JPMorgan Chase’s chief executive, Jamie Dimon, is the most successful banker of his generation. He has successfully navigated a challenging environment over more than a decade, and his firm is stronger than ever. So naturally, given his status and success, his recent comments that Bitcoin was a…

“Ways of Hearing,” Damon Krukowski’s new six-episode podcast, makes us think about the act of listening itself, in ways that feel timely and vital. Illustration by Linda Huang Damon Krukowski’s new six-episode podcast, “ Ways of Hearing ,” beginswith an exciting analog sound: that of a needle…

Reid Doughten | Longreads | September 2017 | 12 minutes (3,073 words) It’s dark and I’m sitting beside the smoldering remnants of sausage fat and cocoa powder. My kids roll around noisily in a tent behind me. I can hear my son try to reason with his younger sister, a bedtime dialogue marked by…

Haruki Murakami tweaks tradition and gives equal air time to the tradition and the tweak. photo: Marion Ettlinger With all due respect to Toni Morrison, Ian McEwan, Beverly Cleary, Muriel Spark, Günter Grass, J.D. Salinger, Stephen Dixon, Lorrie Moore, Grace Paley, Gore Vidal, Gabriel García…

Recenti denunce di episodi di corruzione hanno gettato un’ombra sull’Università italiana. È un’ombra che alimenta un sentimento di sfiducia verso l’Università diffuso in alcuni settori del nostro paese, e risuona con lamentele sentite molte volte: fuga dei cervelli, parzialità nel reclutamento,…

The questions, as it turned out, were unsurprising. These were the same questions I’d been asking myself eversince I was diagnosed with cancer, and my answers haven’t changed since. A few months back, I was invited to take part in a program for ABCtelevision called “You Can’t Ask That.” The premise…

The Biblioteca Angelica in Rome holds the first volume of Cicero’s “De Oratore” that was printed in Italy, in 1465, and a precious early edition of Dante’s “Divine Comedy.” Credit Susan Wright for The New York Times In the madness of late spring at San Marco Square in Venice, amid the hordes pouring…

O ne morning in mid-December, a group of soldiers banged on the door of a house in eastern Aleppo. A male voice responded from inside: “Who are you?” A soldier answered: “We’re the Syrian Arab Army. It’s O.K., you can come out. They’re all gone.” The door opened. A middle-aged man appeared. He had a…

I’m sitting on a train when a group of football fans streams on. Fresh from the game – their team has clearly won – they occupy the empty seats around me. One picks up a discarded newspaper and chuckles derisively as she reads about the latest “alternative facts” peddled by Donald Trump. The others…

Illustration by Mandela Smith Reporting from the very near, post-Google future Google made almost all its money from ads. It was a booming business — until it wasn’t. Here’s how things looked right before the most spectacular crash the technology industry had ever seen. The crumbling of Google’s…

   11 agosto 2017 Come nasce un cammino? Chi traccia lungo una ragnatela di sentieri quei segni uniformi e inconfondibili che migliaia di pellegrini seguiranno sicuri di essere condotti a destinazione? Il più delle volte sono appassionati e piccole associazioni molto radicate sul territorio a…

COURTESY OF LEONARD HAYFLICK Leonard Hayflick, pictured in 1982, inspects WI-38 cells that he derived from aborted fetal lungs. The cells have been used to produce vaccines in use worldwide. The woman was four months pregnant, but she didn't want another child. In 1962, at a hospital in Sweden, she…

Ordos, Inner Mongolia, China A decade ago, after a speculative coal boom fizzled, the once-thriving desert city of Ordos, in Inner Mongolia, became China’s largest ghost town , littered with unfinished or empty buildings and desperate for another way to make money. Blessed like most of China with…

Credit Inez and Vinoodh for The New York Times. Stylist: Alex White. Leer en español 阅读简体中文版 O n a gray morning this spring, Chelsea Manning climbed into the back seat of a black S.U.V. and directed her security guard to drive her to the nearest Starbucks. A storm was settling over Manhattan, and…

This past winter, Sarah Fader, a 37-year-old social media consultant in Brooklyn who has generalized anxiety disorder, texted a friend in Oregon about an impending visit, and when a quick response failed to materialize, she posted on Twitter to her 16,000-plus followers. “I don’t hear from my friend…

A light bulb at a fire station in Livermore, California, has been on almost continuously since 1901. In 2015 it was recognized by Guinness World Records as the world’s longest-burning bulb. Photograph by DICK JONES / EPA The light bulb that has brightened the fire-department garage in Livermore,…

I t is a mystery that continues to baffle modern engineers. Why do 2,000-year-old Roman piers survive to this day, yet modern concrete seawalls embedded with steel crumble within decades? Even Pliny the Elder , writing in Naturalis Historia in 79AD, noted that concrete structures in ancient…

Periodicamente ritorna la polemica contro la letteratura fantasy. Una decina d’anni fa Piergiorgio Odifreddi, commentando le cattive prestazioni degli studenti italiani nel campo della matematica, attribuiva i risultati negativi anche a una eccessiva diffusione tra i giovani di testi come Il Signore…

Accessibility help Skip to navigationSkip to contentSkip to footer Sign In Subscribe Menu Search Financial Times myFT Home World Sections World Home Global Economy UK US China Africa Asia Pacific Emerging Markets Europe Americas Middle East and North Africa Most Read Saudi Arabia sells Canadian…

