When Country Was King
Uncovering Southern California’s country music roots.
Uncovering Southern California’s country music roots.
Elisabeth Greenbaum Kasson Los Angeles Times Magazine Jun 2011 10min Permalink
Andrew MacGregor Marshall, a longtime Reuters reporter based in Thailand, resigned and forfeited his ability to enter the country in order to report on the revelations about the Thai royal family and military contained within the Wikileaks “Cablegate” dump.
Thailand has the world's harshest lèse majesté law. Any insult to Bhumibol, Queen Sirikit or their son Crown Prince Vajiralongkorn, is punishable by three to 15 years in jail.
The cables reveal a toxic power struggle between elected officials, the military, and the monarchy, with the huge shadow of exiled telecommunications billionaire Thaksin Shinawatra looming over the country’s post-King Bhumibol future.
The impending end of his reign has sparked intense national anxiety in Thailand. King Bhumibol's son and heir, Crown Prince Vajiralongkorn, has a reputation for being a cruel and corrupt womanizer. A notorious video showing a birthday party for his pet poodle Foo Foo -- who holds the rank of Air Chief Marshal -- has been widely circulated in Thailand; in it, the prince's third wife, Princess Srirasmi, dressed only in a thong, eats the dog's birthday cake off the floor while liveried servants look on.
Editor’s Note: Marshall’s findings will be published as a 4-part series, hosted here by the permission of the author, and re-publishable through a Creative Commons license. His writings on the topic have already reached near book length, for a good overview, see Marshall’s introduction in Foreign Policy.
Andrew MacGregor Marshall Creative Commons Jun 2011 3h35min Permalink
A profile of California congressman Darrell Issa:
A few days after we met in Las Vegas, Issa called me. He was concerned about all my questions regarding his early life and didn’t see why they were newsworthy. The conversation was awkward.
Ryan Lizza New Yorker Jan 2011 30min Permalink
How one man terrorized a small Illinois town.
Robert Kurson Chicago Magazine Sep 2002 Permalink
An investigation into clergy sexual abuse in Philadelphia.
Robert Huber Philadelphia Magazine Jun 2011 25min Permalink
The rise and dissolution of the magazine that nearly took down a president.
Byron York The Atlantic Nov 2001 50min Permalink
Best Article Science Tech World
On the development of South Korea’s New Songdo and Cisco’s plans to build smart cities which will “offer cities as a service, bundling urban necessities – water, power, traffic, telephony – into a single, Internet-enabled utility, taking a little extra off the top of every resident’s bill.” The demand for such cities is enormous:
China doesn't need cool, green, smart cities. It needs cities, period -- 500 New Songdos at the very least. One hundred of those will each house a million or more transplanted peasants. In fact, while humanity has been building cities for 9,000 years, that was apparently just a warm-up for the next 40. As of now, we're officially an urban species. More than half of us -- 3.3 billion people -- live in a city. Our numbers are projected to nearly double by 2050, adding roughly a New Songdo a day; the United Nations predicts the vast majority will flood smaller cities in Africa and Asia.
Greg Lindsay Fast Company Feb 2010 15min Permalink
On why the Anthony Weiner story makes people more uncomfortable than simple cheating, the shifting meaning of faithfulness in marriage, and the relationship ideals espoused by Dan Savage:
In Savage Love, his weekly column, he inveighs against the American obsession with strict fidelity. In its place he proposes a sensibility that we might call American Gay Male, after that community’s tolerance for pornography, fetishes and a variety of partnered arrangements, from strict monogamy to wide openness.
Mark Oppenheimer New York Times Magazine Jul 2011 20min Permalink
A scientist writing on his experiences smoking weed.
