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Snoop Dogg, Tupac, Dr. Dre, Nine Inch Nails, Marilyn Manson, Eminem: If it weren’t for Jimmy Iovine, you might not know those names. Oh, and those ubiquitous Beats headphones? That was Iovine too. Now the legendary producer (and head of Apple Music) wants to do something even grander: save the music industry. As September’s cover story (“Relentless”) reported, Iovine and Dre have teamed up to found an undergraduate program at USC for training the next generation of leaders. Their hope is to assemble “a pipeline of professionals, equally at home in the worlds of tech and culture,” Jason Tanz wrote. If they succeed, it won’t just mean a bunch of new creative talent— it could change the way we think about education. Re: “Relentless” “CAN DRE AND IOVINE TEACH THE…

TECH COMPANIES SPEND a good chunk of cash lobbying for their interests. To determine what those interests actually are, we asked nonpartisan research organization MapLight to sift through lobbying payments for the past few years. Not surprisingly, Facebook and Google spent the most on online advertising legislation; Microsoft tried to sway laws affecting cybersecurity; and everyone worries about copyright issues. But some expenditures were more altruistic: Intel dropped $1.2 million to support a bill that would allow gay and lesbian Americans to sponsor their foreign-born partners for citizenship. Here’s a breakdown of what some prominent tech companies spent to get the government they want.…

TO DESCRIBE COMPLEX THINGS like rockets and trees, it helps to use simple words. Really simple words. That’s what Randall Munroe did for his upcoming book Thing Explainer. Munroe, creator of the webcomic xkcd and author of the 2014 best seller What If?, drafted blueprints for various devices and systems—using only 1,000 common words to describe them—from washing machines (sorry, boxes that make clothes smell better) to nuclear bombs (machines for burning cities). “It forced me to learn more about the stuff I was describing,” Munroe says, “since I couldn’t just say the name of the thing.” Test your nerd cred: Flip to his periodic table (gah, the pieces everything is made of ) and quiz yourself. Quick, what’s a rock that makes glass blue?…

THE DEFAULT DUTCH OVEN for most cooks is Le Creuset. It’s been that way since the brand showed up in the hands of Julia Child on PBS in the 1970s. But that doesn’t mean you should buy one. That French pot may be great for simmering cassoulet, but it’s never been displayed at the Louvre or MoMA. It hasn’t won four international design awards either. Those tributes belong to this Technicolor gem: Dansk’s Kobenstyle. The elegant enameled pot, the brainchild of Danish designer Jens Quistgaard, was released in 1956 and became a big hit with the mid-mod crowd. Integral to its design is a bit of dinner theater—remove the lid with a flourish and place it on the table, where it instantly converts into a trivet. Order a modern-day recasting…

Trailblazers VENTURE CAPITALIST Equality in the Digital Age “Meeker is a partner at Kleiner Perkins. On Wall Street at Morgan Stanley in the early ’90s, I thought I would succeed or fail solely on my own merits. That’s the way it worked when I was a kid, playing sports like tennis and basketball while growing up in Indiana. Wall Street was an intense, male-dominated place. But I didn’t think much about it at all. It was what it was. ¶ I later moved to California, joining the venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins. We invested in Square, the online-payments company cofounded in 2009 by Jack Dorsey, who was also one of the founders of Twitter. I serve on Square’s board, and I took notice of how Jack built the management team.…

Trailblazers FOUNDER OF BLACK GIRLS CODE “Bryant’s Black Girls Code organization has taught computer science skills to more than 4,000 girls in nine cities around the world. My daughter was never into combing dolls’ hair and playing with Barbies. She was into Legos and building things and playing with her Game Boy. By the time she was in middle school, she was old enough to go to an overnight summer coding camp. It was life-changing for her. She loved it. But the thing I noticed at the camp was that there were very few girls in the classroom. And there was one student of color. That was her. ¶ It really resonated with me because, growing up, I was a tagalong little sister who always wanted to prove that even…

