Editor’s Pick

The Extreme Affordability program is an experiment with a dramatically different approach to fighting poverty, one that in recent years has generated tremendous buzz among academics, development workers, entrepreneurs and corporate executives. It’s called “bottom of the pyramid” marketing. The idea is to harness capitalism to solve the problems of the world’s poorest — those […]

Hero. Cheat. Prodigy. Ingrate. Free spirit. Knucklehead. Hall of Famer. Pariah. Enigma. Manny Ramirez, one of the great right-handed hitters of his generation, who retired from baseball this month after once again testing positive for performance-enhancing drugs, was many things to many people — fans and family and teammates from Santo Domingo to Washington Heights […]

The industry is moving fast to adapt to the changing regulatory climate—and watchdogs warn that state lawmakers and regulators may be surprised to see the same payday products under different names. “Pretty much any state that tries to get at the bottom line of payday lenders, we see some attempt at subterfuge,” says Sara Weed, […]

On August 23, 2004, they discovered a cinema 60 feet beneath Paris. The sun was shining on the Trocadéro, the Eiffel Tower gleamed across the Seine, and deep belowground, police came across a sign. The officers were on a training mission, exploring the 4.3 miles of catacombs that twist beneath the 16 th arrondissement. The […]

On the 25th anniversary of “Licensed to Ill,” an oral history of the birth of the Beastie Boys. “Then we were like, ‘Oh, shit, we should get a D.J.! Like rap groups. They have a D.J.!’ Nick Cooper knew about this guy Rick Rubin who went to NYU and would throw parties and had turntables. […]

On Prince William and Kate Middleton’s wedding, and the state of the British monarchy. “Only churls will do anything other than look indulgently on their happiness. But since 1981 we should all have learnt much that eluded Diana and Cinderella. Being a princess is no fairytale; it may not even involve love. It is assumed […]

As the public faces of the psychedelic revolution, Allen Ginsberg and Timothy Leary made a dynamic duo. The charming, boyish, Irish Harvard professor and the ecstatic, boldly gay, Hebraically-bearded Jersey bard became the de facto gurus of the movement they’d helped create — father figures for a generation of lysergic pilgrims who temporarily jettisoned their […]

The predicted dire emergency [with H1N1] did not occur. In the 2009–2010 “influenza season” about 18,000 people died from the disease worldwide, fewer than in previous years, and the vast majority of victims had serious underlying conditions such as cancer, lung disease, AIDS, or severe obesity, which can impair breathing.7 Since one influenza strain usually […]

Vince Thompson doesn’t appear in any accounts of Facebook’s early years. Few of the more than 2,000 employees at the company even know his name. The AOL veteran’s brief stint as Facebook’s first official ad-sales chief lasted less than six months. Even so, when Thompson left the company in early 2006, he exercised his options […]

“Things started out innocuously enough. ‘I’m a huge fan!’ I exclaimed. ‘Right back at you,’ Franzen replied, explaining that he had bought my book as a Christmas present for multiple people, though he hadn’t yet read it himself. ‘But I’ve read parts of it!’ I told him that I had loved Freedom, which is true […]