Some Things Never Die
Race relations at the gigantic and soul-crushing Smithfield slaughterhouse, where annual turnover is 100 percent: 5,000 people are hired, 5,000 quit.
Race relations at the gigantic and soul-crushing Smithfield slaughterhouse, where annual turnover is 100 percent: 5,000 people are hired, 5,000 quit.
Charlie LeDuff New York Times Jun 2000 25min Permalink
A first-person account. “If you’re the sort of person who has only ever had to deal with colds and cuts, food poisoning and the odd virus…what strikes you most is the glacial pace of recuperation.”
Tim Lusher The Guardian Jun 2010 10min Permalink
Through a series of interviews and historical inquiries, Errol Morris dissects Anosognosia, “a condition in which a person who suffers from a disability seems unaware of or denies the existence of his or her disability.”
Errol Morris New York Times Jul 2010 Permalink
What exactly is going on politically in Thailand?
Andrew MacGregor Marshall Reuters Jul 2010 40min Permalink
Detroit is dying. But it’s not dead yet. Just ask Charlie LeDuff.
Matt Labash The Weekly Standard Dec 2008 40min Permalink
The man who keeps finding famous fingerprints on uncelebrated works of art.
David Grann New Yorker Apr 2011 1h5min Permalink
An early 1995 peek at what happens when secretive groups meet the Internet: a Scientology Usenet group, populated by believers and critics, stirs conflict that results in raids.
Wendy M. Grossman Wired Dec 1995 20min Permalink
How USAID workers are trained for work and danger in Afghanistan.
Kristin Henderson Washington Post Jul 2010 20min Permalink
Anesthesiologists, in hugely disproportionate numbers compared to other doctors, are getting high.
Jason Zengerle The New Republic Dec 2008 20min Permalink
After his wife disappears, Hans Reiser’s defense contacts a Wired writer who they believe can help explain the world of groundbreaking code, video games, and sci-fi that defines Reiser’s existence.
Joshua Davis Wired Jun 2007 20min Permalink
War stories from the world of Manhattan real estate, written during an era when everybody knew the Internet would completely change the business and nobody quite knew how.
Susan Orlean New Yorker Feb 1999 20min Permalink
An interview with New Yorker critic Alex Ross about his book The Rest is Noise and why there’s really no such thing as “classical music.”
Alex Abramovich Stop Smiling Mar 2009 10min Permalink
The rise and fall of NAMBLA (North American Man Boy Love Association), from its 1970s founding as a splinter group within the gay rights movement to its current incarnation as the most reviled organization in America.
Benoit Denizet-Lewis Boston Magazine May 2006 25min Permalink
When New York built a prison designed to house two men in a single cell, it launched a new experiment in crime control. A look at life inside this prison and in the tiny town surrounding it.
Jennifer Gonnerman Village Voice May 1999 20min Permalink
When the Internet made plagiarism harder, Jordan Kavoosi saw a burgeoning market for original essays. But in his empire of fake papers, it’s the writers, not the students, who get the shaft.
Andy Mannix City Pages Jun 2010 10min Permalink
Political races don’t run on ideas and grassroots activism–they run on voter databases. And no one has more voter data than Aristotle Inc., whose information has helped elect every president since Reagan.
James Verini Vanity Fair Dec 2007 15min Permalink
A mission in Baghdad to let a photojournalist get a shot of an insurgent corpse ends up getting a Marine killed.
Dexter Filkins New York Times Magazine Aug 2008 25min Permalink
Adventures in something called “Radical Honesty.”
A.J. Jacobs Esquire Jul 2007 20min Permalink
A 1988 profile of Bill Murray, then at the peak of his box office power and living in a secluded farmhouse in the Hudson River Valley.
Ty Cobb, who would go on to be the greatest baseball player of his time, was a 17-year-old minor league prospect when his mother shot and killed his father at home in Georgia.
K. Rheinheimer Blue Ridge Country Jun 2010 Permalink
Are video games capable of emotion?
Jason Fagone Esquire Nov 2008 25min Permalink
Saad Mohseni, Afghanistan’s first media mogul and a business partner of Rupert Murdoch, produces everything from nightly news broadcasts to the controversial Afghan version of American Idol.
Ken Auletta New Yorker Jun 2010 35min Permalink
75 years after its founding, it’s still hard to explain exactly why Alcoholics Anonymous works.
Brendan Koerner Wired Jun 2010 20min Permalink
How an L.A. high school dropout became an enforcer for Mexican cartels and ended up on the F.B.I. Most Wanted List.
Christine Pelisek Dallas Observer Jun 2010 20min Permalink
An unidentified body found near the beach in Australia in 1948. An unclaimed suitcase. A coded note.