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June 19, 2016

13

First Words

All Knowing Just about anything can be made smart

these days, from surfboards to flatware. While its presented
as an upgrade, its also a means of surveillance.

By Jacob Silverman

16

On Sports

The Dreaded Slice Maybe more than any other sport,

golf forces a confrontation between the mind and a body
that just wont fall in line.

By Jay Caspian Kang

20

Diagnosis

Garden Path The man tested positive for hepatitis. But that
didnt seem to explain his illness.

By Lisa Sanders, M.D.

28

16

20

24

Letter of
Recommendation

Bunk Beds Sharing a single vertical axis, each person is

made to be vulnerable before the other.

By Zachary Fine

26

The Ethicist

Rejected Applicant Should a friend be told the real reason

he didnt get the job?

By Kwame Anthony Appiah

28

Eat

A Slovakian Secret To master pierogies, embrace change.

By Francis Lam

30

Lives

The Enlightenment Sitting down for some spiritual guidance

in the Himalayas.

By Karan Bajaj

58

Talk

W. Kamau Bell The comedian says he has just the thing

to end racism.

Interview by Ana Marie Cox

Behind the Cover: Jake Silverstein, editor in chief, on this weeks cover: Im a big fan of all-type
covers. In their spareness, they can have a greater immediacy and impact than covers on which
words and photos interact. In this case, a good visual treatment and a metallic ink made a simple
idea quite beautiful. Illustration by Erik Carter.

8
10
19
25

Contributors
The Thread
Poem
Tip

26 Judge John
Hodgman
54 Puzzles
56 Puzzles
(Puzzle answers on Page 57)

Continued on Page 6

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32

The Ultimate
Scrum

Can a former bond trader with a dream persuade Americans

to watch rugby?

By Chip Brown

40

Screen Grab

Netflix destroyed the old way we watch TV and helped unleash

the new ways: on-demand, bingeing, mobile. Can it survive to
dominate the world it created?

By Joe Nocera

46

The Parasite
Underground

A shadow network of patients are trying to treat their

own debilitating diseases by infecting themselves with
gastrointestinal worms.

By Moises Velasquez-Mano

When the mayhem on the pitch is over, its customary

for the adversaries to share a pint at a pub.
PAGE 32

Copyright 2016 The New York Times

A San Francisco PRO Rugby player and the team doctor before a game in April.
Photograph by Philip Montgomery for The New York Times.

June 19, 2016

When others become indecisive

in an uncertain market, at

DOUGLAS ELLIMAN
we are emboldened. We have
prospered through 20 economic
cycles in our 105-year history,
and our markets remain the
most sought-after in the world.
This, coupled with extensive
experience and industry-leading
data, perfectly positions us for
continued success.
Howard M. Lorber
CHAIRMAN, DOUGLAS ELLIMAN REAL ESTATE

Dottie Herman
PRESIDENT & CEO, DOUGLAS ELLIMAN REAL ESTATE

105 years of EXPERIENCE servicing clients

through 20 economic cycles
Unprecedented ACCESS to a global
network of 22,000+ professionals in 58 countries through
our exclusive alliance with Knight Frank Residential
Industry leading DATA from U.S. market reports,
produced in conjunction with Miller Samuel, the Elliman
Insights platform and jointly published market research
reports such as the annual Wealth Report, garnering a
reach of 2.3+ billion viewers in 2016

Who knows where its going?

THE ANSWER COMES DOWN TO:

Experience. Access. Data.

Throughout Douglas Ellimans long history, we have kept a steady

hand on the pulse of the market, offering our clients counsel
founded on timely insights and deep knowledge for all their
questionsespecially, To buy or not to buyto sell or not to sell.
An emotionally-charged election year in the U.S., low oil prices,
and bumpy weather for markets in China, Brazil, and most of
Western Europe have created unique challenges. The good news
is that Douglas Elliman agents are well positioned to help our
clients of long standing and new prospects make sound decisions
based on three dening attributes: our extensive experience,
our unparalleled access to high-net-worth individuals across
the globe, and the advantages our data capabilities confer
on our agents. Our ongoing success is built upon a history of
trusted experience, combined with our leading role in the
worlds strongest markets.
Weve experiencedand prospered through20 economic
cycles. Douglas Elliman opened shop in 1911, and today we
are the largest real estate rm in the New York market, and
number four nationally. Last year, our sales volume totalled
$22 billion, up 20% from 2014, while the general Manhattan
market remained at, with only a 0.5% rise. Our accumulated
experience adds up to a coveted quality theres no shortcut to
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After 105 years, we know a few things for certain. No app or
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Contributors

Screen Grab,
Page 40

Joe Nocera

Editor in Chief
Deputy Editors

JAKE SILVERSTEIN
JESSICA LUSTIG,
BILL WASIK

Photographed by Kathy Ryan at The New York Times on June 6,

2016, at 5:45 p.m.

Joe Nocera is the sports-business columnist for

The New York Times. He joined The Times 10
years ago as a business columnist before moving
to the Op-Ed page in 2011. He is the author
of several books, most recently, Indentured: The
Inside Story of the Rebellion Against the N.C.A.A.,
with Ben Strauss. Nocera wrote his first business
article 34 years ago an inside account of
a takeover attempt when he was on the staff of
Texas Monthly. Ive spent a lot of time in recent
years writing about the N.C.A.A., gun violence
and a handful of other subjects, Nocera said.
Writing about Netflix, and the way it is reshaping
television, brought me back to my roots. It felt
like coming home.

Managing Editor
Design Director
Director of Photography
Features Editor
Politics Editor
Story Editors

ERIKA SOMMER
GAIL BICHLER
KATHY RYAN
ILENA SILVERMAN
CHARLES HOMANS
NITSUH ABEBE,
MICHAEL BENOIST,
SHEILA GLASER,
CLAIRE GUTIERREZ,
LUKE MITCHELL,
DEAN ROBINSON,
WILLY STALEY,
SASHA WEISS

Associate Editors

JEANNIE CHOI,
JAZMINE HUGHES

Chief National Correspondent

MARK LEIBOVICH

Staff Writers

SAM ANDERSON,
EMILY BAZELON,
SUSAN DOMINUS,

Chip Brown

The Ultimate Scrum,

Page 32

Chip Brown is a contributing writer for the

magazine. He last wrote about Cyrus Vance
Jr., the district attorney of New York County.

MAUREEN DOWD,
NIKOLE HANNAH-JONES,
WESLEY MORRIS,
JENNA WORTHAM

Writers at Large

Ana Marie Cox

Talk,
Page 58

Ana Marie Cox is a political commentator and

the Talk columnist for the magazine. She is
the senior political correspondent for MTV News
and the founder of the political blog Wonkette.

C. J. CHIVERS,
JIM RUTENBERG

David Carr Fellow

Art Director
Deputy Art Director
Designers

GREG HOWARD
MATT WILLEY
JASON SFETKO
FRANK AUGUGLIARO,
BEN GRANDGENETT

Zachary Fine

Letter of Recommendation,
Page 24

Zachary Fine is a writer based in New Orleans.

This is his first article for the magazine.

Digital Designer
Associate Photo Editors

LINSEY FIELDS
STACEY BAKER,
AMY KELLNER,
CHRISTINE WALSH

Virtual-Reality Editor

Moises VelasquezManoff

The Parasite
Underground,
Page 46

Moises Velasquez-Manoff is the author of An

Epidemic of Absence: A New Way of Understanding
Allergies and Autoimmune Diseases.

Photo Assistant

JENNA PIROG
KAREN HANLEY

Copy Chief

ROB HOERBURGER

Copy Editors

HARVEY DICKSON,
DANIEL FROMSON,
MARGARET PREBULA,
ANDREW WILLETT

Dear Reader: No Air-Conditioning

Or No Music?
Every week the magazine publishes the results of
a study conducted online last July and August
by The New York Timess research-and-analytics
department, reecting the opinions of 2,987
subscribers who chose to participate. This weeks
question: What would you rather endure for a long
summer car ride: no air-conditioning or no music?

Head of Research
Research Editors

NANDI RODRIGO
DAN KAUFMAN,
ROBERT LIGUORI,
RENE MICHAEL,
LIA MILLER,
STEVEN STERN,
MARK VAN DE WALLE

Production Chief
Production Editors
29%
No airconditioning

71%
No music

ANICK PLEVEN
PATTY RUSH,
HILARY SHANAHAN

Editorial Assistant

LIZ GERECITANO BRINN

Publisher: ANDY WRIGHT Associate Publisher: DOUG LATINO Advertising Directors: JACQUELYN L. CAMERON (Advocacy) MICHAEL GILBRIDE (Fashion and Luxury) SHARI KAPLAN (Live Entertainment and
Books) NANCY KARPF (Fine Arts) MAGGIE KISELICK (Automotive, Technology and Telecom) SCOTT M. KUNZ (International Fashion) CHRISTOPHER REAM (Studios)

JASON RHYNE

(Recruitment) JOHN

RIGGIO (Legal Branding) JOSH SCHANEN (Media and Travel) SARAH THORPE (Corporate, Health Care, Education, Liquor and Packaged Goods) BRENDAN WALSH (Finance and Real Estate) National Sales

Office Advertising Directors: KYLE AMICK (Atlanta/Southeast) JACQUELYN L. CAMERON (Washington) LAUREN FUNKE (Florida/Southeast) DOUG LATINO (Detroit) CHRISTOPHER REAM (Los Angeles/
San Francisco/Northwest) JEAN ROBERTS (Boston/Northeast) JIMMY SAUNDERS (Chicago/Midwest)

KAREN FARINA

(Magazine Director) LAURA BOURGEOIS (Marketing Director, Advertising)

MICHAEL

ANTHONY VILLASEOR (Creative Director, Advertising) MARILYN MCCAULEY (Managing Director, Specialty Printing) THOMAS GILLESPIE (Manager, Magazine Layout) CHRIS RISO (Publishers Assistant).

To advertise, email karen.farina@nytimes.com.

6.19.16

Cheryl Windless thought it was a simple u infection. But,

she was in severe cardiogenic shock and many of her organs
were failing. She was given only a ten percent chance of survival.
One hospital wouldnt admit her because they thought she
couldnt be saved. At Mount Sinai Heart, doctors performed
emergency surgery to implant a HeartMate II left ventricular

assist device (LVAD), which functions like an articial heart.

In fact, it was a typical Mount Sinai success story: one that began
with very little hope of success.
1- 8 0 0 - MD-SINA I
mou n t s i n a i .or g/m s h e a r t

OUR
DOCTORS WORK ON HEARTS
OTHER DOCTORS
DONT HAVE THE HEART
TO TOUCH.

The Thread

RE: LIFE AT 800 FEET

For this years New York Issue, we concentrated on the tiny sliver of New York life that
happens 800 feet or more above the ground,
turning the magazine on its side to reect the
height of the tallest 21 buildings in the city.

Social media has been buzzing over the

last few days with images of another
special edition of The New York Times
Magazine. Published last weekend, the
High Life issue is their latest annual
issue about New York and celebrates the
height of the city, a nice idea thats made
special by the simple device of rotating
all the content by 90 degrees. . . .
Of course the magazine has a huge
team and great resources . . . not to mention a fantastic locale to focus on. But to
do it so well and make it appear so simple
is the special part of the project. . . .
I can imagine the general reaction to
the suggestion of rotating an entire issue
in most magazine/newspaper oces.
Would it ever get beyond that rst suggestion? Maybe now it might, but . . . too late!
Jeremy Leslie, magCulture

While respectful of the challenges of producing content for multiple platforms

the print version of The Times and the
digital one would hope that content
would be readable in both. This weeks
print version of the Sunday magazine is
simply unreadable. Magazines are not
meant to be read as if they were wall calendars, and some of the typefaces were
illegible in print.
The digital version of The Times
provides much material that obviously
cannot be included in the print version.
But creating material for the digital platform should not render the print version unreadable.
Harold Rosenthal, Delmar, N.Y.

6.19.16

TWITTER

@NYTmags New
York Issue is loaded
with gorgeous
photos & type that
jump the gutter
& reach for the stars
#printlove
@LucindaWallace

As a newspaper professional myself, I

have to say that I enjoyed the selection
of stories in this weeks magazine about
buildings that top 800 feet in height. It
was an interesting perspective, both in
the words and the photos, that most of us
will never experience in real life, which is
exactly why I read The Times.
I also appreciated the attempt to do
something interesting and unique with
the design for the issue, to try and highlight the staggering heights of these
buildings by changing the layout perspective. It was clever.
But that said, perhaps it was a bit too
clever, as it really made the stories dicult to read, so much so that it was easier
to go online. As a newspaper guy, that
hurts my heart; I enjoy the print edition
and subscribe to it and avoid the early
postings of stories so that I can spend my
Sunday morning reading it. But this was
such a pain to read that all I could think
is that you were actually giving people a
reason not to read your product.
Brian Beckley, Renton, Wash.

We must keep print formats! was my

rst thought after savoring the articles
and images in todays vertically-formatted magazine. Your reporters and their
subjects expressed themselves with spoton images and prose. The whole issue is
a bewitching mix of history, aesthetics,
human interest, engineering, architecture
and the list goes on.
Sometimes the topics with the most
resonance are so much a part of our environment that they become invisible to our
examination: New York City skyscrapers!
Celia Carroll, Santa Monica, Calif.

10

THE STORY, ON

While the proles of the buildings were

fascinating from an architectural and
construction perspective, I found the
people who own and, less frequently,
occupy them to be o-putting, especially in light of the current political discussion on addressing inequality. Frankly,
who cares whether these hyperwealthy
individuals views from their apartments are better or worse than those in
newer buildings?
Amy S. Rich, Orange, Conn.

Sometimes
the topics with
the most
resonance are so
much a part of
our environment
that they become
invisible.
Illustrations by Tom Gauld

Your special issue seemed like a glorication and barely disguised advertorial for the extreme income disparity
that is ruining this city. What New York
desperately needs is aordable housing.
What its getting instead are these spires
that guratively tear the heart out of a
disappearing middle class. Teachers,
nurses, social workers the types of
people who actually contribute to the
public good have necessities more
worthwhile of your attention. These
buildings may indeed constitute high
life but only in the eyes of people like
Donald Trump.
It is woeful and disappointing to see
The Times pay such glossy and excessive
homage to it.
Doug Brin, New York

The sideways issue was very cute! Never

do it again. It kept slipping o the counter when I tried to read it in the diner;
it was impossible to keep ipping back
to see which building was being discussed; the cover came unstapled and
fell o with all the stress. I still nished
the puzzle in half an hour, though.
Linda Lashbrook, West Long Branch, N.J.
Send your thoughts to magazine@nytimes.com.

Photograph by Jimmy Chin

Readers respond to the 6.5.2016 issue.

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First Words

Just about anything can be made smart these days, from surfboards to atware. While its
presented as an upgrade, its also a means of surveillance. By Jacob Silverman

All Knowing
In the land rush to digitize the world, the home is the new frontier.
Over the past few years, practically every household item within
reach has been technologically upgraded and rendered smart:
toothbrushes, cutlery, baby monitors, refrigerators, thermostats,
slow cookers, sprinkler systems, sex toys, even the locks in doors.
Before they achieved enlightenment, they could perform only their
rote, mechanical duties; now they can do so while connected to the
internet. In the case of the telephone, this has been nothing short of
revolutionary, but no other smart object has managed to replicate
its success. The absurdity of the phenomenon was made unavoidably
apparent in May, when a start-up unveiled a smart tampon, called
my.Flow. If women wear the my.Flow and the sensor that attaches to
the tampon by a string (and clips neatly onto your waistband) and use
the my.Flow app, they could now, at last, track their periods duration
and ow. Smart has been slapped onto everything from cups
(that analyze what youre drinking) to surfboards (that let you check
your text messages between waves) to clothing (that tracks calorie
6.19.16

13

expenditure). The word is attering to

both the objects and their users, even as
it threatens to become a hazy banality.
The vogue for smart traces at
least as far back as the smart bomb,
precision-guided munitions made to be
more accurate than the dumb bombs of
wars past, which tumbled out of planes
and exploded wherever they happened
to land. Smart bombs were rst used in
Vietnam, but during the Persian Gulf war,
they became media stars, with generals
and news anchors presenting footage of
the weapons in action, until the moment
the screen went to static as the bombs
obliterated their internal cameras along
with the target. Much like that well-timed
static, the smart in smart bomb does
some ideological work, masking the
inherent violence and mayhem of aerial
bombing. A smart bomb is an unerring
one. It adds an aura of sensible technocratic eciency to an inherently messy,
bloody aair, occluding the simple fact
that bombs are horric creations.
It also conceals a basic oddity: The
word smart has roots in a ProtoGermanic word for pain. It wasnt until
the 20th century, in North America, that
smart came to be synonymous with
brains. Smart bombs combine both
meanings of the word, mingling intelligence and harm. Better accuracy may
save lives on the margins, but it doesnt
make us consider all the political choices
leading up to the decision to kill people
half a world away.
When applied to the latest consumer gadgets, smart performs a similar
sleight of hand; what is presented as an
upgrade is actually a stealthy euphemism
for surveillance. While a smart lighting system promises to adapt to an owners preferences or help the environment
by lowering electricity bills, what it also
does is provide a company a permanent
foothold in a persons home from which
he can be monitored. That smart-lighting
company knows when the owner of its
product comes home, when he goes,
when he dims the lights for a date and
when he leaves them on.
The intelligence given to these devices really serves twin purposes: information collection and control. Smart devices are constantly collecting information,
tracking user habits, trying to anticipate
and shape their owners behaviors and
reporting back to the corporate mother

ship. Data is our eras most promising

extractive resource, and tech companies
have found that connecting more people
and devices, collecting information on
how they interact with one another and
then using that information to sell advertising can be enormously protable.
And so the makers of smart devices
encourage us to make their creations
smarter by confessing more to them,
by exposing more of ourselves. As we
open our lives to increasingly self-aware,
autonomous devices, we are encouraged
particularly in the case of all-purpose
personal assistants like Siri and Alexa
to use them as much as possible, feeding
them more useful data that will allow our
gadgets to learn who we are and what
we like, and to make decisions that might
anticipate our needs.
But the true ingenuity of a smart
device is the way it upends traditional
models of ownership. We dont really buy and own network- connected

