Apple Is Coming for Your Wrist, Your Car, Your House

Can the World’s Biggest Company Be Hip and Ubiquitous at the Same Time?

Verlyn started it, as far as I am concerned. Sometime in 2000, my colleague started bringing his Mac laptop to our New York Times editorial board meetings. The rest of us would hover around the sleek white machine with the cool lighting radiating from it, wondering if Verlyn Klinkenborg could possibly be serious. Some of us had used Apples in college, sure, but everyone does crazy things in college.

Was an Apple really fit for a workplace? Verlyn assured us that it was no toy, and that his Mac could do …

by Andrés Martinez | February 9, 2015

Will Globalization Kill Free Speech?

The First Amendment May Require New Limits in a More Interconnected World

by Andrés Martinez | January 26, 2015

U.S. Supreme Court justices are not supposed to say anything interesting outside of the Court, but in 2010 Justice Stephen Breyer was asked in a rare TV appearance if he …

Did Obama Just Reset the Entire Western Hemisphere?

For Five Decades, the U.S. Has Obsessed Over a Small Caribbean Island at the Expense of Its Policy Toward All of Latin America

by Andrés Martinez | December 22, 2014

I was absorbed in a project Wednesday morning when out of the corner of my eye I started seeing references to big news out of Cuba in various incoming email …

Did Mexico’s Decency Die With Chespirito?

The Loss of a TV Legend Whose Characters Were Defined by Their Kindness Coincides with a National Crisis of Morality

by Andrés Martinez | December 15, 2014

Latin America’s “little Shakespeare,” or “Chespirito,” the most famous TV personality ever in the Spanish language world, died late last month. The only dispute surrounding his towering legacy is over …

Stop Whining, Be Happy

By Every Possible Measure, This Is the Best Time to Be Alive in Human History

by Andrés Martinez | December 1, 2014

In her classic reinterpretation of Western history, The Legacy of Conquest, Patricia Nelson Limerick writes of an entrepreneurial young man in St. Louis eager to get in on the 1849 …

No, You Don’t Have to Sign Up for Mandarin Lessons Just Yet

Even While China’s Economic Power Grows, English Will Remain the Global Go-To Language

November 17, 2014

A Russian, a Korean, and a Mexican walk into a bar. How do they communicate?

In English, if at all, even though it’s not anyone’s native language. You can swap …

Trade Winds