—Parts of the U.S. are expected to get up to 18 inches of snow today as a powerful blizzard rolls its way up the Northeast, shuttering schools and affecting air travel.—The Turkish foreign ministry has described as “worthless” a call for restraint by EU officials over Turkey’s sp … | Continue reading
“There’s nothing in the world so demoralizing as money,” a character proclaims gloomily in Antigone, but maybe he didn’t know how to use his cash. If we spend it right, research suggests, money can, in fact, buy happiness.According to one oft-repeated rule of thumb, spending on e … | Continue reading
“That’s my blood, not the deer’s,” said Eden Kloetzli, a senior at Washington College, in Maryland, as she gazed at the red liquid staining her palm. She and about a dozen other students were busy slicing and dicing four deer carcasses laid outside the school’s new archaeology la … | Continue reading
Pajtim Statovci, who left Kosovo for Finland with his family as a toddler in the early 1990s, knows how to disorient—and disarm. Who would have guessed that an award for the best first novel written in Finnish would go to a book that features a talking cat, a pet boa constrictor, … | Continue reading
David Sim, history professor, University College LondonA century from now, hardly anyone will cut, roll, and burn tobacco, but demand for it made viable the early American colony of Virginia, supercharged the Atlantic slave trade, and helped reshape the world economy. Cigarettes … | Continue reading
I waited though wanting nothing,then waited longer.As if by that I mightbecome againthe carved and painted lure—Its two iridescent eyes that stay always open,its stippled gold sides, deep-orange back,red threads attached at the gills.I hummed with its three-pronged shineof fish w … | Continue reading
So fixated are we now on the divisions between the two major parties that we forget how often internal divisions within one party or the other shape political outcomes. A rich history could be written of the conflicts that have sundered presidents and congressional leaders of the … | Continue reading
1Ben SalesseWhile architects once considered concrete a building’s underwear—an essential but hidden layer—Tadao Ando’s 1 structures display their concrete with pride. There’s a story (which Ando’s team declined to confirm) that’s used to illustrate how seriously Ando takes the m … | Continue reading
Grace was a heroin addict who had been clean for about six months; I was a 34-year-old therapist in training. When we started psychotherapy, in 2006, Grace had a lot going against her. She was an unemployed single mother who had been in a string of relationships with violent men … | Continue reading
Even in triumph, Kellyanne Conway nursed a grudge. As she reflected on Donald Trump’s November victory, she made clear that she hadn’t forgotten how people treated her back when they thought she was a sure loser. Their attitude wasn’t one of outright rudeness or contempt; it was … | Continue reading
In the 27 years he lived in the Maine woods, Christopher Knight said a single word. Because he never spoke to himself and avoided humanity with the guile of a samurai, he went decades without using his voice. In his hidden forest encampment he laughed silently and he sneezed sile … | Continue reading
It is the early 1930s. A girl in New York City, just tall enough to see over her family’s kitchen table, catches a moment of tacit communication between her parents. The mother pauses in her reading of the newspaper to say to the father: “Zenya, it’s coming again.” Even the young … | Continue reading
Over the past decade, pollsters charted something remarkable: Americans—long known for their piety—were fleeing organized religion in increasing numbers. The vast majority still believed in God. But the share that rejected any religious affiliation was growing fast, rising from 6 … | Continue reading
One weekday morning in 2007, Bethanye Blount came into work early to interview a job applicant. A veteran software engineer then in her 30s, Blount held a senior position at the company that runs Second Life, the online virtual world. Good-natured and self-confident, she typicall … | Continue reading
Many Chinese towns have grown fat off of single industries. Much of the world’s hosiery, for example, comes from the village of Datang, also known as “Sock City.” Songxia is dedicated to umbrellas. Jinjiang is all about zippers.And Shisun, for a time, made a killing off of killin … | Continue reading
Near the end of Shakespeare’s Henry VI, Part 2, Dick the Butcher offers a simple plan to create chaos and help his band of outsiders ascend to the throne: “Let’s kill all the lawyers.” Though far from the Bard’s most beautiful turn of phrase, it is nonetheless one of his most end … | Continue reading
