Tag Archives: truth-seekers

T witter lead client partner Alex Martinez had already gone on a handful of dates with Bobby Harr when, over drinks at a cute French restaurant on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, Martinez found himself venting about Elon Musk’s acquisition of the social media platform. Musk’s attitude toward disinformation …

O n Feb. 2, 2022, a line of cars halted outside Naval Special Warfare Command as a group of weary trainees carried a boat on their collective heads across the road. The command, a cluster of cinder-block buildings on the island of Coronado, California, outside San Diego, is the headquarters …

W HEN, NOT IF, ROBOTS DESTROY humanity in the next few decades, they won’t resemble the Terminator, says Eliezer Yudkowsky, the leading pioneer of artificial intelligence who now believes we’re doomed. Yudkowsky is 43, balding, and with a dark beard and glasses. Over Zoom in Seattle, he wears a loose-fitting, …

O n the morning of July 27, 1973, two Brooklyn teenagers set out for central New York to attend one of the biggest concerts in rock history. They were never seen again. Or were they? Fifty years ago last week marked the disappearance of 16-year-old Mitchel Weiser and 15-year-old Bonnie …

I T’S PUSHING MIDNIGHT when my armored escort pulls up to a high-walled compound on the outskirts of Ankara, the Turkish capital. After more than a year and a half of waiting, Abdul Rashid Dostum, Afghanistan’s most notorious and elusive warlord, has summoned me for an interview, his first since …

N ov. 27, 2007, was a hot and humid Tuesday in Manila, Philippines, and David Bunevacz was getting the shit kicked out of him. He had been invited to the home of one of his partners in a recent cosmetic surgery venture, the Beverly Hills 6750 clinic in Makati City, …

O n a narrow hillside road crowded with stucco apartment buildings in the Jenin refugee camp, 22-year-old “Abu Nidal” sits in an open storefront decorated with posters of fallen fighters, clutching his M16. Voices and static blare from the radio stuck to his green tactical vest. Flanked by young men …

I n late March 2020, Haywood Talcove, a CEO at LexisNexis Risk Solutions, was packing up his office, having sent his employees home. He was worrying about laying off his staff, his family’s health, and how he was going to manage two young kids at home during the pandemic. But …

H ow many ways can a man kill himself before the devil finally says, “Well done?” For Rooster, the answer is unknowable: His seven serious bids didn’t take. There was the time he hanged himself from a tree by the river and swung there, counting heartbeats, till he died. (An …

U pstate New York has been the birthplace of many Great Awakenings. In the 1820s, religious fervor so swept the region it became known as “the burned-over district.” In the 1960s, Timothy Leary’s commune in Millbrook became ground control for the East Coast psychedelic movement. “By the time we got …