Showing results by narrator "Nicholas Techosky" in All Categories

To uncover the secrets of mental strength and success, Sam Sheridan interviewed dozens of the world's most fascinating and dangerous men.

What brought on the bad dream was, of all things, an old-time Buick. Sam Fogel wasn’t into vehicles, certainly not collectibles. The forty-two-year-old college professor leaned more toward chamber music and theater and poetry as diversions, not expensive, environment-wrecking technology. But over breakfast one spring Saturday, Janie looked up from the Meadow Hills Observer and pointed to an article, suggesting that he take the children to the fairgrounds to see the auto show.

In How to Lose a Marathon, Joel Cohen takes listeners on a step-by-step journey from being a couch potato to being a couch potato who can finish a marathon. Through a hilarious combination of running tips and narrative, Cohen breaks down the misery that is forcing yourself to run. From chafing to the best times to run, explaining the phenomenon known as the "Oprah Line", and exposing the torture that is a premarathon expo, Cohen acts as your satirical guide to every aspect of the runner's experience.

These stories present electric messiahs, identity constructs, the Beatles, and even a nuclear Armageddon, which serve as comic foils for Lain's everyman characters. Here is an America where packets of Sea Monkeys arrive in the mail containing secret messages, and the girl next door can breathe underwater. With Last Week's Apocalypse, Douglas Lain arrives with a punch line and a warning.

Eighteen-year-old Aidan Salt isn't a superhero. With his powerful (and unpredictable) telekinetic abilities, he could be one if he wanted to, but he doesn't. He's unambitious, selfish, and cowardly, and he doesn't want to have to deal with all the paperwork required to become a professional superhero. But since the money, fame, and women that come with wearing the cape are appealing, he decides to become the first supervillain the world has seen in more than 20 years: Apex Strike.

Zen was uniquely suited to the Samurai of Japan. The high moral principles of Buddhism, when adopted and adapted by the Japanese warriors who became the Samurai, created an austere philosophy of singular beauty and depth. Its characteristic requirements of strict control over body and mind was exemplified by ancient warrior monks whose serene countenance, even in the face of certain death, made them much admired even by their foes.

Nestled in the mountain shadows of Alabama lies the little town of Wicklow. It is here that Anna Kate has returned to bury her beloved Granny Zee, owner of the Blackbird Café. It was supposed to be a quick trip to close the café and settle her grandmother’s estate, but despite her best intentions to avoid forming ties or even getting to know her father’s side of the family, Anna Kate finds herself inexplicably drawn to the quirky Southern town her mother ran away from so many years ago, and the mysterious blackbird pie everybody can’t stop talking about.

What makes couples break up? In Your Fault, writers and ex-lovers April Kim and Ryan Riley revisit their failed relationship in an honest attempt to come up with some answers. After meeting one night at a concert in a foreign city, April and Ryan immediately hit it off. But several months later, they found themselves fighting in taxis, in the bedroom, and just about everywhere else without really understanding the cause.

I ain’t been the same since that brawl. The paramedic said my palpitations would go away, but they got worse. It felt like my heart was fixin’ to jump right outta my throat. I knew this dude was gonna kill again. It made me sick worryin’ about it. I went to the clinic at the college and they sent me to a shrink. Not a real one, but one of them psych majors who’s gettin’ class credit workin’ in the office. I’m only janitorial services.

Journalist Oliver Broudy spent a day talking with mega pop star Justin Bieber as they cruised Beverly Hills in his Rolls Phantom - shopping at Saint Laurent, dodging crazed fans, consulting his health guru, pumping iron at an elite club, and dining at Spago's. In the whisper quiet of the Rolls, Justin slowly reveals himself. After building a career on youthful charisma, he says he's finally ready to leave the boyish persona behind and become a man. But are you ready to believe him?

Best-selling authors Jeffery Deaver and Anne Perry join rising stars like Dana Chamblee Carpenter and Paul Gail Benson in a collection that proves Music City is a deadly place to be when your song gets called. Featuring stories by Donald Bain, Robert Dugoni, Jefferson Bass, Mary Burton, Jonathan Stone, Steven James, Maggie Toussaint, Clay Stafford, Heywood Gould, Jaden Terrell, and more....

