Story of the Week with Joel Stein

Where have you been, what did you find, and who did it make you? On the new podcast Traveling Through, host David Prior, travel writer and founder of immersive travel company PRIOR, invites culture makers like Jenna Lyons, David Remnick, Deborah Needleman, and Athena Calderone to unpack the places, objects, and experiences that have changed their perspective, influenced their work, or marked a tur...

In 1968, in the dense jungles of Vietnam, a team of Green Berets was pinned down by an overwhelming North Vietnamese Army force. Their last hope was a young Air Force pilot named James Fleming. Despite being low on fuel and facing a wall of enemy fire, Fleming refused to turn back. The rescue mission seemed destined to fail, but a split-second decision would earn Fleming the nation’s highest...

Visionary music producer Robert Margouleff shares his stories of pushing the boundaries of musical innovation, art, and technology in the new immersive audiobook,  Shaping Sounds: Stevie Wonder, DEVO, the Synth Revolution and My Life Behind the Music.  In legendary studios like Electric Lady and the Record Plant, Margouleff became a pioneering producer and engineer for artists like Billy...

What if psychedelics could transform the way we treat trauma, chronic pain, and insomnia? This week, neuroscientist and psychedelic researcher Grace Blest-Hopley joins the show to break down the research on psychedelics and female biology. She discusses how psychedelics work in the brain, and the ways that psychedelic-assisted therapies might be beneficial for women in midlife. Links to resources...

With the 96th Academy Awards this Sunday, we wanted to revisit this episode from last year. The Oscars seems to be cursed with a series of chaotic live television gaffes. But one moment in Academy Award history takes the cake. In 1974, a scrawny white man named Robert Opel ran across the stage butt naked, right as the Best Picture category was being announced. New Yorker magazine writer and Oscars...

After his cartooning career failed to take off, a German artist named Arno Funke started extorting department stores.  He went by “Dagobert,” the German name for the character of Scrooge McDuck in the cartoon DuckTales. His crime spree lasted for years and made him a folk hero across Germany. Recently, reporter Jeff Maysh got to meet him.  You can read Jeff Maysh’s New Yorker article “The Strange...

“Bronze Age Pervert” is the moniker of an influential far-right thinker. He has hundreds of thousands of followers on Twitter. His book is a top-seller on Amazon, and was reviewed by a former Trump administration official. Journalist Graeme Wood knew him before all that, back when he was just a college student in tevas.  You can read Graeme Wood’s Atlantic story “How Bronze Age Pervert Charmed the...

When Andrew Leland was a teenager he learned he had a rare disease that would cause him to become blind by the time he reached middle age. He recently decided to prepare by attending a special school for blind people.  You can read Andrew’s essay for the New Yorker, “How to Be Blind” here: https://www.newyorker.com/culture/the-weekend-essay/how-to-be-blind   And you can find Andrew’s new book, The...

A car mechanic named Jeff Carpoff invented a portable solar generator. Companies like Geico and Progressive Insurance bought thousands of his generators because they got tax credits for doing so. But there was something not quite right about Carpoff’s invention. You can read Ariel Saber’s Atlantic story, “The Billion Dollar Ponzi Scheme that hooked Warren Buffett and the US Treasury,” here: https:...

Xochitl Gonzalez spent years planning the weddings of New York’s wealthiest couples. This is the story of the craziest wedding she’s ever planned. You can read Xochitl Gonzalez’s Atlantic story “The Fake Poor Bride,” here: https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2023/07/luxury-wedding-planners-industrial-complex-cost/674169/ See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

A developer named Domenic Broccoli wanted to build an IHOP in Fishkill, New York. But after it was discovered that the plot of land he was planning to build on may have been a Revolutionary War grave site, he became embroiled in a war of his own.  You can read Reeves Wiedeman’s New York Magazine story “The Battle of Fishkill” here: https://www.curbed.com/article/ihop-fishkill-ny-domenic-broccoli-r...

Laos used to be known as “the land of a million elephants.” Now, there are only about 800 elephants left in the country. Reporter Paul Kvinta went undercover to learn about the illegal elephant trade, and ended up putting in an offer on an elephant himself.  You can read read Paul Kvinta’s Outside Magazine story “I Bought an Elephant to Find Out How to Save Them,” here: https://www.outsideonline.c...

Simone Gold, a former ER doctor, is the founder of a non-profit called “America’s Frontline Doctors,” known for spreading misinformation about COVID. After she was arrested for taking part in the Jan. 6 insurrection, she received millions of dollars in donations. And that’s when the feuding within her organization began.  You can read Joel Stein’s Financial Times story, “How a squad of MAGA warrio...

