The Search for the Lost ‘Jeopardy!’ Tapes Is Over. The Mystery Behind Them Endures.

In 1986, Barbara Lowe won five games of Jeopardy! in a row, qualifying for the Tournament of Champions. But she didn’t appear in the tournament, and her games vanished from reruns of the show — only recently did Jeopardy! uber-fans recover and digitize the only known recordings of her episodes. In pop culture lore, Lowe became a villain: Rumors circulated that she had lied on her application for the show, violated contestant policies, and behaved badly on set. Claire McNear, who published a book about Jeopardy! in 2020, tracked Lowe down to try to get the bottom of what happened and found that the short answer might be, well, sexism:

In 1993, Harry Eisenberg, a writer turned producer during the first seven years of the Jeopardy! reboot, published a dishy account of his time at the program. Inside Jeopardy!: What Really Goes on at TV’s Top Quiz Show swiftly landed Eisenberg in hot water with his former employer, chiefly over his description of the show systematically altering game material to provide easier clues for female contestants — an act that would amount to a violation of fairness rules enshrined by the Federal Communications Commission in the wake of the 1950s quiz show scandals. Jeopardy! denied that the show did any such thing; a later edition of Eisenberg’s book dropped the claim.

But both versions of the book featured Eisenberg’s reflections on Lowe. Eisenberg radiated a strong dislike: Lowe, he wrote, “appeared rather strange” and prompted the most letters objecting to a contestant’s “mannerisms and behavior” that the show had ever received. Eisenberg described a fractious moment after Lowe rang in on a clue reading: “Sons of millionaires who killed Bobby Franks as a ‘scientific experiment.’”

“Her response was, ‘Who were Leopold and Leeb?’” Eisenberg wrote. “Alex ruled her incorrect, at which point she immediately shot back, ‘Leeb is just the German pronunciation of Loeb.’ Rather than get into an argument with her right in the middle of the show, Alex went ahead and gave it to her.”

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Homeless in the City Where He Was Once Mayor

After turning to alcohol to cope with Bipolar Disorder and a series of personal losses, lawyer Craig Coyner ended up becoming homeless on the streets of Bend, Oregon, a town in which he once served as mayor.

He had known Craig Coyner for more than 50 years, watching with admiration as the man from one of the most prominent families in Bend, Ore., rose through an acclaimed career — as a prosecutor, a defense lawyer and then a mayor who helped turn the town into one of the nation’s fastest-growing cities.

Now, at age 75, Mr. Coyner was occupying a bed at the shelter on Second Street, his house lost to foreclosure, his toes gnarled by frostbite, his belongings limited to a tub of tattered clothing and books on the floor next to his bed.

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A Trucker’s Kidnapping, a Suspicious Ransom, and a Colorado Family’s Perilous Quest for Justice

Through a special visa program, freelance truckers called transmigrantes are able to drive goods and vehicles from the U.S. to Central America via Mexico, without paying for high import-export fees. These truckers, many of whom have Central American roots, are able to connect with their home countries through this line of work, while the industry as a whole transforms America’s unwanted items into valuable goods abroad. One transmigrante, Guatemalan-born Enrique Orlando León, took a contract job in 2014 from his Colorado employer to drive a truck full of furniture to his homeland. It would be a routine trip like he’d done many times before. But this job went horribly wrong.

For 5280, Chris Walker recounts León’s kidnapping and its aftermath, and how this terrifying experience has affected León and his family. And it’s through León’s story that Walker is able to expose a very dark side of the transmigrante industry.

Even now—years later—Orlando still hears rumors about what may have been concealed in the truck’s cargo, including guns or even up to $2 million in cash hidden inside pieces of furniture. If that much money had gone missing, though, Orlando doesn’t think he’d be alive—or that he’d have been able to negotiate his release for such a comparatively small sum. While his kidnappers originally asked for $15,000, Orlando says he negotiated it down to $7,000 by telling his captors they could keep the school bus he’d driven down to sell in Guatemala. Only in retrospect does it appear that some outside factor—perhaps his family’s calls to local Guatemalan police—saved him from a shallow, unmarked grave.

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With My Heart on My (Gastric) Sleeve

This is a very honest and personal account of a struggle with weight. After reaching 460 pounds, Mike Bowers felt like a prisoner in his own body and decided he needed to navigate the complicated path to weight loss surgery.

Here’s the thing about being overweight: It impacts every aspect of your life. Depending on the situation, a thousand questions run through my head. Will the seatbelts fit? Are we sitting at a booth — will the table be movable? A table with chairs? How close to other tables?

What airline are we flying — what’s their policy on customers of size? How much is a second seat? How does that compare to first class? How long is the flight? How much can I eat or drink on the flight without having to go to the bathroom? That’ll be a tight fit …

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As Rail Profits Soar, Blocked Crossings Force Kids to Crawl Under Trains to Get to School

Hammond, Indiana, a working-class suburb of 77,000, is essentially a parking lot and waiting area for Norfolk Southern trains. Sometimes these trains, many of them quite long, are parked for hours or days, and no one ever knows when they’ll start moving again. These trains disrupt and endanger the lives of all the people who live in Hammond, especially children, who end up crawling through or underneath trains in order to get to school.

The problem of stalled trains and blocked crossings has existed for decades, but as ProPublica and InvestigateTV report in this investigation — with shocking video and photography — it’s gotten worse.

Lamira Samson, Jeremiah’s mother, faced a choice she said she has to make several times a week. They could walk around the train, perhaps a mile out of the way; she could keep her 8-year-old son home, as she sometimes does; or they could try to climb over the train, risking severe injury or death, to reach Hess Elementary School four blocks away.

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He Grew Up in California. Now, He’s Forced to Live in His Birth Country — a Place He’s Never Known

When Khmer Rouge soldiers came to the village where Phoeun You and his family lived in Cambodia’s northwest, they fled on foot across the border to Thailand. At the time, You was just a toddler. In 1980, the family moved to the U.S. as refugees and were granted legal permanent resident status. Eventually, after relocating to Long Beach, California, You fell into gang life, and at 19, in 1995, he shot and killed a teenage boy. Over the years, You has felt deep remorse, has reformed himself, and has been able to mentor other men working through trauma. Still, after being granted parole after serving 26 years of a 35-to-life sentence, state prison officials handed him over to immigration agents, and he was deported back to Phnom Penh.

Joshua Sharpe’s piece about You’s life, deportation, and current transition to life in Cambodia for the San Francisco Chronicle is told with empathy and care. Sharpe’s narrative weaves You’s past and present, effectively telling a nuanced story of a man “caught in the gap between America’s ideals and the limits of its compassion.”

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Pour One Out

New guidelines from the World Health Organization, the World Heart Federation, and the Canadian Centre on Substance Abuse and Addiction have reversed the decades-old belief that alcohol in moderation offered some health benefits. Science writer Tim Requarth investigates this staggering new discovery.

The results live in all of our heads: There’s nothing wrong with a glass of wine with dinner every night, right? After all, years of studies have suggested that small amounts of alcohol can favorably tweak cholesterol levels, keeping arteries clear of gunk and reducing coronary heart disease. Moderate alcohol use has been endorsed by many doctors and public health officials for years. We’ve all seen the Times headlines.

Now, 25 years later, you’re likely feeling a fair bit of whiplash. According to new guidelines released in recent months by the World Health Organization, the World Heart Federation, and the Canadian Centre on Substance Abuse and Addiction, the safest level of drinking is—brace yourself—not a single drop.

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