14

Illustration by Javier Jan

6.19.16

The true
ingenuity of
a smart
device is
the way
it upends
traditional
models of
ownership.

household goods; in essence, we rent

and operate these devices on terms set
by the company. Because they run on
proprietary software, and because they
are connected to the internet, their corporate creators can always reach across
cyberspace and meddle with them. In
2009, Amazon deleted from customers Kindle readers copies of 1984
that were sold without authorization.
Dealers have begun installing starter
interrupt devices on cars bought with
loans, so that they can kill the engine
from afar should the borrower be late
on his payments. Consumers will have
little possibility for redress, much less
rebellion no way to outsmart these
once-dumb objects.
Using a smart device for anything but
the purposes explicitly sanctioned by its
manufacturer risks violating a warranty,
bricking a device or even breaking the
law. (Its tting, albeit a touch melodramatic, that unauthorized tinkering with

Blender: trekandshoot, via Dreamstime

First Words

an iPhone is called jailbreaking.) The

very same elements making these things
smart connectivity, sophisticated software, semiautonomous intelligence
can also make them more frustrating
than any devices weve ever seen.
At its most expansive, smart produces a world where we no longer exert
control over objects weve bought from
corporations, but corporations exert
control over us through things we pay
for the privilege of using. And when
smart is crudely applied to the cities
we live in to our crumbling infrastructure and militarized police forces
we give in to forces of privatization,
algorithmic control and rule by corporate contract. It seems an indelible
symbol of the times that New York City
neglects essential but mundane services
like public restrooms while promoting
other putative municipal innovations,
like the mass conversion of pay phones
to Wi-Fi kiosks. As with other smart
devices, which subsidize their costs
with data collection, these kiosks are

free provided you submit to the collection of your personal information and
location data. The commons becomes
simply another site for private companies to spy on people.
Whether its the routes we drive, the
songs we listen to or the prices we pay
for airline tickets, our lives are increasingly shaped by opaque systems that
assess and sort us according to inscrutable criteria. Every one of these systems
is, in some sense, smart. But that label
elides the more important judgment of
where power lies and how it operates. A
smart tampon may provide some useful
information, but many women simply
need better access to health services,
and laws that preserve their ability to
control their reproductive lives. Fitness
trackers might help some folks, but they
have also become favored tools of insurers and corporate wellness plans while
doing nothing to address the underlying causes of obesity. Self-driving cars
represent a potentially lifesaving innovation, but they are increasingly cast as

The commons
becomes
simply another
site for private
companies to spy
on people.

replacements for embattled mass-transit

systems that millions of people rely on.
Amid the ritual enumeration of tech
specs and price points, we risk ignoring
how smart devices represent another
example of consumer capitalisms bulldozing past political questions.
One of the animating myths of American capitalism is that of the savvy consumer. Informed, discriminating, wise
to manipulation and deceit, this person
uidly navigates the waters of everyday
consumption. And through these small
decisions, replicated over and over again
by millions of others, the free market
improves life for all. Essential to this
myth is the notion that inuence and
power work transparently. Experience
shows that this isnt the case, yet we
continue to atter ourselves by adorning
our bodies, homes and cities with smart
gadgetry and claiming that it serves us.
Perhaps the real smarts on display here
are those of the tech-industry mandarins
who convinced us that we needed all this
stu in the rst place.

Maybe more than any other

sport, golf forces a confrontation
between the mind and a
body that just wont fall in line.

Golf is deceitful above all things. It hovers over your late 20s, shaking its head
as terms like shin splints and plantar fasciitis lter into your vocabulary.
When the chubby ex-frat boys who ock
to the Y.M.C.A. basketball courts after
market close make fun of your old-man
moves, golf clears its throat and lets
loose a short, condescending whistle.
And when the litany of bodily ailments
has grown long enough but you havent
quite accepted the inevitable, golf sidles
up next to you with a pamphlet t for a
pyramid scheme and a reassuring smile.
Life is long, golf says. Forget the bodys
betrayals; golf is a game of the mind.
My first sustained encounter with
golf came three months ago. I had just
started a new job in a new city, where
my only friend was a fellow gambler who
once took me for $2,500 in Scrabble. This
friend plays only golf now, which meant
that if I ever wanted to recoup my debt,
I had to play golf, too.
Honestly, I assumed I would be a natural. I am not a coordinated man, but
I have an unusual tolerance for pain. If
there were a sport in which the athlete
moved a stack of cinder blocks across
a eld while listening to a podcast, I
might have been able to ride the pine
for a minor-league team. I won my college pubs corned-beef-eating contest. I
can stand in freezing-cold water for long
periods. I know a few mantras and spent
my early 20s stinking of cheap incense,
on a doomed path to enlightenment
or, at least, something that looked like
it. Novelists, whether Wodehouse or
Updike, taught me that the best golfer is
a contented, quasi-Zen idiot who blissfully ignores the games myriad mental
anguishes: the shorted putts, the drives
that hook into the trees which, when
you watch them, make you feel as if
youve been kicked in the groin if your
groin were in your brain. The model
golfer best exemplied by Chevy Chase
in Caddyshack, in which he walks the
course barefoot and talks about Basho,
gave me the condence that, with time,
I could at least keep up with my more
athletically talented acquaintances.
It didnt start o so bad. After work
and on weekends, my friend and I would
drive out to the citys cheapest courses,
where, surrounded by overgrown willow
trees and the kindly septuagenarians of
the Pacic Northwest, I would hack my

16

Next Week: On Technology, by Jenna Wortham

6.19.16

Photo illustration by Cristiana Couceiro

Golfer: Getty Images. Golf ball: Horia Varlan via Flickr.

On Sports By Jay Caspian Kang

RADIOHEAD
A MOON SHAPED POOL
A NEW ALBUM. OUT NOW
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way from rough to trap to adjacent fairway. Every time I went out, I noticed
some small improvement, however eeting. On an unusually sunny day in April,
I nally had a breakthrough: Every club
felt light in my hands, and half of my
shots ew straight and true. By the end
of the round, I had clawed back $250 of
my Scrabble debt from my friend, who
accused me of hustling him. The next
day, hoping to build success upon success, I drove to the practice range.
The ground was hard, dusty and
unforgiving, but I didnt think about
it much as I lined up with a pitching
wedge. The rst ball ew like a wing-shot

duck, low for about 30 yards before diving hard to the right, into the turf. My
second shot did the same. Then the third
and the fourth. Of the 200 balls I hit that
day, 190 died on impact. Sometime in
the 20 hours that had passed between
my two trips to the course, I had caught
the dreaded slice. I could feel the fog of
failure in the roots of my teeth; it didnt
lift for two days.
My temporary home in the new city is
on the second oor of a hotel for vagabond corporate executives. It is a terrible place, the lobby littered with bowls
of individually wrapped breath mints
and the garage stued full of midsize

18

Photo illustration by Cristiana Couceiro

6.19.16

Jay Caspian Kang

is a writer at large for
the magazine.

American rental cars. But it is just two

short blocks from one of the countrys
best bookstores. During my slice-induced depression, I went there to seek
the wisdom of golf literature.
Most golf books are either koany little
things lled with visualization techniques
and pastoral aphorisms or hagiographies
of professional golfers, also lled with
visualization techniques and pastoral
aphorisms. A third type, largely written
by former sta writers at Sports Illustrated or Esquire, tells the duers side of
things. All three varieties raise the same
mystical question: What must happen
in the brain to coordinate the eyes, the

Buddha: University of Toronto, Robarts Library. Golfer: Getty Images.

On Sports

Poem Selected by Matthew Zapruder

shoulders, the forearms, the elbows, the

wrists, the hands and the torso into one
repeatable golf swing? Is it mindlessness
or mindfulness? Is it a lifetime of practice
or a gathering up of the will that cleans
out the chattering connection between
the body and the brain?
Harvey Penicks Little Red Book,
a short manual of pithy anecdotes and
golf tips from a lifelong caddie, is not
a Buddhist text, but its not all that far
from it. Penick is a terrible name-dropper, but once you forgive him for all
the mentions of golf legends like Tom
Kite and Ben Crenshaw and what they
learned from him, his prose hums along
at a grandfatherly, crotchety pace. As
for your grip pressure, keep it light,
Penick advises. Arnold Palmer liked
to grip the club tightly, but you are not
Arnold Palmer. Later, on the topic of
anxiety on the course versus unthinking
serenity, Penick cautions against being
too languid. Be at ease. If you are at ease,
you are relaxed but ready, he writes.
The secret is the feeling of controlled
violence, as Jackie Burke Jr. says.
Penick didnt cure my slice. I kept
going to the range, and my shots kept
ying to the right in the same low-slung
arc. As my frustration deepened, I began
muttering bastardized sutras under my
breath, which did nothing to quiet my
harping inner critic:
All form is emptiness.
O.K., Kang, address the ball. Set your
shoulders straight.
All emptiness is form.
Nice and easy backswing. Dont jerk it.
Everything is emptiness.
You denitely just jerked it. Why cant
you listen?
In emptiness, there is no form.
Please dont overswing, youre strong
enough. The tiny Korean women on the
L.P.G.A. tour can hit the ball 250 yards.
There is nothing to attain.
Youre denitely overswinging. Good
Christ. Theres nothing that can be done.
All form is emptiness.
Ball right again. Guy next to me denitely laughing. I am a disgrace to the
Korean people.
Seeking solace, I began reading The
Bogey Man, by George Plimpton, a
founding editor of The Paris Review,
who wrote a series of books about competing, as a quixotic amateur athlete,
in professional sports, including golf.

Plimpton, whose lanky frame looked as

if had been pieced together out of random lengths of industrial piping, starts
on Page 1 with an extended metaphor
that involves a crew of Japanese admirals screaming at all the unwieldy parts
of his body to act in unison. As Plimpton
goes from tournament to tournament,
he talks to an array of pros, caddies
and loiterers, all of whom impart one
bit of wisdom or another. None of these
maxims help Plimpton at all. He is an 18
handicap at the start of the book, and he
is a humiliated 18 handicap at its end.
Plimpton talks to Arnold Palmer and
walks up the fairway of the 18th hole at
Pebble Beach with a huge gallery watching his swing, but the Japanese admirals
never stop their yelling.
Plimpton, more than Penick or any
other sunburned golf philosopher, seems
to understand the games one lesson: All
philosophy is ultimately meaningless. No
profound thought actually works on the
course, and nothing that does work on
the course, whether standing a couple of
inches closer to the ball or relaxing your
grip or keeping your left arm straight, is
actually profound.
Despite all this, I have bought into
golfs pyramid scheme. I seem to gain
three to ve pounds every month, my
left knee buckles every time I step onto
a basketball court and my swimming
stroke, which once wasnt half bad, now
looks like what might happen if you stapled a pair of apping hands onto a ling cabinet and threw it into the ocean.
Buddhism tells me to accept these physical changes because even a mountain
will ultimately melt down into the soil
like a sugar cube under hot water. Golf,
on the other hand, prods me to keep
inventing new theories, because its easier to come up with one that explains my
perpetual failure than it is to keep my
left arm straight.
Buddhism, of course, is ultimately right my slice will x itself when
it feels like it, or it wont but as Ive
grown older and lifes perpetual suering has gone from an abstract concept to
slow, creeping reality, I much prefer to
believe that I can x my bodys failings
through tricks, gadgets and philosophy.
To heed the lying but calming voice that
assures me: Once you x this goddamn
slice, you can still improve, not only in
golf but in all things.

This poem reminds us that the word stanza comes from

the Italian and means room, which in turn can remind us
that there is something that feels physical about reading a
poem. The readers mind moves along with the poets, until
we arrive in another space, where at least some scraps of the
marvelous can appear.

Stanzas for a Sierra Morning

By Robert Hass
Looking for wildowers, the white yarrow
With its deep roots for this dry place
And reweed which likes disturbed ground.
There were lots of them, bright white yarrow
And the reweed was the brilliant magenta
Some women put on their lips for summer evenings.
The water of the creek ran clear over creekstones
And a pair of dove-white plovers shed the rills
A sandbar made in one of the turnings of the creek.
You couldnt have bought the skys blue.
Not in the silk markets of Samarkand. Not
In any market between Xian and Venice.
Which doesnt mean that it doesnt exist.
Isnt that, after all, what a stanza is for,
So that after a night of listening, unwillingly,
To yourself think, you can walk, slightly hungover,
Through some morning market, sipping tea,
An eye out for that scrap of immaculate azure.

Matthew Zapruder is the author of four collections of poetry, most recently

Sun Bear. He teaches at Saint Marys College of California and is editor at
large at Wave Books. Robert Hass, a former poet laureate of the United States,
won the Pulitzer Prize in 2008 for his collection Time and Materials. This
poem is from Lightning Strikes: 18 Poets. 18 Artists, published by the Dolby
Chadwick Gallery last year.

Illustration by R. O. Blechman

19

Diagnosis By Lisa Sanders, M.D.

The man tested positive

for hepatitis. But that didnt
seem to explain his illness.

Nonno says he doesnt feel good,

the 8-year-old girl reported, handing
her mother a digital thermometer. The
woman looked at the readout just
under 102 degrees.
Her father, the childs grandfather,
had been sick for weeks. He was weak
and exhausted and ran a fever accompanied by shaking chills every afternoon.
He wasnt eating and had lost nearly 20
pounds. It was late summer, and the
tomato and eggplants in his garden were
ripe, but he hadnt been outside for days.
Over the past two months shed taken
her 67-year-old father to doctor after
doctor. They looked him over and gave
him antibiotics and other medications,
but so far nothing had helped.
Tell Nonno that if hes feeling sick,
hes got to go to the hospital. The girl
darted back to him with the message,
then quickly returned. He says hes
ready to go.

The More Obvious Possibilities

The woman rst took her father to his

internist when she noticed his fever
early that summer. The doctor thought
the patient probably had Lyme disease.
Though he didnt have the rash that usually announced the presence of the disease, it was summertime, and Lyme was
common where they lived in Connecticut. The doctor knew his patient spent
most of his summer days in the garden
behind the house where he lived with his
wife, their daughter and her children. The
patient took antibiotics for the presumed
Lyme, but the fevers continued.
His stomach was bothering him a bit,
he told his doctor when he went for a follow-up visit. So he was sent to a gastroenterologist. That doctor gave him a diagnosis of Helicobacter pylori a bacterium
that can survive the acid environment of
the stomach, where it can cause pain and
ulcers, though not usually fever. Still, for
the next two weeks the man took the prescribed medications: three pills to kill the
bug and one to neutralize the acids that
can exacerbate the stomach distress. But
the daily fever persisted.

A Dropping Blood-Cell Count

Then the mans wife noticed he was

coughing. His doctor gave him another
antibiotic for possible pneumonia. He was

20

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Diagnosis

still taking it when he agreed to go to the

emergency room that summer afternoon.
Three generations wife, daughter
and grandchildren of concerned family
members got in the car with the patient
and drove to Yale New Haven Hospital,
in the next town over. The doctors there
did a chest X-ray, which found no sign
of pneumonia. They assumed the patient
had a virus and sent him home.
The next day, the man felt no better. So
after his daughter returned from work, the
whole family got back in the car and drove
to the Hospital of St. Raphael, a community hospital recently added to the Yale New
Haven Health System. When the doctor
arrived, the patients wife and daughter
explained once again how sick hed been,
how tired. But when the doctor examined
the older man, he could nd nothing out
of the ordinary except the fever.
His blood tests were more revealing.
At the hospital the day before, his redblood-cell count was nearly normal. Now
it was low, which was worrisome. There
was also evidence of liver damage, so he
was tested for viral hepatitis. He tested
positive for hepatitis A and was admitted.

Looking for Patterns

Dr. Neil Gupta, the resident leading the

team on call, heard about this patient the
next morning on rounds. Seeing that he
looked fairly well and hearing the relatively routine diagnosis of hepatitis A,
Gupta turned his attention to patients
who seemed sicker.
In puzzling over a possible diagnosis,
doctors often rely on illness scripts,
detailed mental images of what a particular
disease looks like based on our knowledge
of the diseases characteristics along with
our experiences with patients. That afternoon, when Gupta heard that the patient
had developed a fever, he was surprised.
That didnt usually happen with hepatitis.
He went back to see him. The older man
was pleasant but didnt say much. Perhaps
there was a language barrier; the patient
spoke with a thick Italian accent. Or perhaps he was one of those patients who
dont dwell on their suering.

READERS
RESPONSES

Nearly 400 readers

oered possible
diagnoses after the
case was posted on
The Timess Well blog
on June 2.
Maitou,
Canada
Chronic form of
Q fever caused
by Coxiella burnetii.
Richard Irwin,
Massachusetts
Multiple myeloma.
Cornelia DeLee,
Hot Springs, Ark.
Toxoplasmosis
from feral cat feces
in his garden.
Cynthia Smith,
Chicago
G6PD deciency.

Lisa Sanders, M.D.

is a contributing writer
for the magazine
and the author of Every
Patient Tells a Story:
Medical Mysteries and
the Art of Diagnosis.

His wife and daughter, however, were

keenly attuned to the changes in the
patients health and behavior, and what
they told Gupta at the bedside didnt
sound like hepatitis. Gupta wondered:
Was this the right diagnosis?

A Story in the Details

Gupta sat down with the family in the

lounge and asked to hear the patients
story from the beginning. The man had
been sick for several weeks. Hed had a
fever every day. Before he became ill, he
was never idle; these days he sat on the
sofa for hours. Sometimes he had pain in
his upper abdomen, but never any nausea.
He had a cough.
Gupta returned to the patient and
examined him, this time quite carefully,
looking for the typical signs of hepatitis.
The mans skin was dark, but olive-hued,
not yellow; his eyes showed no hint of the
yellow of liver disease, either. His liver
was neither enlarged nor tender. Yet he
had tested positive for hepatitis A. Perhaps it was a false positive. But then what
did he have?

