“Well, you’re just special. You’re American,” remarked my colleague, smirking from across the coffee table. My other Finnish coworkers, from the school in Helsinki where I teach, nodded in agreement. They had just finished critiquing one of my habits, and they could see that I was on the defensive.…

[ Announcer voice. ] Get ready to ruuuuumble! Seeing Stephen Colbert and John Oliver bitch about politics together is already a sight for sore eyes, but if we were to ignore a certain orange man at the moment and instead focus on pre-21st-century presidents, would the smack talk still be as good?…

We’re on the cusp of the fastest, deepest, most consequential disruption in transport history Image credit: Snohetta Pssstt… prefer listening to reading? You can get this article in podcast form , courtesy of good folks at The Frontier, right here. An overlapping confluence of three different…

Spotify headquarters in Stockholm. The company, finding a demand for “mood” music, has worked with artists to produce it under pseudonyms. Jonathan Nackstrand/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images A year ago, Apple stirred controversy by striking special deals with some of pop music’s biggest stars.…

From busy rooflines to plastic shutters, mismatched windows to four-car garages, the McMansion has dominated the American suburban residential landscape for almost 40 years without a notable change in aesthetics. Many people know a McMansion when they see one. The typical McMansion follows a…

Fleabag is an original. She’s at once a mischief-maker and a figure of pathos. Illustration by Jeff Östberg “We’re going to die here. We’re going to be raped and die,” Fleabag’s sister says as the two women enter an unfamiliar house in an isolated area. “Every cloud—” Fleabag shoots back. That punch…

Sam Edwards / Getty Some of the greatest moments in human history were fueled by emotional intelligence. When Martin Luther King, Jr. presented his dream, he chose language that would stir the hearts of his audience. “Instead of honoring this sacred obligation” to liberty, King thundered , “America…

The Salk Institute near San Diego is considered one of Louis Kahn's masterpieces. Lenny Ignelzi/AP Amanda Kolson Hurley Jul 14, 2017 In her new book, Sarah Williams Goldhagen presents scientific evidence for why some buildings delight us and others—too many of them—disappoint. Sarah Williams…

CALEDONIA, Mo.—Jeanne Wilson Johnson raises sheep and angora goats, and to sell the wool and mohair online she drives 4 miles to the parking lot of Roy’s gas station, the closest spot for decent internet access. Quotes in the article AT&T Inc T ▼ 36.21 -0.62 -1.68% AdChoices At her 420-acre farm,…

Lil Peep at Webster Hall in New York in April. Credit Chad Batka for The New York Times SEATTLE — One night this spring, the rapper Lil Pump, 16, with braces on his teeth, was asleep — or something like it — on the couch in the upstairs green room at the Columbia City Theater here, his blond and…

Is it wickedness?Is it weakness? This couplet, which opens DAMN. , the latest album from Kendrick Lamar , cuts right to the quick of the powerful anxiety that is so prevalent in all of his work: Am I strong enough spiritually? Physically? Is what I am doing right? Good? These are universal concerns,…

“ The Wire ” creator David Simon caused an uproar among followers of his work — a little Baltimore crime drama that’s one of the greatest television shows of all time — when he revealed in an interview with the yesterday the exasperation he feels with the fandom that’s built up around the show. To…

A couple weeks ago I turned 30. Leading up to my birthday I wrote a post on what I learned in my 20s . But I did something else. I sent an email out to my subscribers ( subscribe here ) and asked readers age 37 and older what advice they would give their 30-year-old selves. The idea was that I would…

(Getty Images/Ringer illustration) Robert Armola really didn’t want to be at this town hall. Hundreds of people had packed into the Mesa Convention Center on April 13 to hurl rapid-fire questions and comments at Jeff Flake, the junior U.S. senator from Arizona, who was returning to his constituents…

Take a step to fight the impostor syndrome. Credit: Amy Cuddy photo by Kris Krug By Christine Bailey Last year, I was smacked by a major life change: the job and team I loved became redundant. I lost my salary and stability. Was I devastated? Did I panic? Quite the opposite. I said to myself, “This…

Let’s be reductionist for a moment and simply state that “ The Wire ” was a television series that aired on HBO from June 2, 2002, to March 9, 2008. Chances are, if you’re on this site, reading this piece, you already knew that. Chances are, in fact, that you know the show as “The Greatest TV Series…

Billionaire Michael Bloomberg says he is ready to help foot the bill for the Paris Climate Agreement after President Trump announced his decision to pull the Unites States out of it. Bloomberg Philanthropies said Friday it will pull together $15 million to "support the operations" of the United…

“Let others wallow in Watergate, we are going to do our job,” said Richard Nixon with typical unearned self-righteousness in July 1973. By then, more than a year had passed since a slapstick posse of five had been caught in a bungled burglary at the Democratic National Committee headquarters in the…

I’m normally leery of the pervasive threat inflation that tends to dominate discussions of foreign policy. Because the United States is so strong and in such a favorable geopolitical location, pundits and policymakers have to pretend the sky is falling to justify bigger military budgets and convince…

Sexual indiscretions, regrettable financial missteps, or just severe lapses in judgement—we all have at least one gnarly secret buried deep down in the depths of our souls, things we'd die of embarrassment if our loved ones found out. We asked our friends and co-workers to sum up their darkest, most…

