The New Yorker - February 17-24 2020

52 THENEWYORKER,FEBRUARY 17 &24, 2020 speech can identify you as a dissident. Similarly, Harari has observed that, had so ...

laughed. “You know—the usual stuff.” He deferred his compulsory military service, through a program for high- achieving students ...

54 THENEWYORKER,FEBRUARY 17 &24, 2020 of my life. It was a culture shock, it was a climate shock. I just couldn’t grasp i ...

THENEWYORKER,FEBRUARY 17 &24, 2020 55 nation. You don’t need to meditate for two hours a day to realize that.” We drove t ...

56 THENEWYORKER,FEBRUARY 17 &24, 2020 “Paul? Susan! From the gym? I showed you how to use the elliptical? We went for cof ...

THENEWYORKER,FEBRUARY 17 &24, 2020 57 wrote—but the book thrived in an envi- ronment of relative critical neglect. At the ...

58 THENEWYORKER,FEBRUARY 17 &24, 2020 it will just be mud wrestling.” Yahav had earlier teased Harari, saying, “You don’t ...

THENEWYORKER,FEBRUARY 17 &24, 2020 59 Harari, “You’re not going to die on me. We’ve discussed this—I’m going to die first ...

60 THENEWYORKER,FEBRUARY 17 &24, 2020 LETTER FROM ARLES LIVING PROOF Was Jeanne Calment the oldest person who ever lived— ...

THENEWYORKER,FEBRUARY 17 &24, 2020 61 Since Calment died, in 1997, at a hundred and twenty-two, her claim to the longevit ...

62 THENEWYORKER,FEBRUARY 17 &24, 2020 she seemed twenty years younger.” At a hundred and ten, Calment was still living al ...

Pravda declared that the reputations of Calment’s validators would soon “pop like a soap bubble.” A carnival atmosphere often su ...

64 THENEWYORKER,FEBRUARY 17 &24, 2020 the competition. The second-longest- living person died in 1999, at a hun- dred and ...

THENEWYORKER,FEBRUARY 17 &24, 2020 65 comes about through the gradual build­up of unrepaired faults in the cells and tiss ...

wrote of a sombre palette: “the fune- real blue of cypresses,” the “sky baked white.” Van Gogh painted the city in violet, cobal ...

THENEWYORKER,FEBRUARY 17 &24, 2020 67 Zak wrote, “this is yet another argu- ment for the I.D. switch.” As for the dressma ...

68 THENEWYORKER,FEBRUARY 17 &24, 2020 truth about Jeanne Calment would be interesting, but it certainly wasn’t es- sentia ...

THENEWYORKER,FEBRUARY 17 &24, 2020 69 greeted me in a domed entryway lined with murals of wildlife, and we pro- ceeded th ...

70 THENEWYORKER,FEBRUARY 17 &24, 2020 to allow me to listen to them before he did. It was crazy to be able to hear a voic ...

THENEWYORKER,FEBRUARY 17 &24, 2020 71 nation in the switch scenario is easy: she didn’t want her name to be on the grave ...