Missing a Beat
Millions of hearts fail each year. Why can’t we replace them?
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Showing 25 articles matching physics of music.
Lauren Underwood Is the Future
A profile of the youngest Black woman in Congress.
TikTok and Suburban Gothic
Will the literature of the suburbs be written on TikTok?
Chinese Dreams on Native American Land
A tale of cannabis boom and bust.
Why Did You Throw Stones?
A diary of the author’s visit to Palestine.
What Slime Knows
“There is no hierarchy in the web of life.”
Searching For Mecca
Investigating the unsolved murder of Malcolm X’s grandson.
The Gangster in the Huddle
The double life of Aaron Hernandez.
Teresa McGovern: A Death in the Cold
“In all his life, this was the moment of his greatest defeat.” On the death of George McGovern’s daughter on a cold winter night in Madison, Wisconsin.
The Longform Guide to Loners
Chris McCandless, Sly Stone, and Ida Wood — a collection of stories going inside the lives of outsiders.
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Sponsor: "What It Takes" by Richard Ben Cramer
In honor of Presidents' Day, our sponsor is one of the great pieces of political reporting in American history: What It Takes, Richard Ben Cramer's masterful account of the 1988 presidential election.
With a level of access impossible to imagine today, Cramer delves into the personal, intimate lives of the key candidates as he seeks to understand the drives, passions, egos, and failings that transform an individual into a president. Cramer goes particularly deep on Joe Biden, then 47 and making his first presidential run. Here is an extended excerpt of that section.
When Richard Ben Cramer passed away last year, we collected his greatest articles in this Longform guide. But What It Takes is his masterpiece, a book that exposes the emotional reality of politics and defined modern campaign reporting.
Flying Upside Down
An engineering team races to create a next-generation computer.
The first installment of The Soul of a New Machine.
Running with the Bully
“Twenty-five years ago, I used to live in fear of Trevor Latham kicking my ass nearly every day. I grew up to be a writer. He grew up to run one of the toughest biker gangs in America. And then I tracked him down.”
What Happened to 'The Most Liberated Woman in America'?
Barbara Williamson co-founded Sandstone, one of the most famous radical experiments in group sex and communal living of the 1970s. Then she got wild.
The Secrets in Guatemala's Bones
In the face of death threats, a forensic anthropologist has spent two decades exhuming the victims of a “dirty” civil war. Now his work might help bring justice for their murders.
Are You Ready to Meet Your Fixer Uppers?
How a pair of HGTV stars are trying to renovate the reputation of Waco, Texas.
John Edgar Wideman Against the World
Late in a career marked by both triumph and tragedy, the author has written a new book exploring the unsettling case of Emmett Till’s father — and the isolation of black men in America.
I'm Dying to Meet You in the Next Life
An essay on Alcor – “the Arizona cryonics company that has put the body of Boston Red Sox Hall of Famer Ted Williams in cryogenic suspension, in the hope he may one day rise again” – and the desire to live forever.
The Fake Pot Industry is Coming Down From a Three-Year High
The rise of the “wildly lucrative” herbal incense business, and the downfall of one company.
Show Yourself the Money
Aside from the wealthiest players, nine out of 10 NFL athletes are likely to be insolvent within 10 years of retirement. A new executive MBA program aims to change that.
Interview: Richard Linklater
“Does your life have a plot? It has characters. There is a narrative. There’s a lot of story, a lot of character. But plot? Eh, no.”
Stephen King: The Rolling Stone Interview
The author on why he belives in God (“It makes things better”), the perils of writing high (“Annie Wilkes is cocaine, she was my number-one fan”) and what he thinks of other writers (“Hemingway sucks, basically”).
Black Arts
The Academy of Art University in San Francisco is very profitable for the family who runs it. But not so much for the students who attend in hopes of becoming artists.
When the Womb Is a Crime Scene
An Alabama woman took the equivalent of one Valium during her pregnancy. A few weeks after she gave birth, she became one of more than 1,800 new and expecting mothers arrested under the state’s chemical endangerment law.
The Good Soldier
Struggling with depression and thoughts of suicide, Army officer Lawrence Franks went AWOL. Five years later, he reappeared as Christopher Flaherty, a member of the French Foreign Legion who served three tours in Africa. Then he was court-martialed.
