Affairs
What Happens If the Lights Don't Come Back On?
America's grid depends on thousands of aging, hand-built transformers. A single replacement takes five years to make — and the waiting list is getting longer.
Senior Correspondent
Mara Whitfield
Mara Whitfield reports on power — electrical and political. Her work on infrastructure and security has taken her to forty countries and several substations.
Affairs
Taiwan's Civilians Are Training for a War They Hope Never Comes
In church halls and school gyms, volunteers practise triage, blackout drills, and rumor control. The island's quiet bet: resilience itself is deterrence.
Culture
Everyone Loves Bourdain. Almost Everyone Misreads Him.
The devotion is cultish; the message got lost in translation. He wasn't telling you to eat adventurously. He was telling you to pay attention.
Lifestyle
The New Face of Normal
Procedures once whispered about are now itemised on social feeds. What the mainstreaming of cosmetic surgery says about work, age, and honesty.
Culture
How Shania Twain Became Gen Z's Favourite Country Star
The kids found the leopard print, the key change, and the attitude. A nineties megastar's second audience says something about pop's memory.