Detroit Arcadia
Wanders through the emptied post-American landscape.
Wanders through the emptied post-American landscape.
Rebecca Solnit Harper's Jun 2007 Permalink
It began with a series of anonymous sexual-harassment complaints that the writer knew were false. But the truth was far stranger.
Sarah Viren New York Times Magazine Mar 2020 35min Permalink
Katrina’s floodwaters had knocked out the power. Evacuation of the sickest patients seemed impossible. So the doctors at Memorial did what they thought was right, even if they knew it was a crime.
Sheri Fink New York Times Magazine Aug 2009 55min Permalink
The Estonia was carrying 989 passengers when it sank in 30-foot seas on its way across the Baltic in September 1994. More than 850 lost their lives. The ones who survived acted quickly and remained calm.
William Langewiesche The Atlantic May 2004 35min Permalink
Three days in the creative wilderness with Francis Farewell Starlite, the reclusive muse to Kanye West, Bon Iver and Drake.
Reggie Ugwu New York Times Mar 2020 10min Permalink
The arson case that may have led Texas to execute an innocent man.
David Grann New Yorker Sep 2009 1h5min Permalink
A secret hope of mine, which I now find hilarious: I imagined that once I had a child, I would become a faster writer. Faster, and also better. It’s hard for me to reconstruct the optimistic logic that led me to this hypothesis. I think I honestly believed that if I did not have the option to write badly, I would simply evolve, like that Lamarckian giraffe, into a more efficient creature.
Karen Russell Wealthsimple Magazine Mar 2020 20min Permalink
A Kickstarter for a Kevlar backpack goes awry leading to a federal investigation.
Ashley Carman The Verge Mar 2020 20min Permalink
Mountain athletes face death and grief more often than most of us. One therapist thinks he can help.
Nick Paumgarten New Yorker Feb 2020 20min Permalink
Why do corporations speak the way they do?
Molly Young Vulture Feb 2020 20min Permalink
They were an all-star crew. They cooked up the perfect plan. And when they pulled off the caper of the century, it made them more than a fortune—it made them folk heroes.
Randy Quaid and his wife Evi have fled to Canada and are living in their car. They are seeking asylum from the menace of the “Hollywood Star Whackers.”
Nancy Jo Sales Vanity Fair Jan 2011 25min Permalink
Heather Morris’s bestselling novels ‘The Tattooist of Auschwitz’ and ‘Cilka’s Journey’, and the problem of truth in historical fiction.
Christine Kenneally The Monthly Feb 2020 25min Permalink
Online public spaces are now being slowly taken over by beef-only thinkers, as the global culture wars evolve into a stable, endemic, background societal condition of continuous conflict. As the Great Weirding morphs into the Permaweird, the public internet is turning into the Internet of Beefs.
Venkatesh Rao Ribbonfarm Jan 2020 20min Permalink
On the shared life of Tatiana and Krista Hogan:
The girls’ doctors believe it is entirely possible that the sensory input that one girl receives could somehow cross that bridge into the brain of the other. One girl drinks, another girl feels it.
Susan Dominus New York Times Magazine May 2011 25min Permalink
Nicola Gobbo defended Melbourne’s most notorious criminals at the height of a gangland war. They didn’t know she had a secret.
Evan Ratliff California Sunday Jan 2020 50min Permalink
On Rudolph Giuliani and the enduring power of shamelessness.
Jonathan Mahler New York Times Magazine Jan 2020 35min Permalink
How the museum-quality 55,000 film collection that an East Village video store gave away ended up in a small, possibly mob-run village in Sicily.
Karina Longworth Village Voice Sep 2012 Permalink
On the centuries-long search for the perfect hangover remedy.
Joan Acocella New Yorker May 2008 20min Permalink
The moderators who keep Google and Youtube free of beheadings and child porn now have PTSD themselves.
Casey Newton The Verge Dec 2019 25min Permalink
“I always said that when my time came I’d want to go fast. But where’s the fun in that?”
Peter Schjeldahl New Yorker Dec 2019 40min Permalink
How the media and law enforcement fingered the wrong man for the 1996 Olympic Park bombing.
Marie Brenner Vanity Fair Feb 1997 1h15min Permalink
Todd Marinovich was engineered from birth to be the greatest quarterback of all time. He ended up doing heroin in the locker room. A 2010 National Magazine Award winner, reprinted on Longform.
Mike Sager Esquire May 2010 40min Permalink
Paul Skalnik has a decades-long criminal record and may be one of the most prolific jailhouse informants in U.S. history. The state of Florida is planning to execute a man based largely on his word.
Pamela Colloff ProPublica Dec 2019 55min Permalink
How a Sacramento Kings executive stole more than $13 million from the team—and almost got away with it.
Kevin Arnovitz ESPN Nov 2019 25min Permalink