The Place to Disappear
On Bangkok’s Khao San Road.
On Bangkok’s Khao San Road.
Susan Orlean New Yorker Jan 2000 15min Permalink
On the murder of a young Hasidic boy in Brooklyn.
Matthew Shaer New York Dec 2011 25min Permalink
Enlightened is probably the sharpest satire of modern white-collar work since the original British version of The Office, and its skewering of this world intertwines with its portrait of individual personalities so deftly that you can’t separate them. Creator Mike White captures the unsettling blandness of office protocol, politics and jargon, from the chill that workers feel when Human Resources calls them out of the blue to the impressive-sounding word salad labels that the company gives to its departments and projects. (The experimental department to which the newly demoted Amy is assigned is called “Cogentiva.”)
Matt Zoller Seitz Salon Nov 2011 Permalink
Paul Simon’s Graceland at 25.
The Paul Simon who, on a bus en route to New York City told his sleeping girlfriend that he was empty and aching and he didn’t know why, that Simon belongs to our parents. My generation may love him but he’s not ours. The Simon who is soft in the middle (or at least feels an affinity for men who happen to be), however, the one who reminds young women of money, who has been divorced and has a kid to prove it, and who has the means to catch a cab uptown and take it all the way downtown talking dispassionately while doing so about the comings and goings of breakdowns, that Simon belongs to us as much as he does to our folks because he is our folks.
Nell Boeschenstein This Recording Apr 2011 10min Permalink
The tiny, insular Tehran rap scene.
Noah Arjomand Frontline Apr 2010 20min Permalink
Creating an identity that’s no longer tied to the past.
Monsters occasionally assume a completely unexpected appearance. All of a sudden, Adolf Hitler is standing onstage wearing an Adidas tracksuit and flip-flops, and his name isn't Hitler; it's Oliver Polak. And the monster isn't really Adolf Hitler, either; it's the audience's laughter. It starts with a sputter, like something trying to break free from its restraints. But then it bursts out as if suddenly liberated.
Georg Diez Der Spiegel Nov 2011 20min Permalink
On the American way of death, burial, and mourning, from war heroes to Elvis:
At the scene of his mother’s funeral, Elvis Presley — invincible sex symbol, cocksure performer, the man who changed the world and music forever — was reduced to a pathetic, blubbering mama’s boy. “Mama, I’d give up every dime I own and go back to digging ditches, just to have you back,” he told her body while it lay in repose the night before the funeral. At the service, according to biographer Peter Guralnick, "Elvis himself maintained his composure a little better until, towards the end, he burst into uncontrollable tears and, with the service completed, leaned over the casket, crying out, 'Good-bye darling, good-bye. I love you so much. You know how much I lived my whole life just for you.' Four friends half-dragged him into the limousine. 'Oh God,' he declared, 'everything I have is gone.'"
Things go terribly (and illegally) wrong at a rehab center for well-off L.A. teens.
Michael Angeli Los Angeles Nov 2011 25min Permalink
The psych hospital life of John Hinckley Jr., Ronald Reagan’s would-be assassin.
Eddie Dean Washington City Paper Jul 1997 45min Permalink
Bill Russell, race, and the NBA of the 1960s.
Gilbert Rogin Sports Illustrated Nov 1963 20min Permalink
Best Article Reprints Business
A breakdown of the early 80s homeless epidemic.
Jonathan Alter Newsweek Jan 1980 15min Permalink
On the strengths and limitations of the Republican frontrunner:
“The Mormon’s never going to win the who-do-you-want-to-have-a-beer-with contest,” concedes one adviser, while another acknowledges, “He’s never had the experience of sitting in a bar, and like, talking.”
Robert Draper New York Times Magazine Nov 2011 20min Permalink
The story of a sheriff’s deputy in Minnesota who took his own life.
"If anything happens to me," Ruettimann said, "give this to the reporter." After Ruettimann's death, Hereaux took the file down off his desk. Inside was a thick stack of loose-leaf documents, a manila folder stuffed with letters, and a catalog-size clasp envelope labeled "Reports." Written in black permanent marker in the margin of the envelope was the reporter's name: mine.
