Branded For Life
What it’s like to be Enzyte’s “Smiling Bob,” and other tales of acting as a product’s public face.
"The Best TV Show That's Ever Been"
An oral history of Cheers.
The Last Book Party: Publishing Drinks to a Life After Death
Wandering through the Frankfurt Book Fair.
The Crayola-fication of the World: How We Gave Colors Names, and It Messed with Our Brains
Vegetables are “blue” in Japanese and other observations on the uneasy relationship between color and language.
What Katie Didn't Know
Scientology’s stronghold on Tom Cruise’s dating life.
The Perfect Level of Fame
A day at the mall with the cast of Here Comes Honey Boo Boo.
Death on the Path to Enlightenment
Westerners’ spiritual quests in India gone wrong.
Gideon Lewis-Kraus is the author of A Sense of Direction.
"My best friend, who is a fiction writer, she once said to me that she saw a lot of the things I was doing as 'wring tenderness from absurdity.' That wouldn't have occurred to me to put it that way, but that does seem to me [what] I like to do ... I am someone who can very easily be dismissive, or even contemptuous. And one of the things I like about reporting a story, particularly reporting a story that is ultimately, counterintuitively, positive, is that it gives me a chance to work through that, and be the more tender, sympathetic person that I would like to be in real life."
The Great New England Vampire Panic
How a group of farmers came to believe that their relatives were returning from the grave.
Errol Morris, Forensic Epistemologist
A conversation on the “bedeviling sorts of indeterminacies one encounters the deeper one drills.”
Inside China's Star-Making Machine
On China’s pop music charm offensive.
How Collecting Opium Antiques Turned Me Into an Opium Addict
The evolution of an obsession.
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John Kennedy, New Yorker
A remembrance of JFK, Jr.
The League of Dangerous Mapmakers
“Redistricting today has become the most insidious practice in American politics—a way, as the opportunistic machinations following the 2010 census make evident, for our elected leaders to entrench themselves in 435 impregnable garrisons from which they can maintain political power while avoiding demographic realities.”
No Evidence of Disease
Stephanie had cancer, until she didn’t.
Portrait of the Artist as a Postman
A profile of Kermit Oliver, a reclusive, critically acclaimed artist who designs scarves for Hermès and works nights at the Waco post office.
Sex and the Superbug
The rise of drug-resistant gonorrhea.
Power, Pollution and the Internet
The environmental impact of server farms.
Ultimate Retreat to French Polynesia
Exploring remote atolls in the South Pacific.
The Lie Factory
The invention of political consulting.
May Doctors Help You to Die?
Debates surrounding physician-assisted dying in the U.S.
The Shocking Truth
The story of a device that delivers electric shocks to students at a school for special needs.
23 Reasons Why a Profile of Pete Carroll Does Not Appear in This Space
An attempt at writing about the football coach.
Eyes Wide Shut
What the wife of a ponzi schemer knew.
