Innholdsfortegnelse for 3/19-4/1/18 i New York Magazine

1 In dozens of interviews, essays, and conversations, New York explored the impossibly urgent question of “How to Raise a Boy” (March 5–18). Daphne C. Watkins of the University of Michigan’s School of Social Work responded: “This feature is a reminder that we need to think critically about the way we are raising our boys. With changing times and passing decades, we have been able to revolutionize the roles of girls and women. But we need to start normalizing the unique ways boys develop, and treat this with the same open-mindedness we apply to girls. Girls can dance along the boundaries of gender norms, but not our boys, and we are long overdue for a change. We now live in a progressive world that eagerly waits for boys who are…

An entire industry realizing there’s a better way to do business isn’t collusion. KENNY WILLIAMS HAD a fruitful six-year Major League Baseball playing career as a journeyman before, at the age of 27, starting as a scout for the Chicago White Sox, the team that had drafted him in 1982. Over the next 25 years, he worked his way up to general manager and constructed a team, the 2005 White Sox, that won the World Series—ending one of the longest curses in baseball, almost as long as the one the Cubs would break in 2016. But to a large number of baseball fans and connoisseurs of literary nonfiction best sellers, not to mention (and this is key) hundreds of people who currently work in baseball front offices, Williams isn’t any…

JUST 20 YEARS AGO, we had not discovered a single planet outside our solar system. Now we know of more than 3,000 of them, and we know nearly every star in the night sky has at least one planet in its orbit. “Even people who are not terribly interested in science know that we’ve found that planets are as common as fire hydrants—they’re everywhere,” says Seth Shostak, the senior astronomer at the SETI Institute. “One in five or one in six might be a planet similar to the Earth.” That doesn’t mean we’ll ever find an exact replica of Earth, but maybe we don’t have to. Our study of other planets and moons in the solar system shows us many worlds possess the ingredients necessary for life—an atmosphere, organic compounds,…

Tim Urban: You created a language you think we might be able to use to communicate with aliens. So what exactly is it that we would want to say to the rest of the universe if we had the chance? Stephen Wolfram: I think the main difficulty is the definitional one. You talk about alien life, you talk about intelligence; what are those things abstractly? We know the specific example that we have historically been exposed to: life on Earth, human intelligence. The question is, when you generalize away from that, what do you get to? One of the things that I’m fond of quoting is the statement “The weather has a mind of its own.” What does this mean? What is the abstract kind of thing that’s like the…

THE ALIENS ARE ALL DEAD Let’s start with the most depressing theory: Maybe we haven’t found extraterrestrials because they’re all dead—at least now. The universe is 13.78 billion years old, and in that amount of time, there might have been plenty of civilizations that evolved and went extinct. THE ALIENS ARE ALL SLEEPING But maybe they’re not dead—just hibernating. Another theory suggests that perhaps there’s an extraterrestrial species out there that’s so advanced it cannot efficiently make use of its technology right now, because the universe’s temperature is currently too high. Good news, though: The universe’s temperature is cooling down (even as Earth’s is heating up). So aliens may have decided to take a snooze for a few trillion years while they wait for colder weather that’s more suited. THE…

MARC MONIER AGE: 16 PLACE OF BIRTH: San Clemente OCCUPATION: Student Last thing you bought: Nike volleyball shoes. Song you know every word to: “Back in Black,” by AC/DC. Shirt by BILLY [found], price upon request at billylosangeles.com . KELSEY Q. W. AGE: 26 PLACE OF BIRTH: San Fernando Valley OCCUPATION: Recipe development and fermentation with chef Jake Westacott of Kinsmoke Dream car: Land Cruiser from the 1980s. Movie you watch on repeat: Thelma & Louise. If you were one color, what would you be? Burnt sienna. Tank by Araks, $110 at araks.com . Jewelry her own. MARLON RABENREITHER AGE: 29 PLACE OF BIRTH: Vienna OCCUPATION: Musician Last thing you bought: Levi’s jean jacket from Wasteland. Celebrity you’d want to be reincarnated as:…

S THE LEAD SINGER of the Strokes, Julian Casablancas A became famous for embodying classic rock-and-roll nonchalance. These days, though, he’s more interested in showing how deeply he’s engaged with both his music—Virtue, the impassioned second album from his other band, the Voidz, is out this month via his own label, Cult Records—and his words. “Can you make complex truth sexy?” asks the 39-year-old, sitting in a conference room in New York’s offices. “It’s a riddle I think about constantly: How do you get people to pay attention to what’s going on in the world and not tune out?” Casablancas rubs his eyes and smiles. “I’ve got a lot of ideas.” As on the first Voidz album, Tyranny, the lyrics on Virtue…