A Symptom Log

Gupta and his team wrote a list of key

symptoms: a fever that recurred every
afternoon, an occasional cough and some

A Dangerous Pear-Shaped Ring

The results trickled in over the course

of the next day. He didnt have Lyme or
Rocky Mountain spotted fever, the most
common tick-borne diseases in the United States. It wasnt mono or H.I.V. Finally, at the end of the day, an answer: The
patient had something known as babesiosis, a disease caused by a parasite, Babesia microti. The bug is transmitted by the
deer tick Ixodes scapularis, the same
tick that carries Lyme and Rocky Mountain spotted fever and is typically found in
the Northeast and upper Midwest.
Once introduced into the body, these
parasites invade red blood cells, destroying them as they reproduce and causing
a progressive anemia.
Gupta went down to look at the blood
smear with the pathologist. There, in the
middle of a sea of normal-looking red
blood cells, the pathologist pointed out
a few that carried a tiny pear-shaped ring.
It was the parasite.

A Tricky Diagnosis

Even in the geographic areas where the

infection is most common, babesiosis
can be dicult to identify. The symptoms patients are likely to have fever,
chills, fatigue, loss of appetite, abdominal pain and headache are seen in
many infections.
The patient was immediately started
on medications. The next day was his
rst without a fever in weeks. Now, a year
later, the patient is back in his garden. His
tomatoes, peppers and eggplants are just
beginning to blossom. Hes out weeding
and tending to them every day just as
he always did.

identify this unusual infection was Dr. Paige

Szymanowski, a resident in her second
year of training in internal medicine at Beth
Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston.

6.19.16

And the Winner Is: The rst person to

22

upper abdominal pain. His liver showed

signs of very mild injury not consistent
with hepatitis, which usually causes significant liver damage. He had an anemia that
had worsened over the past three days.
That list suggested a dierent set of
diseases, and Gupta began marking them
down as well. Could he have a tick-borne
illness other than Lyme? The cyclic fevers
were suggestive of malaria rare in this
country, but still worth thinking about.
Could this be mononucleosis? Or even
H.I.V.? Those diseases can aect red blood
cells and the liver. This new list required
additional testing.

Illustration by Andreas Samuelsson

CR AF T MEETS COLD

BOLD &
BAL ANCED

SWEET &
CREAMY

IN STORES NOW

Letter of Recommendation

Bunk Beds
By Zachary Fine

The punishing rents of New York City

breed unusual compromises. Sophomore
year of college, I snagged a one-bedroom
at the top of a seventh-oor walk-up in
Lower Manhattan. The week I moved in,
a neighbor pulled me aside and oered
wisdom on the climb: Your legs will
get used to it, she said, but your heart
never will. How literally she meant this,
I was never sure.
The apartment was tiny I had to
shule sideways like a crab to get into my

bathroom and I was intent on justifying

the unreasonable rent. So the day before I
moved in, I ordered a bunk bed on Amazon. I gured that with an extra berth, I
could eectively double the apartments
holding capacity, allow out-of-towners to
avoid hotels and oer refuge for friends,
whether locked out of their own homes or
weary of the slog back to Brooklyn.
The bed arrived as a sprawl of metal
poles, each embalmed in white lacquer.
I had picked a model with a full-size bed

24

Photo illustration by Mauricio Alejo

6.19.16

Sharing a single
vertical axis, each
person is made
to be vulnerable
before the other.

on bottom and a twin on top. While a traditional twin-on-twin evokes the accommodations of childhood and camp, prison and the military a sign, somehow,
of both playfulness and austerity the
twin-over-full variety signals something
entirely dierent, and possibly even
transgressive. Instead of two sleepers,
the bed seemed to beckon heterodox
groupings of three or four.
Most evenings, the bunk bed oered
itself up as a choice. Did I want to

transcend worldly concerns, swaddled

and suspended in a criblike twin bed
that enveloped my lanky build? Or did
I prefer to brave the open expanse of
the full bed like a taxpaying adult? The
decision involved a touch of foresight.
The bed was wedged against three walls,
and waking up on the twin meant either
shimmying down the ladder (and having
my ribs played like a xylophone by the
rungs) or taking a morning death-leap
from the top, more invigorating than a
cup of coee.
During the trial run, close friends took
the bottom, and I, rather religiously, took
the top. I was convinced I would be horribly maimed should the contraption collapse Please! You take the bottom,
I insisted, shrouding my dread in panicked largess. But once the lights were
o, youthful exchanges about life, love
and the cosmos raged. We were recumbent along an intimate vertical axis, and
our words, unmarred by dubious glances, spilled into the air. All night, the
whoosh of cars outside echoed through
the room like waves against a hull; until
sleep nally took us, we were out at sea
together, stowed away safely.
The bed swiftly earned its claim to
being one of my most prized possessions. Then, my parents came to visit.
One evening, I left the apartment to
pick up milk for the mornings cereal.
When I returned, they were absent from
the living room, and the bedroom door
was closed. I opened the door, and I
regret it, as those who open doors so
often do. My parents, stumbling through
a defense, confessed that the bunk bed
had sparked dormant passions the
beds latticework of metal poles both
the kindling and the match that ignited
their love aame. Freuds primal scene
is supposedly a trauma specic to childhood, but I am now no longer sure.
In the years to follow, the bed exerted
something like a centripetal force on the
space. Nearly all memorable activity in
the apartment spiraled around it. Regardless of how close any two (or more) people
are beforehand, on bunks they fall asleep
together, they wake up together, they hear
each other sleeping (snoring, babbling,
rolling around). Each person is made to be
vulnerable before the other, and in doing
so bonds in an unusual and meaningful
way. The twin-over-full arrangement
did not militate against the orgiastic, as

Minimum square
feet the Army
requires for a bunk
bed, in order to
prevent disease
transmission: 144
Number of serious
bunk-bed-related
injuries suffered by
children each year:
36,000
Proportion of
those injuries
caused by falls:
Number of children
who died trapped
between bunk beds
from 1990 to 1999:
57

my parents had proved, but much more

often, it fostered friendship.
In the summer, small, boozy gatherings in the apartment migrated to the
air-conditioned bedroom. As many as six
of us would distribute ourselves across
the beds, and occasionally someone
would be dispatched to the bottom bunk
if the metal moaned too much under our
weight. Treasured memories of childhood
mischief and sleepaway camp inevitably
surfaced, cementing new friendships and
shedding light on old ones.
Each morning when visitors were
below, I craned my neck over the side
of the safety railing to check on them.
Some consulted my eyes, as if inquiring
about what was in store for breakfast;

others instinctively reached out a hand

to meet mine halfway. Even though
the bed proved to be reliably sturdy,
I was always delighted to nd that no
one perished in the night, that no limbs
and organs were compromised by loose
screws or buckled metal.
Word eventually got around campus,
and the questions kept nding me: Is it
true that you have a bunk bed? Does it
really have a full and a twin? I had bought
the thing in the name of economy, but it
had become an attraction in itself. Perhaps bunk beds, in an age of individuation, tap into our latent desire to share a
world they urge us, after all, to cohabitate, and to explore the pleasures and
challenges of unfamiliar intimacies.

Tip By Malia Wollan

Duration is very important, says

Damien Lger, a doctor who runs the
sleep-research center at the HtelDieu hospital in Paris. Aim to sleep
for 20 minutes. Anything longer, and
you risk drifting into what scientists
call slow-wave sleep, a state of languid
brain-wave activity considered important for consolidating memories. Set an
alarm clock. A slow-wave encounter is
likely to leave you with what Lger calls
sleep drunkenness instead of a feeling
of rejuvenation.
Think of napping as a basic right, not
a petty luxury. For a French think tank,
Lger wrote a recent report arguing that
all workers should be permitted naptime, an especially important respite
for those working night shifts or anyone
who routinely sleeps six or fewer hours

daily. Such chronic sleep deprivation is

associated with hypertension, diabetes,
depression, obesity, cancer and even an
increased risk of death. Research shows
that short periods of sleep increase cognitive performance, reaction time and
mood. In one study, subjects who took
an afternoon nap were nearly twice as
likely to solve a video-game problem as
those who didnt.
Establish a few basic preconditions.
Find a safe space, like an unoccupied
oce or a dedicated rest area, where
youre unlikely to be bothered. Block out
light with an eye mask. Absolute quiet is
not a requirement for sleep, but if you are
in a particularly noisy place, like a factory,
use earplugs. You dont need to lie down.
Napping can be achieved sitting upright,
cheek on the desk. Bring along a small
pillow for your head, Lger says. The
ideal snooze time will depend on your
sleep schedule, but most daytime workers experience peak drowsiness in the
afternoon. Lger hopes that someday, a
quick slumber will replace the post-lunch
coee. Napping is much more powerful
than caeine, he says, and there are no
negative side eects.
Patients often tell Lger how they
sneak into the bathroom or into their
parked cars to nod o during the workday. Their fatigue embarrasses them. Do
your part to destigmatize naps by talking
openly about how pooped you feel. Tell
your co-workers you intend to sleep for
20 minutes. There is nothing shameful
about a nap, Lger says.

Illustration by Radio

25

How to Nap

The Ethicist By Kwame Anthony Appiah

26

6.19.16

A friend whom I like and admire a great

deal applied for a teaching job at a private
school where my wife used to work,
and where she and I maintain friendly
connections with top decision-makers.
On the face of it, our friend exceeded all
qualications for the job, and my wife
and I each wrote glowing recommendations
for him, including to the head of the
department to which he was applying. We
thought he was a slam-dunk for the position.
To our surprise, he didnt get it, and
in the aftermath, he was eager to know
what went wrong, emailing me twice to ask
whether I had heard anything. My wife
subsequently had lunch with the department
head, who told her frankly that he had
made a bad impression, that he seemed
too full of himself, alienating several
people who interviewed him and watched
him teach a class.
I still believe that the school missed out
on an exceptional teacher. Yet knowing
him, I can understand how he might have
created this impression. Hes a person who
works too hard to impress, and his energy
can be over the top; at times you want to
nd the volume knob and turn him down
a notch. Im guessing also that hes the
kind of teacher who is eective in a cult-ofpersonality way a teacher who is a
character and whom many students

Name Withheld

Illustration by Tomi Um

Just as you are morally bound to respect a

reasonable expectation you have created,
whether or not you used the formula I
promise, so the demands of condentiality extend to cases in which there is a
reasonable expectation that youll honor
it, even if you werent explicitly asked to.

(The person who spoke to your wife would

have been well advised to be explicit,
however. What goes on in job interviews
is usually the business of only people in
the decision-making chain.) You clearly
feel the force of this consideration. But
you also think the information could
help your teacher friend adjust his style
in future interviews. For this prospect to
weigh against the presumptive breach of
condentiality, it would have to be a good
thing. Is it?
Notice that youre not worried the interviewers got a misleading impression of
your friends temperament and teaching
style; you believe they got an accurate one
and didnt take to it. If thats so, you may be
able to help him interview better by hiding the side of him that put the interviewers o. Yet the school may have had good
cause to avoid a teacher who is, as you put
it, eective in a cult-of-personality way.
Theres another reason it might be good
to tell him what happened, though. Our
country is full of people convinced that
theyve lost out through armative action
to less-qualied minorities. Sometimes
they have; very often they havent. (For
one thing, you can be right that a white
candidate lost out to a targeted hire but
wrong to think that you were that white
candidate.) Its not just his self-esteem
thats being defended by this consoling
thought, its a false belief that relates to
an important social question. I would say
the expectation of condentiality wins out

Bonus Advice From Judge John Hodgman

Thomas writes: My wife and I play a game with our 5-yearold in which I pretend to be a man obsessed with salad,
called the Saladetarian. She calls herself the Lollipop Lady
and will only eat food on a stick. Searching for a food that
could satisfy both of us, my daughter suggested a miniature
caesar-salad wrap on a toothpick. I think this is an elegant
solution, but my wife argues that a salad inside a tortilla is
no longer a salad. Please resolve this dispute.

I promised myself I wouldnt adjudicate this sort of thing

ever since ruling in these pages that a hot dog is NOT
a sandwich. But I am simply too fascinated by your familys
bizarre fantasy life to not weigh in. First, congratulations
on teaching your 5-year-old that it is her job to find some
way to keep your strange needs satisfied and save your
marriage. Given the work shes doing, I think your stick-itarian
wife should ease up a bit. Whatever its called, that food
is unquestionably on a stick, and you all should eat it.

Illustration by Kyle Hilton

To submit a query:
Send an email to
ethicist@nytimes
.com; or send mail
to The Ethicist, The
New York Times
Magazine, 620
Eighth Avenue, New
York, N.Y. 10018.
(Include a daytime
phone number.)

Should I Tell
My Friend the
Real Reason
He Didnt
Get the Job?

will revere but some may resist. This

may have turned people o.
The friend, knowing that my wife was
having lunch with the department head,
emailed me again to ask how it went.
My question is whether to tell him what
I learned. A couple of things concern
me. First, while the department head did
not specically request that my wife not pass
along the content of her conversation, it
is quite possible that she assumed my wife
wouldnt do so; and my wife is reluctant
to do so. Second, I have to admit that Im
reluctant to give my friend news that will
vex him; he and I had each assumed that
he was passed over for a targeted hire
and not that he had in fact been judged
adversely. Learning that he was in fact
personally rejected will be upsetting to him.
On the other hand, it might help him
adjust for such situations in the future.
Its interesting and a bit perplexing
to nd yourself in this kind of ethical
quandary. You tend to think you should
always have a gut instinct for what
is right to do. But in this case, I dont.

here. But the reason youre having a hard

time deciding is that its a close-run thing.
I just discovered that my upstairs
neighbors in my very small co-op of ve
units are renting their apartment on
Airbnb. I only discovered this when my
partner recognized a guy from the
neighborhood in our stairwell and asked
if he was a friend of the neighbors. He said
that he wasnt; his mother is in town and
has been renting the apartment through
Airbnb rather than staying in a hotel.
Upon nding their actual listing on the
site, I learned that they are renting the
apartment for nearly $400 a night and
have had at least six renters based on
the reviews on their page. They didnt alert
anyone in the building that they were
doing this, and it violates our co-ops rules.
I believe it also violates New York City
law, but Im a little vague on that.
My real issue is that there are strangers
in our building, and it makes me feel
unsafe. My partner says that no one who
can aord their price would do anything
damaging to us or the building and thinks
Im crazy for being annoyed with them.
Obviously Im also jealous of their extra
income: Who wouldnt want an extra
thousand dollars (at least!) a month?
How do I confront this? Do I confront
it at all? I dont necessarily want to get
them evicted, but I do want them to know
they are violating my trust and not being
good neighbors. Thoughts?
C.S., Brooklyn

Your co-op has rules. Your neighbors are

violating them to their nancial advantage. If they want a change in the rules,
they should ask for a change. Putting
your anxiety and envy to one side, the
real issue here is that your upstairs neighbors are not doing their part in a common
enterprise based on a shared understanding. Of course, you have to gure out how
to handle this. Even if aluent short-term
renters arent dangerous, angry neighbors can be. No doubt a printout of the
Airbnb page mailed to the co-op board
anonymously would force the issue.
I am a lmmaker and recently graduated
from a university. I was shocked when,
by a stroke of good luck, hard work and
fortunate timing, I managed to get myself
booked onto a huge advertising job. The

work was extremely fullling, fast-paced

and well paid.
Despite this, I couldnt shake the feeling
that the company I was working for,
a giant tech company, was using me to sell
a product that is made by employees who
make very low wages and work very long
hours. Not only did I feel bad for my role
in pushing products onto consumers, but
worse, I felt very guilty knowing that the
extremely high gure I was being paid
for a weeks work might be two years worth
of work for the people who made the
things I was selling. At the same time, this
job fell from the sky at a time of extreme
nancial need, and I really enjoyed it.
My question is: How can I navigate this
situation in the future? I enjoy the fast pace
of advertising and the creative opportunities
it brings, but I am acutely aware that I am
becoming part of the inequality machine
every time I accept work like this.
Name Withheld

Your co-op
has rules.
Your neighbors
are violating
them to their
nancial
advantage.

I commend you for your concern about

the moral standing of your employer, but
your characterizations are pretty broadbrush. Big corporations, like every collective human endeavor, have good
eects and bad ones, and sometimes it
can be hard to be sure which predominates. On a global level, extreme poverty
has decreased by more than 50 percent
since 1990, as countries like China and
India entered the world economy. Could
your tech company have played a role in
that? Is it really just a wart on the face
of history? Still, if you remain convinced
that Giant Tech is evil, you might spare
yourself some anxiety and step aside for
someone who will do the work with a lessburdened heart. If this company wants
you, there are bound to be plenty of other
bidders for your services.
Kwame Anthony Appiah teaches philosophy
at N.Y.U. He is the author of Cosmopolitanism and
The Honor Code: How Moral Revolutions Happen.

Eat By Francis Lam

A Slovakian Secret
To master pierogies, embrace change.

Julia Hlinkas mother was tired of making pierogies. Shed already dug up the
potatoes on her small Slovakian farm,
harvested the wheat and milled the
our, so who could blame her for enacting a pierogi succession plan? She gathered her kids around. She kneaded and
rolled the skins out thin. She mashed
potatoes with sheeps cheese and drew

the dough around them, dumpling

after dumpling, hundreds at a sitting.
One day, she turned the task over to the
children. Hlinka was 10.
Shes 87 now, and she still makes
pierogies every Friday. She told me this,
her granddaughter Helena Fabiankovic
translating, as she peeled potatoes with
an eight-inch chefs knife in her Brooklyn

28

Photograph by Davide Luciano

6.19.16

Pierogies with
bacon and
(American) cheese.

kitchen, the motion seemingly hardwired into her ngers.

Fabiankovic made a face, though,
when Baba, as she calls Hlinka, pulled
out milk for the dough. Thats not how
she taught me, she said, before continuing in mild protest: She told me to use
sour cream and water. Its a dierence
that goes beyond dairy choices; last year,

Food stylist: Claudia Ficca. Prop stylist: Gozde Eker.

