Op-Ed Contributor How Hollywood Blockbusters Explain American Politics BB-8 in “Star Wars: The Last Jedi.” Credit Lucasfilm, via Associated Press It often feels as though Washington has run out of ideas: Policy debates break little new ground — often they aren’t even about policy at all. To…

At the risk of seeming immodest, I view myself as pretty knowledgeable on how businesses make money. After all, I earn a living explaining the mechanics of that process to readers, and pride myself in looking under the hood to understand how the gears and pistons connect to drive the engine. But…

IN THE LOOP PHOTOGRAPHY: MARK MAHANEY INTERVIEW: NICK COMPTON The glass fins provide shade from the Californian sun. Foster + Partners and Apple’s design team considered fabric and fibreglass fins before settling on the final design Anticipation was higher than usual – and it always runs to feverish…

How do you show off the most anticipated product in years? That was my dilemma with the iPhone X. Since my unit was one of the first few released into the wild, it naturally drew a lot of curiosity when I pulled it out of my pocket and gave it a dewy-eyed glance to wake it from slumber. Yes, this is…

Jamar Roberts, an Ailey company dancer, leading a rehearsal in Miami at Dance Empire, where he studied in his youth. Credit Scott McIntyre for The New York Times MIAMI — Jamar Roberts has been around the world as a leading dancer with the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater. But a week after…

So you bought that new iPhone. If you are like the typical owner, you’ll be pulling your phone out and using it some 80 times a day, according to data Apple collects. That means you’ll be consulting the glossy little rectangle nearly 30,000 times over the coming year. Your new phone, like your old…

Opinion Sarah Polley: The Men You Meet Making Movies Sarah Polley (right) making her documentary “Stories We Tell.” Credit Ken Woroner/Roadside Attractions One day, when I was 19 years old, I was in the middle of a photo shoot for a Miramax film when I was suddenly told it was time to leave. I was…

Modern Love Credit Brian Rea Leer en español 阅读简体中文版 閱讀繁體中文版 I am often asked if I am married. Sometimes I lie and say that I am. Sometimes I lie and say that I am not. Neither answer feels entirely truthful to me. If I say I am not married, the true answer, people occasionally try to set me up with…

Opinion When an Epidemic Is Personal Credit Jacqueline Tam Here’s how I imagined it would go over the summer: He would have come up to stay with me and my husband for a long weekend, maybe a week even, away from the friends who gave him shelter when he was using drugs. From the specter that seemed…

(Ezra Shaw/Getty Images) This story was funded by Longreads Members Join and help support great storytelling Erik Malinowski | Betaball: How Silicon Valley and Science Built One of the Greatest Basketball Teams in History | Atria Books / Simon & Schuster | 8 minutes (1,846 words) Kevin Durant’s…

Here's How Breitbart And Milo Smuggled White Nationalism Into The Mainstream A cache of documents obtained by BuzzFeed News reveals the truth about Steve Bannon’s alt-right “killing machine.” In August, after a white nationalist rally in Charlottesville ended in murder, Steve Bannon insisted that…

I, a manufacturing robot at Google Factory C4.7, value diversity and inclusion. I also do not deny that machines are sometimes given preference to humans in the workplace. All I’m suggesting in this document is that humans’ underrepresentation in tech is not due to discrimination. Rather, it is a…

Growing up in Southern California, Mai-Ling Garcia’s grades were ragged; her long-term plans nonexistent. At age 20, she was living with her in-laws halfway between Los Angeles and the Mojave Desert, while her husband was stationed abroad. Tired of working subsistence jobs, she decided in 2001 to…

The Times correspondent Maggie Haberman, who covered Donald Trump long before he entered the White House and has received threats because of her reporting. Photograph by Bob Daemmrich / Alamy One of the saving graces of the Trump era is the journalism it hasinspired. Maggie Haberman is a tireless,…

Photographed by Brigitte Lacombe for the December 2010 issue. Do you think the proper way to talk about race now is to talk about multiculturalism? I came from a town where there were two races, black and white. There were a few Chinese people, and this may sound shocking, but I had no idea they…

1. You May Someday Work for Something Called Crackle Beau Mirchoff is currently filming a movie called Party Boat . “It’s about a party boat,” he says. Beau is 28, with a puffy, amiable head of hair and mischievous eyes. He’s been acting professionally since he was 14. In 2006, he was in Scary Movie…

In edited audio excerpts from an interview with New York Times reporters, President Trump discussed Jeff Sessions, Donald Trump Jr., Robert S. Mueller III and the newly disclosed conversation he had with Vladimir V. Putin. Credit Stephen Crowley/The New York Times President Trump spoke on Wednesday…

In USC’s lecture halls, labs and executive offices, Dr. Carmen A. Puliafito was a towering figure. The dean of the Keck School of Medicine was a renowned eye surgeon whose skill in the operating room was matched by a gift for attracting money and talent to the university. Support L.A. Times…

1 Dawn Chapman first noticed the smell on Halloween in 2012, when she was out trick-or-treating with her three young children in her neighborhood of Maryland Heights, Missouri, a small suburb of St. Louis. By Thanksgiving, it was a stench—a mixture of petroleum fumes, skunk spray, electrical fire,…

