All posts tagged: stories

The Sport Shows Highlight Human Stories

The Sport Shows Highlight Human Stories

About a decade ago, when I was interviewing True Detective creator Nic Pizzolatto, he said something that perked up my ear: “I don’t really care about cop shows. It’s just an easy way to sneak in all the other things I want to say.” The philosophy-minded writer, apart from being generally (and characteristically) misanthropic, was making a profound point. TV formats (or at least TV executives) have rigid requirements. But if you pick the right genre at the right time and are smart about it, you can expand a show in all kinds of ways without most people even realizing you’ve done it. I thought about that this Emmys season when watching Stick, a show about golf that isn’t really about golf, and again when watching The Fall and Rise of Reggie Dinkins, a show about football that isn’t really about football, and then when watching Margo’s Got Money Troubles, a show about a retired wrestler (and OnlyFans entrepreneur) that isn’t really about wrestling (or OnlyFans entrepreneurship), and yet one more time when watching Off Campus, …

Hollywood Stories, Marilyn Monroe, Howard Hughes

Hollywood Stories, Marilyn Monroe, Howard Hughes

Every morning, Mamie Van Doren walks down to the beach near her home in Southern California and sits on the same rock with her feet in the Pacific. “It kind of heals me,” she says. At 95, she has outlived just about everyone. Her memoir, You Thought I Was Dead: My Life of Celebrities, Sex, and Champagne, is out now from Simon & Schuster, and she already has started the next book — about Marilyn Monroe, who would have turned 100 this month. Mamie — rhymes with “pay me” — knew her before she was Marilyn. To her, she is still Norma Jeane Baker, a teenager who defended a stranger at the Ambassador Hotel pool during the war years in Los Angeles. By the 1950s, Hollywood had repackaged them both as blond bombshells and set them against each other — Van Doren was Universal’s answer to Fox’s Monroe, measurements printed side by side in fan magazines. Monroe died in 1962. Van Doren kept going. She has stories she has kept quiet for decades — about …

Top Stories: WWDC 2026 Recap With Siri AI, iOS 27, macOS Golden Gate, and More

Top Stories: WWDC 2026 Recap With Siri AI, iOS 27, macOS Golden Gate, and More

WWDC 2026 has come to a close, and it brought a number of announcements with the headliner being the new Siri AI functionality available both in a standalone app and integrated throughout most of Apple’s next-generation operating systems. iOS 27 brings a host of other improvements with an emphasis on performance, while macOS 27, known as macOS Golden Gate, delivers some Liquid Glass design refinements and more, so read on below for all of the details! Top Stories Everything Apple Announced at WWDC 2026 in 10 Minutes Apple held its WWDC 2026 keynote on Monday, introducing iOS 27, macOS 27, iPadOS 27, watchOS 27, visionOS 27, and tvOS 27. It took Apple around an hour and 15 minutes to walk through the major new features in the updates, but we have a quicker 10-minute recap for those who want the highlights. Our recap also includes links to all of our keynote-day article coverage, so it’s a great place to catch up on all of the big announcements. And if you want a full summary of …

Six Surprisingly Human Stories About Aliens

Six Surprisingly Human Stories About Aliens

When I look at the night sky, I don’t wonder whether alien life is somewhere out there; I think it probably is. Considering the sheer number of stars in the cosmos, and the possibly larger number of planets that revolve around them, the idea that humans are alone in the universe strikes me as unlikely. So, instead, I wonder: What is that life like, and will we ever encounter it? Searching for extraterrestrials is, generally speaking, the province of scientists. But I’m a writer, and many of us also seek answers to equally fundamental questions about our fellow humans. As I found while working on my own novel, writing about aliens can be strangely helpful in this pursuit. Just as astronomers use telescopes to examine celestial objects light-years away, novelists can invoke imagined civilizations to reveal truths closer to home, in part by forcing their characters into contact with alien environments and worldviews. These fictional interactions challenge assumptions about relationships and consciousness, allowing authors to ask how universal our values really are. In the following …

‘Flying has steadily become ever more unpleasant’: Readers share their air travel horror stories

‘Flying has steadily become ever more unpleasant’: Readers share their air travel horror stories

Get the Travel Insider newsletter for tips, deals, and inspiration from our global travel editor Get inspired with our free Travel Insider newsletter Get inspired with our free Travel Insider newsletter Independent readers responding to Helen Coffey’s account of returning to air travel after seven years have been sharing plenty of flying horror stories of their own, with many arguing that the experience has become markedly worse in recent years. Cramped seating and shrinking legroom featured heavily. Taller readers described squeezing into economy seats for hours on end, while others recalled paying hundreds of pounds extra for exit-row seats or abandoning long-haul travel altogether because of the discomfort. Many contrasted today’s packed flights with memories of roomier cabins, quieter airports and half-empty 747s. Readers also recounted frustrating experiences on the ground, from lengthy check-in queues and overcrowded terminals to exhausting early-morning departures and increasingly stressful airport journeys. For many, however, the biggest problem was not the airlines but other passengers. Commenters complained about noisy travellers, poor hygiene, loud phone use, drunken behaviour and what they …