Fabiankovic quit her career as a preschool

teacher to open a restaurant in Gowanus
with her boyfriend called Babas Pierogies,
dedicated to her grandmothers specialty.
But Baba just kept kneading. Sometimes,
mastery of a dish means that you make
it the same every time, and sometimes it
means that things change, you wing it and
you know itll work out in the end.
Baba has seen a lot of change. She told
me stories from her years in her village,
Litmanov: about the government-assigned teacher whose pedagogy included making his students catch frogs for
him to cook for his girlfriend; about the
songs her mother and aunt sang in the
elds; about the call she got, in 1969, from
her husband, Mikulas, whod set out for
America two years earlier to make a living away from the eyes of the Communist regime. Come, he told her. Bring
the children. And open the barn; set the
animals free before you go. (Grandpa
always cries when he tells that story,
Fabiankovic said.)
Baba came to Brooklyn, living alongside Scandinavians in Sunset Park.
There were more Slovaks in Astoria, and
among the Polish families of Greenpoint,
and clustered with the Germans in Yorktown, communities as old as the 1880s.
But if New York is actually a galaxy of
tiny cities, in 1969, Sunset Park was out
of those orbits. Some of Hlinkas in-laws
lived nearby, though, and a few Slovak
friends. Still, Grandma cried a lot in the
early days, Fabiankovic said. Baba mentioned that she couldnt nd the sheeps
cheese for her pierogies. A friend took
her to the grocery store and pressed a
pack of American singles in her hand.
After the fall of communism in
Czechoslovakia in 1989, Fabiankovic remembers, Slovak families began
moving to her neighborhood and nearby Bay Ridge. It was great, she says. I
got to experience my culture head-on,
get smacked in the face with it. They all
went to the same church, shopped at Polish markets for almost-tastes of home,
made pierogies, sang and danced. But
over time, those families moved away.
Fabiankovic, who has lived her whole
life in Sunset Park, used to make pierogies with her Baba as a little girl, using
Play-Doh and a gumball as the lling,
but is also at home around won tons, pot
stickers and shiu mai. For as long as she
can remember, her neighborhood has

Comment: nytimes.com/magazine

A pliant,
tender skin
gave way
to a smooth,
creamy mash
of potatoes,
delivering
the gut-level
satisfaction
of starch
on starch.

been Brooklyns Chinatown, as Chinese

immigrants started arriving in the 80s. I
asked whether her community ever felt
any tension, being suddenly surrounded
by such a dierent culture, but her grandfather replied from the couch: Hes always
felt a connection to the Mexicans, the
Chinese, to the immigrants theyve seen
move into their neighborhood; he feels as
if he understands how they came here and
are trying to gure out their lives. Theres
a word in Slovak: susid, Fabiankovic said.
It means neighbor, but where they grew
up, your neighbor is your family, so I think
they brought that feeling with them. My
dad cooks lo mein at home.
We nished making the pierogies,
Baba and her granddaughter showing
me how to knead the dough so it has
just the right amount of chew, how to
pack them full but not-too-full. We ate
them: a pliant, tender skin giving way
to a smooth, creamy mash of potatoes,
delivering the gut-level satisfaction of
starch on starch. The salty bits of bacon
and lashes of fat on top were, strictly
speaking, unnecessary, but why resist?
I was lucky, I thought, to have this
moment. Not only because I got to compulsively eat a dozen superb pierogies,
but because Baba and Grandpa were
just about to go back to Slovakia for six
months. Do they ever think about just
staying there? I asked.
Nah, they like it here, Fabiankovic
said. They love that theres someone
selling vegetables on the corner, and that
theres a bus you can take anywhere. This
is their home now. Then I remembered
something else Fabiankovic told me: They
can get sheeps cheese here now, but Baba
still makes her pierogies with American.
Potato-Cheese Pierogies With Bacon
Time: 1 hour 30 minutes

pound bacon, cut into 1-inch pieces

(see note)
pounds red or Yukon Gold potatoes,
peeled, cut into 1-inch chunks, rinsed
Table salt

slices American cheese

large egg

cup plus 2 tablespoons milk

cups our, plus more for board

Note: If you prefer, dress the pierogies

with melted butter and chopped chives to
taste instead.

1. Place the bacon in a small saucepan

over medium-low heat to render slowly,
stirring occasionally. When the bacon
is cooked and browned but not yet crisp,
turn off the heat; let the bacon sit in its fat.
2. Place the potatoes in a large
saucepan, and add cold water to cover
and 1 tablespoon salt. Bring them
to boil over high heat, then lower heat
to a simmer for 25 minutes, or until
the potatoes break apart easily but are
not falling apart. Drain the potatoes,
and place them back in the pot. Add the
cheese, and mash with a potato
masher until smooth. Taste, and season
with salt if necessary.
3. While the potatoes cook, beat the egg
and 1 tablespoons salt together with a
fork in a large mixing bowl. Let rest for a few
minutes, then beat in the milk. Add the
flour in thirds, stirring well, until you have
a sticky, shaggy dough.
4. Flour your board with cup flour, spread
it in an 18-inch circle and turn the dough
out into the flour. Lightly knead the dough,
rolling it in flour as necessary, until it is
mostly smooth (a little lumpiness is O.K.) and
well floured, about 5 minutes. Pat it
into a 1-inch-thick disc, cover and let rest
for 30 minutes.
5. Using a rolling pin, roll the dough
out -inch-thick. (If you like a more delicate
wrapper, roll it a little thinner.) Punch out
wrappers with a 2-inch-round cookie cutter.
6. Hold a wrapper in one hand, and place
1 to 1 tablespoons potato filling in it,
pressing on the filling slightly to spread it
nearly to the edge of the wrapper. Bring
the edges of the wrapper up, as if folding a
taco, and pinch one end closed. Stabilize
the pierogi on the outstretched fingers of
one hand. Use your other hand to pinch
around the pierogis top to seal the dumpling
into a half moon, pinching the wrapper
snugly against the filling to prevent any air
pockets from forming. Use the thumb
of the stabilizing hand to block the filling
from squishing out as you pinch. (If you
have air pockets, they may cause the pierogi
to explode while boiling.) Place finished
pierogies on a lightly floured surface. Any
leftover dough may be reserved for
another use in the refrigerator, or cut and
boiled as rustic noodles.
7. Bring a large pot of water to a rolling
boil over high heat. Gently reheat
the bacon. Carefully add the pierogies
to the water, and cook until they all
float, then cook 1 minute more. Drain,
and serve garnished with bacon and
slicked with bacon fat.
Serves 4-6 (about 60 pierogies).
Adapted from Julia Hlinka.

29

Lives

The
Enlightenment
Sitting down for
some spiritual guidance
in the Himalayas.
By Karan Bajaj

Name:
Karan Bajaj
Age: 36
Location:
Uttarkashi, India

30

6.19.16

Bajaj, who now lives

in Brooklyn, is the
author of The Yoga
of Maxs Discontent,
published last
month by Riverhead.

He has also published

two novels in
India: Johnny Gone
Down and Keep Off
the Grass.

Nani Ma was standing in a white sari

outside her hut, a bare concrete block
with a tin roof, when I arrived. The villagers who told me about her had described
her accurately a slender British woman
in her late 60s who radiated calm. For 16
years she had meditated alone in a cave in
the Indian Himalayas. Recently she had
broken her vow of silence and moved to
this hut in Uttarkashi, in the foothills of
the mountains. I had hiked four kilometers through a dense forest to meet her.
Six months earlier, in late 2012, I had
left my job in New York to learn meditation, rst in a Sivananda ashram in southern India, then in a forest ashram in the
Uttarkashi district. I grew up in Shimla,
also in the Himalayas, and always thought
I would return one day to live a silent, contemplative life. My mothers death from
cancer fast-forwarded the plan 20 years.
I wanted a more urgent answer to my
questions about the nature of life, suering and death. But despite practicing six
hours of yoga and meditation every day
for months, I hadnt glimpsed the transcendence I read about in the Buddhist
and yogic scriptures. Now I had a rare
chance to ask a saint what more I could do.
Nani Mas kind face was marked with
bright splotches of red, and she was mostly bald. For a period of years she had subsisted on two bottles of cows milk that the
villagers left for her every day. Perhaps living on a milk-only diet irritates your skin
and makes you lose your hair. Her good
temper was intact, though. She greeted my
intrusion with a warm smile, as if she had
been expecting me. I bowed and touched
her feet. She went inside her hut and got
me water in an earthen pot. I was sweating
after hiking down steep trails for a few
hours and took it gladly. We sat down on a
rock in front of her hut next to the Ganges
River. Across the river, the mountains rose
high above the mist, a colossal tower of
green speckled with snow.
Unlike the grim, bearded yogis I
knew from my childhood, she was open
and welcoming. But words failed me.
They seemed too limited and impersonal to articulate the questions in my
mind: What have you learned about the
nature of reality while living in complete
silence? Your face looks so serene are
you enlightened? What does enlightenment feel like and how does one achieve it?
She lled the silence by asking me
questions about myself in a gentle, smiling

Illustration by Melinda Josie

voice. I told her I left India to pursue a

corporate career in the United States a
decade ago. Now I was back for spiritual reasons, but in the six months I spent
meditating in these ashrams, all I thought
about was petty material concerns, like
whether I would have a job when I
returned to New York and whether my
ance and I should have a traditional
Indian wedding. I was tired of my trivial thoughts and was thinking of taking
more drastic measures like living in a
cave alone for a month.
In the middle of my rant, a mechanical
whirring sound came from the hut.
Nani Ma excused herself. She returned
a few minutes later with a sheet of paper
and a cellphone in her hand.
I have to make a phone call, she said.
I stared at her. Of course, I said.
Ill leave.
Im on the board of a hospice now,
she said. We have a meeting, and Ive
received two prayers for review.
I stood up from the rock, wondering
vaguely how she managed to get a cellphone connection so soon after spending 16 years in a cave. It took me three
weeks of submitting and resubmitting
documentation about my identity and
residency, as well as references, before
nally being granted a connection.
Thank you for your time, I said. Can
I support the hospice in any way?
Nani Mas face brightened.
Oh, yes, she said with a broad, toothless smile. Come inside for a minute.
I followed her inside her hut, stooping
to enter through the small wooden door.
On one side of the 6-by-10-foot room was
a mattress with a brown blanket and ve
or six articles of clothing in a neatly folded
pile. Opposite the bed were a saucepan,
one clay glass, a bag of rice and a printer.
Nani Ma bent down and got a packet
of greeting cards from under the printer.
She showed them to me with delight.
The children in the village designed
them, she said. The cards had a picture
of a long-stemmed marigold ower on
them with Ganga Prem Hospice written
under it.
We sell these to raise funds, she said.
Do you want to buy one? The packets
were 50 rupees (about 75 cents) each.
Nani Ma had returned to the world. It
occurred to me that maybe it was time
for me to do the same. I bought 30 cards
and went on my way.

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B
o m e ry
Montg
ip
il
h
P
y
b
s
raph
Photog

C
S

er
ond trad e
b
r
e
m
r
o
Can a f dream persuad
h
wit a watch rugby?
ns to
America
Brown
y Chip

32

THE
ULTIM
ATE

H
e was hard-pressed to explain it even to himself. Possibly the
whole idea was daft. His rugby dream, the aspiration to start
a professional rugby league in North America, had taken over
his life. It had him raiding his bank account to pay for logos,
trademarks, websites. For visa specialists, branding wizards, a
high-powered sports lawyer. It had him hacking through jungles of marketing jargon. His Midtown Manhattan oce was
cluttered with cartons of new business cards, boxes of hats,
sample jerseys. There was a litter of unorganized receipts on
the desk. In 18 months hed racked up 250,000 frequent ier
miles. Hed watched the Rugby World Cup in London from
the Royal Box at Olympic Stadium; someone joked he could
plunge New Zealand into a national depression if he lured
their stars to America. Hed delved into venue contracts, hotdog sales projections and turf heights on rugby-compliant
elds. In conversation after conversation, on the phone, by
email and in person, at mixers and conferences, in airports
and foyers and hallways, he pitched his plans, parried critics
and cajoled skeptics into the fold. Some guardians of amateur
rugby were threatened by the prospect of losing prized club
players to a pro league. Some just wondered who the hell
he was Douglas Schoninger, a not-particularly-athletic
55-year-old former bond trader who had never played rugby,
who dimly remembered seeing a few games 30 or 40 years
ago but didnt know a ruck from a maul or a lock from a hooker until he bought a copy of Rugby Union for Dummies.
Last fall, he was thinking of his late father and the National
Football League games they used to attend at the old Giants
Stadium in the Meadowlands. On cold days, they sat on copies of the Sunday paper and used phone books to keep their
feet from freezing on the frigid concrete. They saw the same
people every weekend in the stands. They felt they were part
of the game in a way that was hard to put into words. All his
life, Schoninger had been going to N.F.L. games 10 last year
with his teenage son, Charlie. Charlie loved football, but to
Schoninger it seemed that on the professional level, the ethos of
the game, which evolved from rugby more than a century ago,
had curdled. Materialism and proteering had eaten away any
nobility the N.F.L. game once possessed, leaving in its place a
34

6.19.16

violent, vainglorious, $13-billion-a-year entertainment spectacle

staged by helmeted mercenaries for the enrichment of grasping
billionaires. Rugby was dierent, or seemed so, even in the
nature of the game: Players vied for the ball in scrums, bulled it
forward in mauls, booted it through goal posts or dashed with
it across the try line in the course of 80 nearly continuous minutes of free-owing improvisation, versus what unfolded in the
three-plus hours it took to play a 60-minute N.F.L. game, where
the actual amount of action averages only 10 minutes 43 seconds. In football, specialists did the same thing over and over;
in rugby, you played oense and defense anyone could score.
One day in February, Schoninger conded to me that his
secret ambition was to supplant the N.F.L. He was kidding.
Or not. It was hard to tell.
The N.F.L. is on top right now, and rugby is at the bottom, he said. But things always look better at the top and
worse at the bottom than they really are.
PRO Rugby, his new league for a sport that in America
has a fan base that would barely register as an N.F.L. rounding error, was just two months from kicking o its 30-game
season in April, with clubs in Denver, Sacramento, San Francisco, San Diego and Obetz, Ohio. Opening day was marked
D-Day on a wall calendar.
What if nobody comes? I asked. Rugby-dream stress
was showing on Schoningers face in a way it hadnt when I
asked the same heartless question in October.
You mean what happens if I dont sell a single ticket, or
a single hot dog, or a single parking space? If nobody buys
any PRO Rugby T-shirts or hats? If I dont get one sponsor?
If nobody wants to broadcast a single game?
He shuddered.
Im all in, he said. Ive become a rugby believer. If I fail,
its not the money Ive spent well, its the money Ive spent,
but its also that I was wrong. Wrong about the support from
the rugby community. Wrong about the time being right.
Thats what would hurt. Its like opening a restaurant and
then no one comes. That would hurt. But then, if this were
easy, it would have been done already.
hy it took so long has a lot to do with
the history of the game. Legend has it
that rugby sprang into being one day
in 1823 at the Rugby School in Rugby,
England, when 16-year-old William
Webb Ellis, with a ne disregard for
the rules of football as played in his
time, rst took the ball in his arms and ran with it. Until the
beginning of the professional era in 1995, the main branch
of the game, known as Rugby Union, held fast to its amateur
status, and to a manly, aristocratic ethos that idealized the
carnage of concussions and separated shoulders as unselsh
character-building sacrice for Team, God and Country. Vestiges of those values are still celebrated by club players and
boosters who credit rugby with fostering a rare fellowship
and mutual respect, rugby brawls notwithstanding. Players
often call the ref sir. Stars have been known to help clean up
the locker room. When the mayhem on the pitch is over, its
customary for adversaries to share a pint at a pub. Of what is
sometimes called the game they play in Heaven, the English
rugby champion Jason Leonard once wrote: There is a way
of life that comes with it; and a way of thinking that believes

Photograph by Philip Montgomery for The New York Times

Do
of ugla
his PRO s Sc
sta son Rug hon
nd , C by ing
s in ha , ce er,
Sa rlie, nte C.E.
cra in t r, a O.
m e he n d
nto
.

in honor, sacrice, pain and love of teammates and country.