IT WAS LATE November 2008, and Dan Wagner’s post–Election Day high was wearing off. Just a few weeks before, the Obama for America team had gotten their guy elected, and people like Wagner, a member of the analytics staff, were getting a whole lot of credit. Headlines hailed Obama’s campaign as the most digitalsavvy in history. For Wagner, winning felt good. ¶ But weeks after the Election Day rush, as Wagner was lying in bed in Michigan, a crushing realization hit him: Every tool he had built, every algorithm he had written, all the work he had done was about to spend the next three years rotting at the bottom of a code base in Chicago. “It was pretty brutal,” Wagner says. “The incredible contribution that dozens of engineers and…

Tissue-Velcro n. [ 'ti-'shü-'vel-'krō] A synthetic hook-andloop scaffold for labgrown organ tissue. The Velcro-like biodegradable mesh can hold together layers of heart or lung cells, which could allow surgeons to rapidly patch vessels and valves. And just like Velcro, those layers can also be ripped apart to study how organs work. narcopaloma n. ['när-kō-pä-'lō-m ] A pigeon taught to smuggle drugs into prisons. Trained using a feeding regimen, the narcopaloma is released to fly into jails with small bundles of cocaine and marijuana strapped securely to its breast. The name—“drug dove” in Spanish— became popular after guards nabbed one west of San José, Costa Rica. cybertypes n. [ 'sī-b r-tīps] Three-dimensional x-ray images of newly described organisms. Cybertypes supplement holotypes, the specimens required to classify species. The first cybertype— for…

Essential Grimes 1. “Oblivion,” from Visions 2. “Go,” with Blood Diamonds 3. “SCREAM,” from Art Angels ELECTRO-POP MUSICIAN Grimes (aka Claire Boucher) admits she didn’t really know what she was doing when she made her last album, 2012’s gauzy Visions. Still, that release— self-produced in GarageBand over about two weeks—was an out-of-the-ether success, setting Boucher on a path to stardom: She signed with Jay Z’s Roc Nation management company, toured with Lana Del Rey, and recorded a track with Bleachers for an episode of Girls. Despite this elevated profile, the 27-year-old remains fiercely DIY, honing her studio skills and dismissing suggestions that she work with outside producers. Her latest release, Art Angels, is bolder, noisier, and more out there than Visions. Take “SCREAM,” which features obscure Taipei rapper Aristophanes spitting…

Idaho Potatoes Extracting water lets the starchy tubers sit on the shelf for years without spoiling. Back in the 1950s, food scientists discovered that the best way to desiccate spuds is the “Philadelphia cook,” in which taters are partially cooked, cooled, steamed, and then dehydrated in a single-drum dryer to 6 percent moisture. Calcium Stearoyl Lactylate This molecule boosts overall stability, keeping rehydrated potatoes from turning into a lumpy glue. It includes stearic acid, an 18-carbon fatty acid chain, which also helps keep the mix from separating into its oily and watery components. Maltodextrin A nonsweet sugar that’s almost tasteless but helps to absorb the water you add to dehydrated potatoes, so they firm up instantly. This polysaccharide comes in a variety of chain lengths, from three to 19 glucose…

1 Grind 10 ounces of beans very coarsely. Baratza Encore Grinder $129 2 Slowly add 40 ounces of cold filtered water, then stir. Soma Pitcher $39 3 Wait 12 to 16 hours, then drain through a filter. Oxo Cold Brew Coffee Maker $50 4 Dilute with two parts water to one part concentrate—it’s very strong! WE REGRET TO inform you that you are abusing your coffee. If you brew it hot—and we know you do—many of the lovely flavors in the beans get stripped out by the heat. But when you cold-brew your java, steeping the beans in cold water for 12 to 16 hours, the process extracts all the best flavors and leaves the harsh, bitter notes behind. “When you filter the next day, you’re getting a smooth, low-acid…

MINCE, JULIENNE, CHIFFONADE. The essence of French gastronomy is cutting, and from fillet knives for cleaning fish to tourné knives for carving spuds, cutlers in the town of Thiers have been making specialized knives for every sliver and slice of haute cuisine since the rise of the multi course meal in the 1800s. Yet there was one knife that could do it all. With its straight triangular blade, the French chef’s knife is the culinary equivalent of the smartphone. The tip can be used for peeling and trimming. The cutting edge is honed for precision slicing. The heel has a wedge shape suited to butchering meat. When garlic needs to be crushed, just press the flat side into service. Non-Gallic manufacturers like Japanese masters Global have put their own imprint…