Did you know that tug of war was once an Olympic Sport, or that President Teddy Roosevelt demanded that actions be taken to turn football into a more gentlemanly pastime? And what about Eddie Gaedel, the 3’7" pinch hitter for the St. Louis Browns who was nearly impossible to strike out? Even if you think you have a handle on all things trivia, you're guaranteed a big surprise with Now I Know: Sports. This special collection from the Now I Know archives will challenge your knowledge of the fascinating stories behind the world's greatest facts.

"If there’s a lesson to be learned, it’s that logic is the sworn enemy of grief," writes Halimah Marcus, co-editor of Electric Literature, in her introduction to “Firewood," a hilarious and devastating story by J. Robert Lennon. "When the narrator’s wife (expectedly) leaves him, too devastated to admit the obvious, he concocts an impossible explanation for her disappearance. All I’ll say is that it involves the woodpile. The invented story is more horrible than the truth, but somehow easier to manage."

When Sunny Lytle is evicted for keeping her fur family of thirteen dogs, eight cats, two ferrets, and two rabbits in her apartment in Kentucky, she packs them into a converted school bus and returns to her hometown, DeLeon Springs, Florida. Her dream is to create a no-kill animal rescue, but survival soon takes top priority. Camping in the woods is no longer the peaceful haven of her teen years, and the brutal demands of nature and the threatening intervention of Rita, a well-meaning veterinarian, create an ongoing struggle.

Slang, writes Michael Adams, is poetry on the down low, and sometimes lowdown poetry on the down low, but rarely, if ever, merely lowdown. It is the poetry of everyday speech, the people's poetry, and it deserves attention as language playing on the cusp of art. In Slang: The People's Poetry, Adams covers this perennially interesting subject in a serious but highly engaging way, illuminating the fundamental question "What is Slang" and defending slang - and all forms of nonstandard English - as integral parts of the American language.

“If you have to puke, don’t puke on the bones,” I said. Laughter—bravado on the surface, nervousness underneath—skittered through the group of students. Most of the thirty bleary-eyed undergraduates milling outside the wooden gate of the Body Farm would be fine, but judging from my experience in prior years—and my assessment of several queasy-looking faces today—a couple of these kids would lose their breakfast.

Meet Gregor Samsa, a humble young man who works as a fabric salesman to support his parents and sister. His life goes strangely awry when he wakes up late for work and discovers that, inexplicably, he is now a man-sized baby kitten. His family freaks out: Yes, their son is OMG so cute, but what good is cute when there are bills to pay? As his new feline identity threatens to eat away at his personality, Gregor desperately tries to survive this bizarre, bewhiskered ordeal by accomplishing the one thing he never could as a man: He must flee his parents’ house.

A middle-aged, African-American gentleman with a kindly face and mellow voice sat behind the wheel of his trolley and collected tickets from that evening’s passengers. A family of four—father, mother, and two teenage daughters—came aboard. The father, who’d been cajoled by his daughters to take the Savannah, Georgia, ghost tour, handed the driver their tickets and asked, “So what’s this Skippy Walker thing all about?”

There are sharps and flats. Majors and minors. And then there’s the sound of a Top 10 hit. That sound. It shouldn’t be so, of course. A song is, after all, a simple thing. At its heart, it’s just a collection of verses and choruses, maybe a bridge to stir things up and tie it all together. A few chords with a solo thrown into the middle. That’s all there is to it. And yet, for an art form that’s ruled by and relies upon mathematical patterns, there is still an unquantifiable quality that defies reason.

Did you know that San Diego’s Frozen Zoo is home to preserved DNA samples from over 8,000 endangered or threatened species, or that the tell-tale smell of freshly mowed grass is actually the plant’s version of a distress call? And what about Henrietta Lacks, the “immortal woman” whose cancer cells have been divided and multiplied for research purposes for over 60 years? Even if you think you have a handle on all things trivia, you're guaranteed a big surprise with Now I Know: Science.