We can never compare sport with war, but we can perhaps
discover here the wellspring of those beliefs.
The rst bona de rugby in the United States was played
in 1874, between Harvard and McGill University. Six years
later, at Yale, the future T. rex of American sports was hatched
when Walter Camp, the innovative coach and writer known
as the father of American football, separated the rugby scrum
into footballs line of scrimmage. Both rugby and football
were popular in American colleges and universities in the
early 20th century, and at one point, alarmed by the prevalence of injuries, Stanford and Berkeley gave up football for
rugby a programming decision that was reversed after
New Zealands mighty All Blacks, on a tour in 1913, humiliated
a squad of all-stars in California, 51-3.
New Zealand and other top teams were not represented
when the United States won Olympic rugby gold medals in

Antwerp in 1920 and Paris in 1924. The 17-3 victory in Paris over
a heavily favored French team by a United States squad made
up mostly of California collegians was one of the greatest upsets
in Olympic history. But the outraged reaction of some 40,000
French fans at the Stade Colombes jeopardized the very principle of the better and more peaceful world through sports on
which the modern Olympics were based. David Wallechinsky
recounts the scene in The Complete Book of the Olympics:
After two French players were injured, the U.S. team was booed
and hissed the remainder of the game. Fighting broke out in the
stands, and Gideon Nelson, an art teacher from Illinois and a
United States reserve player was knocked unconscious after
being hit in the face with a walking stick. The Americans left the
eld under a police escort and a barrage of rocks and bottles.
Rugby was dropped from subsequent Olympics. In America the game went into a long dormancy from which it did
not emerge until the 1960s, when it began to catch on again

The New York Times Magazine

35

with colleges and clubs. Ed Hagerty, whose life before rugby

included a turn as an altar boy in Grace Kellys wedding in
1956, discovered his passion for the game at Holy Cross in
1963. It was kind of countercultural, he recalls. We wore
discarded football jerseys. After graduation, Hagerty played
for local clubs in New York and was working as the publisher
of Popular Science when he quit to eke out a living as editor
of Scrumdown, a rugby newspaper started in 1975 by Jon
Prusmack. One of the rst Scrumdown editorials summed up
the state of the American game, suggesting that ruggers from
New Zealand, Australia and Britain were to their American
counterparts what Rudolf Nureyev was to Zorba the Greek.
To close the talent gap, promote and govern the sport
at all levels and establish a United States national team, the
115,000-member organization known today as USA Rugby
was formed in 1976. This August, rugby is returning to the
Olympics after a 92-year hiatus. The United States will defend
36

6.19.16

its gold medal in Rio de Janeiro, playing a shorter, less complex form of the game that features seven players on a side
instead of the traditional 15.
professional rugby league is about the
last thing Doug Schoninger imagined
he would be pouring time and money
into. Hockey, basketball and tennis
were his games growing up in Great
Neck, Long Island. His father, a voracious reader who left high school early
to help put a brother through college, worked six days a week
running an extermination company. Somewhat like Its a
Wonderful Life but with no angels, Schoninger recalls. He
was 25 when his father died at 66.
Reecting his faith and his cool appraisal of numbers, Schoninger spent a year at Emory University studying theology, then

Playe
rs
Franc from San
is
Sacra co and
ment
o
in an
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ay
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transferred to Tulane, from which he graduated in 1982 with a

degree in mechanical engineering. He landed a $13,000-a-year
job as a runner on the oor of the New York Stock Exchange
and later worked as a construction manager for Morse Diesel,
the general contractor for the Marriott Marquis Hotel in Times
Square. He returned to Wall Street in 2000 to trade stocks and
bonds at Morgan Stanley and Oppenheimer. Bearish by temperament, with a keen feel for risk, he eventually started his own
shop, DJS Capital Management, managing a bond portfolio of
several hundred million dollars for more than a dozen clients.
In 2013 Schoninger bought an inactive company called Stadium Capital Financing Group that Morgan Stanley needed
to unload to comply with new banking regulations. Trying to
revive the business, he began shopping for undervalued second-tier sports teams (minor-league baseball, lacrosse, D-league
basketball) whose revenues might be leveraged to raise capital
for new stadiums. He wasnt having much luck when, in the
autumn of 2014, he was introduced to Jason Moore, an Australian
sports-marketing impresario who for years had been trying to
raise up to $300 million to create an American rugby league
drawing on the N.F.L.s gladiatorial-entertainment template. We
wanted to showcase rugby the way Americans consume sports,
marketing it with American pizazz and style, Moore told me. He
aimed to sell franchises, host games in midsize soccer venues
and pay players upward of $100,000, but he had yet to secure the
all-important sanction from USA Rugby, without which it is
dicult to hire referees, coaches or players or to get insurance.
Moore arranged for Schoninger to attend a match in Chicago featuring the United States national team, the Eagles, and
New Zealands All Blacks, the titans of the sport. Beyond the
score the Eagles were slaughtered, 74-6 what impressed
Schoninger was the choreographic precision of the All Blacks
and the fervor of the crowd.
There were 61,500 people at Soldier Field, the largest rugby
crowd in American history, he recalls. That was the moment
things changed for me. I realized that if great teams wanted
to play here, and you could ll Soldier Field, you could do well
building a professional league.
Schoninger met with USA Rugbys chief executive, Nigel
Melville, a former scrum-half captain of the English national
team, in fall 2014. Using USA Rugbys demographic and event
data, Schoninger spent the winter doing due diligence. He
drew up budgets for what he envisioned would be six leagueowned franchises. He would start modestly, building around
cities with vibrant rugby clubs and prominent teams among
the hundreds of college and university rugby programs. Salaries ranging from $20,000 to $35,000 would be on a par with
other second-tier professional sports vying for sunlight in the
shadow of the N.F.L. Through Facebook, he could reach rugby
fans with a precision never before possible. I couldnt have
built a league on my budget without social media, he says.
The expenses for each team salaries, coaches, training
facilities, venue costs, marketing, uniforms would run to
about $1.5 million per year. Schoninger didnt have, or want,
partners, and would be nancing everything himself the rst
year. Revenues who knew? Could he get sponsors? Sell
broadcast rights? How many people would buy tickets? When
professional rugby began in England, the rst Harlequins game,
at Stoop stadium, drew around 1,400. Fans now routinely ll all
14,800 seats, and games at the national stadium in Twickenham
attract capacity crowds of 82,000. A survey by the Sports and
Photograph by Philip Montgomery for The New York Times

Fitness Industry Association found that there were 1.3 million

rugby participants in the United States, some 431,000 of them
hard-core devotees who played or watched the game more
than eight times a year. (The N.F.L., for comparisons sake,
estimates its fan base at 202 million.)
In April 2015, the USA Rugby board, which had considered
many proposals over the years, agreed to sanction Schoningers plan. Schoninger intended to kick o exactly a year
later hoping to ride the public interest generated by the
Rugby World Cup in the fall of 2015 and the return of rugby
to the Olympics in Rio this summer. First, he needed a name
and a logo. He couldnt use the word league because rugby
league signied a much less popular version of the game
that developed after the so-called Great Schism of 1895, when
working-class players from northern England who wanted to
be paid split o from teams adhering to the supposed purity
of amateur competition. A branding rm in San Francisco proposed a number of logos and names. Some, like the National
Rugby Association, or N.R.A., were red-carded for unwanted
connotations. Logos that looked decent on a ball or jersey
might look crummy on a trailer or a pitch. He nally settled
on a red oval shaped like a rugby ball with the winning name
in block letters: PRO, for Professional Rugby Organization.
He added the word Rugby below the acronym lest there be
any confusion about what PRO actually stood for.
Having never been the public face of an organization, Schoninger found himself in some novel situations. In December he
sat down in the Pig N Whistle bar in Manhattan with Matt
McCarthy, a host of a webcast called Rugby Wrap Up. McCarthy reached across the table and palpated Schoningers arm.
Doug, I just want to make sure youre real
Im as real as you are, Schoninger said.
because youre like Sasquatch to most American rugby
fans.
The leagues initial website and its Facebook page went up
in October, and Sasquatch had been living and dying on the
number of likes. He was relieved that only one fussbudget
had taken issue with the redundancy in the name PRO Rugby.
He hired a director of operations, Stephen Lewis, a well-connected Scotsman who was named USA Rugbys 2014 coach of
the year. Dominic DeFalco, a recent Penn State graduate who
played rugby there, came aboard over the summer as assistant director. Just before Christmas, Schoninger organized
a skills combine in San Diego to assess domestic prospects
and shoot footage for video spots.
There were setbacks. Schoninger couldnt nd a venue for
a team in New York, and his hopes were further hindered by
the states exorbitant workmans-compensation insurance
rates. Philadelphias rugby community was not as vigorous
as hed hoped. Venues in the Boston area didnt pan out.
By January it was clear that the rst season would feature
no teams on the East Coast. But Sacramento proved fertile
ground. Having three teams in California meant that players
could travel to some games by bus instead of plane, saving
Schoninger $1,500 a game on transportation.
When I stopped by the oce in February, coaches had
been hired, the schedule set, but Schoninger wasnt sure how
many players drawn mostly from the U.S., with a sprinkling
of international stars would sign contracts, and he hadnt
found a national sponsor or settled on a broadcast deal.
I was always the downside guy, he said. You cant take
The New York Times Magazine

37

risks if you dont understand the downside. But here we are,

two months away, and no one can tell me what our revenues
are going to be.
Lewis, the director of operations, came in to say hed heard
from the San Francisco coach, Paul Keeler, that no one liked
the colors of the teams uniform.
Too much gray, Lewis said.
The designer wanted gray its supposed to be evocative
of San Francisco fog, Schoninger said.
No one likes it.
We can change it.
DeFalco pulled up computer photos of all the proposed
league uniforms a palette of bold colors meant to evoke the
geography of each teams city.
Are we paying this guy to come up with these designs? said
Lewis, who had already dubbed his boss the Mad Couturier
because he insisted on putting a line across the jerseys to mark
the upper limit of a legal tackle.
Whats our rule? Schoninger said.
Criticism is only accepted with suggested solutions,
DeFalco said.
In some ways, the reason you have a Season 1 is so you can
x things in Season 2, Schoninger said, sighing.

-Day at last: Before sunup on April 17,

Schoninger and his son, Charlie, drove
from their downtown Sacramento hotel
to the local ABC aliate for a 6:10 interview. Schoninger took along a rugby ball
and some home-team jerseys.
I feel like Im running for court clerk in one of those elections where theres only one candidate, he said as he parked.
When he nished explaining why viewers might want to witness the fruition of his rugby dream instead of, say, assess the
structural features of Finnish lapphunds at the Sacramento Dog
Show, also taking place that day, he headed to Bonney Field. The
temperature was climbing to near-record levels. He was frazzled
from weeks of cross-country travel and negotiations. The cable
channel ONE World Sports would be broadcasting a third of the
season. AOL was live-streaming the Sacramento game. HawkEye Innovations, a sports-technology company, was producing
the seven-camera video feed. Thanks to a payroll imbroglio, hed
recently spent seven hours manually entering salary information
for his 130 new players. Where was the credit-card machine Bank
of America had promised? And why, oh why, had he scheduled
opening-day games in two cities? The Ohio teams ight barely
got in to Denver in the midst of a blizzard.
Maybe itll be like a snow day, and people will show up,
he said.
Douglas wakes up every morning, and the glass is half full,
said his wife, Abigail Asher, a noted art consultant.
When the gates of Bonney Field opened, early arrivals huddled in the shade of the press box. In the V.I.P. tent, waitresses
were loading tables with dishes of salsa and colored tortilla chips.
At 3:30 the players were announced Sacramento in green
and white; San Francisco in fog-free red and black. Its a risible
misconception that rugby is populated by athletes inferior to
high-level American footballers. The boys, as they are called
by coaches, fans and even the players themselves, are built
like a herd of genetically modied water bualo and seem as
inexhaustible as a class of A.D.H.D. preschoolers.
38

6.19.16

For all the nesse and savvy the players need to succeed in a
game that they, not the coaches on the sideline, control, rugby
still has a brutal heart. Lest there be any doubt, an ambulance was
parked behind the bleachers. But its a paradox of the sport that
helmetless rugby players may actually suer fewer concussions
than their cousins in the N.F.L. The concussion rate at last years
World Cup, according to USA Rugby, was 11 per 1,000 player-hours, compared with an estimated 54 per 1,000 player-hours
last season in the N.F.L. (The N.F.L. calculates concussions per
game, not per player-hour.) Credit below-the-shoulder tackling
rules and self-preservation not having a helmet lessens the
temptation to deploy your head as a spear.
At 4 oclock, Dan Power, a loquacious former rugby player
with a gift for decoding the chaos on the pitch, leaned into his
press-box mike and said, Ladies and gentlemen, the wait is
nally over.
Preseason odds had made the talent-laden San Francisco team
the heavy favorite, and at rst the game unfolded accordingly.
It was all a bit bewildering to the untutored eye. The ball would
vanish in a clot of bodies and then mysteriously reappear on
the grass like a giant egg, and a scrum half would pluck it up
and ing it underhand across the eld in what might become a
series of thrilling laterals that delivered it to a speedster on the
wing who would hie down the sideline and ing himself across
the try-line, jabbing the ball onto the ground for the proverbial
touch down. The heat began to alict players on both sides
with cramps, and occasionally some of the boys were leveled
by head-on collisions that left them looking as if the next game
they played might in fact be the game they played in heaven.
At the half, San Francisco led, 17-13. Schoninger went onto
the eld for an interview with Dan Power, who called him
the man behind the madness. He had been following the
game on his iPhone, roving from the press box to a V.I.P. tent
table where his wife and son were sitting. He was buoyed by
reports from Denver, where the home team won in overtime
before a snow-day crowd of 2,300.
When play resumed, San Francisco lock Nick Grass, evidently having missed the memo about fellowship and respect,
was sent o with a yellow card after he appeared to gouge the
eyes of Sacramento anker Kyle Sumsion. A little bit of Hows
your father going on out there, said the color commentator,
Lou Stanll, framing the sticus in sports-talk fashion as an
exchange of pleasantries. (Grass was later suspended for six
games.) When San Francisco hooker Tom Coolican was yellow-carded, Sacramento used its two-man advantage to pull
ahead. The crowd of just under 3,400 drummed their feet on the
aluminum bleachers. The home team closed out the win, 37-25.
The fans stood and clapped, and then the players from both
teams lined up in front of the stands and applauded the crowd.
Schoninger lingered at the stadium long after the game. Already
next season was on his mind what he needed to x, change,
invent; what had to be done to get teams in Canada, Houston,
Boston, New York, elsewhere. The weeks to come would esh out
the rugby dream, replacing theory with praxis. He would soon
learn, for example, never to schedule a sporting event on Mothers Day. Otherwise attendance was what he expected between
1,500 and 3,000 per game, paying $20 to $30 per ticket, with V.I.P.
seats fetching $100. More than 6,000 fans entered the leagues
online team-naming contest. By late May, undefeated Denver was
the leagues surprise star. San Francisco, the preseason favorite,

ing
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was a disappointment in many ways: negligible media coverage, a skilled but poorly conditioned squad with a pitiful 0-5
record. Hopes for a turnaround were riding on the arrival of the
New Zealand star Mils Muliaina, the 35-year-old former threetime captain of the All Blacks. The citys Recreation and Park
Department wanted to charge Schoninger $18,000 for installing a
rugby goal post, removing one and making a few other improvements at Boxer Stadium. He had been pleasantly surprised by
the interest in the league in Europe; PRO Rugby stats were being
published in French newspapers. He had always known money
wouldnt be the initial index of success what he hoped for was
something dierent, like maybe being mentioned in a joke on
a late-night talk show. He planned to add more teams, but if he
didnt, he could see the league almost breaking even next year.
For the moment, as the heat of a sun-baked afternoon ebbed,
he lingered in the afterglow of the days success, reviewing the
debut with anyone who wanted to talk about it. He fell into
Photograph by Philip Montgomery for The New York Times

conversations with the announcers as they packed up, and the

coaches, and one of the stadium managers, who said 800 people
had paid for parking. Even the Mad Couturiers jersey tackle line
had gotten good reviews. He chatted with the players who were
gathered under the V.I.P. tent swigging beer and carbo-loading
plates of lasagna in preparation for their professional responsibilities next week. A few fans who recognized Schoninger
waited patiently to thank him, and he fell into conversation with
them too. It was getting dark. His wife and son were waiting
to go back to the hotel, but he kept getting tangled in talk in
essence the same conversation hed been having day after day
for the last year and a half, a rolling, jabbering maul of rugby
rugby rugby. Sure, it was all in a days work, but it was more
than that. It was what needed to be done; it was part of what
hed come to think of as his mission, spreading the gospel of
the professional game, one convert at a time.
These, he said, still a bit amazed, are my people. 
The New York Times Magazine

39

BY JOE NOCERA / PHOTOGRAPH S

H S BY PETER EARL MCCOLLOUGH

The New York Times Magazine

41

a little after 9 oclock, a dozen Netix employees gathered in the cavernous Palazzo ballroom
of the Venetian in Las Vegas. They had come to
rehearse an announcement the company would
be making the next morning at the Consumer
Electronics Show, the tech industrys gigantic
annual conference. For the previous year, Netix
had been plotting secretly to expand the availability of its streaming entertainment service,
then accessible in about 60 countries, to most of
the rest of the world. Up to this point, Netix had
been entering one or two countries at a time, to
lots of fanfare. Now it was going to move into 130
new countries all at once, including major markets like Russia, India and South Korea. (The only
signicant holdout, for now, was China, where
the company says it is still exploring potential
partnerships.) Netix executives saw this as a
signicant step toward the future they have long
imagined for the company, a supremacy in home
entertainment akin to what Facebook enjoys in
social media, Uber in urban transportation or
Amazon in online retailing.
Ted Sarandos, who runs Netixs Hollywood
operation and makes the companys deals with
networks and studios, was up rst to rehearse
his lines. Pilots, the fall season, summer repeats,
live ratings all hallmarks of traditional television were falling away because of Netix, he
boasted. Unlike a network, which needs shows
that are ratings home runs to maximize viewers and hence ad dollars, he continued, Netix
also values singles and doubles that appeal to
narrower segments of subscribers. Its ability to
analyze vast amounts of data about its customers
viewing preferences helped it decide what content to buy and how much to pay for it.
Sarandos can be an outspoken, even gleeful,
critic of network practices in his zeal to promote what Netix views as its superior model
42

6.19.16

on-demand and commercial-free streaming,

on any device. That glee was on full display in
these remarks. For years, he said, consumers
have been at the mercy of others when it comes
to television. The shows and movies they want to
watch are subject to business models they do not
understand and do not care about. All they know
is frustration. That, he added, is the insight Netix is built on.
When Sarandos was done, Reed Hastings,
Netixs chairman and chief executive, took the
stage. A pencil-thin man, he seemed swallowed
up by the empty ballroom. He squinted uncomfortably under the lights. He and a number of
other Netix executives had spent the morning at
a meeting in Laguna, Calif., where a rare torrential rainstorm grounded air trac, forcing them
to make the ve-hour drive to Las Vegas. They
arrived only a few hours earlier. To make matters
worse, Hastings was feeling ill.
Haggard and tired, he stumbled irritably
through his presentation. But as he neared the
nale, Hastings broke out into a small, satised
smile. While you have been listening to me talk,
he said, reading from a monitor, the Netix service has gone live in nearly every country in the
world but China, where we also hope to be in
the future. Even though this was only a practice
run and even though it would be a long time
before anyone knew whether global expansion
would pay o the Netix executives sitting
in the ballroom let out a loud, sustained cheer.
They had good reason to celebrate. Netix,
since its streaming service debuted in 2007, has
had its annual revenue grow sixfold, to $6.8
billion from $1.2 billion. More than 81 million
subscribers pay Netix $8 to $12 a month, and
slowly but unmistakably these consumers are giving up cable for internet television: Over the last
ve years, cable has lost 6.7 million subscribers;

more than a quarter of millennials (70 percent

of whom use streaming services) report having
never subscribed to cable in their lives. Those still
paying for cable television were watching less of
it. In 2015, for instance, television viewing time
was down 3 percent; and 50 percent of that drop
was directly attributable to Netix, according to
a study by MoettNathanson, an investment rm
that tracks the media business.
All of this has made Netix a Wall Street
favorite, with a stock price that rose 134 percent
last year. Easy access to capital has allowed the
company to bid aggressively on content for its
service. This year Netix will spend $5 billion,
nearly three times what HBO spends, on content, which includes what it licenses, shows like
AMCs Better Call Saul, and original series like
House of Cards. Its dozens of original shows
(more than 600 hours of original programming are planned for this year) often receive
as much critical acclaim and popular buzz as
anything available on cable. Having invented the
binge-streaming phenomenon when it became
the rst company to put a shows entire season
online at once, it then secured a place in the
popular culture: Netix and chill.
But the assembled executives also had reason
to worry. Just because Netix had essentially created this new world of internet TV was no guarantee that it could continue to dominate it. Hulu,
a streaming service jointly owned by 21st Century Fox, Disney and NBC Universal, had become
more assertive in licensing and developing shows,
vying with Netix for deals. And there was other
competition as well: small companies like Vimeo
and giants like Amazon, an aggressive buyer of
original series. Even the networks, which long
considered Netix an ally, had begun to ght back
by developing their own streaming apps. Last fall,
Time Warner hinted that it was considering withholding its shows from Netix and other streaming services for a longer period. John Landgraf,
the chief executive of the FX networks and one
of the companys ercest critics told a reporter
a few months ago, I look at Netix as a company
thats trying to take over the world.
At the moment, Netix has a negative cash
ow of almost $1 billion; it regularly needs to go
to the debt market to replenish its coers. Its
$6.8 billion in revenue last year pales in comparison to the $28 billion or so at media giants like
Time Warner and 21st Century Fox. And for all
the original shows Netix has underwritten, it
remains dependent on the very networks that
fear its potential to destroy their longtime business model in the way that internet competitors
undermined the newspaper and music industries.
Now that so many entertainment companies see
it as an existential threat, the question is whether
Netix can continue to thrive in the new TV universe that it has brought into being.