Jessica Lussenhop City Pages Nov 2011 15min Permalink
After losing his sight at age 3, Michael May went on to become the first blind CIA agent, set a world record for downhill skiing, and start a successful Silicon Valley company. Then he got the chance to see again.
Robert Kurson Esquire Jun 2005 Permalink
Prosecutors have spun creative theories to explain away scientific evidence when DNA tests haven’t fit their version of events.
Andrew Martin New York Times Magazine Nov 2011 25min Permalink
A log of the 32 shitless hours that the author spent in the Tombs prison after being arrested during an Occupy Wall Street protest.
Keith Gessen New Yorker Nov 2011 25min Permalink
From a childhood in the Kremlin to a trip to New Delhi carrying the ashes of her Indian Communist lover, defection at the U.S. Embassy… “finally to decades of obscurity, wandering and poverty.”
Douglas Martin New York Times Nov 2011 10min Permalink
60 Minutes on America’s poverty epidemic:
Jade Wiley is eight years old. She spent three weeks living in her car with her mom, her dad, two dogs and a cat. Pelley: Did you think you were ever gonna get out of the car? Jade Wiley: I thought I was going to be stuck in the car. Pelley: How did you keep your spirits up? Jade Wiley: By still praying to God that somebody'd let us stay in a hotel.
Scott Pelley 60 Minutes Nov 2011 Permalink
Frank rarely smiles, even when he’s being funny. “There are three lies politicians tell,” he told the real-estate group. “The first is ‘We ran against each other but are still good friends.’ That’s never true. The second is ‘I like campaigning.’ Anyone who tells you they like campaigning is either a liar or a sociopath. Then, there’s ‘I hate to say I told you so.’ ” He went on, “Everybody likes to say ‘I told you so.’ I have found personally that it is one of the few pleasures that improves with age. I can say ‘I told you so’ without taking a pill before, during, or after I do it.”
Jeffrey Toobin New Yorker Jan 2009 35min Permalink
The most dreadful men to live with are those who thus alternate between angel and devil.
Not long before she died, Anne Isabella Noel Byron gave a wide-ranging interview to the author of Uncle Tom’s Cabin. Most notoriously, she accused her husband, Lord Byron, of carrying on a “secret adulterous intrigue” with his half-sister.
The Atlantic lost 15,000 subscribers in the months following publication of this article.
Harriet Beecher Stowe The Atlantic Sep 1869 15min Permalink
On the arrival of Formula 1 in India.
Mehboob Jeelani The Caravan Nov 2011 2h15min Permalink
Portraits of the 99 percent.
George Packer New Yorker Nov 2011 25min Permalink
Why Whitney is Lucy, only less lovable:
This may sound like blasphemy to anyone who loves Lucille Ball, the woman who pioneered the classic joke rhythms that Whitney Cummings so klutzily mimics. Cummings has none of Ball’s shining charisma or her buzz of anarchy. Yet she does share Lucy’s rictus grin, her toddler-like foot-stamping tantrums, and especially her Hobbesian view of heterosexual relationships as a combat zone of pranks, bets, and manipulation from below. “This is war,” Whitney announces, before declaring yet another crazy scheme to undercut her boyfriend, and it might as well be the series’ catchphrase.
Emily Nussbaum New Yorker Nov 2011 Permalink
On the history, internal culture, and scandals of the consulting giant.
Andrew Hill The Financial Times Nov 2011 20min Permalink
Afternoons with Altman and Allen.
For a year or two during the mid-1970s, living in New York, I was a moviegoer. I was in my early 20s then, working off and on, driving a cab, setting up the stage at rock shows, writing occasional pieces for The Village Voice. But there were also long empty spells. I tried to write some fiction and couldn’t, tried to read and could—but only for so long. I ended up going to the movies.
Mark Edmundson The American Scholar Jan 2008 20min Permalink