In 2010, Sara Hendren began a guerrilla street art campaign. The assistant professor of design teamed with philosophy professor Brian Glenney to change the commonly accepted symbol…

When Dan Scheffey turned 50, he threw himself a party. About 100 people packed into his Manhattan apartment, which occupies the third floor of a brick townhouse in the island’s vibrant…

A few years ago there was a woman in my life—let’s call her Tanya—and we had hooked up one night in Los Angeles. We’d both attended a birthday party, and when things were winding…

In his free time, Sven Laumer serves as a referee for Bavaria’s highest amateur football league. A few years ago, he noticed several footballers had quit Facebook, making it hard…

In the spring of 1964, as fighting escalated in Vietnam, several dozen Americans gathered to play a game. They were some of the most powerful men in Washington: the director of Central…

Ronald Perry can’t seem to get his patients’ teeth white enough. The Massachusetts dentist, who directs the Gavel Center for Restorative Research at Tufts University School of…

You can wear them as high-fashion jewelry, eat them in marshmallow form, and wrap your packages in duct tape branded with their likeness. Their cultural currency is so strong that,…

An hour into my interview about sex and love with Helen Fisher, she said, “You’re getting me to say a whole lot of things I never get to say.” Her tone wasn’t exasperation…

An American man and a French woman meet on a train in Eastern Europe. They live on different continents. But before the sun comes up, they have spent the night together. What happens…

I walk into Starbucks in Achrafieh, Beirut and feel all eyes on me. I tug at my top self-consciously, probably making things worse, and wonder a) do I look like an easy Westerner;…