When the ACLU filed a class-action lawsuit against Missouri’s struggling public-defender system on Thursday, Michael Barrett wasn’t surprised.“We've been jumping up and down trying to call attention to this matter for the last two years, telling the state, ‘This is coming, this i … | Continue reading
When Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi gave a news conference during the annual session of the National People’s Congress on March 8, he warned that the United States and North Korea were behaving “like accelerating trains coming toward each other,” and wondered whether the countr … | Continue reading
At the southern end of Hawaii’s Big Island, I’m standing on a cliff and watching the newest part of the world being made. Half a mile away, a torrent of lava bursts through the basalt of the island’s edge and pours into the turquoise Pacific. The spout of liquid rock has been sho … | Continue reading
On Sunday, Iowa Congressman Steve King embarked on what was to be a multi-day revival of the Steve King Xenophobia Road Show, tweeting out support for the far-right anti-Islam Dutch politician Geert Wilders:Wilders understands that culture and demographics are our destiny. We can … | Continue reading
What We’re FollowingThe Dutch Elections: On Wednesday, Mark Rutte, the prime minister of the Netherlands, will lead his center-right party into a narrow contest against far-right populist Geert Wilders for control of the government. Wilders, whose platform centers on effectively … | Continue reading
A new survey reveals that four in 10 U.S. colleges have experienced a decline in international applicants for the Fall 2017 term. The survey of around 250 colleges and universities—which will be released in its entirety later this month—was conducted in February by six higher-edu … | Continue reading
Today in 5 LinesThe Congressional Budget Office projected that the House Republicans’ new health-care plan would result in 24 million Americans losing their health insurance and lower federal deficits by $337 billion over 10 years. Iowa Representative Steve King defended a commen … | Continue reading
“The old order changeth,” Tennyson wrote in 1912, “yielding place to new.”For three-quarters of a century, Americans have been debating whether the state should guarantee health coverage for all. With the passage of the Affordable Care Act, the “yes” side seemed at last to have p … | Continue reading
Much of the focus around the Obamacare repeal debate has focused on what would happen to people who buy insurance on their own, but about half of Americans are insured through their jobs—a situation that has shielded them from many of the concerns around Obamacare and its repeal. … | Continue reading
On the eve of International Women’s Day last Tuesday, State Street Global Advisors, which manages some $2.5 trillion in assets, signaled its solidarity with the day’s demonstrators. The company installed a roughly 50-inch-tall bronze statue of a defiant girl in front of Wall Stre … | Continue reading
The Republicans’ effort to pass their proposed replacement for the Affordable Care Act just got a whole lot harder.The Congressional Budget Office on Monday projected that the House leadership’s American Health Care Act would result in 24 million Americans losing their health ins … | Continue reading
Is true crime, as a genre, really ripe for satire? On the one hand, the recent resurgence of interest in real-life murders thanks to podcasts and documentaries offers plenty of opportunity for comedy gold—think Fred Armisen’s shuffling, mumbling Robert Durst in season two of Unbr … | Continue reading
Every week, a group of young people meet in Taksim Square to perform spoken-word poems. They are led by a woman named Merve Pehlivan, who is profiled in this short film. “As a Turkish person myself, I feel the extent to which we have been divided as a society and we have stopped … | Continue reading
Zak Bickel / The AtlanticHere’s how an Atlantic author answered that question in September 1858:Full of anticipations, full of simple, sweet delights, are these [childhood] years, the most valuable of [a] lifetime. Then wisdom and religion are intuitive. But the child hastens to … | Continue reading
For decades, the window for Hollywood’s big summer movies was tightly defined. The first blockbuster—a popular sequel, perhaps in the Indiana Jones, Beverly Hills Cop, or Rocky franchises—would drop at the end of May, and the big-budget hits would continue apace through to the Fo … | Continue reading
After her mastectomy, Jennifer LaFleur found herself lying on the hardwood floor in her kitchen. The firm surface seemed to loosen up her tense back muscles, which were sore from the maddening stillness her recovery required.LaFleur was first diagnosed with breast cancer in July … | Continue reading