Equality in the Digital Age Back in 2008, when I was competing in the US Open, I would keep little “match books,” where I’d write affirmations to myself and read them during matches. It worked pretty well. But before long I found an even better way to inspire myself: I started using affirmations as the passwords to my phone and my computer. (No, I’m not going to tell you what my current affirmation is!) You should try it. You’ll be surprised how many times a day you log in and have an opportunity to trigger that positivity. I love that I can use technology that way. Here’s one of the affirmations I gave myself when I was younger: “I will work in Africa and help kids and help people.” And…

Trailblazers CIVIL RIGHTS ACTIVIST “Mckesson (center) is one of the most visible faces of the Black Lives Matter movement. As people of color, we have always faced issues of erasure: Either our stories are never told or they’re told by everybody but us. But in this moment we’ve become the unerased. Because of Twitter, Facebook, Vine, and Instagram, we’re able not only to push back against dominant-culture narratives, but also to talk to each other differently. ¶ I met Johnetta “Netta” Elzie (at right in photo) on Twitter. She and I knew each other digitally before we knew each other in person, and we trusted each other there first. And now we’re together all the time. ¶ There was this one night when Netta was going to a protest in…

Trailblazers MIXED MARTIAL ARTS CHAMPION “Rousey (below, with her dog Mochi) is an MMA champion and action movie star. On authenticity: I’ll let thousands of people boo me as long as I feel I was honest and authentic. That way, when I do something later that the fans like, they know it was genuine and not staged. I wouldn’t shake Miesha Tate’s hand after I beat her the second time, but I gave Cat Zingano a hug and a kiss after we fought, because I truly empathized with her in that moment. On the decision to turn pro: My mom was the senior statistical consultant at the University of Southern California. She really wanted me to go to college. I said I wanted to do MMA. She said it was…

Trailblazers TENNIS CHAMPION Equality in the Digital Age “King won 39 grandslam titles, including a record 20 career titles at Wimbledon. She won a so-called battle-of-the-sexes match against Bobby Riggs in 1979. When I was 11, my friend Susan Williams took me to her coun try club. That’s where I first played tennis. And I said to myself, “I’m not going to be able to play much, because we don’t have the financial means.” But not long after that, I found out that the city offered free lessons in the public parks. That’s when I went home and told my parents I wanted a racket. ¶ When I was 12, I started to play tournaments. I real-ized everybody in my sport wore white socks, white shoes, white clothes, and played…

Kimberly Bryant is the founder of Black Girls Code, a nonprofit in San Francisco that teaches girls of color to code and design games. Common played James Bevel in the 2014 film Selma. The rapper also cowrote and performed the film’s Oscar-winning song, “Glory.” Billie Jean King, once the world’s highest-ranked woman in tennis, was one of the first openly gay major American athletes. DeRay Mckesson is a former school administrator and probably the most recognizable face of the new online civil rights movement. Adria Richards is a DevOps engineer who became the target of an online mob in 2013. She works on software that reduces online harassment. Anne-Marie Slaughter, CEO of the New America foundation, wrote the blockbuster Atlantic cover story “Why Women Still Can’t Have It All.” Bijan…

Illuminating Brushwork Sharon Calahan, director of photography on The Good Dinosaur, painted concept art for characters (like main dino Arlo) and landscapes. AS A DIRECTOR of photography at Pixar, Sharon Calahan makes it her business to know environments. So when her director on The Good Dinosaur, Peter Sohn, said he wanted the movie to have a rugged, pioneer feel, Calahan knew just the place: Jackson, Wyoming, where she’d spent time painting landscapes. She took the crew there on a scouting trip so they could soak up the region’s treacherous terrain, harsh weather, and big sky. The Good Dinosaur, out in November, represented a unique stylistic challenge for Calahan. Unlike her previous projects at Pixar—as varied as Ratatouille (“soft and warm and romantic,” she says) and Cars 2 (“a guys’ film…

