If you’re not sure what Odd Things in Odd Places is and why I’m in Iraq by myself, here’s why . __________ PDF: We made a fancy PDF of this post for printing and offline viewing. You can buy it here: Or see a preview here . _______________ On the morning of Saturday, August 2nd, I got in a taxi in…

Part 3: All the Best Cowboys Have Daddy Issues Francis Capra: Kazaam came at a really busy time for my mom and I, and for the family. We were at a transitional period. I had just finished production on this TV series called My Guys with Lorraine Bracco and was working with Rob Reiner on a series…

When Barry Diller, the founder of the media company IAC , comes downstairs for breakfast at the Carlyle in New York, the waiter brings him tea and a single fried egg. The charming 73-year-old billionaire has just spun Match Group out of IAC as a public company, and he is pleased with the result —…

In a market suffused with pricey superhero films, Fogelson is betting on stories on a human scale. But he says, “If you ask, ‘Can we make something great once or twice a year that violates a rational business model?,’ the answer is no!” Photograph by Angie Smith for The New Yorker Adam Fogelson, the…

Right now I just think there’s this fundamental problem where so many people who identify themselves as being part of the broad left define their coalition based on linguistic cues, cultural overlap, and social circles. The job of politics, at its most basic, is finding common cause with people who…

ON JANUARY 12th Istanbul’s Sultanahmet district, an area popular with tourists, was rocked by a blast that killed 10 people and wounded 15, most of them believed to be German visitors. Ahmet Davutoglu, the prime minister, confirmed that the attack was carried out by a suicide bomber from Islamic…

When Jonathan Nichols got a new cellphone in 2012, he didn’t expect to get the number once used by Seattle hip-hop legend Sir Mix-A-Lot. Since then, he’s gotten countless calls and texts asking for Mix. Nichols is at the Dick’s Drive-In mentioned in “Posse on Broadway.” (John Lok/The Seattle Times)…

PUERTO RICO’S creditors have plenty to complain about, but they can’t claim they weren’t warned. Last June Alejandro García Padilla, the governor of America’s Caribbean outpost, announced that its $72 billion public debt was “unpayable”, and that a “unilateral and unplanned non-payment of…

Entertainment Written by Ed Smith Former British Prime Minister John Major once described the country as one of “long shadows on cricket grounds, warm beer, invincible green suburbs and pool fillers.” A Conservative, he'd previously served in Margaret Thatcher's Cabinet as both Foreign Secretary and…

Rap fans tend to get into arguments with other rap fans, and it doesn't take much more than someone declaring their Favorite Rapper. Your favorite rapper is a personal preference, one that requires the most subjective defenses. If you’re rooting for the rookie of the year or a washed-up veteran…

Last month, Cory Jones, a top editor at Playboy, went to see its founder Hugh Hefner at the Playboy Mansion. In a wood-paneled dining room, with Picasso and de Kooning prints on the walls, Mr. Jones nervously presented a radical suggestion: the magazine, a leader of the revolution that helped take…

By Jan 11, 2016 When asked, I will always tell people the best job I've ever had as a writer was working for Playboy magazine in 2008. At the time, I was just starting out as a online media reporter, penning eight posts a day for $12.50 per post, a position I felt lucky to have landed. Like nearly…

There’s a fun game I like to play in a group of trusted friends called “Controversial Opinion.” The rules are simple: Don’t talk about what was shared during Controversial Opinion afterward and you aren’t allowed to “argue” — only to ask questions about why that person feels that way. Opinions can…

Foreign Affairs Anthology Series The Arab Spring at Five Buy for $8.95 Subscribe All anthologies are free when you subscribe Introduction Freedom and Justice in the Modern Middle East Demystifying the Arab Spring Parsing the Differences Between Tunisia, Egypt, and Libya Understanding the Revolutions…

An Unbelievable Story of Rape An 18-year-old said she was attacked at knifepoint. Then she said she made it up. That’s where our story begins. March 12, 2009 Lynnwood, Washington No one came to court with her that day, except her public defender. She was 18 years old, charged with a gross…

In the Miami area, the daily high-water mark has been rising almost an inch a year. Illustration by Jacob Escobedo The city of Miami Beach floods on such a predictable basis that if, out of curiosity or sheer perversity, a person wants to she can plan a visit to coincide with an inundation. Knowing…

Yes, this man could be the Republican presidential nominee. REUTERS/Brian Snyder/Files When people find out I am a political reporter, they usually have only one question for me: "Donald Trump can't really win this thing, can he?" My answer is always the same these days: Absolutely he can. The…

The Republican Party is facing a historic split over its fundamental principles and identity, as its once powerful establishment grapples with an eruption of class tensions, ethnic resentments and mistrust among working-class conservatives who are demanding a presidential nominee who represents…

Camille Cosby. Photo: Bryan Bedder/Getty Images Among the many things that lawyers are tussling over in the various legal cases involving comedian Bill Cosby is the question of whether his wife of 51 years, Camille, will be compelled this week to testify about her knowledge of his criminal and…

