In Awe of Simone Biles' Greatness, With My Daughter and 25,000 Others
The author and his daughter make a pilgrimage to witness greatness.
Showing 25 articles matching physics of music.
The author and his daughter make a pilgrimage to witness greatness.
Kevin Van Valkenburg ESPN Jun 2021 10min Permalink
Troughout his life, Hernández has been known as one thing: a soccer player. But last year, that identifier stopped being enough.
Mirin Fader The Ringer Oct 2021 Permalink
The 72-year-old is still making movies that shock.
Marcela Valdes The New York Times Magazine Dec 2021 30min Permalink
The writer speaks with his father for the first and last time.
My father moved back to Nigeria one month after I was born. Neither I nor my sister Ijeoma, who is a year and a half my elder, have any recollection of him. Over the course of the next 16 years, we did not receive so much as a phone call from him, until one day in the spring of 1999, when a crinkled envelope bearing unfamiliar postage stamps showed up in the mailbox of Ijeoma's first apartment. Enclosed was a brief letter from our father in which he explained the strange coincidence that had led to him "finding" us.* It was a convoluted story involving his niece marrying the brother of one of our mother's close friends from years ago. As a postscript to the letter, he expressed his desire to speak to us and included his telephone number.
Ahamefule J. Oluo The Stranger Jul 2011 10min Permalink
Did A.Q. Khan sell nuclear secrets on the black market? The fame had unbalanced him. He was subjected to a degree of public acclaim rarely seen in the West—an extreme close to idol worship, which made him hungry for more. Money seems never to have been his obsession, but it did play a role.
William Langewiesche The Atlantic Jan 2006 55min Permalink
He was America’s first celebrity chef, setting the hedonistic tone of California cuisine in the ’70s and ’80s. Then Jeremiah Tower lost his restaurant and ended up in Mexico, exiled from the booming culinary culture he helped create. Now, at 71, he’s coming home to take over the kitchen at Tavern on the Green.
John Birdsall Eater Nov 2014 25min Permalink
It had seemed simple in the beginning. Now everything was so complicated, he wasn’t sure what the truth was. He had to admit that he might have gotten involved with the wrong people—that he might have become part of a scam within a scam.
Joshua Davis Wired Nov 2011 Permalink
He was an itinerant preacher who claimed god have revealed him to be the one true prophet. He kidnapped Elizabeth Smart and lived with her in a makeshift camp for years. She was hard to find; not because he was sly, but because Utah is full of prophets with multiple young wives.
Scott Carrier Mother Jones Dec 2010 Permalink
From 1976 to 1986, one of the most violent serial criminals in American history terrorized communities throughout California. He was little known, never caught, and might still be out there. The author, along with several others, couldn’t stop working on the case.
Michelle McNamara Los Angeles Feb 2013 30min Permalink
A woman is accused of lying about being raped. Years later and several states away, the story changed.
T. Christian Miller, Ken Armstrong ProPublica, The Marshall Project Dec 2015 50min Permalink
Unpacking the empty promises of the minimalism craze.
Excerpted from The Longing for Less: Living with Minimalism, available January 21st. Chayka on the Longform Podcast.
Kyle Chayka The Guardian Jan 2020 20min Permalink
At the start of the coronavirus outbreak, one ill-fated cruise ship became a symbol for the panic and confusion that would soon engulf the globe. What two harrowing weeks trapped aboard the ocean liner felt like—for unsuspecting tourists, for frightened crew members, and for the captain himself.
Doug Bock Clark GQ Apr 2020 35min Permalink
The author travels to North Korea in the years after Kim Jong Il’s succession. He also gets a haircut:
But suddenly the whole chair starts vibrating and I find myself surrendering to her, as she begins to knead the acupressure points on my forehead and neck. Next it's ginseng unguent all over my face. Gobs of pomade smelling like bubble gum go on my hair. Then, like a true daughter of the revolution, she upholsters her blow dryer and begins combing in the pomade and sculpting my now subdued hair. The pungent aroma of heated pomade, like fat frying in a pan, fills the room. My stylist gives my hair a little twist with the comb. It feels like she's making a Dairy Queen curl on top. Then she fries it in place with the dryer. Another dab of pomade. More mincing motions with the comb. Another blast of hot air. Suddenly I feel a moist breeze around my ears. She's taken out a can of imported aerosol spray and is cementing her creation in place. She's delicately patting my new coiffure now the way a baker taps a loaf of bread to see if it's springy to the touch. She murmurs something. I'm breathless with expectation. I open my eyes and gaze into the mirror. Magnifique! It looks like I have a loofah sponge on my head! I am reborn -- a cross between Elvis and a 1950s Bulgarian hydrology expert! At last I have become a true son of Pyongyang!