To hear Reed Hastings explain it, there was

never any doubt in his mind that, as he told
me during one interview, all TV will move to
the internet, and linear TV will cease to be relevant over the next 20 years, like xed-line telephones. Viewers, in other words, will no longer
sit and watch a show when a network dictates.
According to Hastings, Netix may have begun
as a DVD rental company remember those
red envelopes? but he always assumed that
it would one day deliver TV shows and movies
through the internet, allowing customers to
watch them whenever they wanted.
Now that future has begun to take shape. The
television industry last went through this sort
of turbulence in the late 1970s and early 1980s,
when cable television was maturing. Previously,
of course, television had been mostly transmitted
via the public airwaves, and the major networks
made the bulk of their money from advertising.
But cable provided an indisputably better picture,
and the proliferation of cable networks came to
oer a much greater variety of programming.
In time, consumers concluded that it was worth
paying for something TV that had previously been free. This meant that in addition to

advertising dollars, each cable channel received

revenue from all cable customers, even those who
didnt watch that channel. By 2000, 68.5 million
Americans had subscriptions, giving them access
to the several hundred channels the industry took
to calling the cable bundle.
Hastings knew the internet would eventually
compete with that bundle, but he wasnt entirely
sure how. And so he had to be exible. Sarandos
says that in 1999, Hastings thought shows would
be downloaded rather than streamed. At another
point, Netix created a dedicated device through
which to access its content, only to decide that
adapting its service to everything from mobile
phones to TV sets made more sense. (The Netix
device was spun out into its own company, Roku.)
In 2007, even as Netixs DVD-by-mail business
remained lucrative, and long before the internet
was ready to deliver a streaming movie without
ts and starts, Hastings directed Netix to build
a stand-alone streaming service.
Netixs approach to what it streams has been
similarly exible. At rst, the company focused
on movies, logically enough: 80 percent of its
DVD rentals were lms. But despite deals with
two premium movie channels, Starz and Epix,

Netix found the distribution system to be

largely inhospitable. Netix usually didnt get
access to a new movie until a year or so after
it ran in theaters. It then held the distribution
rights for only 12 to 18 months; eventually, the
movie went to free TV for the next seven or
eight years. This frustrated customers who
couldnt understand why something was there
one month and gone the next or why, for that
matter, so many titles were missing entirely
from Netixs catalog.
So the company shifted to television. Cable
networks like FX and AMC were developing
expensive, talked-about dramas, the kind HBO
pioneered with The Sopranos and The Wire.
But these series, with their complex, season-long
story arcs and hourlong format, seemed to be
poor candidates for syndication, unlike self-contained, half-hour sitcoms like Seinfeld, which
can be watched out of order.
Hastings and Sarandos realized that Netix
could become, in eect, the syndicator for these
hourlong dramas: We found an ineciency, is
how Hastings describes this insight. One of the
rst such series to appear on Netix was AMCs
Mad Men, which became available on the site

Below: A meeting at Netflix headquarters in Los Gatos, Calif. Opening pages: Reed Hastings, left, and Ted Sarandos.

Photograph by Peter Earl McCollough for The New York Times

The New York Times Magazine

43

Todd Yellin, the vice president of product, says, The worst thing you can do at Netflix is say that
you showed it to 12 people in a focus room and they loved it.

in 2011, between its fourth and fth seasons.

Knowing from its DVD experience that customers often rented a full season of The Sopranos
in one go, Netix put the entire rst four seasons
of Mad Men online at once. Bingeing took o.
Television networks lined up to license their
shows to Netix, failing to see the threat it posed
to the established order. Its a bit like Is the
Albanian Army going to take over the world?
Je Bewkes, the chief executive of Time Warner,
famously joked back in 2010. The occasional voice
warned that Netix would become too big for the
industry to control, but mostly the legacy media
companies viewed the fees from Netix as found
money. Streaming video on-demand rights, as
they were called, hadnt even existed before Netix
asked to pay for them. And because the networks
didnt understand how valuable those rights would
become, Netix got them for very little money.

Everyone seemed to be a winner, including

the shows themselves. In 2012, for instance,
Netix began streaming the rst three seasons
of Breaking Bad, the dark drama produced by
Sony that ran on AMC. Though praised by critics,
Breaking Bad had not yet found its audience.
When the folks at Sony said we were going
to be on Netix, I didnt really know what that
meant, Vince Gilligan, the creator of Breaking
Bad, told me. I knew Netix was a company
that sent you DVDs in the mail. I didnt even
know what streaming was. Gilligan quickly found out. It really kicked our viewership
into high gear, he says. As Michael Nathanson,
an analyst at MoettNathanson, put it to me:
Breaking Bad was 10 times more popular once
it started streaming on Netix.
This was around the time that network executives started to recognize the threat that Netix

44

Photograph by Peter Earl McCollough for The New York Times

6.19.16

could eventually constitute to them. Five years

ago, says Richard Greeneld, a media and technology analyst at BTIG who happens to be Netixs
most vocal proponent on Wall Street, we wrote a
piece saying that the networks shouldnt license
to Netix because they were going to unleash a
monster that would undermine their business.
Thats exactly what seemed to be happening.
Worse, they realized that Netix didnt have
to play by the same rules they did. It didnt care
when people watched the shows it licensed. It
had no vested interest in preserving the cable
bundle. On the contrary, the more consumers
who cut the cord, the better for Netix. It didnt
have billions of legacy prots to protect.
Yet the networks couldnt walk away from the
company either. Many of them needed licensing
fees from Netix to make up for the revenue they
were losing as traditional viewership shrank.
Negotiations between a network or a studio and
Netix became fraught, as the networks, understanding the value of their streaming rights, sought
much higher fees. In some cases, those negotiations broke down. The Starz deal, for example, was
not renewed after it ended in 2012. (Chris Albrecht,
the chief executive of Starz, would later describe
the original deal as terrible.)
This was also the moment that Netix started
to plot its move into original programming. In
2012, Sarandos began to argue internally that to
stand apart from the crowd, and to avoid being
at the networks mercy, Netix needed exclusive
content that it fully controlled. If we were going
to start having to fend for ourselves in content,
Sarandos says, we had better start exercising
that muscle now. In short, Netix needed to
begin buying its own shows.
We could see that eventually AMC was going
to be able to do its own on-demand streaming,
Hastings says. Or FX. We knew there was no
long-term business in being a rerun company,
just as we knew there was no long-term business
in being a DVD-rental company.
Still, Hastings was cautious. Producing original
material is a very dierent business from licensing someone elses shows. New content requires
hefty upfront costs one show alone would most
likely cost more than the $30 million a year Netix
reportedly once paid Starz for its entire library of
movies. Developing its own series would thrust it
into the unfamiliar business of engaging with producers, directors and stars. Back in 2006, the company set up a way to distribute independent lms,
called Red Envelope Entertainment, but it failed,
and Hastings shut it down. (We would have been
better o spending the money on DVDs, he told
me.) Now it was going to give original content
another try with much higher stakes.
Sarandos had a show he was itching to buy:
House of Cards, a political drama that was

being pitched by David Fincher, the wellknown director, and would star Kevin Spacey.
Sarandos knew that, according to Netixs vast
database, many of the companys subscribers
liked the kind of drama that Fincher and Spacey
wanted to make. But algorithms alone werent
the deciding factor. He and Hastings gured
that Fincher, who directed lms like Fight
Club and The Social Network, would create
a critical and popular sensation.
In any case, Sarandos said, the potential
reward vastly outweighed whatever nancial
and reputational risk House of Cards represented. If it is a op, we will have overpaid for
one series, he told Hastings. But if it succeeds,
we will have changed the brand.
In winning over Fincher, Sarandos faced two
other obstacles: a competing oer from HBO,
which also wanted House of Cards, and the
fact that no one had ever made a show for a
streaming service before. For decades, when
movies went straight to video without a theater run, they were ipso facto failures in Hollywoods view; for a seasoned director like Fincher, picking Netix presented the same risk of
marginalization. Sarandos overcame both by
oering freedom and money. There are a
thousand reasons for you not to do this with
Netix, he told Fincher. But if you go with us,
well commit to two seasons with no pilot and
no interference. Sarandos also oered Fincher
a reported $100 million for 26 episodes, at the
high end for an hourlong drama.
The rst season of House of Cards became
available in February 2013. It was an immediate
hit with viewers and critics. Five months later,
Netix posted the rst season of Orange Is the
New Black, which Sarandos had ordered before
House of Cards went into production. Critics

lavished praise on the new show as well. Having

begun its life as a Silicon Valley tech company,
Netix had somewhat improbably become a
television network.
Reed Hastings doesnt have an oce. My oce
is my phone, he says. I found I was rarely using
my cubicle, and I just had no need for it. It is
better for me to be meeting people all around
the building. On the several occasions I interviewed him at the companys headquarters in Los
Gatos, Calif., we met in the cafeteria. Although
Netix employees describe him as an intense,
blunt boss, Hastings comes across in public as
relaxed and undefensive. He spent our interviews
leaning back in his chair, his arms folded and legs
crossed, tossing o answers to my questions as
if it were a day at the beach.
Born and raised in the Boston suburbs his
great-grandfather was the wealthy investor
Alfred Lee Loomis, who played a critical role
in the invention of radar Hastings, now 55,
is one of those tech executives who came to
California to attend Stanford (grad school for
computer science in his case) and never left. The
tech company he ran before Netix was called
Pure Software, which made debugging tools for
software engineers. Before Netix, Hastings had
no experience in the entertainment industry.
Although news coverage now tends to focus
on its shows, Netix remains every bit as much
an engineering company as it is a content company. There is a reason that its shows rarely
suer from streaming glitches, even though,
at peak times, they can sometimes account for
37 percent of internet trac: in 2011 Netix
engineers set up their own content-delivery
network, with servers in more than 1,000 locations. Its user interface is relentlessly tested and

tweaked to make it more appealing to users.

Netix has the ability to track what people
watch, at what time of day, whether they watch
all the way through or stop after 10 minutes.
Netix uses personalization algorithms to put
shows in front of its subscribers that are likely
to appeal to them. Nathanson, the analyst, says:
They are a tech company. Their strength is that
they have a really good product.
It is no surprise that Hastings, given his engineering background, believes that data, above
all else, yields answers and the bigger the data
set, the better. The worst thing you can do at
Netix is say that you showed it to 12 people
in a focus room and they loved it, says Todd
Yellin, the companys vice president of product
innovation. He likes to note that customers will
at most consider only 40 to 50 shows or movies
before deciding what to watch, which makes it
crucial that the company puts just the right 50
titles on each subscribers screen. (All the data
Netix collects and dissects can yield surprising correlations: For example, viewers who like
House of Cards also often like the FX comedy
Its Always Sunny in Philadelphia.)
There is another underappreciated aspect
of Netix that Hastings views as a competitive
advantage: what he calls its high performance
culture. The company seeks out and rewards
star performers while unapologetically pushing
out the rest.
One person who helped Hastings create that
culture is a woman named Patty McCord. The former head of human resources at Pure Software,
she was also Hastingss neighbor in Santa Cruz.
She car-pooled to work with him and socialized
with his family on weekends. I thought the idea
for Netix was kind of stupid, she told me. But she
trusted Hastingss instincts and wanted to keep
working with him. Her title was chief talent ocer.
The origins of the Netix culture date to
October 2001. The internet bubble burst the
year before, and Netix, once ush with venture capital, was running out of money. Netix
had to lay o roughly 50 employees, shrinking
the sta by a third. It was Reeds rst layos,
McCord says. It was painful.
The remaining 100 or so employees, despite
working harder than before, enjoyed their jobs
more. McCord and Hastings concluded that the
reason was that they had held onto the self-motivated employees who assumed responsibility
naturally. Oce politics virtually disappeared;
nobody had the time or the patience. There
was unusual clarity, McCord says. It was our
survival. It was either make this work or were
dead. McCord says Hastings told her, This is
what a great company feels like.
As luck would have it, the DVD business
took o right around the time of the layos.
By May 2002, Netix was
(Continued on Page 52)
The New York Times Magazine

45

A shadow network of
patients are trying to treat
their own debilitating
diseases by infecting
themselves with
gastrointestinal worms.

By Moises Velasquez-Manoff
Illustrations by Brosmind

46

Credit by Name Surname

Credit by Name Surname

The New York Times Magazine

47

When Vik was in his late 20s, blood

started appearing in his stool. He

found himself rushing to the bathroom
as many as nine times a day, and he quit his job
at a software company. He received a diagnosis of severe ulcerative colitis, an inammatory
condition of the colon. Steroids, which suppress
inammation, didnt work for him. Sulfasalazine
suppositories oered only the slightest relief. A
year and a half after his diagnosis, Viks gastroenterologist warned him that because his disease
was poorly controlled, he risked developing a
condition called toxic megacolon: His inamed
intestines might rupture, leading to blood infection, septic shock or death.
The doctor recommended infusions of cyclosporine, a powerful immune-suppressant drug.
Vik looked it up and learned that the drug, often
given to transplant recipients, in rare instances
can increase the risk of fatal infection and certain cancers. And if cyclosporine didnt work, the
next intervention would probably be the surgical
removal of his colon. Vik might have to wear a
colostomy bag for the rest of his life.
I had a feeling there had to be a better way,
he told me recently. (Worried about being stigmatized, Vik asked that I identify him only by
his rst name.) He began researching ulcerative
colitis and discovered that the prevalence of
inammatory bowel disease an umbrella term
that includes both ulcerative colitis and Crohns
disease had increased markedly in the United
States over the 20th century. Yet the disease was
less common in the developing world. He learned
that exposure to dirt and unsanitary conditions
early in life seemed to protect against these and
other inammatory diseases later. And then he
encountered an explanation for the correlations in
the research of a scientist named Joel Weinstock.
Weinstock, a gastroenterologist now at Tufts
University, thought that parasites were to blame.
But it wasnt their presence in the human digestive system that was causing the rise; it was their
absence. To survive for years in another animal,
parasitic worms, known as helminths, counter
their hosts defenses. Because an out-of-control
immune response against native bacteria was
thought to drive inammatory bowel disease,
Weinstocks insight was that parasites ability to
disarm the immune system might prevent the
disorder. The broader implication was that the
disappearance of parasites largely eradicated from American life in the early 20th century
through improvements in sanitation might
have left our immune systems unbalanced,
increasing our vulnerability to all types of inammatory disorders.
To Vik, Weinstocks idea was the rst cogent
explanation for his disease. It also pointed toward
a solution. Weinstock was already experimenting
with re-parasitizing people with inammatory
bowel disease, using a helminth called Trichuris
48