Castle Connolly Medical, Ltd. provides Top Doctors lists for many regional publications throughout the country, including New York magazine’s “Best Doctors” issue. TheBestDocs.com NEUROSURGERY Ezriel E. Kornel, MD Minimally Invasive Brain & Spine Surgery 903 Park Ave., New York, NY 646-751-7295 TopSpineSurgeonNYC.com DERMATOLOGY Michele S. Green, MD Cosmetic and Medical Dermatology 156 East 79th St., New York, NY 212-535-3088 MicheleGreenMD.com SPORTS MEDICINE Jonathan L. Glashow, MD Shoulder, Knee, Arthroscopic Surgery 737 Park Ave., New York, NY 212-794-5096 GlashowMD.com HAND SURGERY Mark E. Pruzansky, MD Hand, Wrist & Elbow Surgery, Sports Injuries 975 Park Ave., New York, NY 212-249-8700 HandSport.us FACIAL PLASTIC SURGERY Dilip D. Madnani, MD 30 Central Park South New York, NY 212-203-8591 DrMadnani.com CosmeticHG.com UROLOGY David B. Samadi, MD Robotic Prostate Surgery 485 Madison Avenue New York, NY…

IN 1952, a CIA group called the Psychological Strategy Board concluded that, when it came to UFOs, the American public was dangerously gullible and prone to “hysterical mass behavior.” The group recommended “debunking” campaigns to tamper the public’s interest in unexplained phenomena. But the government seems to have been interested, too: In December, the Pentagon confirmed the existence of the Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program. Created in 2007 by senators Ted Stevens (who reported being chased by a mysterious object), Daniel Inouye, and then–Majority Leader Harry Reid, and funded with $22 million of “black money” from the Department of Defense’s budget, the program investigated and evaluated reports of UFO sightings, many of which came from American service members. So much of what the program uncovered remains classified, but what little…

Adventures in the “Goldilocks zone.” Scientists now think every one in five or six planets might be habitable, based on two general criteria: They’re rocky, and they reside in a region of the star’s orbit called the “Goldilocks zone,” where it’s not too cold and not too hot, but just right to allow for liquid water to form on the surface. And where there’s water, there can be life. Extraterrestrial researchers and enthusiasts are most excited about these seven: PROXIMA B The closest exoplanet ever discovered is also a potentially habitable world in its own right, if the intense stellar winds don’t make it barren. It’s not totally inconceivable we might be able to actually send a probe and study it directly this century—even travel to it ourselves one day.…

ELON MUSK MUSK IS HELL-BENT on using his $21 billion to colonize Mars. His company SpaceX has been trying desperately to reduce the cost of space travel in the hopes of beginning a million-person colonization of Mars. “If [we’re not in] a simulation, then maybe we’re in a lab and there’s some advanced alien civilization that’s just watching how we develop, out of curiosity, like mold in a petri dish,” says Musk. PAUL ALLEN WHEN CONGRESS cut off funding for NASA’s hunt for aliens in 1993, Allen gave millions to the SETI Institute; in 2009, the Allen Telescope Array started searching the cosmos. Allen has given an additional $30 million to the project, a sum that bought him a guarantee that if the array detects an extraterrestrial communiqué, Allen will…

Katie Heaney: Why, when we think of aliens, do they all look the same—three feet tall, gray or green, big black eyes? Joseph O. Baker: It didn’t used to be that way. UFO narratives became much more popular in the 1950s and ’60s, and during that era, the descriptions of the aliens would be almost humanlike in form. If you see drawings that some of the so-called contactees made, the aliens almost look like Swedish people—very attractive blond types with shining eyes. The abductee narrative really took over pop culture in the 1970s and ’80s, and after that, there’s this homogenization of the public perception because of all the stories and TV and movies about abductions. KH: Even those guys look pretty human—why do we have such a hard time…

THE BEST BET THE GOAL: Find the most coveted flower to display in the dining room this spring. We spoke to florists and growers from around the country who turned us away from candy-colored Ecuadoran roses and tulips and toward European bulbs in moodier shades that have risen in popularity over the past few years alongside the slow-flower and natural-arrangement movements. THE VERDICT: Typically found in botanical gardens or painted by Dutch masters, the Fritillaria persica ($25 per stem at Emily Thompson Flowers, 53 Howard St., at Mercer St.; 212-882-1384) is rare to spot as a stand-alone stem, making it all the more sought-after. It’s on the market for a short stretch every year, arriving from Holland at the very end of February only to disappear by April. Its appeal?…