This week Hindus around the world celebrate Holi, the Festival of Colors. Holi is a springtime celebration observed on the last full moon of the lunar month. Revelers traditionally throw bright colored powders at friends and strangers alike as they celebrate the arrival of spring … | Continue reading
Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte is fighting for his political life ahead of this week’s national elections in which 28 parties are vying for seats in the Netherlands’s 150-member lower house of parliament. Rutte’s center-right People’s Party (VVD) for Freedom and Democracy is pro … | Continue reading
Men started making glassware along Pierce Avenue in Lancaster, Ohio, in 1905. That was when Ike Collins and his business partners fired up a small furnace to melt silica and other minerals inside The Hocking Glass Company near the banks of the Hocking River. Locals were soon call … | Continue reading
Steve King has always made a habit of speaking his mind, and quite frequently his mind has been controversial, blatantly false, or outright racist.The Republican congressman from Iowa is the man who said in 2013 that while some children brought to the U.S. illegally were good kid … | Continue reading
In a ruling on Friday, the eight justices of South Korea’s Constitutional Court rejected four of the five impeachment charges against President Park Geun-hye. But they were unanimous on the fifth, which was enough for her to have to go. By giving her best friend Choi Soon-sil acc … | Continue reading
When the Genetic Information Nondiscrimination Act passed in 2008, supporters hailed it as the “first major civil-rights bill of the century.” GINA was unusually forward-looking; it protected against a form of discrimination that was not yet common. Under the law, employers and h … | Continue reading
Scott Pruitt, the new administrator of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, seems like a refined and intelligent man. Speaking in public, he has an easy manner, a winsome smirk, and a pleasant drawl. Even though Senator Susan Collins opposed his nomination to lead the agency … | Continue reading
How many highway lanes could be paved, how many bridges repaired, how many illnesses averted, how many opiate addicts saved from overdoses, how many veterans given better care with the hundreds of millions of dollars that the Trump administration is spending on discretionary mili … | Continue reading
“Go on—eat it.” With these words, the 16-year-old vegetarian protagonist in Julia Ducournau’s Raw is urged to consume meat by her older sister and classmates at her new veterinary school. When Justine (Garance Marillier) refuses, her sister Alexia forces the meat into her mouth a … | Continue reading
When a forest burns, the aftermath is a post-apocalyptic landscape of smoldering black trunks. The forest’s managers, whether they work for the U.S. Forest Service or for private companies, sometimes send in heavy machinery to harvest the dead trees in a process called salvage lo … | Continue reading
—One of the world’s most famous terrorists, Carlos the Jackal, a Venezuelan who planned bombings and assassinations throughout France in the 1970s and 80s, will appear in French court on accusations of a 40-year-old attack at a Parisian shopping center.—The National Weather Servi … | Continue reading
“I remember looking at her and thinking, ‘She’s totally lying.’ At the same time, I remember something in my mind saying, ‘And that doesn’t matter.’” For Daniel Shaw, believing the words of the guru he had spent years devoted to wasn’t blind faith exactly. It was something he cho … | Continue reading
It is a funny feeling to realize you may have unwittingly come into contact with Russian intelligence—but not, these days, a totally uncommon one in Washington.“There I was, standing in the entrance hall,” recalled Trevor Potter, a prominent election lawyer and former chairman of … | Continue reading
Here is a question nobody asked Betsy DeVos at her confirmation hearing to become the eleventh secretary of education: Is the U.S. Department of Education a civil-rights agency? The last secretary, John King, thinks so. Over 600 education scholars who protested the nomination of … | Continue reading
Hannah Helene Horvath—flasher of principals, abuser of Q-tips, stealer of housekeeping cash—is pregnant. Thanks to a brief, blue Curaçao-fueled liaison with a sweet but vacant surfing instructor in a bunkbed in Montauk, Hannah (Lena Dunham) is unexpectedly host to a six-week-old … | Continue reading
In late November 1968, less than a month after Richard Nixon won the presidency, U.S. Attorney Robert Morgenthau made a surprise announcement: He wasn’t leaving his post.John F. Kennedy had chosen Morgenthau to be the chief federal prosecutor for the southern district of New York … | Continue reading