In detailing his travels across the Pacific islands in 1521, Magellan described the men as “well formed,” and the women as “slender and beautiful.” Five hundred year later, the top seven most obese countries, as well as eight of the top 10, are all Pacific islands. At the top of this list is the Republic of … Read more
Nina Khrushcheva, great granddaughter of the late Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev, writes the following: “Russia is a hypothetical culture. Ruled by despots for most of our history, we are used to living in fiction rather than reality.” But if Russia exists in a fictional world, laced with larger-than-life characters and theatrical plots, what can we … Read more
Many were shocked to wake up on the Wednesday morning after the election to hear that Donald Trump had defied predictions and won the Presidency of the United States. On election day, Nate Silver’s popular website FiveThirtyEight had forecast a 71.4 percent chance of Hillary Clinton winning. Experts and voters alike expected Trump’s more controversial … Read more
Sundays at 7:30 a.m. are usually not a peak hour for the nation’s noisy nightclubs. SoulCycle, which combines indoor cycling and high-energy music into arguably the world’s most notorious fitness brand, is a different story. One dreary October Sunday, nearly 50 riders and I rose with the sun and clocked in at SoulCycle’s Union Street … Read more