The Disappearance of Ford Beckman
How a celebrated American artist was forced to trade his multimillion-dollar collection for a job selling donuts.
How a celebrated American artist was forced to trade his multimillion-dollar collection for a job selling donuts.
Michael Paul Mason The Believer Nov 2009 15min Permalink
What’s really happening in Kyrgyzstan.
Philip Shishkin Foreign Policy May 2010 20min Permalink
A 1992 Q&A with Woody Allen, conducted in the midst of the media swarm around his newly public relationship with Soon-Yi.
Walter Isaacson, Woody Allen Time Aug 1992 Permalink
A young journalist’s low-paid odyssey through publications from the Hong Kong iMail to Gawker adrift in the “nothing-based economy.”
Maureen Tkacik Columbia Journalism Review May 2010 30min Permalink
How the actor ended up with a house full of tourniquets and syringes, an unflinching belief in the restorative powers of “ozone,” and the brain scan of someone who has “experienced the equivalent of blunt trauma.”
Daniel Voll Esquire Oct 1999 45min Permalink
It took a desperate screenwriter to find Max Mermelstein, Miami’s former coke overlord, after twenty-five years in hiding.
Gus Garcia-Roberts LA Weekly May 2010 20min Permalink
Muhammad Ali and his followers were the greatest show on earth. Then the show ended, and life went on.
Gary Smith Sports Illustrated Apr 1988 45min Permalink
Both the Chinese government and private matchmakers are laboring to unite people who lost spouses and children in the earthquake.
Brook Larmer New York Times Magazine May 2010 Permalink
Step 1: awkward high school senior passes himself off as a flirtatious female student online. Step 2: he cons his male classmates into e-mailing him sexually explicit images of themselves. Step 3: extortion.
Michael Joseph Gross GQ Jul 2009 20min Permalink
The fatal allure of the Golden Gate Bridge and why it doesn’t have a barrier to thwart potential leapers.
Tad Friend New Yorker Oct 2003 20min Permalink
The Conficker ‘worm’ has replicated itself across tens of millions of computers. Only a few hundred people have the knowledge to recreate how, and no one (except its anonymous maker) fully understands why.
Mark Bowden The Atlantic May 2010 35min Permalink
Andrew Breitbart’s empire of bluster.
Rebecca Mead New Yorker May 2010 30min Permalink
How two brothers, born of the same mother but adopted by different families, reunited and used a stolen $50k to fund a ride that started in New Jersey and ended with bullet-ridden cabins in the wilds of Alaska.
Joshua Saul Alaska Dispatch May 2010 Permalink
Profile of the flip-flop wearing 61-year-old ‘dude’ who turned around a dying company by selling all-American sex to teens – and isn’t apologizing.
Benoit Denizet-Lewis Salon Jan 2006 Permalink
Jung’s ‘Red Book’, a secret journal of dreams and drawings, has been in a Swiss vault for the better part of a century. The burden of its care has fallen on his descendants, who have reluctantly allowed it to be published.
Sara Corbett New York Times Sep 2009 Permalink
The where-are-they-now stories of MC Ren, DJ Scatch, Sir Jinx, Kid Disaster, Candyman, and everyone else on the cover of 1987’s N.W.A. and the Posse.
Martin Cizmar LA Weekly May 2010 20min Permalink
In 2005, the prisoner who had set the U.S. penal system record for years in solitary confinement was moved to what’s called “the Alcatraz of the Rockies”—a jail in Colorado built just for him.
Alan Prendergast Westword Aug 2007 20min Permalink
A woman is clogging the Lehigh County court system with divorce filings against David Lee Roth and there is nothing the legal system can do to stop her.
Kevin Amerman The Morning Call May 2010 Permalink
An excerpt from Night of the Gun, the memoir by New York Times media critic David Carr about his years as a junkie in late-‘80s Minneapolis.
David Carr New York Times Magazine Jul 2008 25min Permalink
Over a scotch a few months after his underdog Jets won Super Bowl III, a 26-year-old Joe Namath told Jimmy Breslin what he’d done the night before the game: “I went out and got a bottle and grabbed this girl.”
Jimmy Breslin New York Apr 1969 10min Permalink
The inner workings of a surprisingly amiable Holocaust denial conference.
A profile of the mysterious and moderately intelligent Giant Pacific Octopus.
Brendan Kiley The Stranger Sep 2009 20min Permalink
Yeah, you’ve seen that headline before. The difference? This time it’s not journalists trying to do the saving. It’s Google.
James Fallows The Atlantic May 2010 Permalink
Inside the twisted, half-conscious world of Jure Robic, the Slovene soldier who might be the world’s best ultra-endurance athlete.
Daniel Coyle New York Times Feb 2006 Permalink
How HBO went from sitcoms starring Delta Burke and O.J. Simpson to The Wire. The view from a former HBO employee who witnessed the channel’s rise to prominence firsthand.
Jack Lechner Good Feb 2007 15min Permalink