Jonathan Taplin has had more careers than most folks — Bob Dylan and The Band’s tour manager, film producer (the Last Waltz and Mean Streets) Wall Street entrepreneur,teacher at USC’s Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism. In an exclusive excerpt from his latest book,“The End of Reality: How 4 Billionaires …
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P atricio Manuel sits silently backstage at the Fantasy Springs Resort Casino. He’s in the back corner of the white-tarpaulined gazebo as he waits to be called to the ring of the 3,000-seater events center here in Indio, California. Inside the thin tent walls, he can hear the hubbub of …
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“Whoever Sarah is, your friends [are] over there talking about you.” When TikTok influencer Kellie Yancy overheard a group of women gossiping about their friend while out at brunch, she immediately got on TikTok. “They said that your coochie was out on the video, she said you dress sleazy everywhere …
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It’s a little after midnight on a cold winter night. I’m in someone else’s van, driving down a highway I’ve never seen before.I’m on my way to pick up a load of marijuana and transport it across state lines. What could go wrong? The trip was organized at the last …
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“Guys….this thing dropped out of my c00ch1e and it’s alive. I need answers please,” the text on the video reads. A lengthy, worm-like creature that could be anywhere from one inch to 10 feet — the scale of the video is unclear — slithers across the screen. In a stitch …
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“I’m an open book,” Alex Cooper, the host of the wildly popular Spotify podcast Call Her Daddy, proclaims at the start of our conversation. It’s an afternoon in late May, and she’s lounging in a tasteful écru chair on the ground floor of her recording studio in West Hollywood, her …
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It all started with a name. Author and conspiracy theory expert Mike Rothschild, who is not related to the storied Rothschilds—a banking dynasty at the center of infamous antisemitic mythology — found that cranks often dismissed his reporting on the assumption that he was. Just because of his byline, he …
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A month ago, Sen. John Fetterman of Pennsylvania posted a selfie to X, formerly Twitter, that would shock America — and kick off weeks of feverish, unfounded claims that he had been replaced by a lookalike. The caption read, “Lost a bet to Karl.” The outcome of that wager with …
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“What’s the one thing that your optometrist doesn’t want you to know about?” asks a “human optimization specialist” who goes by the name Samantha Lotus in a recent video on her Instagram account. “The fact that you do not need glasses,” she answers, removing a pair from her own face. …
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There are very few people who know more about the history of ancient Rome than Mike Duncan. The creator and host of the tremendously popular History of Rome podcast, which first aired between 2007 and 2012, Duncan has essentially devoted his career to studying the inner workings of the Roman …
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