The Audition
On trying out for the Boston Symphony Orchestra.
On trying out for the Boston Symphony Orchestra.
Jennie Dorris Boston Magazine Jul 2012 15min Permalink
On life in Los Angeles, and the specter of a second riot.
Thomas Pynchon New York Times Jun 1966 20min Permalink
The playground, the Ivy League, the triangle offense, and how we dreamed up a “black basketball” and “white basketball.”
Tom Scocca Transition Jan 2001 25min Permalink
The Constitution and its worshippers.
Jill Lepore New Yorker Jan 2011 25min Permalink
Inside the hacker ecosystem.
Quinn Norton Wired Jul 2012 25min Permalink
A CIA veteran remembers his Soviet nemesis, Leonid Vladimirovich Shebarshin, who was the chairman of the KGB for a single day during the 1991 coup against Gorbachev, and committed suicide in Moscow in March.
Milton Bearden Foreign Policy Jul 2012 10min Permalink
Experiments in making others feel good.
Tom Chiarella Esquire Sep 2009 10min Permalink
An ode to the MSNBC anchor.
Ben Wallace-Wells Rolling Stone Jul 2012 20min Permalink
“Good espresso depends on the fourM’s: Macchina, the espresso machine; Macinazione, the proper grinding of a beans; Miscela, the coffee blend and the roast, and Mano is the skilled hand of the barista, because even with the finest beans and the most advanced equipment, the shot depends on the touch and style of the barista.”
Jimmy Stamp Smithsonian Jul 2012 Permalink
A profile from Cooper’s early days an an anchor.
Choire Sicha The New York Observer Mar 2004 15min Permalink
The taming of the political reporter.
Alessandra Stanley, Maureen Dowd GQ Sep 1988 25min Permalink
Last year, 1 million gallons of diluted bitumen flooded the town of Marshall, Mich. An investigation into “the biggest oil spill you’ve never heard of.”
Elizabeth McGowan, Lisa Song InsideClimate News Jun 2012 1h5min Permalink
The story of a Ponzi schemer who became the mark.
Guy Lawson New York Jul 2012 20min Permalink
On the surprising radicalism of library music – “music that has been composed and recorded for commercial purposes.”
Lindsay Zoladz The Believer Jul 2012 20min Permalink
An interview with Pavement’s Bob Nastanovich on his career afterlife as a “a clocker and chart-caller” and occasional breeder at an Iowa race horse track.
Alex Pappademas, Bob Nastanovich Grantland Jun 2012 30min Permalink
A profile of Italian soccer star Mario Balotelli.
Jeré Longman New York Times Jul 2012 Permalink
On collecting books.
I have lived in books, for books, by and with books; in recent years, I have been fortunate enough to be able to live from books. And it was through books that I first realised there were other worlds beyond my own; first imagined what it might be like to be another person; first encountered that deeply intimate bond made when a writer's voice gets inside a reader's head.
Julian Barnes The Guardian Jun 2012 15min Permalink
How Wall Street thoroughly dominated Obama’s economic policy.
Paul Krugman, Robin Wells New York Review of Books Jul 2012 15min Permalink
Growing up with Charlie Brown.
Jonathan Franzen New Yorker Nov 2004 30min Permalink
Listening to the Big Star songwriter, who left the group before dying in a solo car crash at 27.
His voice, on the recordings, is too sensitive. That's meant not as an aesthetic judgment. It wasn't too sensitive for the material, in other words. It was too sensitive for life. You listen to him sing, closely, and if you don't know another thing about what happened to him, you know that the guy with that voice is not going to last.
John Jeremiah Sullivan Oxford American Apr 2010 10min Permalink
On the road with three high school show choirs and a dream.
William Powell Cincinnati Magazine Jul 2012 25min Permalink
How six different people live off six different, and wildly varying, incomes.
Jon Ronson GQ Jul 2012 15min Permalink
How the author became tangled up with an international con man who may or may not have murdered several people.
Brad Stone Businessweek Jun 2012 15min Permalink
Life as a police informant.
Ted Conover New York Times Magazine Jun 2012 20min Permalink
A profile of Chief Justice John Roberts.
Jeffrey Toobin New Yorker May 2009 30min Permalink