Here’s something to celebrate: At last night’s Tony Awards, all four musical performance trophies—Featured Actor, Featured Actress, Lead Actor, and Lead Actress in a Musical—were handed out to black actors and actresses. For context, fourteen Oscars have been given to black performers in the entire history of the Academy Awards, which just had its 88th ceremony in February. Just marinate in that for a while. Television is getting its act together little by little and increasing the amount of programming centered around women, people of color and LGBT characters and Broadway is currently stacked with buzzworthy productions showcasing diverse casts, like The Color Purple, Hamilton and Eclipsed. Meanwhile, Oscar-winning screenwriter…

In an attention-grabbing piece of social media hoopla, England’s favorite rogue Prince Harry aired his HIV test live on Facebook for all the world to see on Thursday. The goal was to promote awareness, both of the importance of getting tested and how to show just how easy it is. It was a bold move for the royal family’s first-ever Facebook Live video, following in the footsteps of Harry’s mother Princess Diana, and her fervent activism on behalf of HIV awareness. The prince admits to being nervous at first, then visibly loosens up as the test proceeds. The entire video—and the procedure itself—lasts a grand total of five minutes. Prince Harry receives a…

He’s the candidate for their party’s nomination who wasn’t just publicly lectured by the head of the FBI. But House Democrats booed Bernie Sanders anyway, in a gnarly meeting where Members lost patience with Sanders’ refusal to formally get aboard the Clinton train. “The goal isn’t to win elections, the goal is to transform America,” Sanders told the room full of people who believe they have no power to transform America unless they win elections. Although that line set off the Dems, lingering unease over Hillary Clinton’s candidacy has haunted insiders and operators as well as the pro-Sanders grassroots. If she wins, Clinton will likely head into office with historically…

Nadia Murad, a 23-year-old former ISIS captive, won the Vaclav Havel Human Rights award on Monday for her efforts to protect the Yazidi people in Iraq. Murad was captured by ISIS from her village of Kocho, near the northern Iraqi town of Sinjar, in August 2014. She was forced to convert to Islam after being taken hostage in Mosul. She was tortured and raped by members of ISIS until she escaped three months later.  The Yazidis are part of an ancient religious faith that is linked to other major monotheistic faiths, yet are considered ethnically Kurdish. There are about 650,000 Yazidis left in Iraq, with smaller populations living in Syria, Turkey, Armenia, and a large…

Most sane people can agree that Taco Tuesdays should be a weekly national holiday for the obvious reason that tacos are amazing. Some fools, however, want to fight that notion and the most notable example of this—besides Hispanic-phobic Donald Trump himself—has been Latinos for Trump founder Marco Gutierrez. Last month he warned Americans that without extreme measures to prevent the spread of Mexican culture (i.e., his own culture), there would be “taco trucks on every corner.” As if that’s a bad thing. Thanks to the United States Hispanic Chamber of Commerce, we’ll be seeing a lot more tacos and a lot more registered voters. In an effort to increase America’s Latino…

Part 10 of 19 See all › Issue 38: 10th Anniversary Issue Next: Explore China’s Future In 5 Subway Stops Tremors erupted in the darkness before dawn, two miles off the Chilean coast, shaking much of the city of Constitución to rubble. It took less than three minutes. The 8.8 magnitude earthquake was the second strongest recorded anywhere in the world in nearly 50 years.  When the quake and ensuing tsunami hit on February 27, 2010, Chile’s undersecretary of housing, Andrés Iacobelli, had only been on the job for a few days. One of his first official phone calls was to a former colleague at Elemental, the Chilean architecture firm…

While you spent your summer soaking up the sun, these Nepalese nuns were bicycling the Himalayas to stop human trafficking of girls in their region. The so-called “Kung Fu nuns” of the Druk Gawa Khilwa nunnery are completing a 4,000-km (2,485 mile) bicycle trek – or “yatra”, which is a kind of pilgrimage – this week, which took them from Nepal’s capital Kathmandu to the northern city of Leh in India. “We wanted to do something to change this attitude that girls are less than boys and that it’s okay to sell them,” 22-year-old nun Jigme Konchok Lhamo told the Thompson Reuters Foundation. After the 2015 earthquake in Nepal, which left many Nepalese destitute, trafficking of…

Other than the odd episode of Frasier, which I use as a televisual narcotic to lull my brain to sleep, I haven’t opened Netflix in months. Why would I? Especially when there’s Hulu, Amazon, HBO Now, and Apple TV. I have them all and I use them all, rotating based on whichever service has the content I actually want to watch. But despite killing video rental as both a concept and business in its halcyon days, Netflix has been so barren between binge-watching sessions of shows like Jessica Jones or Master of None that even the Crane brothers’ soothing banter may not be able to keep me from leaving. It’s looking like I’m not alone. After a disastrous earnings report…

Acclaimed rapper The Game made headlines last week when he joined Snoop Dogg for a peaceful protest march in Los Angeles that was designed to help foster better communications between the black community and the Los Angeles Police Department. But his latest move might be even more historic. The Game’s son, Harlem, decided he wanted to use the recent focus on police misconduct and racial tensions to help bring attention to police officers who are doing a good job in their communities. That’s when he came across Tommy Norman, a white police officer in Arkansas who has won accolades for his work in building relationships with local black youth. Norman…

With any luck, you’ll be spending this long Fourth of July weekend stranded on some beach or soaking up the sun in a hammock, sipping on something fruity. But even if your body’s being lazy, you can occupy your mind with words by some of the smartest, most interesting writers in recent memory. Here are five books that will make fantastic reads for your luxurious days off.       Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s Americanah Even if you don’t recognize her name, you may recognize Adichie’s voice—it appears, quite prominently, on Beyoncé’s 2014 hit, “Flawless”, which samples Adichie’s now-iconic Ted Talk, “We Can All Be Feminists”. And soon, you’ll be able to watch one of her…