Longreads

Lance Armstrong racing in the 2009 Tour of California. Photo: Peter Weber/Shutterstock One week removed from Lance’s I surrender (with caveats) fallout, and cycling miraculously still exists.…

Illustration: Yuko ShimizuWE’RE IN FOR A WILD RIDE, say Oceanus’ 13-person crew, salts old and young, most of them Cape Codders with lifelong careers on the water. Consequently, many of…

Claudia Cox, a nurse visiting Marnie Marshall, who is dying of bone cancer at home. One morning this spring, Claudia Cox, a registered nurse in Jackson, Miss., drove toward the countryside to visit…

DeeDee Trotter was on an airplane in 2006 when she overheard a passenger seated behind her discussing the steroids scandal. Federal investigators in the Balco case, named for a lab that produced…

Uniqlo founder Yanai uses design and technology to improve upon classic American sportswear--and now he wants to sell it back to Americans. | Photo by Kareem Black On a drizzly Wednesday afternoon in…

When killer whales perform a behavior correctly, they are “bridged” (often with a whistle sound, in essence signaling “well done”) and then receive reinforcement in the form of a reward, such as a fish or a playful rubdown. When they don’t perform correctly, the trainer reacts with a three-second neutral response and withholds the reward. This is known as a least-reinforcing scenario, or LRS. Repeated failed attempts—and the corresponding lack of reward—can sometimes lead to a frustrated killer whale. “The question the trainer has to constantly be asking is: Is this animal mildly frustrated but still has the ability to stay with it and work through the problem?” explains Samantha Berg, who worked as a trainer at SeaWorld Orlando’s Shamu Stadium in the early 1990s. “Or have I gone beyond this animal’s limits and it’s time to cut the losses, take a break, and start over?”