On a recent visit to Shanghai, I looked up through the canopy of trees in the former French Concession district, and realized the sky was not the customary gray but a bright blue. At a busy intersection near Wukang Mansion, a century-old landmark reminiscent of New York City’s Flatiron Building, the scene was oddly quiet,…
We interact with people every day: A brief nod to a neighbor. A friendly chat in the school pick-up line. A heart-to-heart with a friend. Together, these moments add up to your “social biome,” a term coined by the communication researchers Andy Merolla, of the University of California, Santa Barbara, and Jeffrey Hall, of the…
A little over a year ago, Joseph Coates was told there was only one thing left to decide. Did he want to die at home, or in the hospital? Coates, then 37 and living in Renton, Wash., was barely conscious. For months, he had been battling a rare blood disorder called POEMS syndrome, which had…
On Monday evening in Paris, Karlie Kloss and the fashion designer Rick Owens were reminiscing about their first meeting. It was, Ms. Kloss said, 17 years ago when she was so fresh to modeling that her mom accompanied her to the fitting. What a difference a decade and a half makes. Today Ms. Kloss sits…
To bring to life the nefarious corporation at the center of the dystopian thriller “Severance,” the director of photography Jessica Lee Gagné needed to find the right location for a fictional headquarters. As she scoured the internet for abandoned malls, she stumbled upon a blog with photos of a decaying, hollowed-out midcentury office building called…
