For the last Nazi hunter, the inevitable comes into focus
Efraim Zuroff does not want to retire.
Clear Eyes, Full Plates, Can't Puke
Behind the scenes of the lovely, strange world of competitive eating.
David Samuels is a contributing editor at Harper's and contributor to The New Yorker and The Atlantic.
"You start by doing the thing you want to do, at whatever level you can. There's this idea that you work your way up by writing captions, and then capsule film reviews or whatever, and I don't think it works that way. I think you learn to master a form, and you start by doing the thing you want to do. At first you're not going to do it as well as you wish you could, and then you learn. At the same time, I think, there's so much dreck, and there's so many people who don't care about doing the thing well, that when that kid walks in your door and they want to do the thing, you say 'Sure,' because it doesn't cost you anything, you look at it, and there's actually some energy on the page, like, yeah, it's bad, but it's bad in a different way. It's bad in the way of someone who might eventually be good."
Thanks to TinyLetter for sponsoring this week's episode!
Wild Things
Animal nature, human racism, and the future of zoos.
How Do You Raise a Prodigy?
The challenges of parenting genius.
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Only a handful of animals in the world can be tamed, but that can’t stop a homesick 15-year-old girl from trying.
In “A Raccoon of My Own,” new in Aeon Magazine, American psychologist and best-selling writer Lauren Slater recalls an exquisitely painful time in her youth, when, cast adrift from home herself, she adopted a baby raccoon. Her relationship with “Amelia” blossomed—one creature adapting to, and learning from the other. But Amelia’s wild instincts could not be contained in suburban domestic life, as Lauren was soon to realize.
Read it in Aeon Magazine—a new digital magazine publishing daily essays on ideas, culture and science.
Has Hollywood Murdered the Movies?
Blockbusters in the age of “corporate irony.”
Interview: Elizabeth Gilbert
“There’s a lot of disorder that comes along with wanting to know everything and wanting to try everything and wanting to experience everything, but there’s a lot of knowledge that comes out of it too.”
The Muse of the Coyote Ugly Saloon
Adventures in bartending.
Resurrection
Becoming a priest in Boston amidst a sex abuse scandal and church closings.
The Plot to Destroy America's Beer
The future of beer behemoth AB InBev.
Hacking the President’s DNA
On the potential existence of personalized bioweapons, which could attack a single individual without leaving a trace, and how they might be stopped.
Proust Wasn’t a Neuroscientist. Neither Was Jonah Lehrer.
The allure of conclusion-shaping and a wunderkind’s fall.
Mourning Glory
A high school baseball team responds to a loss.
State of the Species
The future of homo sapiens.
The Longform Guide to Sleep
Great dreams, terrible dreams, no dreams at all—a collection of stories about slumber, at Slate.
Monopoly Is Theft
The surprising anti-monopolist origins of the world’s most popular board game.
The Two Rogers
Reflections on Mr. Angell, Mr. Kahn and Dad.
Spain's Robin Hood
Working within Andalusia’s impoverished farming communities, a ragtag pair of longtime union leaders have been leading raids on local supermarkets.
The Kindness of Beasts
On the moral behavior of animals.
General Failure
The U.S. military’s leadership problem.
Life on Matinicus Island
How modernity – and an eruption of violence – changed “the most remote inhabited island on the Atlantic seaboard.”
My Multiday Massage-a-Thon
A non-erotic journey.
He Came from Outer Space
Barry Zito, profiled.
The Broke Broker: He’s Got Keys to the Best Apartments, But Lacks One of His Own
Bruce Cawsey Waite has no home, no office, and wears a dead man’s suit.