Written by Nancy Kress One of the scariest statements I ever heard came from a young relative of mine: “All the science I know I learned from your books!” To which I replied, gasping a little, “But you know I make it up, right?” But not entirely—which raises a critical question. While much has been…

A lot happened in 2016, but one of the biggest cultural shifts was the rise of fake news - where claims with no evidence behind them (e.g. the world is flat) get shared as fact alongside evidence-based, peer-reviewed findings (e.g. climate change is happening). Researchers have coined this trend the…

Illustration by Oliver Munday What makes science science? The pious answers are: its ceaseless curiosity in the face of mystery, its keen edge of experimental objectivity, its endless accumulation of new data, and the cool machines it uses. We stare, the scientists see; we gawk, they gaze. We guess;…

Even Physicists Find the Multiverse Faintly Disturbing

H ow do you feel about the multiverse?” The question was not out of place in our impromptu dinner-table lecture, yet it caught me completely off-guard. It’s not that I’ve never been asked about the multiverse before, but explaining a theoretical construct is quite different to saying how you feel…

Back to story Restart gallery A nationwide measles outbreak has spurred new action in Washington state and elsewhere to eliminate exemptions for parents who don’t vaccinate their children. But experts say a hard-line approach could backfire. A growing measles outbreak linked to the Disneyland theme…

Everyone knows about the Tulip Bubble, first documented by Charles Mackay in 1841 in his book Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds : In 1634, the rage among the Dutch to possess [tulips] was so great that the ordinary industry of the country was neglected, and the population,…

John le Carré in 2000. He began learning German aged 13.Photograph: Jane Bown for the Observer I began learning German at the age of 13, and I’m still trying to explain to myself why it was love at first sound. The answer must surely be: the excellence of my teacher. At an English public school not…

GANTA, Liberia — Cheer up: Despite the gloom, the world truly is becoming a better place. Indeed, 2017 is likely to be the best year in the history of humanity. To explain why, let me start with a story. I’m on my annual win-a-trip journey with a university student, who this year is Aneri Pattani, a…

Share Mc Arthur Wheeler non poteva passare inosservato. Quarantacinque anni, alto poco meno di un metro e sessanta e pesante poco più di 120 chili, venne riconosciuto senza difficoltà dai testimoni come il responsabile di ben due colpi in pieno giorno a Pittsburgh. Le telecamere di sorveglianza lo…

T hree years ago, my wife, Anne-Marie Slaughter, wrote in these pages about how difficult it remains for women to “ have it all” —a family and a career. She’d recently left a high-powered job in Washington, D.C., to return to our home in Princeton, New Jersey, where I had been acting as lead parent…

Werner Herzog | Of Walking in Ice | University of Minnesota Press | April 2015 | 12 minutes (3,048 words) Long out of print, then in print in only a difficult-to-find small press edition, Herzog’s brilliant, strange jewel of travel writing has been reissued this spring. It is excerpted here courtesy…

Scotty Reifsnyder for The Boston Globe Beads of sweat are collecting around the small of your back. Your brain feels like it’s suspended in chicken broth. Your eyelids are droopy, and your skin is hot. If only the windows in your office could be opened. If only one of your co-workers had a fan. If…

In South Sudan, thousands of people walk for hours to reach a food distribution site. (Associated Press) We are facing one of the worst humanitarian crises since World War II. As the looming threat and tragic reality of famine spread across South Sudan, northern Nigeria, Somalia and Yemen, 20…

Adam Greenfield | Radical Technologies : The Design of Everyday Life | Verso | June 2017 | 27 minutes (7,433 words) Below is an excerpt from Radical Technologies , by Adam Greenfield. This story is recommended by Longreads contributing editor Dana Snitzky . * * * They are the last thing we look at…

“ This article has been read by 20 million people. I know that many would choose not to hear what I say in the article, but your children need you to hear this message. ” — Victoria Prooday (and what to do with it) There is a silent tragedy developing right now, in our homes, and it concerns our…

O ur technology-rich world has proven to be both a blessing and a curse. While on the one hand we have access to information or people anywhere at any time, on the other hand we find our attention constantly drawn by the rich, multisensory, technological environments. It all started with the…

Jacey Chalmers, whose father died from a heroin overdose, lives with her grandmother, in Martinsburg. Down the street is a couple with five adopted children whose parents were addicts. Across the street, a woman lives with her two nephews; their mother is an addict. Photograph by Eugene Richards for…

meshaphoto / Getty / Konstantin Orlov / Shutterstock / Katie Martin / The Atlantic Y ou were going to get one-click access to the full text of nearly every book that’s ever been published. Books still in print you’d have to pay for, but everything else—a collection slated to grow larger than the…

W hen you examine the lives of history’s most creative figures, you are immediately confronted with a paradox: They organize their lives around their work, but not their days. Figures as different as Charles Dickens, Henri Poincaré, and Ingmar Bergman, working in disparate fields in different times,…

The Undoing Project: A Friendship That Changed Our Minds by Michael Lewis 1. We are living in an age in which the behavioral sciences have become inescapable. The findings of social psychology and behavioral economics are being employed to determine the news we read, the products we buy, the…