Esther Bergdahl

When it comes to male characters, Marvel likes keeping all its options open. So many superheroes have joined the cast of Captain America: Civil War that some joked franchise star Chris Evans "will make a cameo" in the film. Yet for some reason,…

In a couple of years, you are going to be like Iron Man. No, really. It's not because you're getting a flying suit and sweet new facial hair — it's because how you use computers is going to completely change. That's what John Underkoffler hopes,…

Strung together, the Marvel Cinematic Universe is now nearly 24 hours long, not counting its connected TV shows, Netflix series and one-shot short films. On Wednesday, AMC Theaters screened all 10 Marvel movies in four theaters around the country,…

Imagine the typical Hollywood leading lady who dominates screens silver and small: She struggles, succeeds and inevitably finds love. Now ask yourself: What happens next?   Marvel has, and when its Agent Carter miniseries premieres Tuesday night on…

Molotov cocktails and mobs at synagogues. Assaults on city streets. Leaflets left on car windshields promising violence. Public hate speech and calls for eradication. Governments holding houses of worship hostage. It's not paranoia or exaggeration:…

The Colbert Nation is coming for Amazon. On Wednesday night, Stephen Colbert fired shots at the world's largest online retailer over its ongoing war of attrition with book publisher Hachette. Amazon shoppers hoping to buy and preorder works by the…

This country has a very controversial history of banning books. We ban classics, we ban new releases and last week, the American Library Association released a list of 2013's most frequently challenged titles.  A book is considered "banned" when…

We're still trying to piece together what happened with the South Korean ferry that capsized last week. But what we do know is that some heroes stood up to save passengers, even at a great cost to themselves. Four hundred and seventy-six people were…

Choose a city and imagine what it would look like if it was 95% razed and rebuilt in the course of 20 years. Think about all the history and culture that would be destroyed. This dystopian vision isn't hypothetical. Rather, it's happening in Mecca,…

Spanish activist Enric Duran has swiped nearly half a million Euros in loans from banks in Spain, which has wracked Spain's economy leaving its citizens buckling under catastrophic unemployment. He has no intention of ever paying those loans back,…

Some of the biggest cultural touchstones from a century ago still live on: the Titanic, the first crossword puzzle, the lead-up to World War I. But there are other equally important touchstones that we have forgotten about today. That's the case in…

The world lost a literary giant Thursday when Colombian novelist and Nobel laureate Gabriel García Márquez died at 87 in Mexico City. We've marveled over his works for years: Among his many gifts to us were Love in the Time of Cholera, One Hundred…

Putting corporations in charge of something as vital as water may sound cartoonish. But it's no hook for a dystopia story: The World Bank, which offers "loans, advice, and other resources" to developing countries, is recommending that water…

After an honest, ideas-driven campaign in which the people were given ample choice and opportunity to choose their next leader, 77-year-old Algerian president and recovering stroke patient Abdelaziz Bouteflika looks poised to take office for the…

Imagine you had the ultimate chance for revenge, to inflict the worst pain you've ever felt in equal measure on the person who caused it. In Iran, this is part of the legal system: Qisas, the sharia law of retribution, can be applied literally in…

Indentured servitude is alive and well, but it's taken some odd and infuriating new twists since the 18th century — namely that McDonald's has used sky-high rents to entrap foreign workers in Canada. Five workers from Belize, dreaming of a better…

Russian President Vladimir Putin is making dire noises about the possibility of civil war in Ukraine. The eastern Donetsk region has declared itself its own republic, and reports of fighting between protesters, rebels and pro-Russian forces are…

How long does it take for the most trusted news source to turn a boring non-story into a racist, xenophobic nightmare? About 13 seconds it turns out, and that's only because CNN news correspondent Jeanne Moos takes her time narrating the…

Spoilers for the novel (and probably the movie) below the trailer. It's coming: The biggest book of the 2010's (so far), Gillian Flynn's Gone Girl, is making the leap to the big screen. Just this week we got a glimpse of the first trailer, and if…