Conversations
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One Of The Best Rock Albums Of All Time Returns Tomorrow

Tomorrow Matador Records is reissuing Come's "11:11." If you don't remember the 90s, and really why would you, it's one of the great rock records of… all time? Yup, absolutely. Come toured with Pavement and Nirvana, considered their major label options, and put out three more albums in the 90s, even as half the lineup left. And then… everyone sort of drifted away. Now the original four-some is on tour in Europe; they'll wend their way to America in mid-June. Over the weekend, we Skyped with Come's Thalia Zedek about getting the band back together. She was in Berlin, getting lost; she also has a new album [...]

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How Do You Like Barack Obama Now? A Conversation

New York Times political reporter Jodi Kantor's The Obamas arrived in paperback yesterday, so we gathered some people to talk about Barack Obama: the man, the president, the person, the dog enthusiast, the man who kills people with drones.

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An Interview with Hanksy

Hanksy is a street artist who puts Tom Hanks’ face on copies of Banksy’s art. His first show, which just closed at the Krause Gallery on the Lower East Side, and where the menu offered boxes of chocolates and Dr. Pepper, nearly sold out completely, according to the dealer. “I think what made it such a success is the genuine honesty in it,” gallery owner Ben Krause told me. “Hanksy really is a huge Tom Hanks fan and a huge Banksy fan.”

Images of Hanksy’s pieces, pasted and sprayed over walls in both New York and Chicago, gained momentum over corners of the internet, not just those [...]

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A Conversation with Misha Angrist, Publisher of His Genome

Misha Angrist, otherwise known as member four of the Personal Genome Project, has—along with Stephen Pinker and some other science-world luminaries—given permission for his entire genome to be published online. As a trained geneticist, he's more equipped to predict the direction and effects of DNA research than the rest of us. His new book, Here is a Human Being, ponders the implications of this kind of bioforensics for our culture at large, and also for those of us, like me, who've already opened this Pandora's box by subscribing to 23andme or one of the other personal genomics outlets. Will our information be kept private? [...]

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How To Write About Tragedy And/Or Lindsay Lohan: Advice From Stephen Rodrick

Stephen Rodrick, a contributing writer to the New York Times Magazine, of late best known for the single best story on Lindsay Lohan ever, has a new book out today called The Magical Stranger: A Son’s Journey Into His Father’s Life. His father, Commander Peter Rodrick, died in 1979 when his Prowler crashed into the ocean. The book traces the aftermath of his father’s death for his young family, and its ripple effects in Rodrick’s adult life—but is also a book documenting military life today. It's also really good, particularly in the way it calibrates the telling of such an openly emotional story. It’s not easy [...]

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The Bike Rides Around Baltimore That Become GPS Art

Godzilla vs Mothra 22.61 miles => 3 Hours 43 minutes 32 Seconds

Michael Wallace is a middle-school science teacher who lives in Baltimore. When he’s not teaching his kids about the Mesozoic Era (remember, “meso” means “between”), Wallace rides his bike around the city. Only, while he’s riding his bike, he’s also drawing something, using GPS tracking to trace his routes throughout Baltimore and forming them into different shapes, symbols that become fully detailed pictures. There’s “Jellyfish Invasion,” a giant jellyfish created over 16-plus miles and nearly three hours of riding, and “Gat,” a massive gun that took less than an hour over about 5.5 [...]

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A Q&A with a 'Daily News' Crime Reporter

For almost a decade straight, Kerry Burke has been reporting on crime for the New York Daily News, primarily homicides—or "murder and mayhem," as he tends to call it. Burke was one of the reporters featured in Bravo's short-lived 2006 reality series "Tabloid Wars," which documented how writers and editors at the Daily News manage to put a great deal of the day's activities into a newspaper that's ready for sale the next morning. It got him a good bit of attention back then; now it's 2012, and he's still at it, contributing stories from all over the city, from waiting for Beyoncé to Occupy Wall Street [...]

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The U.S. Open Is Here! Let's Talk Tennis

We gathered some tennis experts and pals to talk tennis—please do join us. The question before us: is this going to be the greatest U.S. Open of all time? EVERYONE AGREES: YES. (Wait, even without Rafael Nadal???)

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The Tiny Newspaper In North Carolina That Scooped Up Journalism's Big Prizes

Yancey County is located in the mountainous western stretch of North Carolina, about 45 minutes from Asheville. The county's population is less than 18,000, and yet it has two local papers to serve it: the Yancey Common Times Journal, which has been in publication more than a hundred years, and the "other" newspaper, the Yancey County News, founded in 2011. The paper's masthead lists only two people—husband and wife Jonathan and Susan Austin—but nevertheless, its first year out, the Yancey County News has won two major journalism awards, the E.W. Scripps Award for Distinguished Service to the First Amendment and the Ancil Payne Award for Ethics in Journalism.

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What Can China Teach London About a "Harmonious Society"?

Tonight, at PowerHouse Arena, it is the Brooklyn Launch Party for Tom Scocca's Beijing Welcomes You, a nonfiction chronicle of what Beijing has so recently become. As China is now (well, as usual) so much in the news, we asked him some questions!

Choire Sicha: Tom Scocca, as you have written a book called Beijing Welcomes You: Unveiling the Capital City of the Future, which is brand new and good and also a book I have read, you are the only expert on China.* (*That I personally know.) Is this a great week for China or what?

Tom Scocca: If you set aside the fact that all [...]