We recommended 1,399 articles articles this year, from 1,088 writers and 307 publications.
Fiction Pick of the Week: "Angry Signatures"
An investigation into prophetic dreams.
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Tragedy Made Steve Kerr See the World Beyond the Court
How the 1983 assassination of his father, the president of American University of Beirut, shaped the Golden State Warriors basketball coach.
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The Man Who Taught America To Play
Henry Orenstein survived three years in concentration camps before creating Transformers and poker cameras.
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The Life and Death of Wasil, the Taliban-Hunting Child Warrior
When his father was murdered, Wasil Ahmad vowed revenge. He was 8 years old.
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I Was All Set to Become the Most Popular Guy in the Cancer Ward. Then I Met My Nemesis: Ben.
On chemo.
Ta-Nehisi Coates is the author of Between the World and Me and a national correspondent for The Atlantic. His latest cover story is “My President Was Black."
“[People] have come to see me as somebody with answers, but I don’t actually have answers. I’ve never had answers. The questions are the enthralling thing for me. Not necessarily at the end of the thing getting somewhere that’s complete—it’s the asking and repeated asking. I don’t know how that happened, but I felt like after a while it got to the point where I was seen as having unique answers, and I just didn’t. I really, really didn’t.”
Thanks to MailChimp, Casper, and Audible for sponsoring this week's episode.
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Wham Bang, Teatime
All of the books about all of the David Bowies:
There are more and more books like this these days: rock histories and encyclopedias, stuffed with information, compendiums of every last detail from this or that year, era, genre, artist – time pinned down, with absolutely no anxiety of influence. And while it would be churlish to deny there is often a huge amount of valuable stuff in them, I do think we need to question how seriously we want to take certain lives and kinds of art – and how we take them seriously without self-referencing the life out of them, without deadening the very things that constitute their once bright, now frazzled eros and ethos.
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The Baby in the Plastic Bag
One frosty October morning in 1991, a newborn baby boy is found inside a plastic bag in an Oslo graveyard. This is his story, in nine parts.
Popular This Week
The most read and shared articles from across the web
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The American Leader in the Islamic State
John Georgelas was a military brat and drug enthusiast from Texas. Now he’s a prominent figure within the Islamic State.
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The Great A.I. Awakening
How Google used artificial intelligence to transform Google Translate, one of its more popular services — and how machine learning is poised to reinvent computing itself.
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Donald Trump and the Rules of the New American Board Game
While volunteering at his daughter’s new high school, Michael Lewis watched kids of all races and backgrounds react to Trump’s election with a peaceful demonstration of their grief and fear. Manning the school phones the next day, he heard the response of Trump supporters to those students: a blast of outrage and fury. It inspired a game he’s devised for thinking about the future.
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The Phenomenon of ‘Bud Sex’ Between Straight Rural Men
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Untamed
On making friends with animals.
The American Leader in the Islamic State
John Georgelas was a military brat and drug enthusiast from Texas. Now he’s a prominent figure within the Islamic State.
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Homer and Harold
When the prosecutor in a 1924 trial focused on the murder of a priest backed the suspect–and everything that followed.
Prince of the Forty Thieves
He was a Baptist who became a Muslim, a Marine who became a bank robber, a criminal who became an informant, and a student who became an imam. But was Marcus Robertson connected to the deadliest mass shooting in American history?
The Paramedic Murderer of Narrowsburg, N.Y.
A small town upstate, a Queens ambulance veteran, and a murder
OxyContin Goes Global — “We’re only just getting started”
As business declines amidst an opioid epidemic in America, Purdue Pharma’s owners the Sackler family are pursuing a new strategy: putting OxyContin in medicine cabinets around the world.
'What Kind of Childhood Is That?'
Their mom and dad were two of the 33,091 people to die of opioid overdoses in 2015. Now, three children in West Virginia must move forward amid an epidemic.
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The Choke Artist
Henry Heimlich saved untold choking victimes when he invented his maneuver in 1974. Since then, he’s searched in vain for another miracle treatment—pushing ethical boundaries along the way. Now at the end of his career, Heimlich has hired an investigator to find an anonymous critic working full-time to destroy his legacy.
The Great A.I. Awakening
How Google used artificial intelligence to transform Google Translate, one of its more popular services — and how machine learning is poised to reinvent computing itself.
A Possible Break in One of Evolution’s Biggest Mysteries
The little-understood history of the whales and how barnacles may be the key to understanding how giant mammals evolved underwater.
Fiction Pick of the Week: "Love Stories"
A winding search for love through drink, power, and fear.
Craig Sager: Always on the Bright Side
A profile of the NBA sideline reporter as he battled cancer.
The Neo-Nazi Murder Trial Revealing Germany’s Darkest Secrets
In the beginning, they were known as die Dönermorde – the kebab murders. The victims had little in common, apart from immigrant backgrounds and the modest businesses they ran.
Is Shannon Briggs for real?
Pro boxing, famous for larger-than-life characters, now has one invented or the Instagram age.
Hua Hsu writes for The New Yorker and is the author of A Floating Chinaman: Fantasy and Failure Across the Pacific.
“I remember, as a kid, my dad telling me that when he moved to the United States he subscribed to The New Yorker, and then he canceled it after a month because he had no idea what any of it was about. You know, at the time, it certainly wasn’t a magazine for a Chinese immigrant fresh off the boat—or off the plane, rather—in the early 70s. And I always think about that. I always think, ‘I want my dad to understand even though he’s not that interested in Dr.Dre.’ I still think, ‘I want him to be able to glean something from this.’”
Thanks to MailChimp, Texture, and Squarespace for sponsoring this week's episode.
Finding North America’s Lost Medieval City
A thousand years ago, huge pyramids and earthen mounds stood where East St. Louis sprawls today in Southern Illinois... At the city's apex in 1100, the population exploded to as many as 30 thousand people. It was the largest pre-Columbian city in North America, bigger than London or Paris at the time.
The Perfect Weapon
An investigation into how “Mr. Putin, a student of martial arts, had turned two institutions at the core of American democracy — political campaigns and independent media — to his own ends.”
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The Godfather Wars
The battle to make The Godfather pitted director Francis Ford Coppola against producers including Robert Evans, and the production itself against the real life mob.