Edition #78: Longform Profiles

This edition features the death of a CrossFit athlete, the healthcare hustlers of South Florida, the Khmer Rouge's last stronghold, and more.

Spotlighting outstanding longform stories and the journalists who bring them to life. Did you receive this email from a friend? Subscribe here.

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Credit: Miguel Helft

🗻 A Crushing Wave of Snow

Miguel Helft | Esquire

Within seconds, the avalanche seemed to swallow the camp whole, like a giant white wave crashing down. Moments later, the snow settled, and it was over. There was no trace of camp. The climbers had disappeared. Their gear was gone. Their tents were gone. The climber’s trail through the camp was gone. Camp 2 had been completely erased.

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🏋️‍♂️ The Death of a CrossFit Athlete

Calum Marsh | Rolling Stone

It was a little after 4 p.m., and several hundred athletes, coaches, and staff members from CrossFit’s head office were assembled in the center of the cavernous stadium, waiting to hear Dave Castro, in his customary cap and tight-fitting T-shirt, address the crowd. Nothing had been made official, but nearly everyone had seen the local news reports: Lazar Ðukić had been declared dead, his body discovered by divers and extricated from the lake shortly after 10 a.m., in what the Tarrant County Medical Examiner’s office later deemed an accidental drowning.

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🏥 Chasing Big Money With the Health-Care Hustlers of South Florida

Zeke Faux, Zachary R Mider | Bloomberg

The ads were deceptive, but they weren’t trying to con people out of their money—at least not directly. The goal was to sign them up for actual government-subsidized health-insurance plans, whether they wanted them or not. People responding to the ads were routed through a network of middlemen to call centers, many of them in South Florida.

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🎓 How Steve Jobs Wrote the Greatest Commencement Speech Ever

Steven Levy | WIRED

Jobs woke up on the morning of the 12th riddled with anxiety. “I’d almost never seen him more nervous,” Laurene Powell Jobs would tell Schlender and Tetzeli. Even on the short drive from his home to the stadium—their three kids in the back—he rode shotgun in the family SUV, still tweaking the speech.

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🤼 Wrestling with the American Dream

Brant deBoer | Texas Observer

Still speaking very little English, Samsor showed up at LEE High School in north San Antonio in August 2021. Right away, he tried to join the wrestling program but didn’t weigh enough. He came back his sophomore year, promptly broke a finger, and was out for the season, but not before he earned the nickname “Ferrari,” because a coach couldn’t pronounce his name.

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