Adrian Piper’s Show at MoMA is the Largest Ever for a Living Artist. Why Hasn’t She Seen It?
Thomas Chatterton Williams profiles the conceptual artist and philosopher Adrian Piper.
Jonathan Franzen Is Fine With All of It
“Most of the people who have complaints with me aren’t reading me,” says Jonathan Franzen, but he’s a process guy. He doesn’t read anything by his readers. They could write the book on reading him, but he wouldn’t read it and neither would they.
The ‘Sex Cult’ That Preached Empowerment
How did a former television star and a self-help guru convince women to join an organization named Nxivm that’s now being accused of running a “sex-slave cult”? It turns out that “humans are highly programmable.”
The Prisoners Who Care for the Dying and Get Another Chance at Life
How some inmates serving life sentences in prison work 10-15 hours a day, seven days a week so that terminally ill fellow prisoners do not have to die alone.
The Baby-Formula Crime Ring
It’s pricey, it’s portable, its users need it constantly, and retailers love to buy it at a discount. All of which makes it a perfect product to steal.
A Lynching’s Long Shadow
The story of Elwood Higginbothom, a sharecropper and possible labor activist lynched in Oxford, Mississippi in 1935, is told to his descendants for the first time.
How Janelle Monáe Found Her Voice
Jenna Wortham profiles actress/singer/songwriter Janelle Monáe on the eve of the debut of her newest album, “Dirty Computer.” With many sounds vetted by the late Prince, and an accompanying film, the album will the be artist’s first release without the use of her alter ego, the android Cindi Mayweather, and will touch on themes of non-binary gender identity and female sexuality.
Why America’s Black Mothers and Babies Are in a Life-or-Death Crisis
Reporter Linda Villarosa reports on the racial disparities in health care that contribute to black women being three to four times as likely to die from pregnancy-related causes as their white counterparts, and black infants being more than twice as likely to die as white infants. Threaded through the piece is the story of Simone Landrum, who lost a baby girl after doctors dismissed her pain and symptoms of pre-eclampsia, but delivered a healthy son after receiving the help of a doula through that subsequent pregnancy.
What the Arlee Warriors Were Playing For
On February 23, the Arlee Warriors, a Class C high-school basketball team from the Flathead Indian Reservation, announced they were dedicating their tournament to “all the families that have fallen victim to the loss of a loved one due to the pressures of life.”
Dark Zones
Sixty-six year old Bill Ewasko never returned from a hike in Joshua Tree National Park. He’s one of 150,000 lost hiker cases used to create lost-person-behavior algorithms, and he’s the focus of a large grassroots search by amateur investigators. None of this was enough to find Ewasko, but these kinds of searches are enough to save the living.