In mid-September, while President Obama was fending off complaints that he should have done more, done less, or done something different about the overlapping crises in Iraq and Syria, he traveled to

Wh en humans move to space, we are the aliens, the extraterrestrials. And so, living in space, the oddness never quite goes away. Consider something as elemental as sleep. In 2009, with the expansive

Last week, the New York Times columnist Roger Cohen published a piece under the headline “ Islam and the West at War .” Something seemed amiss here. Surely a more-or-less liberal columnist at the Time

It is difficult to forget the names, or the images, of James Foley, Steven Sotloff, David Haines, Alan Henning and Peter Kassig. The barbaric beheadings between August and November 2014, in cold blood

On Yahoo’s 20th Anniversary, its CEO presents a progress report on how she’s turning around—and maybe transforming—an Internet icon It is sunset in Sunnyvale, but Marissa Mayer’s day is far from over.

During his 83-year visit to this planet, Leonard Nimoy wrote two autobiographies: 1975’s I Am Not Spock and 1995’s I Am Spock. The titles suggest a thesis and its antithesis — a youngish man’s arrogan

When you hear the word “astronaut,” you probably think of guys like Neil Armstrong. When you think of women astronauts—an even smaller number—you probably think of the late Sally Ride who, among her m

Movies Recent reviews ★★ ★★★ The Darkest Minds The Darkest Minds feels late to the party. A film based on a YA novel, coming ... ★★★ ★★ The Negotiator In director Brad Anderson’s most famous film, 2004’s The Machinist, a ... ★★ ★★★ The Meg It may not shock you to hear this, but The Meg — a movie…

I. Launch Day “So much of our manufactured environment testifies to carelessness,” Ive says. Things are “developed to be different, not better.” Photograph by Pari Dukovic In recent months, Sir Jonath

High-tech analysis of a 2011 DARPA Challenge shows why we can’t have nice things Published in Backchannel · 16 min read · Feb 9, 2015 -- Meet Adam. He’s a mid-level engineer at a mid-level software co

A demonstrator holds a sign as others gather in Foley Square during a national day of action “Occupy the Courts” in New York, January 20, 2012. REUTERS/Shannon Stapleton Five years after the U.S. Supr

The Gene Hackman performance that sticks with me the most didn’t occur in one of his 79 films, but rather in a profile written by Roger Ebert for the Chicago Sun-Times in 1971 . Hackman stopped in tow

Sara Thomas Monopoli was pregnant with her first child when her doctors learned that she was going to die. It started with a cough and a pain in her back. Then a chest X-ray showed that her left lung

In my family, we don't really talk about death. But, every now and then, we joke about it. For some reason, there is a running joke among my immediate family about how my parents will die. Specificall

Twenty years ago, Pete Carroll’s name was a punch line. Following the 1994 season, the New York Jets fired Carroll after one year as head coach. It wasn’t simply that Carroll’s team lost; it was how i

Movies have become very good at assembling armies. Good software and skilled technicians are often all you need. The ensuing chaos of battle tends to resemble a cartoon of war. What’s human grows indistinguishable from what’s not, and making a distinction between the two sides seems beside the…

After a decade-long slump, Lego has rebuilt itself into a global juggernaut. An exclusive look inside the company's top-secret Future Lab. Every September, largely unbeknownst to the rest of the company, a group of around 50 Lego employees descends upon Spain's Mediterranean coast, armed with…

If your cable package were a sports team, it would invariably be described as “close-knit,” all those individual channels bound and bundled together. Unlike most of commerce today—we purchase individu

Chris Green holds an envelope. At least, it looks like an envelope. In reality, it's a piece of office copy paper that's been cut and folded into the shape of a Kindle Voyage, the latest in Amazon's b

Tim Cook said something very revealing on last quarter’s earnings call : Last month we introduced two new categories; the first is Apple Pay, an entirely new way to pay for things in stores and in app

The door of 10 Downing Street in London. (AP Photo/Alastair Grant) John Graham-Cumming used cunning and data to get the apology Published in Backchannel · 9 min read · Nov 14, 2014 -- Arriving in thea

Not long ago, Stephen Bradley, a New York tech entrepreneur, was looking to expand his company, AuthorBee, which aggregates tweets and Instagram posts and puts them together in story form. Instead of

Steve Albini is the producer (he prefers the term “recording engineer”) behind several thousand records. He is also a member of the band Shellac. In 1993, he published The Problem with Music , an essa

November 6, 2014 October 19, 2022 November 6, 2014 October 19, 2022 Meaghan O’Connell | Longreads | Nov. 6, 2014 | 57 minutes (14,248 words) Download .mobi (Kindle) Download .epub (iBooks) It was Mond

The Unbelievable Skepticism of the Amazing Randi James Randi in front of a painting done by his partner, the artist José Alvarez. Credit... Jeff Minton for The New York Times A few minutes before 8 o

They are old men now in their 70s, two robbers who were famous long ago and now sport white hair, Butch and Sundance in twilight. Five decades ago, Jack Murphy (a.k.a., “Murf the Surf”) and his partne

It is impossible for me to begin to write anything about the events of 9-11 without first bowing my head and taking a moment of silence in remembrance of all those who died and the grief which still l

Rock sees his new film as a last chance. “If this doesn’t work, I can definitely see no one letting me direct a movie again,” he says. Photograph by Pari Dukovic In 1988, when Chris Rock had been doin

Confessions of a Jury Foreman Behind the scenes of the Whitey Bulger trial. By · 10/28/2014, 4:35 a.m. Print Get a compelling long read and must-have lifestyle tips in your inbox every Sunday morning

When you get right down to it, even a mega-million-dollar international criminal caper is mostly boring shitwork. As Frank Bourassa tells it, his own criminal masterpiece hinged on the events of one m

I n 2005, the Witherspoon School of Law and Public Policy held a conference in Virginia’s Blue Ridge Mountains. The school’s name was something of a misnomer: Rather than grant JDs, Witherspoon staged

5 min read · Oct 13, 2014 -- Last week, a courthouse in Washington DC was hearing the case of Dhiab v. Obama — the first-ever trial to assess the legality of force-feeding methods at Guantanamo Bay. F

The tone of the answering machine message was routine, like a reminder for a dental appointment. But there was also an undercurrent of urgency. “Please call me back,” the voice said. “It’s important.”

Ruth Bader Ginsburg was considered a judge’s judge when she was appointed to the Supreme Court in 1993, an incrementalist who thought Roe v. Wade might have gone too far. Some liberals were wary. But

Stop and seize Aggressive police take hundreds of millions of dollars from motorists not charged with crimes Play Video Published on September 6, 2014 A fter the terror attacks on Sept. 11, 2001, the

Scalia: A Court of One by Bruce Allen Murphy (Simon & Schuster). On October 15, 1987, as Justice Antonin Scalia settled into his second term at the Supreme Court, he emerged from conference with his e

(or perhaps just a loved but irritating old uncle) Published in the bower · 27 min read · Nov 22, 2013 -- by bowerbird intelligentleman evidently “medium” articles don’t typically need a table of cont

“Stand back, I’m going to try science” is one of the enduring mottos of the XKCD webcomic. That’s exactly what cartoonist Randall Munroe has done: applied his physics degree (he’s a former employee of