“The Plaza at night is an almost magical place. The profiles of all the old Spanishdecor buildings are illuminated for several blocks with Christmas lights. It’s a fun place to walk. — Bill Zahner, architectural metal designer (New York’s 9/11 Memorial, KC’s Kauffman Center) MIDWESTERN CITIES tend to sprawl, but in Kansas City a revitalized urban core has drawn dreamers back downtown. Supercharged by the introduction of Google’s high-speed gigabit service in late 2012, this former stockyard town in Missouri now regularly hosts startup pitch sessions, hackathons, and— inevitably—converted-warehouse parties. In fact, even the city’s most celebrated tradition (not counting amazing barbecue) has received an upgrade. On Thanksgiving, revelers will turn up for the Plaza Lighting Ceremony, when 15 blocks of the historic outdoor shopping district will twinkle with tens…

LET’S SAY YOU’RE TALKING to your brand-new Apple TV. You click the remote and rainbow-colored sine waves on your flatscreen indicate Siri is listening. It’s slick: You ask for a channel or to replay a scene and it responds smoothly. But then you say, “Show me some new comedies,” and maybe it suggests... Pixels. Of course, Pixels is a wretched movie, so you look at the next suggestion, and oh, man: Hot Tub Time Machine 2. Now you’re cursing into the remote, just to see what happens. ¶ The thing is, Apple TV doesn’t keep your foul language to itself. To understand your speech, it sends the audio to Siri’s cloud servers, where it’s processed—and archived, for up to two years. ¶ Welcome to the latest, weirdest phase of our…

Country | Score Where 15-year-olds in the US rank in relation to Japan and South Korea.* SALMAN KHAN sits at the head of a conference table, surrounded by about a dozen children, talking about Hitler. It’s late June, nine months into the first year at Khan Lab School, Khan’s educational R&D lab in Mountain View. At most schools, the students would be counting down the minutes until their summer vacation. But the Lab School eschews most of the traditional trappings of US education, including summer break. So the kids here don’t seem particularly fidgety. Or at least not any more fidgety than your standard group of 9-to 12-year-olds sitting in a warm room analyzing the decline of the Weimar Republic. Khan himself is the famed creator of Khan Academy, the…

Trailblazers FOUNDER AND CEO OF WALKER & COMPANY Walker’s startup sells health and beauty products designed for people of color. He is cofounder of CODE 2040, a program that places minority students in tech internships. I grew up in the projects. My mom was very strict and wanted me to succeed. I was part of the Boys Club of New York after-school program and was encouraged to apply to get a full ride to Hotchkiss, a prestigious boarding school. I got in, and it was the first time that I understood what wealth was. I knew I wanted to be rich. ¶ After college I started working on Wall Street at Lehman Brothers. One day the most senior black managing director, William Lighten, called me into his office and gave…

Ask Siri if she’s a woman. Go ahead, try it. She’ll tell you she’s genderless. “Like cacti. And certain species of fish,” she might say. So is Amazon’s Alexa. Microsoft’s Cortana. Samsung’s S Voice. And Google Now. But man, do they ever sound a lot like women. Culturally, we think of them as ladies too. (In Old Norse, Siri translates to “a beautiful woman who leads you to victory.”) We assign female pronouns to them, and in turn, they fold feminine turns of phrase into their robotic and occasionally inane answers to our requests. The world is about to start sounding even more feminine, as voice systems pop up in things that are not phones and prove to be a more effective interface than keyboards. Siri is an integral element…

AGENTS OF CHANGE THAT HELPED GET THIS ISSUE OUT: Amy Jellicoe; Obagi-C C-Clarifying Serum; Sirron Norris; Thooorin; #changetheratio; the men from U.N.C.L.E.; BART machines that, when fed a $20 bill, dispense only quarters in change; the San Francisco weather; #prayformarcus; Amy Schumer; the Sober Sisterhood; Obergefell v. Hodges; Daniel “007” Craig; Tobener Law Center; Nancy Heck Michelli, Ken Bagwell and the rest of Team Awesome; Marge Piercy’s “For Strong Women”; the Print Devils clan in Clash of Clans; Lea DeLaria; NYC meteorologists; Crest Whitestrips; my grandmother Lacie Flowers, a secretary for the NAACP of Leflore County, Mississippi, during the ’60s. WIRED is a registered trademark of Advance Maga zine Publishers Inc. Copyright ©2015 Condé Nast. All rights reserved. Printed in the USA. Volume 23, No. 11. WIRED (ISSN 1059–1028) is…