What do you do when your political brand is based on old-school competence, but you literally can't keep the trains running on time? For New York governor Andrew Cuomo, presiding over a subway system that's become a total nightmare, the answer seems to be: Hope your constituents think it's someone…

A few months ago my boyfriend and I poured ourselves two beers and opened our laptops. It was time to review the terms of our relationship contract. Did we want to make changes? As Mark and I went through each category, we agreed to two minor swaps: my Tuesday dog walk for his Saturday one, and…

When the stranger yelled at me from his car window, I was carrying my Zamioculcas zamiifolia, a large tropical plant I had just bought at a greenhouse. I couldn’t hear what he said, but I don’t think he was complimenting my plant. His words, whatever they were, brought to mind all of the derogatory…

The Multnomah County Republican Party voted this week to use far-right milita groups as private security at events. The resolution is the brainchild of party chairman James Buchal, who last month suggested to The Guardian that the GOP could use Oath Keepers and Three Percenters, two paramilitary…

Image: Encyclopedia Grid (Acropolis) , 2014, by Sara Cwynar . Courtesy Foxy Production , New York. 1. The canonical, stereotypical memory object is Proust’s madeleine, a small, buttery, shell-shaped cake that when dipped in hot tea becomes the catalyst for the densely wrought memories that make up…

A view of Big Ben and the Houses of Parliament from a black cab in London. Credit Andrew Testa for The New York Times By LONDON — Shortly before 6 a.m., Zahra Bakkali tiptoed out of her bedroom for morning prayers. She prepared breakfast (black tea and toast with olive oil), saw her children off to…

A few weeks ago on a balmy day in rural Pennsylvania, I passed up the chance to bring home a piece of Nazi Germany. “Now this one is really special,” the seller told me, picking up a red armband with a black swastika from a case holding other armbands with slightly different swastikas. “It’s from…

FCC chairman Ajit Pai is fond of saying that “the internet was not broken in 2015” when he argues for repeal of our nation’s net neutrality rules. This is particularly funny to me, because in 2014 I literally wrote an article called “ The internet is fucked .” Why was it fucked? Because the free and…

Jerome Graham was awakened by the sun coming up over the horizon of the Atlantic Ocean. He was underneath the Atlantic City boardwalk, sleeping in the sand. The night before he had lost all of his money playing seven-card stud in the Taj Mahal, felted well past the hour of the last bus back upstate…

Until 4:44 , Jay-Z’s albums could be understood as an indictment of the immorality of capitalism by a man luxuriating in its fruits. Jay-Z argued that there was something revolutionary in this, in a black man born in the projects proving himself a better entrepreneur than white men born into plenty,…

This story reflects the views of the authors, but not necessarily the editorial position of Fast Company. In February, college sophomore Trevor Hill stood up during a televised town hall meeting in New York and posed a simple question to Nancy Pelosi , the leader of the Democrats in the House of…

George, Schneider and Newton didn't feel comfortable talking about their treatment until years — decades — later. Most actors probably prefer not to speak up because doing so might mean losing jobs. Since the 1970s, filmmakers have justified portrayals of rape as honest and necessary, as dialogue…

Dive into the real time production and post-production workflow of this tightly synced film. Top image via Paul Machliss / Avid. Editor Paul Machliss, ACE has cut some of the most ambitious film and television projects. Most recently, he cut the hit musical thriller Image via TJ Maher. My brother…

Troy McClure in Stop the Planet of the Apes, I Want to Get Off! Photo: FOX In a show as jam-packed with memorable moments as The Simpsons , it’s hard to say with any certainty where any one bit ranks. What I do know is when you mention anything about Planet of the Apes to a fan of the show, their…

"We need to go win a million dollars." Lester Mackey was just a senior computer science major at Princeton when a friend burst into his dorm room in a hysterical fit of excitement. "We need to do this." In October 2006, Netflix, then a service peddling discs of every movie and TV show under the sun,…

The countdown for SoundCloud’s final days has begun: 50, 49, 48, 47, 46… Earlier this year, SoundCloud’s co-founder and CEO Alexander Ljung shocked investors and employees with a jaw-dropping statement. He told investors, “SoundCloud may run out of cash earlier than December 31, 2017… These matters…

Photo: Saner Gulsoken/Getty Images/iStockphoto SoundCloud — the popular music-and-podcasts service that is the closest thing on the internet to a YouTube for audio — appears to be in dire straits. Yesterday, TechCrunch reported that in an all-hands meeting this month, concerning layoffs that…

I noticed that she started wearing a T-shirt between the shower and the bedroom. That’s how these things begin. You build up a small barrier between people, and the tiny intimacies of living together fall away. You close the door when you use the restroom. You roll over and fall asleep before the…

We discuss the idea behind Blomkamp’s new studio and why the filmmaker is always striving to create new worlds. It’s tempting to describe Zygote as the short film where Dakota Fanning gets chased by hands. That was my gut reaction to Neill Blomkamp ’s latest Oats Studio short film, which borrows a…

ES News Email A row has erupted after Samsung snubbed London for a new European headquarters because Britain's capital is "not a fun place to live unless you are really rich". Samsung Next, a $150 million technology fund owned by the South Korean company, said Berlin had been chosen instead due to…