The New York Times Magazine
I’ve Never Bought Anything From QVC. I Can’t Stop Watching It. — The playful pleasures of David Venable keep pulling me back in.
Letter of Recommendation: Norman Doors — Of all the poorly designed objects in the world, doors are perhaps the least excusable. And yet I’ve begun taking a strange delight in them.
The Ringer
Why We Remain Fascinated with Twisters — The sequel to the tornado-chasing movie hits theaters this weekend. But our obsession with the violent wind vortexes extends far beyond the big screen—even as the science on them continues to evolve.
The Impossible Story of the Bomb — Ever since its detonation in 1945, people have been grappling with the enormity of the atomic bomb’s power. This is the complex tale Christopher Nolan is trying to tell with ‘Oppenheimer.’
The Quest for the Best Amusement Park Is Ever-Changing and Never-Ending — At Universal Orlando, Hagrid’s Magical Creatures Motorbike Adventure is redefining what a roller coaster is. But just down the road, Disney has unveiled Rise of the Resistance, a Star Wars–themed experience that immerses parkgoers so deeply that the line between ride and reality is blurred. And the revolution of augmented reality has only just begun.
The American Scholar
House Call — The comfort of escaping into fictional spaces during quarantine.
The Bitter Southerner
Pythons of the Everglades — On the Python Elimination Program and hunting invasive Burmese Pythons in the Florida Everglades.
Los Angeles Review of Books
Giving Up the Ghost — The quest to find what Susan Orlean spent all of The Orchid Thief looking for, but never found: a ghost orchid in bloom.
The Jordan Rules, Recycled — On “The Last Dance,” ESPN’s 10-part documentary series about Michael Jordan and the Chicago Bulls.
Eephus (A Los Angeles Review of Books Channel)
Flotsam: Revisiting My Losing Season — When Pat Conroy died, I picked up My Losing Season again. His book made me relive my final college season, which probably explains why it had been nearly seven years since I last read it. Like Conroy, at the end of my senior year I promised myself I’d “never think of that pockmarked, quicksilver year.” I lied.
Listen to a recording of this essay from the Columbia Selects reading series here:
The Rumpus
The Surgeon’s Stitches — A thin rope spurted out of the exposed chest cavity, fraying at its peak into soft red droplets. This was not a good sign for Jim, the squat surgical resident leading the operation. The patient’s aorta had torn, and blood now seeped through the stitches he’d sewn only an hour before. Without hesitation, my dad, who’d been assisting Jim on the case, leaned over the chest cavity and tried to make sense of the spraying mess.
He took the needle-holder and suture from Jim and quickly plugged the widening hole with his left hand and sewed the repair stitches—six in all—with his right. Giddy and awed, a medical student next to me whispered, “Your dad’s good, huh?”
Over the Hill — On Steve Nash, Jack McCallum’s :07 Seconds or Less, and an athlete’s decline.
Away
Follow the Boom — A few years earlier, thousands of men like Riley migrated to the northwest corner of North Dakota, drawn in by promises of six-figure starting salaries, early retirements and enough sweet crude streaming below their feet to last for decades. The boom caused everything to rise. Population. Wages. Rent. Crime.
In late 2014, the price of oil-per-barrel plummeted from a high of nearly $100 to less than $50, causing mass layoffs. When I got there in mid-March 2015, the roughnecks who remained didn’t know whether their next paycheck would be their last. I was there to see how these guys handled the uncertainty pervading their lives, how they approached every day of work not knowing if by the end of their shift they’d lose their job, or a limb, or their life.
The Classical
Bearded — Why would anyone compete in the Beard and Moustache National Championships? Believing there was no better way to understand the competition and its participants, I entered.
Fadeaway — I wanted to know what it was like to be the man whose son may very well fulfill the dream he never quite could. And I wanted to know how Tatum coped with his failure, if only so that I could learn something about how to cope with my own.
The Awl
It’s Hoopfest, Man — On the Spokane Hoopfest.