This weekend, listen to a collection of articles from around The New York Times, read aloud by the reporters who wrote them.
Written and narrated by Sarah Baird
If you listen to local radio stations in much of rural America, you might hear a host banter with a caller looking for help installing an oil pump in a Chevy engine. Another caller might be trying to trade a few bales of hay for a wheelchair lift. Maybe even a funeral for a cat.
These are “tradio” programs (short for “trade” and “radio”), where people buy, sell and exchange items or services – and, through such offers and transactions, give small glimpses of their lives.
In the age of websites like Facebook Marketplace and Craigslist, trad — also called “swap shops,” “auction barns” and “supermarket posts” — adds a personal touch to the giving of goods and services that is both. a throwback to the days of bartering and cementing community bonds.
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Written and narrated by David Segal
In 1973, a young man named Uri Geller appeared in one of the most popular television shows of the BBC, “The Dimbleby Talk-In”, and announced that the laws of Newtonian physics did not apply to him. Or that, at least, was the implication. A handsome 26-year-old Israeli, casually dressed and flanked by a pair of academics, Mr. Geller performed a series of mind-boggling feats using nothing more, he said, than his mind.
He restarted a stopped clock. He duplicated a drawing that was sealed in an envelope. Then he seemed to bend a fork just by looking at it.
Mr Geller became not only a global celebrity – a media figure who traveled the world and filled auditoriums for dramatic demonstrations of cutlery abuse, with the humble spoon becoming his victim of choice – but also the living embodiment of the hope that there was something more. , something science could not explain. Because at the core of his action was an assertion of bewildering audacity: that these were not tricks.
They were displays of raw psychic powers.
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Written and narrated by Andy Kifer
Martin Sherwin was hardly your classic writer’s block. Quirky, funny and sporty, he is described by those who knew him as the opposite of neurotic.
But by the late 1990s, he had to admit that he was stuck. Sherwin, a history professor and the author of one previous book, had agreed to write a full-scale biography of J. Robert Oppenheimer two decades earlier. Now he wondered if he would ever finish it. He did a lot of research—an extraordinary amount, in fact, amassing some 50,000 pages of interviews, transcripts, letters, diaries, declassified documents, and FBI files, stored in seemingly endless boxes in his basement, attic, and office. But he barely wrote a word.
In the end, the book took 25 years to write — and Sherwin didn’t do it alone.
When Christopher Nolan’s film “Oppenheimer” is released on July 21, it will be the first time many younger Americans will encounter the story of J. Robert Oppenheimer. But that film stands on the shoulders of the thorough and exciting 721-page Pulitzer Prize-winning biography called “American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer,” co-written by Sherwin and Kai Bird.
Last month, Emma, Duchess of Rutland, sat in her drawing room and weighed the pros and cons of living above the shop. Specifically, Belvoir Castle, a majestic and magnificent mass perched on a wooded hilltop in the English countryside with over 356 rooms and soaring neo-Gothic towers and turrets. It has been the location of the family seat since the 16th century.
Recently, despite tabloid scrutiny for her unconventional living arrangements and the fact that Britain’s historic houses are increasingly part of a brewing war over how the country should reckon with its colonial past, the duchess has shown a growing taste for the spotlight, albeit on her. terms
In 2020, she started a podcast, “Duchess”, in which she interviews other duchesses. Duchess Gallery shop on the estate sells branded clothing, homewares, gins, wines and cider. And last year the duchess published “The Accidental Duchess,” an autobiography that includes candid accounts of her husband’s serial affairs and her series of miscarriages while raising five children.
Now 59, she emerges as one of the friendlier public faces of Britain’s aristocracy at a time when many prefer to stay under the radar.
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Written by Abbie VanSickle and Steve Eder | Narrated by Abbie VanSickle
On October 15, 1991, Clarence Thomas secured his seat on the Supreme Court, a narrow victory after a bruising confirmation battle that left him isolated and disillusioned.
Within months, the new justice enjoyed a much warmer welcome to a second exclusive club: the Horatio Alger Association of Distinguished Americans, named for the Gilded Age author whose rags-to-riches novels represented an aspirational version of his own. bootstraps origin story by Justice Thomas. .
If Judge Thomas’ life had unfolded as he envisioned, his Horatio Alger induction might have been a celebration of his triumphs as a successful lawyer instead of a judge. But as he tells it, after graduating from Yale Law School, he was rejected by a series of top law firms, rejections he attributes to a perception that he was a token beneficiary of affirmative action. Thus began his distasteful path to a judicial career that brought him great prestige but only modest material wealth after decades of financial struggle.
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Written by Ernesto Londoño and Azeen Ghorayshi | Narrated by Ernesto Londoño
David and Wendy Batchelder hate the thought of putting their sprawling house in West Des Moines, Iowa, on the market, disrupting the routines of their six children or giving up the Lutheran church they’ve attended for about a decade.
But two new laws left them debating whether to leave Iowa.
A ban on a puberty-delaying drug taken by their transgender son, Brecker, was signed into law by the state’s governor in March. That same month, teachers informed Brecker, 12, that he could no longer use the men’s restrooms and locker room at his high school after another bill was passed in the Republican-led Statehouse.
In 20 states, bans or restrictions on transition-related medical care for transgender youth are changing the lives of families and medical providers.
In areas where the care is prohibited, doctors hastily closed practices in recent months, leaving patients in the lurch. Clinics in states where it is still allowed have recently been struggling with a flood of out-of-state patients seeking treatments that include puberty blockers and hormone therapy. Waiting lists for initial appointments can exceed a year.
The Times’ narrated articles are done by Tally Abecassis, Parin Behrooz, Anna Diamond, Sarah Diamond, Jack D’Isidoro, Aaron Esposito, Dan Farrell, Elena Hecht, Adrienne Hurst, Emma Kehlbeck, Tanya Pérez, Krish Seenivasan, Kate Winslett , John Woo. and Tiana Young. Special thanks to Sam Dolnick, Ryan Wegner, Julia Simon and Desiree Ibekwe.