How did the Guinness World Records company come to be? And how, in the age of the internet, does the company make money? Imogen West-Knights spent a year investigating. She learned how to be a record adjudicator (it’s riskier than it sounds), met a man who has broken more than 700 records, and tried to break a record herself.  You can read Imogen West-Knight’s Guardian story, “The Strange Survival...

The history of Dr. Bronner’s soap is even crazier than the famously crazy writing on the side of a Dr. Bronner’s soap bottle. The company was founded by a man who escaped from a mental asylum. Now it is the top-selling natural soap brand in North America. How did this happen? Carrie Battan paid their headquarters a visit to find out.  You can read Carrie Battan’s GQ story, “Is Dr. Bronner’s the La...

In 2010, an art collector named Forrest Fenn published a memoir called “The Thrill of the Chase,” in which he described hiding a treasure chest somewhere in the United States. His memoir inspired hundreds of thousands of treasure hunters to scour the country for it. Now, over a decade later, much about this chest still remains a mystery.  You can read Svati Kirsten Narula’s story “America’s Greate...

A woman in Louisiana named Donna Metrejean fell in love with a D.E.A agent in Oregon named Robert Golden. She uprooted her whole life to be with him. But all was not what it seemed.  You can read Jeff Maysh’s story “Undercover Lovers” here: https://jeffmaysh.substack.com/p/undercover-lovers   See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Comedian Dave Chappelle has been buying up properties in the tiny town of Yellow Springs, Ohio. The residents have mixed feelings about their powerful neighbor’s real estate decisions and it’s been splitting the town in two.  Reporter Tyler J. Kelley paid a visit to Yellow Springs to see if it’s really becoming Chappelleville. You can read Tyler J. Kelley’s Bloomberg story “What Happens When Dave...

In celebration of Bloomsday on June 16th, we’re bringing you a special James Joyce mystery. Ten years after achieving stratospheric and unlikely fame, the world’s greatest Ulysses scholar disappeared. Reporter Jack Hitt went on a quest to find out if he was dead, alive or insane. You can read Jack Hitt’s New York Times story “The Strange Case of the Missing Joyce Scholar, here: https://www.nytimes...

When a benign urban planning concept is co-opted by conspiracy theorists, an unsuspecting professor becomes the target of right-wing death threats. Tiffany Hsu covered the story of the 15 minute city conspiracy for The New York Times. You can read the full story here: https://www.nytimes.com/2023/03/28/technology/carlos-moreno-15-minute-cities-conspiracy-theories.html   See omnystudio.com/listener...

Every month in New York City, a small group of people who feel like they’ve been ostracized for holding unpopular opinions and their supporters meet up to chat, debate, and even sing folk songs. Reporter Emma Green attended a recent gathering.  You can read Emma Green’s New Yorker story “The Party is Cancelled” here: https://www.newyorker.com/news/our-local-correspondents/the-party-is-cancelled  ...

Nearly all of the high-end microchips in the world - the ones we depend on for our phones and cars  –  are manufactured in an unassuming factory in Taiwan. Virginia Heffernan is one of the few reporters to go inside. She wrote about what she saw for Wired. You can read Virginia Heffernan's story, "I Saw the Face of God in a Semiconductor Factory" here: https://www.wired.com/story/i-saw-the-face-of...

When a nurse named Tiffany Dover fainted on camera after getting a Covid vaccine, anti-vaxxers assumed the worst. Shortly after, the internet was awash in conspiracy theories that she was dead. NBC News reporter Brandy Zadrozny set out to prove that Tiffany Dover was alive. This turned out to be more difficult than she could have imagined. You can read Brandy Zadrozny’s story, “Conspiracy theorist...

On the Replica app, you can create an AI-powered chatbot to talk to, befriend, sext and even virtually marry. The service has millions of users. Some of them are now discovering that having a friend or spouse that’s owned by a private company comes with downsides.  Pranshu Verma wrote "They fell in love with AI bots. A software update broke their hearts" for The Washington Post. You can read the f...

In 2012, Melania Trump tweeted a photo of a smiling beluga whale and captioned it “what is she thinking?” Eleven years later, Sabrina Imbler, a journalist at Defector Media, decided to try to answer that question.  You can read Sabrina Imbler’s full story, “What Was She Thinking? An Investigation,” here: https://defector.com/what-was-she-thinking-an-investigation See omnystudio.com/listener for pr...