Talk of ‘Civil War’ Flares Online and More: The Week in Narrated Articles

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/10/07/podcasts/civil-war-belle-sebastian-narrated-articles.html

Version 0 of 1.

This weekend, listen to a collection of narrated articles from around The New York Times, read aloud by the reporters who wrote them.

Written by Ken Bensinger and Sheera Frenkel | Narrated by Ken Bensinger

Soon after the F.B.I. searched Donald J. Trump’s home in Florida for classified documents, online researchers zeroed in on a worrying trend.

Posts on Twitter that mentioned “civil war” had soared nearly 3,000 percent in just a few hours as Mr. Trump’s supporters blasted the action as a provocation. Similar spikes followed, including on Facebook, Reddit, Telegram, Parler, Gab and Truth Social, Mr. Trump’s social media platform. Mentions of the phrase more than doubled on radio programs and podcasts, as measured by Critical Mention, a media-tracking firm.

Posts mentioning “civil war” jumped again a few weeks later, after President Biden branded Mr. Trump and “MAGA Republicans” a threat to “the very foundations of our republic” in a speech on democracy in Philadelphia.

Now experts are bracing for renewed discussions of civil war, as the Nov. 8 midterm elections approach and political talk grows more urgent and heated.

Written and narrated by Ben Sisario

Makoto Kubota is still amazed by the continuing appeal of his old band, Les Rallizes Dénudés.

An accomplished producer and bandleader in Japan, Kubota spent just a few years in the early 1970s playing with the Rallizes, which by the usual measures of rock success barely made a blip. Yet decades later, younger musicians now press him for any information about the band, and fans around the world who probably cannot understand Takashi Mizutani’s cryptic Japanese lyrics declare on social media that his music has changed their lives.

“I never thought this could touch foreigners’ hearts so deeply,” Kubota said in a recent interview from his home in Tokyo.

Les Rallizes Dénudés have long held a peculiar place in the annals of underground music as a group more heard about than actually heard, its reputation resting more on legend than fact.

Written and narrated by Claire Dederer

Claire Dederer’s favorite band was on the road — and she went with them. She’d been a little beaten up by the world the last couple years and needed to get out.

“Like the saddest, oldest groupie in the world,” Dederer wrote, “I’m following the Scottish indie band Belle and Sebastian down the west coast of America.”

She started out in the Paramount Theater in Seattle, where she lives. Her grown children go along with her and it feels right, she wrote, “the band’s presence in my life maps directly onto my motherhood.” She continued: “I discovered them when my first child was a baby. The voice of the lead singer, Stuart Murdoch, accompanied me over the next two decades, ringing out as I drove the school run in my VW van (little kids), then my Prius (medium-size kids), then a sensible Mazda (teenagers).”

Written and narrated by Priya Krishna

A bottle of Screaming Eagle cabernet sauvignon: $3,495. Nineteen shots of Rémy Martin Louis XIII Cognac: $4,525. Rib-eye steaks, seafood platters, bottles of Voss water: $1,014.

Total bill: $17,748. With tip, more than $20,000.

For many diners, that would seem an outlandish amount to spend on a meal, even for a large group. For athletes in the National Football League, it’s a decades-old ritual known as the rookie dinner — an exorbitant meal that new players are expected to finance for their teammates. In this particular case, the bill for a 2014 meal at a Del Frisco’s steakhouse was charged to Lane Johnson, a first-round draft pick and offensive tackle for the Philadelphia Eagles, who then posted the bill on Twitter.

Footing these five-figure bills has become standard practice throughout the N.F.L., “like putting your pads on before practice,” said Channing Crowder, a former linebacker for the Miami Dolphins. “It is part of the game.”

Written and narrated by Kim Severson

Linda Ronstadt, once the highest paid woman in rock, is famous for a lot of things. One thing she is especially famous for among her family and friends is not cooking, even though one of her grandfathers invented the electric stove and the other was a master of meat and mesquite.

That particular hole in her skill set makes it even more curious that Ms. Ronstadt, 76, has written a cookbook. But her book, “Feels Like Home: A Song for the Sonoran Borderlands,” is a way to explain why the arid land that starts in Arizona and stretches into Mexico’s west coast is her foothold in the world.

It’s a story she has told through music, and now wants to tell — as much as she can — through food. Except there is that troubling bit about cooking. She just never really learned how.

The Times’s narrated articles are made by Tally Abecassis, Parin Behrooz, Anna Diamond, Sarah Diamond, Jack D’Isidoro, Aaron Esposito, Dan Farrell, Elena Hecht, Adrienne Hurst, Elisheba Ittoop, Emma Kehlbeck, Marion Lozano, Tanya Pérez, Krish Seenivasan, Margaret H. Willison, Kate Winslett, John Woo and Tiana Young. Special thanks to Sam Dolnick, Ryan Wegner, Julia Simon and Desiree Ibekwe.