time
As immigration turns red states blue, how can Republicans transform their platform?
The Glorious Plight of the Buffalo Bills
The relationship between Buffalo and its team.
The Curious Case of the Sherlock Pilgrims
In the Swiss town of Meiringen, where an obsessed group of ‘pilgrims’ painstakingly recreate the death of Sherlock Holmes.
If You Go Chasing Rabbits...
More than forty years later, tracking down an elementary school crush.
When Thugs and Hustlers Ruled Dark Alleys
The gamblers and teenage cons who haunted New York City’s 60s-era all night bowling alleys.
Kafka in Beijing
An alleged rape and one woman’s futile quest for justice in modern China.
The Greatest Team That Never Was
Dunks, drugs, and disappointment: an oral history of the 1980s Houston Rockets.
Genius: The Nickelback Story
How a loathsome band makes gobs of money.
Uncovering the Truth Behind the Myth of Pancho Villa, Movie Star
The revolutionary and the silver screen.
Secrets, Schemes, and Lots of Guns: Inside John McAfee's Heart of Darkness
Why is an anti-virus software giant in the Belizean jungle surrounded by gang members?
The Man Who Smelled Too Much
William Nowell got a windfall and got off the streets. The only problem were his neighbors – and his odor.
Book Shopping with the Best-Read Man in America
Browsing the stacks with The Washington Post’s Michael Dirda.
Rio: The Fight for the Favelas
On the experimental favela police force UPP (aka “The Big Skull”) and their efforts to clean Rio’s largest slum in advance of the World Cup and Olympics.
Jonah Weiner, contributing editor at Rolling Stone, pop critic at Slate, and contributor to The New York Times Magazine and The New Yorker.
"The thing that I've found useful is really actually to delete everything that I've written and go at it fresh, and re-envision it again: this is going to be my new lede now. That's really the best way to do it, because if there are these vestigial sentences, and vestigial sequences or paragraphs that are in the draft, for me, that's just going to snap me back to where my head was at, in an unproductive way ... Often, I'll find that that is just this great cure-all. Just delete it all, go for a walk or whatever, and then sit down and start writing an entirely different feature about the exact same subject."
Thanks to TinyLetter for sponsoring this week's episode!
Playboy Interview: Stephen Colbert
An out-of-character conversation.
What Happened to Michelle in Forest Hills?
Behind the tabloid story of the “murder orphan” in Queens.
Rock, Paper, Scissors
How America used to vote.
Come On, Feel the Buzz
On Politico’s brand of insider journalism.
The Fifth Problem
How Moscow State university discriminated against Jewish applicants using deceptively simple problems.
In Cold Type
The backstory of “The Duke in His Domain,” Truman Capote’s 1957 New Yorker profile of Marlon Brando.
Murder of an Idealist
The life and last days of U.S. Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens.
Love on the March
On the gay community’s political progress.
