A School Bus for Shamsia

Even before the men with acid came, the Mirwais Mena School for Girls was surrounded by enemies. It stood on the outskirts of Kandahar, barely 20 miles from the hometown of Mullah Muhammad Omar, the Taliban’s founder.

Published: Aug 17, 2009
Length: 21 minutes (5,329 words)

The Women’s Crusade

In the 19th Century, the paramount moral challenge was slavery. In the 20th century, it was totalitarianism. In this century, it is the brutality inflicted on so many women and girls around the globe: sex trafficking, acid attacks, bride burnings and mass rape.

Published: Aug 17, 2009
Length: 22 minutes (5,711 words)

Can Game Theory Predict When Iran Will Get the Bomb?

Is Iran going to build a bomb?

Published: Aug 12, 2009
Length: 19 minutes (4,842 words)

While My Guitar Gently Beeps

The odd recording session in March was one very small contribution to what Apple Corps — the company still controlled by Paul McCartney, Ringo Starr and the widows of John Lennon and George Harrison — hopes will be the most deeply immersive way ever of experiencing the music and the mythology of the Beatles. The band that upended the cultural landscape of the 1960s is now hitching its legacy to the medium of a new generation: the video game.

Published: Aug 11, 2009
Length: 33 minutes (8,269 words)

Is It Now a Crime to Be Poor?

It’s too bad so many people are falling into poverty at a time when it’s almost illegal to be poor. You won’t be arrested for shopping in a Dollar Store, but if you are truly, deeply, in-the-streets poor, you’re well advised not to engage in any of the biological necessities of life — like sitting, sleeping, lying down or loitering.

Published: Aug 8, 2009
Length: 7 minutes (1,804 words)

What’s a Big City Without a Newspaper?

Now down to a besieged two, Philadelphia is a particularly good place to observe what appears to be big-city journalism’s last stand, when many of America’s metropolitan newspapers must quickly figure out how to become profitable again or face likely extinction.

Published: Aug 6, 2009
Length: 23 minutes (5,824 words)

Karzai in His Labyrinth

Hamid Karzai applauds himself for his big-tent, forgive-and-forget approach. But his opponents are thrashing him for it. “If the goal is to consolidate a group of drug dealers as the government of Afghanistan so that you have relative peace, then what is the vision?”

Published: Aug 4, 2009
Length: 38 minutes (9,667 words)

The Making of an Iran Policy

Some protesters I met on the streets of Tehran pointedly asked me, “Where’s Obama?” Trying to rethink things, it seems. Khamenei’s own shift was cemented in his ferocious sermon a week after the election, when he embraced Ahmadinejad and tried to blame the whole bloody fiasco on “evil” Western agents.

Published: Jul 30, 2009
Length: 22 minutes (5,570 words)

Bright Lights, Big Internet

In their scope, both the Internet and New York are profoundly humbling: young people accustomed to feeling special about their gifts are inevitably jarred, upon arrival, to discover just how many others are trying to do precisely the same, with equal or greater success.

Author: Bill Wasik
Published: Jul 29, 2009
Length: 5 minutes (1,262 words)

In Battle, Hunches Prove to Be Valuable

High-tech gear, while helping to reduce casualties, remains a mere supplement to the most sensitive detection system of all — the human brain. Troops on the ground, using only their senses and experience, are responsible for foiling many I.E.D. attacks, and, like Sergeant Tierney, they often cite a gut feeling or a hunch as their first clue.

Published: Jul 27, 2009
Length: 8 minutes (2,171 words)