6.19.16

suis, the pig whipworm. He had chosen the species

because, in theory, it cant reach sexual maturity
in humans and spread from one person to another. Early, small studies yielded impressive results,
with 43 percent of colitis patients seeing improvement after 12 weeks of whipworm eggs, but Vik
thought the use of pig whipworm had a aw. It
required continual dosing, and it could cost tens
of thousands of dollars a year (a German company
was producing the eggs for human consumption;
in the United States, selling them to treat a disease is illegal). And most important, if he expected a parasite to change his immune system, he
believed, a species adapted to humans, not pigs,
was likely to do a better job.
Vik wanted human whipworm. This helminth,
which reaches about 1.5 inches in length, xes
itself into the wall of the large intestine and feeds
o the organs secretions for perhaps two years.
The potential results of severe whipworm infection include anemia, clubbed ngers and, in children, stunted growth. But after exhausting his
other options, Vik began to think of infecting himself with parasites as the most rational course of
action. After all, the parasite had been with people
since prehistory; tzi the Iceman, the 5,300-yearold mummy found frozen in the Italian Alps, had
whipworm. Besides, the worst possible outcome
of a whipworm infection was a kind of inammatory bowel disease. And he already had that.
His doctor was dead set against the idea, Vik
told me. So was his wife, a doctor in training. (They
later divorced.) Vik is a driven, entrepreneurial
type, though, and undeterred, he began emailing
any expert who would listen to my crazy ideas. In
2004, he ew to Bangkok to meet a parasitologist
who agreed to hear him out. He brought along
his father, a professor and internist, for gravitas.
(Viks father, who worked in Southeast Asia as a
young doctor, told me it was common then to
leave light whipworm infections untreated.)
The Thai parasitologist later handed him a vial
of uid containing whipworm eggs. Microscopic
in size, they had come from an 11-year-old girl in
southern Thailand, he was told. Vik ew home.
Next began what Vik describes as the most
dicult part of his life. He
set up a lab in his parents
Southern California home
and stocked it with a microscope, petri dishes, slides
and flasks purchased on
eBay. But he couldnt get
the eggs to embryonate.
Just as chicken eggs need to
incubate to hatch, helminth
eggs require embryonation
to produce infective larvae.
Parasite eggs are excreted
in feces, and in their native
tropics, that embryonation
occurs naturally after the

eggs spend time in warm, humid conditions. But

reproducing those conditions in his parents house
proved dicult. He tried various conditions
warm, wet, cool, dry, light, dark to no avail: The
eggs remained inert. Swallowed in this state, they
would pass right through his gut without hatching.
The breakthrough came when, imagining
defecation under a tree, Vik abandoned his goal
of antiseptic incubation and began using nonsterile tap water in the petri dish. Now the eggs,
football-shaped and translucent under the microscope, began to display a knotted, ropy shape
within developing larvae indicating embryonation. Months after returning from Thailand,
he nally drank a glass of water containing a few
hundred whipworm eggs.
Three months later, he swallowed another
thousand eggs. Ova began showing up in his
stool, indicating that his body now hosted living, breeding parasites. When he tapered o his
drugs, his colitis remained quiescent. Instead of
triumph, though, Vik felt doubt. Was this real?
Or was it a natural ebb in his disease? I wanted
proof, he told me. Thats when Vik began searching for what he calls the Team.
In his interactions with scientists, Vik had
noticed that parasitologists, the scientists most
familiar with the dangers of parasitic infection,
were the most receptive to the idea that parasites
might help with disease. So in 2006, after poring
over numerous faculty web pages, he emailed a
young parasite immunologist at the University
of California, San Francisco, named Png Loke.
When Loke heard Viks story his disease, his
trip to Thailand, his trouble incubating the parasites he found the tale compelling. He didnt
seem crazy, just someone who had really done a
lot of research, had his back up against the wall
and decided to take a plunge, says Loke, who now
has a microbiology lab at New York University.
Loke agreed to monitor Vik, a decision that
would alter the course of his own research. Over
the following four years, Vik relapsed twice.
Whenever his whipworms grew old, the colitis
ared. Then he drank more eggs, and his disease
came back under control. A gastroenterologist

periodically examined Viks colon, taking tissue

samples. And when Loke and his colleagues analyzed which genes were expressed during ares
and remission an indicator of immune activity
they discovered a pattern that may change how
scientists think about ulcerative colitis.
When the disease was quiescent, production
of one protein in particular, called interleukin-22,
increased. IL-22 encourages intestinal mucus to
ow. In inammatory bowel disease, the protective mucous layer is often eroded. Scientists
think this allows native microbes, usually held at
a slight remove from the intestinal wall, to get
closer to the gut wall, leading to inammation
and further impeding the ow of mucus. Viks
whipworms apparently interrupted that vicious
cycle by restoring the mucus barrier. Parasites,
it seemed, could heal the gut.
Over the past decade, thousands of

people around the world have introduced parasites into their bodies on
purpose, hoping to treat immune-related disorders. Some have drawn inspiration directly from
Viks case study, which appeared in the journal
Science Translational Medicine in 2011. But many
more have been inspired by the same research that
inspired Vik. A conuence of factors is driving
what is essentially an amateur quest to rewild
the modern body and restore it to an imagined
prelapsarian state. The internet has facilitated the
sharing of information, both reliable and not. But
maybe more important, scientists are wrestling
with germ theory, a cornerstone of modern medicine, and beginning to articulate a more nuanced
idea: that the organisms in our bodies not only
make us sick but also keep us healthy. Participants
in the parasite underground see themselves as acting on this new emerging paradigm.
When I rst began exploring the movement
a few years ago, two self-styled providers supplied most of the parasites. Theyd read some of
the same research as Vik, found it promising and
acquired helminths in the developing world. After
treating their own conditions (they claimed), they
began advertising helminths online for thousands
of dollars. They saw themselves as pioneers.

Since then, competition has come to this niche

market. New providers oer lower prices. Users
read about the science in online forums, share
their experiences and learn where to get helminths. Like Vik, a growing contingent of users
has learned to cultivate parasites for self-treatment, circumventing the providers altogether.
They trade incubation methods in Facebook
discussion groups, occasionally arrange for the
exchange of starter material, including eggs or
fecal material from worm-infested donors, and
post photos of their homegrown eggs and larvae.
Anecdote fuels the movement, because no
large randomized, double-blinded, placebo-controlled studies have produced evidence that parasites can cure anything. And because parasites
arent F.D.A.-approved, paranoia is common.
Nearly everyone I interviewed requested some
measure of anonymity, not only to avoid stigma
but also because they worried about losing access
to a treatment they said had changed their lives.
Scientists I queried tended to emphasize the
dangers of helminth use. I do not advocate
self-experimentation when the risks have not
been claried, Stephen Hanauer, director of
the Digestive Health Center at Northwestern
Medicine, told me in an email. Joel Weinstock,
whose research partly inspired the movement,
ticked o more reasons purchasing unregulated
parasites is a bad idea: You dont know that youre
getting the species promised. Even if you are, you
dont know if the specimens are alive, or if youre
getting the appropriate numbers of them, or even
what the appropriate numbers are.
Still, a few experts also expressed sympathy.
I certainly cant condone it, but I completely
understand, Alex Loukas, a parasitologist at
James Cook University in Australia, told me.
Youre talking about people with debilitating disease. Modern medicine has just failed them. This
is perhaps the best way to understand helminth
use: as one grass-roots response to an epidemic.
The prevalence of autoimmune and allergic diseases has increased between two- and threefold
in recent decades. Roughly one in ve Americans
has an allergic disease, ranging from seasonal hay
fever to life-threatening food allergies. Roughly

one in 13 has an autoimmune disease a disorder in which the immune system tasked with
our protection instead attacks our own bodies.
These disorders often strike in the prime of life or
earlier, causing decades of suering. And current
therapies fall short. Continuing research oers
reasons for hope, says Daniel Rotrosen, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases division of allergy, immunology
and transplantation. But currently, he says, We
are really not where we would like to be in terms
of treating many of these diseases.
Theres an apt historical precedent for the current unregulated experimentation with parasites:
the underground pharmacies and smuggling
rings dramatized in the movie Dallas Buyers
Club. They sprouted during the 1980s AIDS crisis, serving a demographic, mostly gay men, who
were ignored by mainstream medicine and who,
in an eort to treat themselves, began importing
non-F.D.A.-approved drugs from Mexico. Many
of the drugs they used didnt stand up to later
scientic scrutiny, its worth noting, but the calculus leading them to take unproven drugs was
similar to that driving helminth users today. If
you are stricken with a terrible disease for which
medicine has little to oer, then what, really, do
you have to lose by turning to a parasite?
One day in September 2010,

Amy, a 46-year-old teacher in

the eastern United States, found
herself struggling to read and to see peoples faces.
She thought she was going blind, but then she
was given a diagnosis of multiple sclerosis. Her
immune system was stripping the fatty coating,
called myelin, from her nerve bers, impeding
their ability to transmit signals. As the disease progressed, it could cause paralysis and incontinence,
but what worried Amy most was not being able to
read. My No. 1 activity is reading, she told me.
I lost part of my life for a while.
Her neurologist recommended a drug called
Copaxone, she says. But the injections killed fat
cells, leaving unsightly indentations and bruises
along her thighs. And new brain lesions showed
up on scans, indicating that the disease continued to advance. Amy tried another drug called
beta interferon, but it triggered fevers, and after
injections she felt ill for hours. It was just this
weird nightmare of life, she says.
Then Amys thyroid gland, important in regulating metabolism, started failing, stressed by the
interferon treatment. Her doctor recommended
that she take thyroid replacement hormone. This
was the last straw. Each treatment caused new
problems, it seemed, and none really helped. She
wanted another option.
A co-worker recommended a 2011 book called
The Wild Life of Our Bodies, by a biologist
named Rob Dunn. It discussed therapeutic helminths. The notion that wed co-evolved with
The New York Times Magazine

49

parasites for so long that our immune system

needed them appealed to Amys holistic mindset. She joined a Yahoo group dedicated to helminthic therapy. Thats where she discovered an
extraordinary study from Argentina.
In the early 2000s, some multiple-sclerosis
patients at a neurology clinic in Buenos Aires
began showing up with parasite infections. Aware
of the potential for parasites to help inammatory disease, the presiding neurologists proposed
an experiment: Dont treat the parasites, and see
what happens. Twelve patients agreed, and for
nearly ve years the doctors monitored them.
Disease progression, as measured by brain scans,
slowed signicantly. Blood work showed an elevation of suppressor cells that prevent autoimmune diseases. And when, more than ve years
later, the doctors dewormed four patients who
complained of malaise, those suppressor cells
disappeared, and the disease started up again.
Inspired by these ndings, which were published in 2007, small exploratory studies testing
the pig whipworm on multiple-sclerosis patients
began around that time at the University of
Wisconsin, Madison. That helped to reassure
Lisy, Amys partner, who initially thought the
idea reeked of quackery. Amy contacted wormtherapy.com, a site run by man named Garin
Aglietti. Aglietti wasnt a doctor hed dropped
out of medical school but hed treated his own
psoriasis, he said, with hookworms acquired in
Belize. His breadth of knowledge impressed
Amy. I felt this immediate trust, Amy told me.
Two years worth of hookworms cost $2,500.
In January 2012, Amy and Lisy ew to San
Diego. Aglietti picked them up at the airport in
an S.U.V. and drove them across the border to a
two-story building in Tijuana, where Amy met
a warm doctor named Jorge Llamas. His spare,
basic oce didnt have shiny, modern medical
equipment, but as Amy says, helminths were
pretty low-tech.
Hookworms penetrate the skin and, after a
weekslong odyssey through the body, arrive at
the small intestine, where they feed on blood and
grow to about a centimeter long. Llamas applied
gauze to Amys arm containing 35 nearly invisible
hookworm larvae. There was a remote possibility
of a severe, potentially life-threatening allergic
50

6.19.16

reaction as they entered her body,

Aglietti explained. He had an
adrenaline shot handy should that
occur. They waited an hour, chatting, until Aglietti deemed things
safe, and then he drove them back
to San Diego.
About 10 weeks later, Amys
bone-deadening exhaustion, a
symptom of multiple sclerosis,
began fading. She told her neurologist what shed done. To her
surprise, he was familiar with the
background research, but he was nervous about
her decision. Whenever she visits, he oers new
drugs. I have politely declined, Amy told me.
Amys neurologist didnt respond to my queries, but her family-practice doctor corroborated her account, adding, As long as a patient is
making an informed decision, and understands
the risks, then something is worth doing if they
decide its worth doing.
What most frustrates Amy, Vik and

other helminth users I spoke with is that

while they have found something that
helps them, theres little willingness from mainstream doctors to consider it. Vik laments that
sick people might be removing lengths of their
intestines when a therapy exists that might help.
As it happens, a company called Coronado
Biosciences did test Joel Weinstocks pig whipworms. It ran the largest trials conducted to date,
comprising 250 participants with Crohns disease.
But in contrast to Weinstocks earlier, smaller studies, which showed an almost miraculous curative eect in Crohns 72 percent experienced
remission these studies showed no benet at
all. The company, now called Fortress Biotech,
hasnt released details from the study, but it has
dismissed criticism Weinstock, for example,
thinks the trial should have started over because
of an unusually high response among those taking
a placebo as wishful thinking. These believers
are being fooled by randomness, a spokesman for
the rm said in an email.
Last year, however, Alex Loukas, the parasitologist in Australia, published a small study
in which hookworm infection seemingly cured
celiac disease, an autoimmune disease of the gut
triggered by the gluten protein, found in wheat
and other grains. He gave 12 celiac volunteers
20 hookworm larvae each. Once the worms
established themselves, he began feeding the
volunteers incrementally larger quantities of
foods with gluten. At the one-year mark, eight
participants who previously couldnt eat any gluten without diarrhea and worse could now eat a
bowl of pasta without problems.
Celiac disease occurs when a persons immune
system mistakes wheat protein as dangerous and
attacks. This unbridled aggression begins to

destroy the gut. How exactly the parasites stopped

the disease remains somewhat mysterious. Studies
suggest they hijack white blood cells, transforming them into soothing cells that prevent inammatory disease. But research by Png Loke also
indicates that they commandeer the microbiota,
the community of microbes in the intestinal tract.
In animals, parasites increase counts of anti-inammatory bacteria thought to prevent a range
of disorders, including asthma and colitis. And
deworming people causes an immediate decline
in those same bacteria, Loke has found, perhaps
increasing their vulnerability to inammatory
disease. He thinks parasites do this, in part, by
increasing the secretion of mucus, which selectively feeds anti-inammatory bacteria. Loukas
and his colleagues have received funding for a
larger celiac trial, but he sees the eld moving
away from the use of live parasites, toward the
identication of the molecules they secrete.
For helminth users, this push toward wormderived pharmaceuticals is cited as justication
for the undergrounds existence. People are sick
and suering today, they argue. Are they to wait
for years or decades that they may not have for
a worm-based pill when theres something that
might work now?
A few years ago, I acquired my own

hookworm colony. I was researching

what would become my 2012 book,
An Epidemic of Absence, about the rise in allergic and autoimmune diseases. I have a number
of immune-related disorders peanut allergy,
hay fever and an autoimmune condition called
alopecia universalis that has left me mostly hairless that would serve as test cases.
Was I afraid? I knew that a number of parasitologists, well versed in the terrors of hookworm
infection, had intentionally infected themselves.
When you learn enough about a parasites biology, amazement and curiosity gradually replace
fear and revulsion.
So one cool early-winter day, I walked across
the border to Tijuana, accompanied by Garin
Aglietti. In Jorge Llamass clinic, I riled through
several months of tests showing that Aglietti,
my hookworm donor, didnt have H.I.V., hepatitis or Strongyloides stercoralis, a particularly
unpleasant parasite that, like hookworm, infects
through the skin but which, unusually among helminths, can also multiply in the body. Then Llamas
pressed a bandage against my arm containing, he
said, 30 larvae. I felt the well-known hookworm
itch, a slightly tingly, almost stinging sensation as
they burrowed into my skin.
Over the next few weeks, as the larvae made
their way to my small intestine, I felt as if I had
a mild u. Cramps, a little diarrhea, headaches
and malaise followed. The symptoms lessened
over time, and for a month or so during hay-fever
season that spring, my sinuses were remarkably

clear. Seemingly overnight, a patch of eczema

on my hand also disappeared. Fine peach fuzz
sprouted here and there on my body.
But those were the extent of the benets. And
late in hay-fever season, I was suddenly stricken by
full-blown seasonal allergies. My eczema returned
with a vengeance. I thought Id lost the parasites,
but they slowly reasserted control over my sinuses, although never quite as powerfully as during
that initial period. I kept the colony going for over
a year, during which time the benets gradually
waned while the symptoms an occasional ache
in the pit of my stomach and sporadic malaise
never completely dissipated. Ultimately, the
benets were too variable and the side eects too
unpleasant to justify continuing.
When people have written me over the years
asking for advice, I point out that Im not a doctor, and I urge skepticism. Its possible, I say, that
parasites worsen your condition. I interviewed
one young man with Crohns who gave himself
hookworm, lost weight and became so anemic
that he required emergency blood transfusions.
I spoke with others who improved for a while
but then relapsed.
But I dont think that my warnings have dissuaded many people, for the simple reason that
theyre desperate. Its tempting to dismiss them
because of this desperation. And certainly its
possible that cases of remission are a result of
the placebo eect, that parasites dont help and
that the community of helminths users is gripped
by a self-reinforcing delusion. Its also possible,
though, that parasites can treat a subset of patients
with autoimmune and allergic diseases, and that
through self-experimentation, sick people are guring out whos in that group.
Today the members of the under-

ground community infecting themselves with parasites nd one another

on Facebook groups with names like helminthic
therapy support and helminth incubation. They
ask questions about which diseases respond to
helminths or see wrenching posts from people
who recently acquired hookworm, felt terribly
ill and now wonder why their joints hurt more
than before. Others cheer them on, sharing their
own experiences and pointing out that symptoms
often worsen before they feel any better.
Success stories, when posted, invariably inspire
a chorus of congratulations followed by questions
which species worked the best? Moderators
curate up-to-date lists of these successes, some
of which link back to their authors, making them
somewhat checkable. They also include failures, in
an attempt at balance. Documents list substances
that users have found may accidentally kill parasites, like oregano oil and nitrous oxide.
The operating assumption in this world
seems to be that parasites usually work. A moderator once politely asked that I stop referring

to helminths as parasites and call them symbionts instead. And the social dynamics of these
forums can strike some as odd. Theres pressure to be positive and cheerful about it all the
time, a 30-something librarian who successfully
treated her autoimmune thyroid problems with
hookworm told me.
At the same time, these groups direct participants to a remarkable amount of scientic
information, including numerous peer-reviewed
articles. Particularly intriguing are the protocols
based on users experiences. If you have a terrible
reaction to hookworm which isnt uncommon
you might start over with smaller doses, and
gradually introduce larvae over a longer period
of time. Dierent organisms might also work
for dierent disorders. I spoke with one British
scientist, a biologist, who found that hookworm
helped an inammatory condition aecting his
liver, but not his ulcerative colitis. Only when he
introduced whipworm, which lives at the site of
the ulcerations, did his colitis diminish.
At some point, I learned of a private online
group where parents discussed treating their
children with helminths. After my own experience, I couldnt imagine intentionally giving my
child a parasite, so I was surprised. Many members were mothers; some had immune disorders
themselves. A few incubated their own parasites.
Everyone I spoke to had given helminths to themselves before their children. Their children had
disorders like eosinophilic esophagitis, which can
make swallowing food dicult; severe food allergies; and a neuropsychiatric disorder with O.C.D.like symptoms called Pandas. In several instances,
conventional treatment had failed. The parents
viewed the potential side eects of parasite infection as milder than the diseases already alicting
their children, and less dangerous than some of
the drugs they had already tried. And they claimed
to have seen impressive results with parasites.
Some were experimenting with a new organism, a tapeworm native to rats called Hymenolepis
diminuta. A British company called Biome Restoration sells it. Depending on the dosage, an order
can run just $40. Don Donahue, a radiologist in
eastern Tennessee, founded Biome with two other
passionate helminths users. He had long suered

from nasal inammation and obstructive polyps.

