Lab Leak: A Scientific Debate Mired in Politics—and Unresolved
More than a year into the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic, some scientists say the possibility of a lab leak never got a fair look.
Showing 25 articles matching physics of music.
More than a year into the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic, some scientists say the possibility of a lab leak never got a fair look.
Charles Schmidt Undark Mar 2021 20min Permalink
The fast rise and even faster fall of a trader who bet big with borrowed money.
While many trans athletes have become political lightning rods, nonbinary people like Layshia Clarendon are left out of the conversation. In a sex-segregated sports world, where do they fit in?
Britni de la Cretaz Sports Illustrated Apr 2021 20min Permalink
A recent raid in Italy involving rare Chilean species highlights the growing scale of a black market in the thorny plants.
Rachel Nuwer New York Times May 2021 10min Permalink
Rebecca Raffle came to Indianapolis from Los Angeles with dreams of building a cannabis empire. She introduced herself as a West Coast #girlboss, SEO ninja, LGBTQ Family, and avid baker. But she was altogether something different.
Derek Robertson, Michael Rubino, Julia Spalding Indianapolis Monthly Aug 2021 30min Permalink
The Charleston-based evangelicals had much in common: guns, God, Trump. What went wrong, only one of them could say.
Alice Robb Vanity Fair Sep 2021 30min Permalink
Próspera was supposed to be a privatized, Silicon Valley-funded paradise—but it’s a hard sell for the neighbors.
Ian MacDougall, Isabelle Simpson Rest of World Oct 2021 30min Permalink
American anti-trafficking groups often make impossible-to-verify claims. Now, they’re doing it in the aftermath of the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan.
Tim Marchman, Anna Merlan Vice Oct 2021 25min Permalink
The Christian organization Teen Challenge, made up of more than a thousand centers, claims to reform troubled teens. But is its discipline more like abuse?
Rachel Aviv New Yorker Oct 2021 Permalink
Federal agencies have long struggled to stop illegal fishing and drug smuggling in the Gulf of Mexico. In recent years, it’s only gotten worse.
John Burnett Texas Monthly Nov 2021 Permalink
Inside the effort to exonerate the “Starved Rock Killer.” After 60 years behind bars for one of this state’s most infamous crimes, Chester Weger is out to prove his innocence with DNA testing.
Jake Malooley Chicago Magazine Dec 2021 50min Permalink
An early profile of Mrs. Murdoch that made her husband very angry.
Daniel Chang covers healthcare for the Miami Herald. Along with Carol Marbin Miller, he won the George Polk Award for "Birth & Betrayal," a series co-published with ProPublica that exposed the consequences of a 1988 law designed to shelter medical providers from lawsuits by funding lifelong care for children severely disabled by birth-related brain injuries.
“I think that someone on the healthcare beat looks for stories from the perspective of patients, people who want or need to access the healthcare system and for different reasons cannot. It’s a pretty complicated system and it’s difficult for most people to understand how their health insurance works — and that’s if they have health insurance. If they don’t, there is a whole other system they have to go through. What you look for is access issues and accountability for that.”
This is the latest in a week-long series of conversations with winners of this year's George Polk Awards in Journalism.
Apr 2022 Permalink
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A collection of picks about different eras of life in New York City, inspried by Twice Upon a Time: Listening to New York, the new, multilayered essay by acclaimed author Hari Kunzru. Buy it today from Atavist Books.
The lonesome death of Arnold Rothstein, notorious gambler, inspiration for a the character Meyer Wolfsheim in The Great Gatsby, alleged fixer of the 1916 World Series, opiate importation pioneer, mobster and Jew.
Nick Tosches Vanity Fair May 2005 40min
When New York was perpetually on fire.
Luc Sante New York Review of Books Nov 2003 15min
On police brutality in New York and the race riots of 1964.
James Baldwin The Nation Jul 1966
Watching the jazz singer in New York.
Elizabeth Hardwick New York Review of Books Mar 1976 15min
Jacob Riis, writing in 1899, on how a childhood spent in New York City’s tenements led a 15-year-old boy to be convicted of murder.
Jacob Riis The Atlantic Sep 1899 25min
A profile of Chloë Sevigny, 19-year-old It Girl.
Jay McInerney New Yorker Nov 1994
Memories of the old neighborhood, before everything changed.
Arthur Miller Holiday Mar 1955 25min
Sep 1899 – May 2005 Permalink
The laborers who keep dick pics out of your Facebook feed, the geneticists who could help contain Ebola, and the shame of having poor teeth in a rich world — the most read articles this week in the new Longform App, available free for iPhone and iPad.
The grim world of outsourced content moderation.
Adrian Chen Wired 15min
A profile of Nicki Minaj.
Taffy Brodesser-Akner GQ 15min
Life in America without dental care.
Sarah Smarsh Aeon 15min
“The term douchebag, again used as we already use it, has the power to name white ruling class power and white sexist privilege as noxious, selfish, toxic, foolish, and above all, dangerous.”
Michael Mark Cohen Gawker 10min
The author of The Hot Zone on how geneticists can help contain the current outbreak.
Richard Preston New Yorker 40min
On November 12, 2012, after Belizean police announced that they were seeking him for questioning in connection with the murder of his neighbor, John McAfee began a well-publicized stint on the lam. Six months earlier, the writer had begun an in-depth investigation into McAfee's life. This is the chronicle of that investigation.
Listen to Joshua Davis disucsses this article on the Longform Podcast.
Joshua Davis Wired Dec 2012 35min Permalink
Munich, the Dream Team, and the search for Nadia Comaneci—a collection of articles on the highs and lows of Olympic history.
