If president-elect Donald Trump learned anything from his mentor Roy Cohn, it was this: punch first and never apologize. Cohn was notorious for going on the attack—as counsel for Senator Joseph McCarthy during the communist witch-hunts of the f

The Plane at the Bottom of the Ocean, by Bucky McMahon

Dec 13th, 2016 26m 27s

In the year 2015, with GPS and satellites and global surveillance everywhere all the time, how does a massive airplane simply go missing?

The Plane at the Bottom of the Ocean, by Bucky McMahon

Dec 13th, 2016 26m 26s

The question is astonishingly simple: In the year 2015, with GPS and satellites and global surveillance everywhere all the time, how does a massive airplane simply go missing? To find the answer, writer Bucky McMahon boarded one of the vessels

The Price of Being President, by Richard Ben Cramer

Dec 6th, 2016 23m 50s

Published in 1992, Richard Ben Cramer’s What It Takes: The Way to the White House remains the richest and most unvarnished account of the personal price of running for president. The irony, as Cramer pointed out to C-SPAN shortly after the book

The Old Man and the River, by Pete Dexter

Nov 28th, 2016 22m 39s

Norman Maclean published A River Runs Through It when he was seventy-three, and only after his children implored him to write down the stories about fly-fishing, brotherhood, and the wilds of Montana that he’d told them for years. The resulting

The Days of Wine and Pig Hocks, by Jim Harrison

Nov 21st, 2016 24m 8s

Jim Harrison, the novelist and poet who died earlier this year at the age of 78, had a gargantuan, fearless appetite that would make both A.J. Liebling and Anthony Bourdain proud. He wrote about food—about eating, really— in a woolly, baroque s

Martin Luther King Jr Is Still on the Case! by Garry Wills

Nov 14th, 2016 30m 16s

12 Years a Slave screenwriter John Ridley discusses Garry Wills’s 1968 profile, “Martin Luther King Jr Is Still on the Case!”

Love in the Time of Magic, by E. Jean Carroll

Nov 7th, 2016 29m 23s

A chronicle of risk and romance on the sidelines of the NBA

The Tinkerings of Robert Noyce, by Tom Wolfe

Oct 31st, 2016 25m 41s

A meeting of two American masters: Robert Noyce and Tom Wolfe.

The House That Thurman Munson Built, by Michael Paterniti

Oct 24th, 2016 26m 41s

Trust me, he said, and the last great brawling sports team in America did. Twenty years after Thurman Munson’s death, Reggie, Catfish, Goose, Gator, the Boss—and a nation of former boys—still aren’t over it.

The Crack-Up, by F. Scott Fitzgerald

Oct 17th, 2016 33m 9s

F. Scott Fitzgerald's "The Crack-Up," a series of essays from 1936 about his alcoholism and mental breakdown, set off a genre of confessional writing that persists and thrives today.

The Brain That Changed Everything, by Luke Dittrich

Oct 10th, 2016 34m 41s

When a surgeon cut into Henry Molaison’s skull to treat him for epilepsy, he inadvertently created the most important brain-research subject of our time—a man who could no longer remember, who taught us everything we know about memory. Six deca

“I, Stalkerazzi” and “Angelina Jolie and the Torture of Fame,” by John H. Richardson

Oct 3rd, 2016 27m 39s

John H. Richardson on our cultural infatuation with celebrity and the humanity that lurks on both sides of the camera lens.

Nureyev Dancing In His Own Shadow, by Elizabeth Kaye

Sep 26th, 2016 28m 38s

At the end of a glorious career, the defiant legend takes refuge in his most cherished partner—himself.

Frank Sinatra Has a Cold, by Gay Talese

Sep 19th, 2016 31m 58s

And some of the most important people in some of the most important places in New York, New Jersey, Southern California and Las Vegas are suddenly developing postnasal drip

Styron’s Choices, by Philip Caputo

Sep 12th, 2016 25m 1s

The artist’s life demands solitude, sensitivity, and often a little something to get him through the night. The very same things can destroy him

The Falling Man, by Tom Junod

Sep 6th, 2016 33m 55s

Do you remember this photograph?

The American Male at Age Ten, by Susan Orlean

Aug 29th, 2016 26m 32s

What it feels like to be a boy in America.

My Father, the Bachelor, by Martha Sherrill

Aug 22nd, 2016 28m 43s

He was a beautiful man, and someone had to liberate these women from their marriages. When he died, women grieved. Lots and lots of women.

A Few Words About Breasts, by Nora Ephron

Aug 15th, 2016 41m 46s

Shaping Up absurd.

Edwin Moses, by Mark Kram

Aug 8th, 2016 25m 37s

A Hurdler in Inner Space.

What It Takes, by Richard Ben Cramer

Aug 1st, 2016 24m 48s

What It Takes is the most comprehensive account ever written about the personal price of running for president.

My Father’s Life, by Raymond Carver

Jul 25th, 2016 26m 36s

When he looks back at his father, he sees a dim figure losing its substance to sickness, and when the past is a cipher, there is no redeeming the present. There is only living it.

Superman Comes to the Supermarket, by Norman Mailer

Jul 18th, 2016 25m 13s

It’s convention time, an ideal moment to revisit Norman Mailer's legendary 1960 reported essay, “Superman Comes to the Supermarket,” about JFK and the Democratic political convention.