These Queer YA Sports Stories Score

These Queer YA Sports Stories Score

Earlier this year, readers could not get enough Heated Rivalry. At about the time that that series became a smash hit with a deeply beloved adaptation, the Olympics were also heating up television screens. Sports were everywhere this winter, and the excitement for both the fictional and not-fictional athleticism (and romance!) has not slowed down as we’ve entered into summer. While Rachel Reid’s series is published for adult readers, we know that teens who are looking for queer romances also likely turned to the series. Last year, we covered queer YA sports romances, with a focus on those books with a guaranteed happily ever after. While this list includes plenty of queer YA sports romances, it goes even wider to include other LGBTQ+ sports books. You’ll get to bop around between capital-R romances and books that tackle (ahem) meaty topics as they relate to high school and college sports and the queer experience. Some of the non-Romance titles might include bonus kissing, too. None of these are repeats from the above-linked list, meaning you’ve got …

Run-A-Muck Pushes Into Short Stories With Sights Set on Adaptation

Run-A-Muck Pushes Into Short Stories With Sights Set on Adaptation

Media startup Run-A-Muck is going all in on short stories.   The company, co-founded by Condé Nast alum Pamela Drucker Mann, is set to launch short stories on its ad-supported culture and fashion Substack, Drafting, according to a report from The Wall Street Journal.   The move comes along with the company’s bet that the material could be the next major source of intellectual property for film, television, podcasts and other multimedia projects. They plan to adapt successful works across multiple platforms.   “Rather than starting with a medium and searching for an audience, we start with the story we want to tell and then determine the format that best serves that story,” Drucker Mann told WSJ.   Several notable writers have already signed up to publish on the platform. Among them are Cody Behan — writer of short story “The Decorator,” which is set to be adapted for Netflix — and Abbott Elementary writer and director Brittani Nichols.  Adaptation is not the entire goal of the push into shorter fiction, however. Some stories posted on the platform will simply remain in that form. “Not everything we create is destined to become a television series or feature film,” Drucker Mann added.   Drafting, Run-A-Muck’s seven-month-old Substack publication, attracts more than 50,000 monthly readers. Hermès, Moncler and eBay are reportedly among the publication’s advertisers — former Wondery and Google sales …

Founders share VC horror stories, and some are naming names

Founders share VC horror stories, and some are naming names

Asking venture capitalists for investment is a rite of passage for tech founders. This has led to another universal experience: the VC pitching horror story. A massive conversation sharing such stories has taken place all week on X, with the comments both funny and infuriating. We read through them all to find the most interesting ones so you don’t have to. Greg Isenberg, a startup podcaster, newsletter writer, and founder of Late Checkout Studio — a holding company whose previous ventures include a company acquired by WeWork — got the conversation started with a story about a VC falling asleep during a pitch meeting. Isenberg has a large following on X, and his post clearly struck a nerve. “I was once pitching in a board room at a top 3 VC firm for a $15M Series A. 12 people in the meeting. One of the GPs fully fell asleep. Out cold for 30+ minutes. Nobody acknowledged it. Everyone just kept going,” he shared on X. VCs sleeping through pitch meetings was far and away the …

Top Stories: ‘All Systems Glow’ for WWDC, MacBook Neo Popularity, and More

Top Stories: ‘All Systems Glow’ for WWDC, MacBook Neo Popularity, and More

Apple’s big week for developers is just around the corner, and that means WWDC 2026 will also be giving everybody else their first peek at what Apple has in store for iOS 27, macOS 27 and more later this year. Other notable Apple news this week included the popularity of the budget MacBook Neo, the status of new Apple TV and HomePod mini models, iOS 26.5.1 and macOS 26.5.1 bug-fix updates, and more, so read on below for all the details! Top Stories What to Expect From WWDC 2026: Gemini-Powered Siri, iOS 27, macOS 27 and More Apple’s annual developer conference WWDC returns for 2026 next week, so be sure to check out our comprehensive guide of everything we’re expecting to see at Monday’s keynote event. Apple this week teased the event with a new “All systems glow” tagline, a play on the phrase “all systems go,” and it likely hints at Siri’s rumored new design on iOS 27. Both a dedicated Siri app and a new “Search or Ask” feature in the iPhone’s Dynamic …

Why Clint Eastwood never yelled cut: The 7 best stories from his sets

Why Clint Eastwood never yelled cut: The 7 best stories from his sets

Get the latest entertainment news, reviews and star-studded interviews with our Independent Culture email Get the latest entertainment news with our free Culture newsletter Get the latest entertainment news with our free Culture newsletter Clint Eastwood is retired. That is, according to his son. “I have many fond memories of working with him,” musician and composer Kyle Eastwood said in November, in concert footage that’s gone viral this week. “Now he’s retired, he’s 95 years old. But I was very lucky to be able to work with him on quite a few films. It was a great experience for me.” Way to bury the lede, Kyle! Eastwood hasn’t officially confirmed his retirement, but if he has indeed brought his filmmaking career to a close, presumably to stare into the middle distance on a farm somewhere (that feels very Clint, doesn’t it?), it’d mean 2024’s Juror #2 – a legal thriller starring Nicholas Hoult and Toni Collette – was his curtain call. And it would also bring to a close a career as defined by its …