The first modern games were staged in 1850 by a surgeon named William Penny Brookes in a town called Much Wenlock.
Frank Deford Smithsonian Jul 2012
An American gold medalist in the hurdles describes his experience at the 1896 Olympics in Athens.
Thomas P. Curtis The Atlantic Dec 1932 10min
On the scene of the darkest games in Olympic history.
E.J. Kahn New Yorker Sep 1972 15min
Three years after her gold-medal performance—and amidst rumors of a fall from grace—the author travels to Transylvania to track down gymnast Nadia Comaneci. He also enjoys several drinks with her coach, Béla Károlyi.
Bob Ottum Sports Illustrated Nov 1979 25min
On the eve of the 1992 Summer Olympics, the Dream Team held a closed-door scrimmage in Monaco. Michael Jordan led one team, Magic Johnson the other. Two decades later, a game report.
Jack McCallum Sports Illustrated Jul 2012 25min
How the media and law enforcement fingered the wrong man for the 1996 Olympic Park bombing.
Marrie Brenner Vanity Fair Feb 1997 1h15min
Sex in the Olympic Village.
Sam Alipour ESPN Jul 2012 15min
How science is “helping athletes approach perfection.”
Mark McClusky Wired Jun 2012 15min
How the government cleared the streets in advance of the 1988 Olympics.
Kim Ton-Hyung, Foster Klug Associated Press Apr 2016 15min
Dec 1932 – Apr 2016 Permalink
The nightmare of insomnia, the secret of slumber, and the search for the next Ambien — our favorite articles about sleep, presented by Casper.
An essay on insomnia.
Elizabeth Gumport This Recording Dec 2010 10min
We know we need sleep. We just don’t know why.
D.T. Max National Geographic May 2010 15min
Coming to grips with night terrors.
Doree Shafrir Buzzfeed Sep 2012 30min
The state of sleep research and what Americans’ unprecedented lack of shuteye may mean in the long run.
Craig Lambert Harvard Magazine Jul 2005 20min
On Ambien and the search for the next blockbuster insomnia drug.
Ian Parker New Yorker Dec 2013 45min
Thanks to Casper for sponsoring Longform. Get an obsessively engineered mattress at a shockingly fair price right here.
Jul 2005 – Dec 2013 Permalink
Nina Simone, a child of Scientology, and a murderous college student—a collection of articles based on private journals.</p>
The very complicated life of Dr. Essay Anne Vanderbilt, who once built a very good golf club.
Update: Grantland has published a pair of responses to the reaction to this story, "What Grantland Got Wrong" by Christina Kahrl and "The Dr. V Story: A Letter From the Editor" by Bill Simmons.
Caleb Hannan Grantland Jan 2014 30min Permalink
Compiled by Elon Green.
Editor's note: No compendium of cruise stories would be complete without David Foster Wallace’s account of his week on the MV Zenith. Alas, "Shipping Out" is not available online as text, but the pdf is here.
A seven-day cruise with the controversial “downtrodden millionaire.”
Caity Weaver Gawker Feb 2014 30min
An investigation into the disappearance of a 24-year-old British cruise ship activity director from the Disney Wonder opens the strange and insular world of cruise employees, who vanish mysteriously at alarming rates.
Jon Ronson The Guardian Nov 2011 20min
After losing a presidential election, 600 National Review subscribers hit the Caribbean.
The sinking of the Costa Concordia.
Bryan Burrough Vanity Fair May 2012 45min
On board the Perl Whirl 2000, a conference of hard-coding geeks on a luxury cruise ship.
Steve Silberman Wired Oct 2013 35min
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 perish.
William Langewiesche The Atlantic May 2004 35min
Two thousand rednecks on the Chillin’ the Most Cruise.
Drew Magary GQ Jun 2013 15min
May 2004 – Feb 2014 Permalink
On why the Anthony Weiner story makes people more uncomfortable than simple cheating, the shifting meaning of faithfulness in marriage, and the relationship ideals espoused by Dan Savage:
In Savage Love, his weekly column, he inveighs against the American obsession with strict fidelity. In its place he proposes a sensibility that we might call American Gay Male, after that community’s tolerance for pornography, fetishes and a variety of partnered arrangements, from strict monogamy to wide openness.
Mark Oppenheimer New York Times Magazine Jul 2011 20min Permalink
On the insurer’s insurer and calculating the risk of modern catastrophe:
Reinsurers are ultimately responsible for every new thing that God can come up with. As losses grew this decade, year by year, reinsurers have been working to figure out what they can do to make the God clause smaller, to reduce their exposure. They have billions of dollars at stake. They are very good at thinking about the world to come.
Brendan Greeley Businessweek Sep 2011 20min Permalink
The author interviews England in prison:
By now, people all over the world have heard of Lynndie England. She's the "Small-Town Girl Who Became an All-American Monster," as one Australian newspaper headline described her, or "the girl with a leash," as Mick Jagger calls her in the song "Dangerous Beauty." Yet England remains a mystery. Is she a torturer? A pawn? Another victim of the Iraq war? While the world weighed in, England said very little.
Tara McKelvey Marie Claire May 2009 Permalink
An early take on the dark side of cyberspace:
Like many newcomers to the "net"--which is what people call the global web that connects more than thirty thousand on-line networks--I had assumed, without really articulating the thought, that while talking to other people through my computer I was going to be sheltered by the same customs and laws that shelter me when I'm talking on the telephone or listening to the radio or watching TV. Now, for the first time, I understood the novelty and power of the technology I was dealing with.
John Seabrook New Yorker Jun 1994 35min Permalink