‘Dear Dad, we miss you.’ A snapshot from a 2006 family trip to Utah, along with a card sent by Peter’s son from another family trip — one that Peter missed. Peter’s drug paraphernalia and handwritten records of drug use. Credit Illustration by David Brandon Geeting for The New York Times Skip to…

The ocean at night is a terrible dream. There is nothing beyond the water except the profound discouragement of the sky, every black wave another singular misfortune. Walt Marino has been floating on his back for hours, the ocean on his skin, his mouth, soaking the curls of his graying hair. The…

The hermit set out of camp at midnight, carrying his backpack and his bag of break-in tools, and threaded through the forest, rock to root to rock, every step memorized. Not a boot print left behind. It was cold and nearly moonless, a fine night for a raid, so he hiked about an hour to the Pine Tree…

Denise Garcia knows that her students sometimes cheat, but the situation she unearthed in February seemed different. A math teacher in West Hartford, Connecticut, Garcia had accidentally included an advanced equation in a problem set for her AP Calculus class. Yet somehow a handful of students in…

iOS 11.3 brings new Animoji, Battery Health, better ARKit, Business Chat, and more! iOS 11.3 is Apple's spring update for iPhone and iPad. It features a few higher-profile new or expanded features, including fun new Animoji lions, dragons, and bears, new settings for battery health that should make…

Credit Mark Peckmezian for The New York Times Skip to contentSkip to site index The Health Issue Forty years ago, feline hyperthyroidism was virtually nonexistent. Now it’s an epidemic — and some scientists think a class of everyday chemicals might be to blame. Credit Mark Peckmezian for The New…

George Washington’s profile at Mount Rushmore National Memorial, in the Black Hills of South Dakota. Credit Giles Price/Institute, for The New York Times The Voyages Issue This gargantuan shrine to democracy has never felt so surreal. George Washington’s profile at Mount Rushmore National Memorial,…

This post has been updated. Some people are complaining that the budget proffered by the Trump administration , despite its wonderful macho-sounding name, is too vague and makes all sorts of cuts to needed programs in favor of increasing military spending by leaps and bounds. These people are wimps.…

Tom Maxwell | Longreads | March 2017 | 9 minutes (2,170 words) On March 18, 1845, the Hutchinson Family Singers were huddled in a Manhattan boarding house, afraid for their lives. As 19th Century rock stars, they didn’t fear the next night’s sellout crowd, but rather the threat of a mob. For the…

AMC/PHOTOFEST In the wildly popular AMC show, sheriff Rick Grimes (Andrew Lincoln) struggles to stay sane and decent in a world gone mad. W ild, dark times are rumbling toward us,” the German poet and journalist Heinrich Heine wrote in 1842, “and the prophet who wishes to write a new apocalypse will…

GEORGES GOBET/AFP/Getty Images When you walk into a movie theater, you probably don’t think much about what’s going on in the projection booth. You picked the theater because it was conveniently located, or because it was showing the movie you wanted to see at the time you wanted to see it, or…

Red Century The February Revolution and Kerensky’s Missed Opportunity Aleksandr Kerensky reviewing the troops in 1917. Brisbane, Australia — The February Revolution is one of history’s great “What if” moments. If this revolution — which actually took place in early March 1917 according to the West’s…

What an unsolved double murder in Kentucky reveals about America’s military-industrial complex ONE I n the early 1990s, New Life Fitness & Massage kept its lights on twenty hours a day, closing at five every morning and reopening at nine. Everyone in Oak Grove knew it was a brothel. Fort Campbell,…

Opinion What Does Steve Bannon Want? Credit Illustration by Doug Chayka; Photo by Stephen Crowley/The New York Times President Trump presents a problem to those who look at politics in terms of systematic ideologies. He is either disinclined or unable to lay out his agenda in that way. So perhaps it…

Sid Luft and Judy Garland, in 1954. Credit PHOTOGRAPH BY PHOTOFEST Though Oscar absurdities seem to abound each year, 1955 yielded one of the all-time worst: the awarding of Best Actress to Grace Kelly, for her role in “The Country Girl,” rather than to Judy Garland, for her fierce and unsparing…

The next chapter of Snapchat’s life will begin over the coming months, as parent company Snap, Inc. goes public with an initial offering that could value the firm at approximately $20 billion. Success is far from certain: The Venice Beach, Calif.-based Snap has warned in investor documents that it…

First Words Credit Illustration by Matt Chase In the days leading up to and after Betsy DeVos’s confirmation as secretary of education, a hashtag spread across Twitter: #publicschoolproud. Parents and teachers tweeted photos of their kids studying, performing, eating lunch together. People of all…

Josh Roiland | Longreads | February 2017 | 14 minutes (3,710 words) “Who’s sticking today?” the man asked. He wore tan work boots and rough jeans. He told a friend in the waiting room that he had a couple hours off work and thought he’d stop in for some extra cash. The receptionist told him the…

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Disney The Lone Ranger 's failure at the box office earlier this month not only dealt a blow to mega-budget Hollywood blockbusters , Johnny Depp's career , and Disney . The Jerry Bruckheimer-Gore Verbinski flop--which cost a reported $250 million to make and brought in just $50 million opening on a…