Carl Sagan Marijuana Reconsidered Jan 1971 10min Permalink
A Monrovia travelogue:
Even Liberia's roots are sunk in bad faith. Of the first wave of emigrants, half died of yellow fever. By the end of the 1820s a small colony of 3,000 souls survived. In Liberia they built a facsimile life: plantation-style homes, white-spired churches. Hostile local Malinke tribes resented their arrival and expansion; sporadic armed battle was common. When the ACS went bankrupt in the 1840s, they demanded the 'Country of Liberia' declare its independence.
Zadie Smith The Guardian Apr 2007 30min Permalink
What happens to 7-footers when they step off the basketball court?
Pablo S. Torre Sports Illustrated Jun 2011 20min Permalink
Part one of W.T. Snead’s Victorian-era investigation into child prostitution.
William T. Snead The Pall Mall Gazette Jul 1885 45min Permalink
It was one of the most brutal attacks the cops had ever seen. It also might have sent an innocent man to prison.
Christopher Goffard The Los Angeles Times Jun 2011 30min Permalink
First Hormel gutted the union. Then it sped up the line. And when the pig-brain machine made workers sick, they got canned.
Ted Genoways Mother Jones Jun 2011 Permalink
An investigation by ProPublica, PBS Frontline and NPR has found that medical examiners and coroners have repeatedly mishandled cases of infant and child deaths, helping to put innocent people behind bars.
A.C. Thompson, Chisun Lee, Joe Shapiro, Sandra Bartlett ProPublica Jun 2011 25min Permalink
A reporter on how violent sex helped ease her PTSD.
Mac McClelland Good Jun 2011 10min Permalink
Before the guru, Prakashanand Saraswati, vanished in March—before a jury convicted him of sexual abuse; before he slipped across the border into Mexico overnight—he led the premier Hindu temple in Texas and, perhaps, the whole United States.
Ben Crair The Daily Beast Jun 2011 20min Permalink
An oral history of director Michael Bay.
Sean Fennessey GQ Jul 2011 30min Permalink
A cultural history of feral swine.
Ian Frazier New Yorker Dec 2005 40min Permalink
Inside the world of online dating:
If the dating sites had a mixer, you might find OK Cupid by the bar, muttering factoids and jokes, and Match.com in the middle of the room, conspicuously dropping everyone’s first names into his sentences. The clean-shaven gentleman on the couch, with the excellent posture, the pastel golf shirt, and that strangely chaste yet fiery look in his eye? That would be eHarmony.
Nick Paumgarten New Yorker Jul 2011 40min Permalink
Over the last several weeks, dozens of lawmakers, strategists and advocates described the closed-door meetings and tactical decisions that led to approval of same-sex marriage in New York, about two years after it was rejected by the Legislature. This account is based on those interviews, most of which were granted on the condition of anonymity to describe conversations that were intended to be confidential.
Michael Barbaro New York Times Jun 2011 10min Permalink
A visit to the French hideaway of Ira Einhorn, co-founder of Earth Day, who had avoided arrest on murder charges for nearly 20 years.
From our guide to fugitives for Slate.
Russ Baker Esquire Dec 1999 35min Permalink
The first profile of Michele Bachmann.
G.R. Anderson Jr. City Pages Oct 2006 20min Permalink
A profile of new Ticketmaster CEO Nathan Hubbard, who in another life was a touring musician and hated Ticketmaster just like everyone else.
Chuck Salter Fast Company Jul 2011 20min Permalink
A profile of Justin Timberlake:
This need to succeed, to become his generation’s multi-talented Sammy Davis Jr., is part of what makes him appealing to filmmakers. “I needed someone who could be a Frank Sinatra figure, someone who could walk into the room and command all the attention,” says David Fincher, of casting Timberlake as Sean Parker, the Facebook investor and rogue, in The Social Network. “I didn’t want someone who would just say, ‘I know how to play groovy.’ You can’t fake that stuff. That’s the problem with making movies about a rock star—actors have spent their lives auditioning and getting rejected, and rock stars haven’t.”
Vanessa Grigoriadis Vanity Fair Jul 2011 15min Permalink