The Madoff Tapes
“One evening, my home phone rang. ‘You have a collect call from Bernard Madoff, an inmate at a federal prison,’ a recording announced. And there he was.”
“One evening, my home phone rang. ‘You have a collect call from Bernard Madoff, an inmate at a federal prison,’ a recording announced. And there he was.”
Steve Fishman New York Mar 2011 30min Permalink
GQ moved up the release of this Charlie Sheen profile: ”The fucking AA shit. The sobriety shit. It was always for other people. I just wanted to get a job back and get enough money to tell everybody to go fuck themselves and then roll like Errol Flynn and Frank Sinatra—the good parts of those guys.”
Amy Wallace GQ Apr 2011 Permalink
On existing as a girl in the boy’s club that is the world.
Molly Lambert This Recording Feb 2011 25min Permalink
The Gabrielle Giffords shooting, from the vantage point of three central figures: Daniel Hernandez helped save the congresswoman’s life; Patricia Maisch stopped the shooter from reloading; Bill Badger tackled him.
Amy Wallace GQ Mar 2011 15min Permalink
At the very bottom of the porn totem pole is the “mope”, a barely paid assistant who hangs around and occasionally performs. Stephen Hill was mope-ing for Ultima Studios in exchange for pocket money and a place to crash. Learning he was going to be evicted, he sharpened a prop machete.
Michael Albo LA Weekly Feb 2011 15min Permalink
On the structural underpinnings of the revolts currently shaking the Arab world.
Max Rodenbeck New York Review of Books Mar 2011 15min Permalink
She was last seen leaving a pickup bar, her body was found the next morning in the dirt beside a football field. He was ten. Thirty-six years later, the author investigates his mother’s murder.
James Ellroy GQ Jul 1994 15min Permalink
Tackling the science of cooking, one perfect french fry at a time.
Mark McClusky Wired Mar 2011 20min Permalink
The American medical establishment has gone to extraordinary lengths—some of which read like conspiracy theory—to discredit the notion (and its most visible promoter, Dr. Atkins) that carbohydrates, not fat, are the cause of obesity. It looks like they were wrong.
Gary Taubes New York Times Magazine Jul 2002 30min Permalink
Five years ago, Mel Gibson was one of Hollywood’s few genuine family-men and a leading box office attraction; inside his wild descent from star to pariah.
Peter Biskind Vanity Fair Mar 2011 30min Permalink
On the evolution of New Jersey’s governor.
Matt Bai New York Times Magazine Feb 2011 Permalink
The bizarre tale–and unlikely turnaround–of an NHL player who tried to have his youth coach murdered.
L. Jon Wertheim Sports Illustrated Feb 2011 Permalink
“The writer/speaker has certain political convictions or affiliations, and proceeds to filter all reality and spin all assertion according to those convictions and loyalties. Everybody’s pissed off and exasperated and impervious to argument from any other side.”
Dave Eggers, David Foster Wallace The Believer Nov 2003 25min Permalink
A profile of Heather Armstrong, a mom in Salt Lake City who has more than 1.5 million Twitter followers and a personal blog generating $30,000-$50,000 monthly.
Lisa Belkin New York Times Magazine Feb 2011 Permalink
One of most popular Libyan figures amongst Western intellectuals and democracy advocates is… Qaddafi’s second son, Saif.
Eliza Griswold The New Republic Jul 2010 15min Permalink
A profile of Teodoro Nguema Obiang Mangue, the Malibu-dwelling, “fantastically corrupt” dictator-in-waiting of Equatorial Guinea. Teodorin, as his friends call him, is considered by U.S. intelligence to be “an unstable, reckless idiot.”
Ken Silverstein Foreign Policy Mar 2011 Permalink
Twenty-five years later, inside the Exclusion Zone.
Henry Shukman Outside Mar 2011 25min Permalink
“By the time we got to Woodstock 99 …” In a grim finale, the nineties get their Altamont.
Steven Hyden AV Club Feb 2011 15min Permalink
A suitcase was smuggled from Spain to Mexico during the Spanish Civil War containing negatives from three photographers would later become legends and all die in war zones. The suitcase disappeared.
Dan Kaufman The Nation Jan 2011 Permalink
On photographing the former Norma Jeane Mortenson. “I think she was the best light comedienne we have in films today, and anyone will tell you that the toughest of acting styles is light comedy.”—Billy Wilder
Larry McMurtry New York Review of Books Mar 2011 10min Permalink
Six months after playing an electric guitar at the Newport Folk Festival, a rambling Dylan holds forth on style, songwriting, and fame. “People have one great blessing—obscurity—and not really too many people are thankful for it.”
Nat Hentoff Playboy Feb 1966 35min Permalink
On Colonel Muammar Qaddafi, “the permanent revolutionary,” and his son Seif.
Andrew Solomon New Yorker May 2006 55min Permalink
The Top Gun effect; how Hollywood became a factory for sequels, comic book and video game adaptations, and anything else easily marketed to under-25-year-old males.
Mark Harris GQ Feb 2011 20min Permalink
The oracular works of Philip K. Dick.
Alexander Star The New Republic Dec 1993 Permalink
On writing what you loathe. Leslie McFarlane, ghostwriter of the early Hardy Boys novels, was so ashamed of the work he couldn’t even bring himself to name the books in his diary. “June 9, 1933: Tried to get at the juvenile again today but the ghastly job appalls me.”
Gene Weingarten Washington Post Aug 1998 20min Permalink