Orville Schell Harper's Jul 1996 30min Permalink
Picking up the pieces in Afghanistan.
We reprinted this article on Longform to help raise money for the Matthew Power Literary Reporting Award, which in our friend Matt's memory will fund promising young writers to bring forward unreported stories of importance from overlooked corners of the world. Please donate today.
Matthew Power Harper's Mar 2005 35min Permalink
This is the piece of writing that inspired me to make the turn from fiction and corporate research into journalism. It’s the best reframing of American society that I’ve ever read. And kudos to Harper’s for running it. It’s not often you see anarchist anthropologists making highly visible contributions to public discourse.
David Graeber Harper's Jan 2007 Permalink
A report from the KKK’s 2012 Faith and Freedom conference in Arkansas:
It's quite disconcerting in this modern age to be in a room full of white people who are all spouting the most vile racist slurs that one can imagine, openly, while everyone else laughs and applauds it. There is a Twilight Zone feeling to it, as if you'd stumbled into a secret clubhouse where white people can say those forbidden things—the Valhalla of dumb racist jokes.
Hamilton Nolan Gawker Apr 2012 15min Permalink
“Someone has sliced open soccer’s hourglass, and the sand has come pouring out on to the streets.”
Supriya Nair Roads & Kingdoms May 2014 Permalink
Two days in crisis.
At that moment, I didn’t feel like a journalist. There was nothing about this event that I felt the need to chronicle. There was no time to find out what the bombs actually were and what was actually coming out of the guns and what type of gas was coming out of the canisters. In this moment, there was nothing I felt the need to broadcast to the world. I didn’t even have the desire to communicate my safety or lack thereof.
I was just a black man in Ferguson.
Rembert Browne Grantland Aug 2014 15min Permalink
Buddy Cianci, former Providence mayor and convicted felon, is running for the city’s top office. Again.
Simon van Zuylen-Wood Boston Magazine Oct 2014 15min Permalink
“It seemed like everyone gets raped and assaulted and no one does anything about it; it’s like a big rape cult.”
Sabrina Rubin Erdely Rolling Stone Feb 2013 30min Permalink
An interview on craft.
George Plimpton, Frank H. Crowther The Paris Review Sep 1969 30min Permalink
Catching up with the controversial radio host, who recently returned to the air after years away.
Michael Kruse Grantland Sep 2012 15min Permalink
“If you think cam girls—those flirty naked characters that plague porn site pop-up ads—are raking in easy money, you’re right. If you think cam girls are bleakly stripping online out of desperation, you’re also right.”
Sam Biddle Gizmodo 20min
How a loathsome band makes gobs of money.
Ben Paynter Businessweek 10min
Scientology’s stronghold on Tom Cruise’s dating life.
Maureen Orth Vanity Fair 30min
A master troll on trial in New Jersey.
Adrian Chen Gawker 25min
As a 15-year runaway hitchhiker, the writer was nearly killed by a trucker. Twenty seven years later, she investigates whether her attacker was truck stop serial killer Robert Ben Rhoades, who often kept his victims chained in the back of his truck for weeks before killing and dumping them.
Vanessa Veselka GQ 30min
Sex in the Olympic Village.
Sam Alipour ESPN the Magazine 15min
Hanging out with Barack Obama.
Michael Lewis Vanity Fair 55min
The strangest and most volatile American drug craze since crack.
How child molesters get away with it.
Malcolm Gladwell New Yorker 20min
The decades-long saga of Michael Morton, who was wrongfully convicted of killing his wife.
Pamela Colloff Texas Monthly 50min
With abortion access limited in many states, should some home abortions still be a crime?
Ada Calhoun The New Republic Dec 2012 15min Permalink
How Chesley “Sully” Sullenberger and his Airbus A320 landed safely in the Hudson.
William Langewiesche Vanity Fair Jun 2009 40min Permalink