Usain Bolt, of Jamaica, wins the men’s hundred-metre final, ahead of Justin Gatlin, at the Rio Olympics. Photograph by Ian Walton / Getty During the Rio Olympics, Malcolm Gladwell and Nicholas Thompso
During the Rio Olympics, Malcolm Gladwell and Nicholas Thompson will be discussing the track-and-field events, as they did during the 2012 London Games and during the 2015 World Championships . Below
The Canadian sprinter Andre De Grasse and the Jamaican Usain Bolt compete in the men’s two-hundred-metre semifinal. Photograph by Ian Walton / Getty D_uring the Rio Olympics, Malcolm Gladwell and Nich
7 min read · Jul 27, 2016 -- Design Doesn’t Scale is a statement that has bothered me for the last four-years. When I joined Spotify’s design team in 2012, the level of inconsistency and fragmentation
While most companies wrack their brains around words like ‘convenience’, ‘efficiency’, ‘instantaneous’ and ‘comfort’, the world’s most popular room-letting website is swimming against the frictionless
Illustration by Reginald Marsh Ernest Hemingway, who may well be the greatest living American novelist and short-story writer, rarely comes to New York. He spends most of his time on a farm, the Finca
E veryone had his or her favorite drink in hand. There were bubbles and deep reds, and the sound of ice clinking in cocktail glasses underlay the hum of contented chatter. Gracing the room were women
Credit... Christopher Anderson/Magnum, for The New York Times. Feature The Mysterious Metamorphosis of Chuck Close The legendary artist has radically upended his distinctive style of portraiture — and
Any large and alienating infrastructure controlled by a technocratic elite is bound to provoke. In particular, it will nettle those who want to know how it works, those who like the thrill of transgre
This is an edited excerpt from “ I Contain Multitudes: The Microbes Within Us and a Grander View of Life ,” which will be published on August 9th by Ecco, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers. The F
Since 2007, amateur (and less amateur) astronauts have been vying to land a privately funded spacecraft on the moon, in response to a challenge from Google and the nonprofit XPrize, which incentivizes
E dward Said was no tree-hugger. Descended from traders, artisans and professionals, he once described himself as ‘an extreme case of an urban Palestinian whose relationship to the land is basically
I am indebted to the generosity of everyone who shared their experiences of the 1962 tour. My thanks to Jacques d’Amboise, Marlene Mesavage DeSavino, Paul DeSavino, Allegra Kent, Robert Maiorano, Teen
Todd Patrick’s Market Hotel, as viewed from the adjacent JMZ subway platform Anyone who believes that a new Brooklyn DIY venue opens the minute an old one closes is missing the point, says Todd Patric
June 14, 2016 May 2, 2023 Elizabeth Hyde Stevens | Longreads | June 2016 | 31 minutes (7,830 words) Nothing is less material than money. . . . Money is abstract, I repeated, money is future time. It c
The Most-Used Mathematical Algorithm Idea in History An octillion . A billion billion billion. That’s a fairly conservative estimate of the number of times a cellphone or other device somewhere in the
Mail to Print page Submit a letter: Email us letters@nybooks.com Billie Holiday; drawing by David Levine Buy Print “The unspeakable vices of Mecca are a scandal to all Islam and constant source of won
The Politics of Design by Paul Rand I t is no secret that the real world in which the designer functions is not the world of art, but the world of buying and selling. For sales, and not design are the raison d’etre of any business organization. Unlike the salesman, however, the designer’s overriding…
Yoshi Wada practicing at the Künstlerhaus Bethanien, Berlin, 1984. Photo by Marilyn Bogerd My father Yoshi Wada and I have been playing music together for the past six or seven years. It’s been exciti
As we go about our daily lives, we tend to assume that our perceptions—sights, sounds, textures, tastes—are an accurate portrayal of the real world. Sure, when we stop and think about it—or when we fi
This is part 1 of a four-part series, Emergent Layers. If you haven’t read the introduction, I invite you to do so here . There’s a basic but powerful notion that all money is made at points of fricti
Laurie Anderson, singer-songwriter In 1979, Iranian students stormed the US embassy in Tehran. America went blazing in with helicopters to get the hostages out. But it backfired majorly. A helicopter
As the 120-ton space shuttle sits surrounded by almost 4 million pounds of rocket fuel, exhaling noxious fumes, visibly impatient to defy gravity, its on-board computers take command. Four identical m
(Also see my follow-up post on getting organized , and sign up to my tiny letter to get contacted about fixing housing affordability in SF ). San Francisco’s housing system is broken. The only way to
In the early years of the last decade, we watched the concussive career of the rock band Nirvana -- from early word about an explosive new group from Seattle, to the release of the group's epochal "Ne
Liz Phair 1993/Photo: Lloyd DeGrane By Bill Wyman Every few years, it comes back. Back in 1994, I had a weekly music column called “Hitsville” in The Chicago Reader. In early January of that year, I p
By the time drug-policy lawyer Charlotte Walsh took to the stage on the final day of the recent Horizons Psychedelic Conference , we had already heard several persuasive talks on the benefits of psych
In 2014, my Detroit pickle empire Perkins Pickles had the opportunity to start distributing on the West Coast, so I set out on a brine-scouting trip between Portland and Los Angeles. During the pickle
Three decades after the release of Spiderland, Joe Kennedy argues that those who waffle endlessly about post rock have made a mistake in ignoring "a lyrical blueprint which places Gothic imagery at th
Imagine You are in your mid-twenties and your vision is 20/20 or better. You are not color blind and all the devices you own have a ‘retina’ screen. You are standing in a major city and your internet
Karl Ove Knausgaard on the road in Minnesota. Credit... Peter van Agtmael/Magnum, for The New York Times The Voyages Issue My Saga, Part 2 In this second installment from Karl Ove Knausgaard, the Norw
Gjinovefa Merxira after her operation. Credit... Paolo Pellegrin/Magnum, for The New York Times Feature The Terrible Beauty of Brain Surgery A witness in an operating room where the patients are consc
Swinging Modern Sounds #69: Meaning Yes I know personally two people who are as preoccupied with David Bowie as I have been over the years. One of them is Simon Critchley, who wrote a book on the subj
T he first thing you notice at Donald Trump ’s rallies is the confidence. Amateur psychologists have wishfully diagnosed him from afar as insecure, but in person the notion seems absurd. Donald Trump,
On the computer a woman in north Florida is talking about the wildlife down where she’s from. “Raccoons, possums, armadillos, moles,” she lists. “Rattlesnakes, copperheads, water moccasins.” She think
D>Elektro |2.1| |> Material |> History/ies + Sounds of modern electronic / experimental music in Germany |Elektro 1.3 - |> Protagonists [Chronology] |2.1| |> Cluster A curious history of Cluster -
This image was removed due to legal reasons. They were high school sweethearts, sort of: Britt and John met in middle school right outside of Houston, the kind of place where the person you end up mar
FOR the 20 actors nominated for an Oscar all to be white could at best be seen as a surprise. For that to be true two years running is, to many, a scandal. While there will be no empty seats at the 88
Colliers , January 30, 1926 The life of the bee will be the life of our race, says Nikola Tesla, world-famed scientist. A NEW sex order is coming--with the female as superior. You will communicate ins
image wikimedia foundation Published in NewCo Shift · 4 min read · Jan 3, 2016 -- Dr. Mr Graham: You’re a smart man. I would love to read a revised essay from you on income inequality that takes into
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