Vinyl doctor Oliver Wang examines a celebratory box set and expanded reissues of the band’s seminal debut M ichael Rapport’s 2011 documentary, Beats, Rhymes & Life: The Travels of a Tribe Called Quest , laid bare some of the long-simmering tensions within the group, especially between Q-Tip and…

“I t’s a good idea to keep a clean car and dress well,” the UberX instructional video explains. “Strong smells of any kind can make riders uncomfortable.” No doubt that’s true—which is why I kept putting off my on-the-road research for this piece: I’m a middle-aged drive-through aficionado with…

CALL them the hipsters of European neurosis. Take any of the anxieties that have lately beset Europe’s politics and you find the Dutch got there first. Concerns over fiscal waywardness in the euro zone? They were fuming at German and French profligacy over a decade ago. Asylum and immigration? The…

In Unhitched, longtime couples tell the story of their relationship, from romance to vows to divorce to life afterward. After 25 years of marriage, a divorce brought relief to Susan Steinbrecher and Neal Steinbrecher, who live in Dallas. Having grown up the children of divorced parents, neither…

In Unhitched, longtime couples tell the stories of their relationships, from romance to vows to divorce to life afterward. When Massachusetts legalized same-sex marriage in 2004, a Boston couple, Sara Orozco and Lori Herman, had been together for seven years and were raising twin boys. Swept up in…

Valerie and Clark Tate’s wedding took place in 2000, and although they “unhitched” in 2007, they remain legally married, share a home and are raising their son, Jonah, together. Both have other romantic relationships. With their rabbi, they are preparing for a Jewish divorce in the fall that they…

In Unhitched, longtime couples tell the story of their relationships, from romance to vows to divorce to life afterward. Hope Adair and Joe Weeks, both 30, became involved after graduating from high school. After college together, they married but divorced less than two years later after realizing…

After nearly two decades of marriage, David Grah and Mary Daniel, college sweethearts, divorced and have begun new lives. They agree that they are now better matched to others. Where did they grow up? HE: In an upscale San Francisco Bay Area suburb, the youngest of six children. His father was a…

In Unhitched, longtime couples tell the stories of their relationships, from romance to vows to divorce to life afterward. Alec Cumming met Cynthia Harden in 1987, when she auditioned to play in his rock band. They married in 1991. For 15 years they collaborated musically, and raised a daughter. Not…

Star Wars: The Force Awakens earned another $8 million yesterday, basically dead even with Monday’s $8m gross. This brings its domestic total to $758.2m and puts it within $2.5m of Avatar ‘s all-time domestic grosses record, which means said record will fall sometime today, possibly as early as by…

King-Wei Chu has seen Star Wars: The Force Awakens three times, but he’s particularly looking forward to the fourth. The location is already determined: the Montreal Science Centre. Say what? Yup, the Science Centre is one of a handful of venues selected to show the film on celluloid. At the end of…

An Indonesian monkey that achieved Internet celebrity with a grinning selfie cannot own the photograph’s copyright, a federal judge said this week. People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals had argued in United States District Court in San Francisco that the rights to the photograph, which was…

Mike Reddy Email, ughhhh . There is too much of it, and the wrong kind of it, from the wrong people. When people aren’t hating their inboxes out loud, they are quietly emailing to say that they’re sorry for replying so late, and for all the typos, and for missing your earlier note, and for…

You know when someone “jokes” about something that actually makes you deeply insecure, and you’re forced to laugh it off because it would be awkward to do anything else? Imagine it happening for hours at a nationally televised award show, and that’s basically Ricky Gervais’s method of hosting the…

Photograph by JIM WATSON/AFP/Getty WASHINGTON ( The Borowitz Report )—Republican Presidential candidates ripped President Obama on Tuesday for what they called his stubborn insistence on linking gun violence with guns. In campaign stops across Iowa and New Hampshire, the G.O.P. hopefuls pounded the…

How does an astronomically expensive yet astonishingly successful science-fiction blockbuster by a world-famous director dominate popular culture for months on end, only to disappear without a trace from the public’s minds? That is the strange, half-enviable, half-unenviable fate of James Cameron’s…

F ull disclosure: I am a 36-year-old dude who bores easily, drinks I.P.A.s and wears sports-themed T-shirts, especially ones with faded, nostalgic logos that suggest better times. In my early 20s, I developed a gambling problem that I’ve since learned to spread out over a variety of low-stakes games…

TO outsiders, one of the puzzling aspects of the anti-government militia’s takeover of the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge is its location. Twenty-five million birds a year visit the refuge in the high desert of southeastern Oregon, but few people have heard of it. Yet Malheur is a place of…

Twenty years after the football player's acquittal, John Travolta, Cuba Gooding Jr and the players behind FX's 'American Crime Story' reveal for the first time how their very 2016 rearview examination of the case reveals a whole other reality. Plus: Season 2's topic (Katrina) revealed. This story…

A scientific tool for those lacking a voice, a means of encrypting voices during World War II, and a way to drop the funk, the vocoder has had many exhale its praises, from General Dwight D. Eisenhower to Chromeo . The strange history of this piece of equipments usage for both international…