Despite having cultivated a following with the tortilla de patata and other Iberian-accented fare he served at West Village tearoom Té Company, chef Frederico Ribeiro couldn’t shake the sense that his food didn’t cohere with the Asian-minimalist space or his wife Elena Liao’s Taiwanese tea list. So late last month, he introduced a new menu written in Mandarin and English, offering Taiwan-inspired snacks like spicy peanuts and preserved kumquats. Its centerpiece is a hearty lunchtime bowl of lu rou fan, the rustic pork-sauce-over-rice dish eaten throughout the island. Ribeiro developed his recipe based on meals abroad, the unsparing critiques of his wife and in-laws, extensive research, and a rice-cooking consult with sushi chef Eiji Ichimura, according to whom you need only two things: “Really good water and really good rice.”…

“IDON’T HAVE that feeling anymore. Pulling things off.” “Don’t be ridiculous.” “I’m serious.” This exchange is giving Matthew Rhys and Keri Russell, who play married Russian spies working undercover in the Cold War–era D.C. suburbs on FX’s The Americans—which ends forever in May after six seasons—some trouble. The scene has them removing pieces of the disguises they’re wearing as they speak, which sounds easy enough on the page. (“They begin removing their disguises,” says the script for episode seven out of the final season’s ten.) But it requires Russell, as Elizabeth, to pluck out bobby pins and lift off a wig and Rhys, as Philip, to peel off a mustache and beard that need to stay intact for reuse later, while timing their movements and staying centered, sitting on a…

SO FAR IN HIS ten years of life, Desmond Napoles has cultivated one defining talent, and it’s his ability to work a runway. It’s the thing that inspired his drag name, Desmond Is Amazing. And it’s the reason he’s visiting the Phluid Project, a gender-neutral clothing store near NYU, the week before it opens. The “Ph” in “Phluid,” the owner explains, stands for the balance of masculine and feminine, “where we find perfection and harmony.” So it takes about two minutes for Desmond to notice the platform in the center of the store, built to display mannequins. He heads straight to it, turns to his mom, and says, in a high-pitched squeak, “Look, Mommy, I’m walking the runway!” And takes off. When he’s standing still, Desmond looks like an anthropomorphized…

Eric Benson: I’m curious about just where your interest in this subject comes from. Harry Reid: Bob Bigelow [the founder of Bigelow Aerospace and Budget Suites]. He’s a central figure in all this. When he was a young man, he heard a story from his grandparents about driving down from Mt. Charleston, near Las Vegas, where they saw a so-called flying saucer, for lack of a better description. Bob became a very wealthy man. He would pay for these conferences about UFOs, and he would bring in scientists, academics, and a few nutcases. There were people trying to figure out what all this aerial phenomena was. Bob started sending me tons of stuff. Mainly what interested me is that so many people had seen these strange things in the air.…

PAUL HELLYER Canada’s Defense minister during the Cold War, now 94, believes that at least 80 species of aliens have been visiting Earth for millennia. One group is called the Tall Whites (because they can reach basketball-goal height) or Nordic Blondes (because they look like they’re “from Denmark or somewhere”). Unfortunately, the others may include ecoterrorists: “We’re doing all sorts of things which are not what good stewards of their homes should be doing,” he told media in 2014. “They don’t like that, and they’ve made it very clear.” Hellyer adds that many technological “breakthroughs” were aped from these extraterrestrials. Microchips and fiber optics, for instance, were taken off crashed alien vehicles and reverse-engineered. The aliens have a special technology that would solve climate change as well, he claims, but…

How long have you lived in New York? For about ten years. I grew up in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and really focused my entire childhood on getting out of there and coming here. I remember telling my mom when I was about 10, I was like, “I am leaving. I will first go to a black college and then I am not coming back.” I ended up going to an HBC, Hampton University, and spent a summer interning in New York at MTV while selling CDs on the street. Selling CDs on the street! Yeah, I was leaving MTV one day in Times Square, and I walked by this guy trying to sell me his CD, and I was like, “I don’t have money, but I can sell them for you…

IT’S BEYOND STRANGE that so many humans are clueless about how they should feed themselves. Really, we know how we should eat, but that understanding is continually undermined by hyperbolic headlines, internet echo chambers, and predatory profiteers all too happy to peddle purposefully addictive junk food and nutrition-limiting fad diets. Eating well remains difficult not because it’s complicated but because the choices are hard even when they’re clear.¶ With that in mind, we invited friends, readers, and anyone else we encountered to ask us anything at all about diet and nutrition, and we promised to give an answer grounded in real scientific consensus, with no “healthy-ish” chitchat, nary a mention of “wellness,” and no goal other than to cut through all the noise and help everyone see how simple it…