We learned this week that Iranian authorities are keeping a close eye on the First Daughter of the Kardashian family, Megyn Kelly wasn’t that mad at Donald Trump after all and Robin Wright will not tolerate the Hollywood gender wage gap any longer. Here are the zeroes and the heroes you need to know about.  GOOD: Robin Wright strong-arms for equal pay Just call her Robin “Bitch Better Have My Money” Wright from now on. While talking to the Rockefellar Foundation on Tuesday, Wright explained that when she learned she was making millions of dollars less than her co-star, Kevin Spacey, for the same amount of screen time in the show…

Due to the overcrowding of state-run prisons in the 1990s, the U.S. federal government began to rely on private, for-profit prisons to accommodate the overflow, which reached a population peak in 2013. That system will come to an end over the next five years as contracts with 13 privately owned prisons expire, the U.S. Justice Department announced on Thursday. Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates justified the decision to break ties with private prisons, saying in a statement, “They simply do not provide the same level of correctional services, programs, and resources; they do not save substantially on costs; and… they do not maintain the same level of safety and security.” According to…

We’re about two months away from electing the 45th President of the United States. It’s a big honor, and it comes with plenty of responsibility. After all, there are bills to sign, speeches to give, meetings to attend, and plenty of international relations to keep strong. So how in the world would a president have time for athletics? Many presidents excelled at sports during their high school and college days, but the seven in this list kept up the athleticism all the way through their presidency. ​7. Barack Obama (2009- ) Obama is probably the best baller the White House has ever seen. The lefty participated in a 3-on-3 tournament…

Instagram has become the most widely-used photo-sharing platform to date. The app enables users to share photo memories from around the world, tag locations and people, caption the photo with choice words and edit it to the user’s liking. One downfall of the multi-featured app, however, is its tendency to whitewash people of color. Exhausted by the lack of filters flattering to their natural skin tones, a team of designers and engineers from Vox Media took matters into their own hands and developed Tonr, a photo editing application designed for nonwhite skin tones. According to the website, “The goal of Tonr is to create filters that affirm that black, brown and other…

This story is part of an ongoing campaign called the Alphabet of Illiteracy. By using letters themselves—the foundation of reading and writing—Project Literacy examines the ways illiteracy underpins some of the greatest challenges facing the world today. Below, we explore the letter V for “Voicelessness.” It was the end of Heartbeat’s first nine-month pilot. The program, which brings together ensembles of Palestinian and Israeli musicians aged 14-22 for weekly music-based dialogue programs, had just put on a performance in which Israeli and Palestinian youth performed their original compositions for 300 people at the Jerusalem YMCA. “The New York Times showed up to cover the event,” says Aaron Shneyer, founder and executive director, 32. “There were 300 people celebrating nine…

Some women dream about their wedding days their entire lives, from the time they are young girls to the moment the big day finally arrives. For Pittsburgh native Jeni Stepien, anticipation of her wedding day has been building not just since she was a little girl, but even more so over the past 10 years. When Jeni’s father, Michael Stepien, was murdered in 2006, her dream of having her father walk her down the aisle would sadly no longer be fulfilled. On Saturday, however, Jeni had the surreal experience of walking down the aisle with the man who now lives with her father’s healthy heart. An organ donor, Michael Stepien’s heart…

When the U.S. finally issued its dietary recommendations last year, the product of heavy crossfire and gnashing of teeth, one particular element stoked much anger. Despite overwhelming evidence that it would be better for people and the planet—not to mention direct pressure from doctors, NGOs and 150,000 citizens—there was no suggestion that Americans should eat less meat. For a more thoughtful approach to dietary improvement, we must look to China.  The Ministry of Health of the People’s Republic of China just announced their own updated dietary guidelines; front and center, they suggest people should reduce their red meat intake by half. If these reductions were implemented, it could lower global CO2 emissions…

It’s a shame that in our culturally limited idea of masculinity we tend to view men who wear makeup, nail polish, and other traditionally female beauty products as unusual. But there is one benefit to this persistent stereotype: Men who do paint their nails in vibrant colors have a way of standing apart from the crowd. That was exactly Elliot Costello’s intention when he founded the Polished Man project. In an effort to raise awareness about the one in five children around the world who experience physical and/or sexual violence before the age of 18, the Polished Man asks men to paint one fingernail for the month of October. Now…

Last week, The Atlantic ran a piece titled, “How Harambe Became the Perfect Meme.” The subtitle read: “The slain gorilla signifies nothing — except maybe our increasingly weird post-everything world.” But it doesn’t take much reflection to realize that what the gorilla and the jokes surrounding his death signify is much pernicious. Nowhere in The Atlantic article is race even invoked to explain the meme’s staying power. Living on the internet as a black person can be difficult—to put things mildly. Online, as in the real world, whiteness is seen as the default. And anything or anyone on the “wrong” side of that description can find themselves marginalized and othered, or worse, threatened…

Beloved boxing legend Muhammad Ali has died at the age of 74. Though he’s best known for his champion fighting skills inside the ring, he was also a proud Muslim, fierce advocate for civil rights, railed against the Vietnam War, and knew how to dole out some powerhouse life advice. Here are just a few of his strong words to live by:  1. “The man who views the world at 50 the same as he did at 20 has wasted 30 years of his life.”  2.  “Service to others is the rent you pay for your room here on earth.” 3. “It isn’t the mountains ahead to climb that wear you out; it’s the pebble in…