Listening to the Big Star songwriter, who left the group before dying in a solo car crash at 27.
His voice, on the recordings, is too sensitive. That's meant not as an aesthetic judgment. It wasn't too sensitive for the material, in other words. It was too sensitive for life. You listen to him sing, closely, and if you don't know another thing about what happened to him, you know that the guy with that voice is not going to last.
How six different people live off six different, and wildly varying, incomes.
How the author became tangled up with an international con man who may or may not have murdered several people.
A profile of Chief Justice John Roberts.
Transcript of the 1969 Montreal “bed-in.”
JOHN: How long have you been there, in the teepee? I mean, before you sussed the wind and everything, and you know, got your senses back? ROSEMARY: We had to put the teepee up three times before it was right. It’s like you can touch it, and it resounds like a drone, and then it’s perfect, the canvas. It’s a wind instrument that plays like a drone.
What would drive a man to stand outside the Vatican embassy nearly every day for 14 years?
Nora Ephron on adolescence.
A look at Apple stores, where jobs are high stress, with low pay and little opportunity for advancement.
A self-conscious celebrity profile.
Remembering George Plimpton’s old-fashioned style.
Above all, he was a gentleman, one of the last—a figure so archaic, it could be easily mistaken for something else. No, my father’s voice was not an act, something chosen or practiced in front of mirrors: he came from a different world, where people talked differently, and about different things; where certain things were discussed, and certain things were not—and his voice simply reflected this.
A profile of Doc Johnson, “the Procter & Gamble of sex toys.”
An early investigation into Jim Jones’ cult.
The case against Richard Florida.
Meet Dr. Schnoz, the nose-sculpting YouTube king of Miami.
A profile of Ann Coulter, “the glowing scimitar of the American right.”
“My mother became my daughter when I was nine years old.”
A profile of Fiona Apple.
Visiting his daughter in San Francisco, the author longs for food delivery in Manhattan.
The people behind San Francisco’s Summer of Love.
In 1941, hundreds of Jedwabne’s Jews were massacred by their neighbors.
An interview with Marc Maron.
In the remote wilderness along northern British Columbia’s Highway 16, at least 18 women have gone missing over the past four decades. Is it the work of a serial killer or multiple offenders?
An essay on language, fatherhood and forgiveness.
A coffee shop owner finally gets to shut down his store.
On the Boston mobster’s exes.
