The Fall Of New York And The Urban Crisis Of Affluence
I have never seen what is going on now: the systematic, wholesale transformation of New York into a reserve of the obscenely wealthy and the barely here—a place increasingly devoid of the idiosyncrasy, the complexity, the opportunity, and the roiling excitement that make a city great.
Synthetic Media: The Real Trouble With Deepfakes
Keeping on top of manipulated videos and images is no easy feat. Scientists trace the roots of their proliferation, dig up new techniques to counter digital forgeries and warn of the growing dangers ahead.
How A Hot $100 Million Home Design Startup Collapsed Overnight
The untold story of how Homepolish’s extremely Instagrammable house of cards came tumbling down. Instead of building a design juggernaut, the founder constructed something much more precarious — a fear-based culture where sound strategy couldn’t flourish, and where the pressure to grow led to reckless decision-making.
The Father Who Went Undercover To Find His Son’s Killers
After police failed to solve his son’s murder, Francisco Holgado infiltrated the local criminal underworld in pursuit of those responsible. He became a national hero – but at what cost?
Suburban Megastores Remade Into Libraries, Schools & Shelters
Across America, many malls have emptied out and thousands of abandoned big box stores sit empty, including hundreds of former Walmarts. Some, though, are getting creative new leases on life, becoming community markets, indoor tracks, gaming spaces, museums and more.
Francois Prost Returns, Photographing Venice And Its Worldwide Doppelgängers
As a follow-up to his successful series Paris Syndrome, Francois Prost is yet again photographing architectural replica cities, creating almost identical compositions. Venice is compared to a Chinese replica but also to the Las Vegas replica.
Ari Emanuel, WME, And The Great Hollywood IPO That Wasn’t
The entertainment industry’s reigning super-agent planned to put his firm—and the very power structure of Hollywood—on the line with an audacious, now scuttled public offering. With that future on hold and the likes of Netflix and Disney commanding more ground by the day, what’s an ambitious modern macher to do?
World’s Busiest Station: Shinjuku Station, Tokyo
Five separate train lines, almost three thousand passengers per minute and trains arriving every second. How can the people behind the scenes of the world’s busiest station overcome a traffic load like this every day? A look behind the scenes of the world’s busiest station: Shinjuku Station in Tokyo.
Rewilding The Planet
This is some of the newest land on the planet: Marker Wadden. Taking sand and mud from the lake floor, ecological engineers created seven islands enveloped by dunes and beaches. Now, a rich variety of plants, fish and insects have settled into that protected environment, along with vast numbers of breeding birds.
Welcome To Retirement: Lindsey Vonn Confronts Life After Skiing
Vonn is a three-time Olympic medalist with 82 World Cup golds, an internationally renowned comeback artist, and one of the most dominant American athletes of a generation. She is also no longer skiing. So what will she do next?
How Lego Became The Apple Of Toys
In the last 10 years, Lego has grown into nothing less than the Apple of toys: a profit-generating, design-driven miracle built around premium, intuitive, highly covetable hardware that fans can’t get enough of. An exclusive look inside the company’s top-secret Future Lab.
What Happened When Oslo Decided To Make Its Downtown Basically Car-Free?
It was a huge success: Parking spots are now bike lanes, transit is fast and easy, and the streets (and local businesses) are full of people. Several other cities are also working to reduce car use, such as Madrid, which limits access to the city center for anyone other than the people who live there.
How The Killing Of An Abusive Father By His Daughters Fuelled Russia’s Culture Wars
News of the killing of three teenage sisters quickly spread across Russia, and in the months that followed, the country was divided over what drove the sisters to kill their own father. It inspired a campaign for change – and a backlash from the patriarchy.
The Myth Of The Ethical Shopper
What has happened in those sweatshops since they became a cultural fixation three decades ago? All sources led to the same conclusion: Boycotts have failed. Our clothes are being made in ways that advocacy campaigns can’t affect and in places they can’t reach. So how are we going to stop sweatshops now?
Beyond The Growth Gospel
The Hotel Belvédère du Rayon Vert symbolizes the very empire these adherents of “degrowth,” as the movement is known, wish to overthrow: consumption, wealth, inequality, travel, and cement, the whole modern industrial condition.
The Preposterous Success Story Of America’s Pillow King
The tale of Mike Lindell begins in a crack house. The 47-year-old divorced father of four had run out of crack, again. He realized that abusing crack and running a business weren’t compatible in the long term and vowed to fulfill his dream of making “the world’s best pillow.”
The Spy Who Couldn’t Spell: How The Biggest Heist In The History Of Us Espionage Was Foiled
Being underestimated had been the theme of Brian Regan’s life, a curse he had borne silently since childhood. But for the mission he had now embarked upon, it was a blessing. No one in the intelligence community could have imagined that he of all people was capable of masterminding a complex espionage plot.
How To Trick People Into Saving Money
Walmart has an incentive to become the place people think about when they think of their financial future. Inside Walmart’s curious, possibly ingenious effort to get customers to build up their savings accounts.
The Truth About Andy Rubin And Google’s Existential Crisis
20,000 former colleagues staged a walkout against Andy Rubin and other alleged sexual predation among senior management – Why did the man who won Google the smartphone wars get paid $90 million to leave?
Muslims Of Early America
Muslims came to America more than a century before Protestants, and in great numbers. How was their history forgotten? Not just the language of Islam, but the religion itself likely arrived in America in 1492, more than 20 years before Martin Luther nailed his theses to the door, igniting the Protestant reformation.
Schlitterbahn’s Tragic Slide
In the water park business, Jeff Hendry was considered a genius of sorts. He often said that his goal in life was to make customers of his family’s legendary water parks happy—“to put a smile on their faces, to give them a thrill or two.” It was a beautiful vision. Until it went horribly wrong.