For African Players, Chasing Hoop Dreams Is A Risky Proposition
As more and more players cross the Atlantic to find stardom in the NBA, unscrupulous coaches and brokers are descending on—and in some cases, trafficking—unsuspecting teens with big aspirations.
Welcome To The Monkey House
Between the end of the Korean War and the early 1990s, more than one million Korean women were caught up in a state-controlled prostitution industry that was blessed at the highest levels by the U.S. military. They worked in special zones surrounding U.S. bases—areas licensed by the South Korean government.
My Restaurant Was My Life For 20 Years. Does The World Need It Anymore?
Forced to shutter Prune, Gabrielle Hamilton has been revisiting her original dreams for it — and wondering if there will still be a place for it in the New York of the future.
Is Hollywood Doing Enough To Fight The Climate Crisis?
Amid the gathering storms, there is growing criticism that mainstream TV news organizations and storytellers in Hollywood haven’t done enough to raise public awareness of the need for action.
I Tried AirBnb’s Zaniest Online Experiences
Could the company’s latest play to own the experience economy transport me virtually around the world? I made sangria with drag queens in Portugal, meditated with sleepy sheep in Scotland, and visited stray dogs in Ukraine to find out just how far Zoom-powered travel could take me.
The Race To Understand Antarctica’s Most Terrifying Glacier
Thwaites Glacier has long been the subject of dark speculation. If this mysterious glacier were to break down into icebergs and eventually collapse into the ocean—it might be more than a scientific curiosity. It might be the kind of event that changes the course of civilization.
The Gambler Who Cracked The Horse-Racing Code
Bill Benter did the impossible: He wrote an algorithm that couldn’t lose at the track. Close to a billion dollars later, he tells his story for the first time. “I find the real business world to be a lot more difficult than horse racing.”
The Heart Of Today’s Billion-Dollar Sneaker-Collecting Boom Is 35 Years Old
Nowadays, sneakers aren’t just for wearing. They’re an asset class, on display at museums, and fueling an increasingly profitable resale market. Much of that traces back to Nike putting a superstar rookie’s name on a new pair of kicks in 1985.
‘It Was One Problem After Another’: How Woodstock 50 Fell Apart
Woodstock 50 had nearly every resource a festival could ask for: a storied brand name, financial backing from a multinational communications company, and agents eager to sign up their artists for sizable paychecks. But it turned into a slow-moving train wreck. Where did it all go wrong?
The Invention Of Money
When the Venetian merchant Marco Polo got to China, he saw many wonders. One of the things that astonished him most, however, was a new invention, implemented by Kublai Khan, a grandson of the great conqueror Genghis. It was paper money, introduced by Kublai in 1260.
Coming Out Of The Shadows: What It Means To Be French And Chinese
France is home to large Vietnamese and Cambodian communities who arrived in the country in great numbers following the wars in the former French colonies in the 1970s. People of Chinese descent have long faced prejudice and violence in France. But today a new generation is staking out its rightful place in society.
The Berwyn Incident
They made an improbable duo of UFO hunters— a plump Miss Marple and a gun-toting gamekeeper. The true story of their long-odds mission to solve the “Roswell of Wales” in Llandrillo, a small village built around a broad stream at the base of the Berwyn Mountains in North Wales.
Inside X, Google’s Top-Secret Moonshot Factory
Within Alphabet, Google’s parent company, it is grouped alongside Deepmind in “Other Bets”, although in that metaphor, X is more like the gambler. Its stated aim is to pursue what it calls “moonshots” – to try to solve humanity’s great problems by inventing radical new technologies.
I Was a Warehouse Wage Slave
My brief, backbreaking, rage-inducing, low-paying, dildo-packing time inside the online-shipping machine, under conditions that were surprisingly demoralizing and dehumanizing, even to someone who’s spent a lot of time working in warehouses, which I have.
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?
Meet The Americans Who Moved To Europe And Went Awol On Their Student Loans
The amount of money adults in the US owe due to educations is over $1.3 trillion and jumps up by more than $2,000 every second. The average borrower owes $28,000. Some cash-strapped former students are choosing to leave America behind in order to avoid paying off their giant debts.
The Class Of 2000 ‘Could Have Been Anything’
The Minford High School Class of 2000, in rural Minford, Ohio, began its freshman year as a typical class. Over the next decade, Scioto County would become ground zero in the state’s fight against opioids. It would lead Ohio with its rates of fatal drug overdoses, drug-related incarcerations and babies born with neonatal abstinence syndrome.
Blood And Soil In Narendra Modi’s India
The Prime Minister’s Hindu-nationalist government has cast two hundred million Muslims as internal enemies. The lack of journalistic scrutiny has given Modi immense freedom to control the narrative. Nowhere was this more apparent than in the months leading up to his reëlection.
There’s A Better Way To Get Smarter Than Brain-Training Games
Most of the rapid cognitive enhancers currently being peddled are not very effective. Brain-training games like Lumosity and Posit Science (Brain HQ) won’t boost your IQ, but a host of strategies can improve your cognitive abilities one piece at a time.
The Hijacking of the Brillante Virtuoso
A mysterious assault.An unsolved murder. And a ship that hasn’t given up all its secrets. This is the story of the hijacking of the Brilliante Virtuoso in the Gulf of Aden in July 2011.
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.