North Korea’s Digital Underground
The perilous routes through which information—video footage, secret documents, radio broadcasts—flow in and out of North Korea through its porous borders with China.
Sex Thief
One part rapist, one part con-man; the story of the seemingly unconvictable Hy Doan.
Dunk and Done
On Baylor’s freshman basketball star Perry Jones and how the new era of one-season careers has changed the landscape of college basketball.
Too Slick, Too Loud, Too Successful: Why John Calipari Can't Catch a Break
A profile of the highest paid coach in college basketball. A pioneer of one-and-done recruiting, Calipari is also the only coach in NCAA history to have two runs to the Final Four removed from the record books for rules violations.
They Grow Up So Fast
Inside the world of 10-and-under competitive cheerleading.
Interview: Chris Rock
“Howard Stern’s a bad motherfucker, man..if I had to be on six hours a day, it would be just as nasty and foul and not sophisticated. The fact that you’re going to see me do an hour every four years? Reduce Howard Stern to an hour every four years, you’d have the most brilliant comedian who ever lived. It’s not even close.”
Inside Google’s Age of Augmented Humanity (Pt. 1-3)
The next frontier of search is… everything. Voice recognition, image recognition, and why Google’s data set is one of the most valuable scientific tools of our age.
Learning to Love the (Shallow, Divisive, Unreliable) New Media
Is it time to end the mourning period for old media?
A Mugging on Lake Street
A veteran reporter investigates his own beating.
Rules of Misbehavior
How Dan Savage became America’s leading ethicist.
Schemes of My Father
Memories of the author’s teenage years, when his father pulled up stakes on a comfortable life in Baltimore to reinvent himself as the head of a S&L bank in Los Angeles.
How Rovio made Angry Birds a Winner
Inside the most ubiquitous distraction of its era.
This Is It: Ten Years of the Strokes
An oral history of the Strokes.
Slugging—The People's Transit
Passengers get a free ride. Drivers get a passport to the HOV lane. Nobody pays, nobody talks. On “slugging,” the DIY commuter system in D.C. that’s being used by 10,000 people a day and taking thousands of cars off the road.
Opium Wars
Stuck between the Taliban and the U.S. Military, Afghanistan’s farmers risk their lives both when they grow, and when they refuse to grow, fields of poppies.
Who You Are and Who You Say You Are
Thoughts on the current era of online anonymity.
Latter-Day Saints
On Trey Parker, Matt Stone, and their new Broadway musical about Mormons, which “may just be their highest artistic achievement yet.”
Prison Rape and the Government
Prison rape is an epidemic; but the bulk of abuses are not by prisoners themselves, but by guards and other prison workers.
My Detroit Story
A series of first-person essays on a reporter’s relationship with his city. Excerpted from the upcoming Detroit: An American Autopsy.
A Homeless City in the Woods
A crusading minister has built a forested Utopia for the itinerant and destitute. But is a social experiment what they’re looking for, or just a place to live?
The Liberation of Lori Berenson
After nearly 15 years in a Peruvian prison, an American woman convicted of aiding a Marxist terrorist group finds parole in Lima full of contradictions.
Why Are Movies So Bad? Or, The Numbers
Hollywood makes bad movies because “rotten pictures make money.”
Absolute PowerPoint
The definitive story of a ubiquitous software. PowerPoint’s origins, its evolution, and its mind-boggling impact on corporate culture.
Broke Town, U.S.A.
On who will bear the burden of the financial crisis facing cities across America. “Will it be articulated in terms of bond defaults or larger kindergarten classes—or no kindergarten classes at all?”
Mayhem and Murder Rule at This Little Strip Club
The decades-long saga of Miami’s Take Once Cocktail Lounge, where you might get shot, your money will definitely be laundered, and everybody will know your name.
