On Sept. 15, if all goes according to plan, Jared Isaacman—the billionaire CEO of Shift4 Payments—and three other private citizens will strap into a SpaceX Crew Dragon spacecraft—all four seats paid for by Isaacman—and blast off for orbit on the mission dubbed Inspiration4. Three days later they will return to Earth. Unlike most of the rest of us, they will have spent time off of the planet.

Last week more than 200 Afghan interpreters who worked with the U.S. military landed in Virginia, recipients of a special visa for those who served alongside U.S. forces. Interpreters who risked their lives serving as the eyes and voice of U.S. troops are receiving at last the administrative okay to come to America with their families to escape the Taliban.

What is not yet clear is how the story ends for the hundreds of Afghan women who supported the U.S.

During the 4x400 relay at the Tokyo Olympic Stadium on Saturday night, Sydney McLaughlin, who set a world record in the 400-m hurdles earlier this week, took the lead in the first lap. She handed the baton to Allyson Felix, who won 400-m bronze the previous night to become the most decorated female track-and-field athlete in history.

With the future of communal cinema feeling so perilous, many of us who love the movies might be feeling it’s time to go big or go home. Give me a spectacle or give me nothing; don’t just tease me, jolt me. It’s possible to be both exhausted and hungry for experience, almost any experience. Most of us don’t know what we want right now—so we feel our way along, hoping that we’ll know it when we see it, or bump into it.

It was no thing of overwhelming beauty, the Team USA men's Olympic basketball team’s 87-82 win over France in the gold medal game on Saturday in Saitama, north of Tokyo. This was no Dream Team or Redeem Team or any other collection of superstars who will be wistfully remembered in books or documentaries three decades from now.

They didn’t have to be. At an Olympics that at times have felt like more of an obligation than a celebration, the U.S.

This summer, tens of thousands of vacationers are making their way to Maine. Resorts, camps, and local airports have posted record numbers, and the state’s typically biggest tourism month, August, has only just begun. Those of us living here see it bursting at the seams.

The number of people living in flood-prone areas is growing faster than in other places, and at a much faster rate than scientists had previously expected, a study published Aug. 4 in the journal Nature finds. It’s a worrying sign that human settlements are not prepared for increased flood risks in the climate crisis.

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The whole sexiness of cryptocurrency has been its potential to disrupt the status quo, to revolutionize Wall Street and create a new democratic ethos in a global economic system has largely been dictated by the U.S. dollar since the end of World War II.

Summer is in full effect, which means barbecues, bashes, and begging for an end to the global pandemic. But as 2021's hot girl summer rages and the temperatures soar, that doesn’t mean you have to deal with gross, musty cans when you want to enjoy some music solo outside (or inside).

Whether working out in the heat, sweating up a storm on a hike or just walking around by yourself on a warm day, you need a pair of headphones that won’t give up after a few sweltering sessions.

For much of my early life America meant progress, the bright shining farming future.

I was a kid on an old-fashioned farm in the North of England, and we were way off the pace of change. We had tractors and small machinery, of course, but horse tack still hung from the beams in the barn, gathering dust, and all of my grandfather’s stories were about working horses. Ours was a mixed farm of different animals and crops, the kind of farm that existed everywhere until a few decades ago.