Tag Archives: long-reads

I n 2016, newlyweds Marco and Karissa moved to Los Angeles, seeking sunny skies and the chance for a happy life together. The couple had just gone through a miscarriage, and Marco hoped the pleasant climate would help Karissa’s depression. “She was very weather dependent,” he says. “She needed always …

This story was originally published by ProPublica. Sarah Johnson spent her entire life taking care of people — the six children she raised, mostly alone, and the hospital patients she served in her 25 years as a nurse. But at 86, she was the one who needed care. She was …

Listen to an audio version of this story below: On the dusty, heat-blister town of Vacaville, California, halfway between Sacramento and Oakland, sits the bleak squat prison that holds a trim, handsome, highly articulate inmate named Bobby Beausoleil, almost 72, who has spent the past 50 years behind bars for …

T aylor Swift bursts into her mom’s Nashville kitchen, smiling, looking remarkably like Taylor Swift. (That red-lip, classic thing? Check.) “I need someone to help dye my hair pink,” she says, and moments later, her ends match her sparkly nail polish, sneakers, and the stripes on her button-down. It’s all …

Listen to an audio version of this story below: In the spring of 1990, Rivers Cuomo was 19 years old, and all of his plans were coming undone. The year before, he and his high school metal band, Avant Garde, moved from suburban Connecticut to L.A., where all five members …

Name an iconic Sixties rock moment and Ellen Sander was probably there. Dylan going electric at Newport, the Who destroying their gear at Monterey Pop, Hendrix reshaping the National Anthem at Woodstock, the Stones recording Beggars Banquet, John and Yoko talking peace and protest during their Canadian Bed-In visit, the …

It’s already past midnight, but Gary Clark Jr. wants to keep going. The guitarist is standing in the center of a darkened room at Arlyn Studios, an unmarked building hidden behind a housing development in South Austin. Clark has been hard at work all night teaching his band a new …