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Meeting Me
Symbolia’s short Q&A with me on music obsession, being an artist, and zombie preparedness. I wrote about Keith Kabwe and Amanaz (“Ask Me About Psych Rock in Zambia”) for this excellent magazine’s...
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Famous Enough
The new California magazine runs my profile of Rod Benson, probably the most famous pro basketball player in the world who’s never played a minute in the NBA. This was a fun one to report and write....
View ArticleTalking Zamrock
Last week, I appeared on WBEZ’s Worldview radio show, talking about Zambian psych rock and my recent story for Symbolia magazine. Here’s the segment.
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The Kid’s Got Guts
My latest for San Francisco magazine: a profile of Theo Ellington, the rising Bayview political activist who led last year’s fight against “Stop and Frisk”: But Ellington’s campaign showed that the...
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A Spurious “Smoking Gun”
In commemoration of the 10-year anniversary of the invasion of Iraq, here’s a piece I wrote for Mother Jones back in March 2003. It’s about the lies that got us into a war.
View ArticleAwards
Here’s some good news: Two stories I wrote for California magazine last year won CASE awards. My profile of R.J. Rushdoony, the obscure but enormously influential right-wing Christian, tied for the...
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Rules of the Tribe: Hardcore Punks and Hair Metal in the 1980s
My latest feature is about punk and metal specifically, but it’s also about tribal loyalties–and what happens when you violate the rules of your tribe. In 1986, the iconic English hardcore band...
View ArticleMore on Discharge
Reaction to my Discharge piece was spirited and generally positive. I particularly enjoyed this comment thread. A sample: “One thing that article got wrong: Metal sucked then and it sucks now. Up yours...
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Poverty is Making Kids Sick
Or so argues Nadine Burke Harris. And the rest of the medical establishment–not to mention Hillary Clinton–is beginning to listen. In this piece for San Francisco magazine, I profiled a local doctor...
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Sightseeing in a Police State: a Syrian Travelogue
In the late 1990s, long before the Arab Spring and the massacres of the civil war, I traveled to Syria as a tourist. This is a memoir-ish account of what it was like to go sightseeing in a...
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Inspector General
For this profile of the man who runs field operations for U.S. Customs across a huge swath of the West, I spent a few days talking with Customs agents and hanging out at the Port of Oakland, SFO, and a...
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“But He’s Not a Politician!”
My profile of Mayor Ed Lee is the cover story in this month’s San Francisco magazine. With photography by the great Jim Hughes. I’ve never met him, but he also shot my profiles of Rose Pak and Aaron...
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Radio Freedom: A History of South African Underground Radio
Last week, The Appendix published my piece on Radio Freedom, the ANC’s revolutionary radio station during the apartheid era. I discovered that, in many ways, the station’s history parallels that of...
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H8
My Discharge piece from last year–in which I chronicle an iconic punk band’s disastrous experiment with hair metal–gets a second life as a supplement to the New Inquiry‘s latest issue, titled “H8.”...
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Bummer Beach
A few years back, the Silicon Valley billionaire Vinod Khosla bought the land surrounding Martins Beach, a lovely little cove just south of Half Moon Bay. He then closed the only access road to the...
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An Asteroid Wiped Out the Dinosaurs—Will We Be Next?
The new issue of California magazine has an apocalyptic theme: “This is the End.” I chose to write about planet-killing asteroids: … at some point, an asteroid measured better in miles than feet will...
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“We’re a Zambian Band”
My piece on the rise, fall, and rise of Jagri Chanda–once Zambia’s biggest rock star–went up recently on The Appendix. It’s an epic 50-year tale of psych-rock, Quaaludes, post-colonial politics,...
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US government advice to soldiers headed to Syria–circa 1942
I came across this US War Department guidebook for American soldiers posted to the Levant during World War Two, so wrote it up for Slate‘s history blog, The Vault. The advice is often practical,...
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Economic Leverage: UC Students Fought Tooth and Nail to Divest from South Africa
Before the pro-Palestinian BDS movement, before the new push for fossil fuel divestment on college campuses, there was the anti-apartheid struggle. My new piece for California magazine chronicles its...
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Searching for Jagari
We were in the lobby, lingering over breakfast. “Not to be nosy,” the worker said. “But I saw your map. Are you here in search of gems?” The Appendix publishes the story behind my Zamrock story, a...
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