Damned Yankee
Was Steinbrenner’s Partner the “Madoff of Memorabilia”? Inside a collector’s hoax.
Was Steinbrenner’s Partner the “Madoff of Memorabilia”? Inside a collector’s hoax.
Peter J. Nash Hauls of Shame Jul 2011 25min Permalink
Because of what happened in Georgia, Ms. Grace has said over and over, she knows firsthand how the system favors hardened criminals over victims. It is the foundation of her judicial philosophy, her motivation in life, her casus belli. And much of it isn’t true.
Rebecca Dana The New York Observer Mar 2006 10min Permalink
The writer speaks with his father for the first and last time.
My father moved back to Nigeria one month after I was born. Neither I nor my sister Ijeoma, who is a year and a half my elder, have any recollection of him. Over the course of the next 16 years, we did not receive so much as a phone call from him, until one day in the spring of 1999, when a crinkled envelope bearing unfamiliar postage stamps showed up in the mailbox of Ijeoma's first apartment. Enclosed was a brief letter from our father in which he explained the strange coincidence that had led to him "finding" us.* It was a convoluted story involving his niece marrying the brother of one of our mother's close friends from years ago. As a postscript to the letter, he expressed his desire to speak to us and included his telephone number.
Ahamefule J. Oluo The Stranger Jul 2011 10min Permalink
A search for the “armpit of America” ends in Battle Mountain, Nevada.
Gene Weingarten Washington Post Dec 2001 30min Permalink
A sit-down with Ms. Franklin.
As China’s growing upper class has pushed the price of ivory above $700/pound, a look at both the supply and demand side of the global trade in (mostly) illicitly acquired elephant tusks.
Alex Shoumatoff Vanity Fair Aug 2011 40min Permalink
The last days of Spalding Gray.
Alex Williams New York Feb 2004 25min Permalink
An investigation into The End.
Tom Bissell Harper's Feb 2003 45min Permalink
How the mall was born.
Malcolm Gladwell New Yorker Mar 2004 25min Permalink
The story of a Marine who saved innumerable lives, then got fired.
James Verini Washington Monthly Jul 2011 2h15min Permalink
On the oeuvre of Glenn Beck:
"The undisputed high point of Beck’s tenure in Baltimore was an elaborate prank built around a nonexistent theme park. The idea was to run a promotional campaign for the fictional grand opening of the world’s first air-conditioned underground amusement park, called Magicland. According to Beck and Gray, it was being completed just outside Baltimore. During the build-up, the two created an intricate and convincing radio world of theme-park jingles and promotions, which were rolled out in a slow buildup to the nonexistent park’s grand opening… On the day Magicland was supposed to throw open its air-conditioned doors, Beck and Gray took calls from enraged listeners who tried to find the park and failed. Among the disappointed and enraged was a woman who had canceled a no-refund cruise to attend the event." — from Alexander Zaitchik’s Common Nonsense: Glenn Beck and the Triumph of Ignorance
Inside Rupert Murdoch’s News of the World phone-hacking scandal.
Sarah Ellison Vanity Fair Jun 2011 30min Permalink
The disappearance of a legendary scavenger could have dire consequences for a swelling human population.
Meera Subramanian The Virginia Quarterly Review Jul 2011 30min Permalink
The jury room was a gray-green, institutional rectangle: coat hooks on the wall, two small bathrooms off to one side, a long, scarred table surrounded by wooden armchairs, wastebaskets, and a floor superficially clean, deeply filthy. We entered this room on a Friday at noon, most of us expecting to be gone from it by four or five that same day. We did not see the last of it until a full twelve hours had elapsed, by which time the grimy oppressiveness of the place had become, for me at least, inextricably bound up with psychological defeat.
Vivian Gornick The Atlantic Jun 1979 25min Permalink
Before the viewing ends at 4 p.m., 975 people pass through the evidence rooms, many of them former students, survivors, and friends and relatives of the dead. Absent, as they have consistently been in the five years since the massacre, are Wayne and Kathy Harris, Eric's parents, and Tom and Sue Klebold, who raised Dylan. Although they live in the same Littleton-area homes they occupied on April 20, 1999, they have contributed virtually nothing to the public's understanding of who their sons were and why they killed.
Peter Wilkinson Rolling Stone Apr 2004 Permalink
Next is "culture training," in which trainees memorize colloquialisms and state capitals, study clips of Seinfeld and photos of Walmarts, and eat in cafeterias serving paneer burgers and pizza topped with lamb pepperoni. Trainers aim to impart something they call "international culture"—which is, of course, no culture at all, but a garbled hybrid of Indian and Western signifiers designed to be recognizable to everyone and familiar to no one. The result is a comically botched translation—a multibillion dollar game of telephone. "The most marketable skill in India today," the Guardian wrote in 2003, "is the ability to abandon your identity and slip into someone else's."
Andrew Marantz Mother Jones Jul 2011 20min Permalink
A Denver businessman’s revolutionary green energy company turned out to be nothing but a Ponzi scheme built to fund a lifestyle of booze-soaked hotel orgies with flown-in prostitutes.
James Carlson 5280 Jul 2011 25min Permalink
Boris Yeltsin’s right-hand man tells the inside story of the 1991 coup that killed glasnost:
"That scum!" Boris Yeltsin fumed. "It's a coup. We can't let them get away with it."
Gennady Burbulis, Michele A. Berdy Foreign Policy Jun 2011 10min Permalink
A primer on competitive eating’s premier event, the Hot Dog Eating Contest, which airs today at noon EST:
1: During the allotted period of time, contestants eat as many hot dogs and buns (called "HDBs") as they can. 2: They're allowed to use a beverage of their choice to wash things down. 3: They must stay in full view of their own, personal "Bunnette" scorekeeper. 4: Condiments may be used, but are not required. 5: HDBs that are still in the mouth at the end of the contest only count if they are eventually swallowed. 6: Puking up the hot dogs before the end of the contest (called "a reversal") will result in a disqualification, unless you do something horrific to make up for it (more on this later.)
Mickey Duzyj The Mickey Duzyj Catalogue Jul 2011 10min Permalink
On Facebook’s Sheryl Sandberg and the gender dynamics of Silicon Valley.
Ken Auletta New Yorker Jul 2011 35min Permalink
A profile of 17-year-old Teresa Scanlan, the newly crowned Miss America.
Molly Young New York Jul 2011 10min Permalink
A trip to the Cannabis Cup serves as a backdrop for the story of how the War on Drugs revolutionized the way marijuana is cultivated in America.
Michael Pollan New York Times Magazine Feb 1995 30min Permalink
David Headley helped plot the Mumbai terror attacks. Now his best friend is on trial for conspiring with him. The prosecution’s key witness: David Headley. The story of an informant trying to save his own life from the witness stand.
Liz Mermin The Caravan Jun 2011 30min Permalink
Tom Wolfe on the development of ”New Journalism,” an unconventional reporting style which he helped to pioneer.
I had the feeling, rightly or wrongly, that I was doing things no one had ever done before in journalism. I used to try to imagine the feeling readers must have had upon finding all this carrying on and cutting up in a Sunday supplement. I liked that idea. I had no sense of being a part of any normal journalistic or literary environment.
Uncovering Southern California’s country music roots.
Elisabeth Greenbaum Kasson Los Angeles Times Magazine Jun 2011 10min Permalink