But just three weeks after acquiring 30 hookworms
in Tijuana, he told me, the symptoms improved
overnight. It was like someone slapped me in the
face, he says. He started cultivating them at home
for his own use. Spurred in part by the sick people
he saw at work, Donahue then decided to make
helminths more widely available.
The hookworm Necator americanus (American murderer) wasnt ready for prime time in
his view. I really honestly hate hookworm, he
says, because some of the side eects are so bothersome. But Im sick without it. So Donahue settled on what he considered a gentler organism,
Hymenolepis diminuta. Yet even as he put most
of his life savings into starting Biome Restoration,
he has kept giving away parasites freely. Of everyone I spoke with, Donahue perhaps most fully
expresses the ethos of enthusiastic sharing so
often evident among the community of parasite
users. I interviewed one young woman suering from Crohns whom he met running at the
park and gave a supply of the rat tapeworm. Her
Crohns eased, she gained weight and, after years
of trying, she became pregnant. I spoke with a
former snowboarder in Portland, Ore., stricken
with a painful autoimmune disorder of the spine
called ankylosing spondylitis. That man, Scotty
Wittlake he wanted me to use his full name
told me his condition improved following his
self-innoculation with Donahues hookworm.
Citizen scientists are pushing this forward,
says Donahue, who acts more like an evangelist
than an entrepreneur. He seems to want to share
the miracle hes found, to spread the word and
help others. Biome Restoration has no robust safety data nor any evidence that rat tapeworms help
with anything. And parasites that nd themselves
in unfamiliar hosts can, in theory, cause signicant disease and, in rare cases, even death. (In
March, the F.D.A. extended an import alert, which
already applies to hookworm and whipworm, to
tapeworm.) But the company, which seeks to
make a more aordable helminth available to
more people, is trying something few others have:
It is engaging with regulatory authorities to legally sell its product in Britain. The underground is
pushing its way aboveground.

The New York Times Magazine

51

Netflix
(Continued from Page 45)

doing well enough to go public,

selling 5.5 million shares at $15
a share. With the $82.5 million
Netix reaped from the oering,
Hastings started hiring aggressively again. This time, he and McCord
focused on hiring fully formed
adults, in their words, go-getters
who put the companys interests
ahead of their own egos, showed
initiative without being asked and
embraced accountability. Dissent
and argument were encouraged,
even demanded.
For those who t in, Netix was
a great place to work empowering and rational. There are no
performance reviews, no limits on
vacation time or maternity leave in
the rst year and a one-sentence
expense policy: Do what is in the
companys best interest. But those
who could not adapt found that
their tenure at Netix was stressful and short-lived. There was pressure on newcomers to show that
they had what it took to make it at
Netix; those who didnt were let

go. Reed would say, Why are we

coming up with performance plans
for people who are not going to
work out? McCord says. Instead,
Netix simply wrote them a check
and parted ways.
McCord also convinced Hastings that he should ask himself a
few times a year whether he would
hire the same person in the same
job if it opened up that day. If the
answer was no, Netflix would write
a larger check and let the employee go. If you are going to insist on
high performance, McCord says,
then you have to get rid of the
notion of retention. Youll have to
fire some really nice, hard-working people. But you have to do it
with dignity.
I held the hands of people
weeping, saying, I want to be here
forever, McCord says. I would
tell them, Nothing lasts forever. I
would say to Reed, I love them, too,
but it is our job to be sure that we
always have the right people.
In 2004, the culture was codied
enough for Netix to put it on a
sequence of slides, which it posted on its corporate website ve

years later. It is an extraordinary

document, 124 slides in all, covering everything from its salaries (it
pays employees what it believes a
competitor trying to poach them
would) to why it rejects brilliant
jerks (cost to eective teamwork
is too high). The key concept
is summed up in the 23rd slide.
Were a team, not a family, it
reads. Netix leaders hire, develop and cut smartly, so we have stars
in every position.
After Hastings, the executive I
spent the most time with at Netix
was Yellin, a former independent
lmmaker who joined the company in early 2006, when he was in
his early 40s. Yellin quickly distinguished himself by pushing back
hard whenever he thought Hastings was wrong about something.
There was a culture of questioning, but I pushed the envelope,
he says. He also helped develop a
style of meeting that Id never seen
before. At the one I sat in on, there
were maybe 50 people in a small
circular room with three tiers of
seats, like a tiny coliseum, allowing
everyone to easily see everyone

else. The issue at hand seemed

pretty small to me: They were
discussing whether montages on
the opening screen of the user
interface would be more eective
in keeping subscribers than still
images or trailers. But the intensity of the discussion made it clear
that the group took the matter very
seriously. Various hypotheses had
been tested by sending out montages to 100,000 or so subscribers
and comparing the results with
another 100,000 who got, say, still
images. (This is classic A/B testing, as its known.) Every person
present had something to say, but
while there were strong disagreements, no ones feathers seemed
ruled.
One of my last interviews at Netix was with Tawni Cranz, the companys current chief talent ocer,
who started under Patty McCord in
2007. Five years later, McCord, her
mentor, left. When I asked her why,
she visibly inched. She wouldnt
explain, but I learned later that
Hastings had let her go.
It happened in 2011, after he made
his biggest
(Continued on Page 55)

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Puzzles

SPELLING BEE

FREEWHEELING

SKYSCRAPERS

By Frank Longo

By Patrick Berry

By Wei-Hwa Huang

Wheel answers are 6 letters long and circle their

correspondingly numbered hexagons, starting in one
of the 6 adjoining spaces and reading clockwise or
counterclockwise. Rim answers read clockwise around
the grids shaded perimeter, one after the other,
starting in the circled space.

Fill the grid with numbers from 1 to 4. The numbers

represent the respective heights of skyscrapers 1
being the shortest, 4 being the tallest. The digits at
the side of the grid indicate the number of skyscrapers
that can be seen from that vantage point, with shorter
buildings sometimes being hidden by taller ones. As in
sudoku, no number is repeated in any row or column.

How many common words of 5 or more letters can

you spell using the letters in the hive? Every answer
must use the center letter at least once. Letters may
be reused in a word. At least one word will use all 7
letters. Proper names and hyphenated words are not
allowed. Score 1 point for each answer, and 3 points
for a word that uses all 7 letters.
Rating: 7 = good; 14 = excellent; 21 = genius

WHEELS 1. Fanatical activist 2. A Streetcar Named

Desire woman 3. Instantly like (2 wds.) 4. Parcels out
5. Entertain, as with a story 6. Ritzy bathroom fixtures
7. Endless talker
Example Answer

RIM Hidden feature on a DVD (2 wds.) Tolerate Dr.

___, 1990s TV therapist

A
Y
M

L
P

3
4
2
1
3

1
4
2
1
3
2

4 1 2
2 3 1
4 3
2 2 4

2
4

3
2

2
3

Our list of words, worth 26 points, appears with last weeks answers.

TWO BY THREE
By Richard L. Wainwright
Every answer below is a familiar phrase or name in which two different letters of the alphabet each appear exactly three times. The repetitions can appear in any order. Fill in the
blanks to complete the answers. For example, the answer to No. 1 is WALL CALENDAR, which uses three As and three Ls. The respective answer lengths are indicated in parentheses.

L C __
A __
L E N D __
A R (4,8)
A __
L __
Ex. W __

12. __ A __ Y __ L U __ __ Y __ S (4,4,4)

24. F __ R S T __ __ __ __ __ G (5,6)

1. F I __ E A __ __ __ A __ __ Y (4,3,5)

13. Y A __ __ C O __ __ __ G __ (4,7)

25. __ T __ L __ __ N L __ R __ (7,4)

2. __ M E __ __ I N G __ A __ T __ (8,5)

14. J __ __ __ __ J A M __ __ (5,5)

26. __ __ O __ L __ __ __ R S O N (6,6)

3. C R __ __ __ __ A __ __ R (5,5)

15. __ W O L __ F __ F __ __ __ (3,4,4)

27. __ __ __ M F __ __ __ E N T (4,3,4)

4. __ __ R B __ __ E B __ __ (7,3)

16. A __ __ L __ __ __ __ L (5,4)

28. S P __ __ C H __ U __ __ L __ (6,6)

5. D A R __ I __ G __ __ __ D L __ (7,6)

17. __ I __ __ B A __ __ S __ H E M E (8,6)

29. M I __ __ __ L __ __ K __ (4,6)

6. __ O P H __ __ __ N D __ __ I L S (3,3,3,5)

18. B __ __ __ B A __ __ __ L (4,6)

30. F __ __ __ __ W A __ __ N G (6,5)

7. __ U H __ __ __ __ D __ L I (8,3)

19. H O __ __ __ A D __ __ __ A L (8,4)

31. J __ __ S __ __ __ __ R (3-6)

8. R __ D __ __ __ __ __ R (3,6)

20. T __ G __ __ S __ __ V E __ (6,5)

32. H O R __ __ __ __ N __ __ (5,5)

9. L __ __ S E C A __ __ __ __ (5,6)

21. C H A __ T __ __ M __ M B __ __ (7,6)

33. P U R __ __ O __ S __ __ S __ (4,8)

10. __ O __ __ E __ __ A __ O N (6,5)

22. __ H __ A __ __ R S __ A __ (7,4)

34. G __ __ __ __ __ __ (4,3)

11. S __ __ __ C H __ N __ __ M E (6,2,4)

23. G L __ __ __ Y P H __ T __ __ (6,6)

35. __ __ __ D __ __ I N __ (4,5)

54

Netflix
(Continued from Page 52)

mistake as chief executive. He split Netix into

two companies one to manage the DVD
business and the other to focus on streaming.
Customers were outraged; for many, the move
meant a 60 percent price increase if they kept
both the DVD and the streaming service. With
complaints mounting and subscribers canceling, Hastings quickly reversed course and
apologized. In the three weeks following this
episode, the price of Netix shares dropped 45
percent, and Wall Street questioned the companys acumen. Hastings decided to re-evaluate everyone in the executive ranks, using the
litmus test McCord taught him: Would he hire
them again today? One of the people this led
him to push out was McCord.
It made me sad, she said when I called to ask
her about it. I had been working with Reed for
20 years. Netix had just given the go-ahead to
House of Cards, and McCord said she didnt
want to walk away in the middle of the next thing.
But she also felt a sense of pride. She was
gratied that Hastings had taken her advice so
thoroughly to heart.
Bill Murray, wearing a tuxedo with no tie,
stepped out of a black car and meandered
through a throng of people toward Ted Sarandos. It was a crisp night in December, and
Murray had just arrived at the New York premiere of A Very Murray Christmas, a loosely
structured, thinly plotted musical-comedy special directed by Soa Coppola and including
guest appearances by George Clooney, Chris
Rock, Michael Cera and others. In the fall of
2014, when Coppola and Murray rst cooked
up the idea, they went straight to Sarandos. By
then, a year and a half after House of Cards
became available, Netix had a reputation for
deep pockets, marketing savvy and a hands-o
policy with the talent. The idea of doing away
with a pilot, born of desperation when Sarandos
was wooing Fincher, had now become Netixs
standard practice, much to the delight of producers and directors.
Ted, Murray said, as they shook hands warmly, you should get a promotion. He grabbed
Sarandos by the lapels, pulled him close and
added loudly, You are the future! The two men
laughed uproariously.
From the time he arrived at Netix in 2000,
Sarandos has had the nal say on both Netixs
licensing deals and its original programming.
An Arizona native, Sarandos was working for
a large video-retail chain when Hastings hired
him to negotiate DVD deals directly with the
studios. Sarandos had been in love with movies
all his life: He worked his way through college by
managing an independent video store. If he had
chosen a dierent path, its easy to imagine him

having become a traditional Hollywood executive

instead of an industry antagonist.
When the networks complain about Netix,
Sarandos is the one who usually shoots back.
Netix doesnt publish ratings! Ratings, he says,
are irrelevant to Netix because the only number that matters is subscriber growth; Netix
doesnt need to aggregate viewers for advertisers, and it doesnt care when consumers
watch their shows, whether its the day they
are released or two years later. Netix spends
too much money for its shows! Big Data helps us
gauge potential audience size better than others, Sarandos told me.
At an investment conference late last year,
David Zaslav, the chief executive of Discovery
Communications, which operates the Discovery Channel, articulated the case for having networks rethink their relationship with Netix.
Streaming video-on-demand platforms only
exist because of our content, Zaslav said, in an
obvious reference to Netix. To the extent that
our content doesnt exist on their platforms
not to be too pejorative they are dumb pipes.
We as an industry are supporting economic
models that dont make sense.
Sarandos, who had spoken earlier in the day,
had clearly anticipated the criticism: Zaslav says
that we built a great business on their content,
he said. Thats just not true. We did not renew
their deal when they wanted a premium. So we
replaced it with other programming that got us
just as many viewers for less money.
Those who think Netix will come to dominate television have a simple rationale: Netix has exposed, and taken advantage of, the
limitations of conventional TV. The more time
people spend on Netix its now up to nearly
two hours a day the less they watch network
television. Our thesis is that bingeing drives
more bingeing, says Greeneld, the Wall Street
analyst. Once people start watching shows that
dont have commercials, they never want to go
back. Waiting week after week for the next episode of a favorite show, he says, is not a good
experience for consumers anymore.
Still, despite the rise in Netixs share price
over the past few years, the company has no
shortage of doubters on Wall Street. Some distrust Netixs numbers, arguing that millions of
people no longer watch the service anymore but
keep their subscriptions because they are so inexpensive. Netix has announced that it will raise
prices this year, and the Netix skeptics believe
the price increase will cause subscribers to cancel in droves. Other critics note the slowdown
in the growth of domestic subscribers, by far the
companys most protable segment. In addition,
Netix, between its content costs and the cost
of adding subscribers, is spending more than it
collects in revenue. How long can that continue?
Finally, the pessimists point out that Netix
makes very little prot: In the rst quarter of

this year, for instance, Netix had nearly $2 billion in revenue but only $28 million in prot.
Despite the signicant moves by Netix into
original programming, Wall Street still values
Netix more like a platform company a business that uses the internet to match buyers and
sellers, like Uber than a content company,
like a studio or a network. Its valuation is currently $5 billion more than Sony, for example.
Hastings, who has been very blunt about the
companys strategy of plowing money back
into the business, has promised bigger prots
sometime in 2017. Whether he can deliver on
that promise will be a signicant test of investors faith in him.
One of the most prominent Netix skeptics is
Michael Pachter, a research analyst at Wedbush
Securities, a Los Angeles-based investment
bank. In his view, Netixs true advantage in
the beginning was that it had the entire game to
itself, and the networks, not realizing how valuable streaming rights would be, practically gave
them away. He had a buy on the stock from
2007 to 2010, he told me. But, he added, referring to those years when Netix had streaming
all to itself, If its too good to be true, then it
will attract competition.
Now, he said, the networks and studios are
charging higher fees for their shows, forcing up
Netixs costs. Netix doesnt own most of the
shows that it buys or commissions, like House
of Cards, so it has to pay more when it renews
a popular show. In addition to the money it
now spends on content, it also has more than
$12 billion in future obligations for shows it
has ordered. The only way it can pay for all of
that is to continue adding subscribers and raise
subscription rates. And even then, Pachter says,
the networks will extract a piece of any extra
revenue Netix generates. It is nave to think
that Netix can raise its price by $2 a month and
keep all the upside, he said. I defy you to look at
any form of content where the distributor raises
prices and the supplier doesnt get more. Thats
the dumbest thing I ever heard.
Netix, Pachter concluded, is caught in an
arms race they invented. He compared Netix
to a rat racing on a wheel, staying ahead only by
going faster and faster and spending more and
more: As its costs continue to go up, it needs
to constantly generate more subscribers to stay
ahead of others.
And if that doesnt happen? If subscriber
growth were to stall, for instance, then Wall
Street would stop treating it as a growth stock,
and its price would start falling. Slower growth
would also increase the cost of taking on more
debt to pay for its shows. The company would
be forced to either raise subscription prices even
higher or cut back on those content costs or do
both, which could slow subscriber growth even
further. Netixs virtuous circle subscrib(Continued on Page 57)
er growth and content
The New York Times Magazine

55

Puzzles Edited by Will Shortz

By David Woolf
38 Feller in a forest?
1 Its accommodating 39 ____easter
6 Comic cries of
41 Spinners
frustration
42 Most nail-biting
10 Grouped for
43 Fill-in-the-blanks
ACROSS

threshing, say
17 Continuing story
18 Busybody
19 Sly one?
20 Many-time Indy
500 pace car
21 Pruritic
22 Goal on a rst
down
23 Handle letters
24 Gender
nonconformist
26 Ruin
27 Hazels love in
The Fault in Our
Stars
28 Musical with the
songs Santa Fe
and I Should Tell
You
30 Blockheaded
31 Showing acute
embarrassment,
say
32 Anti-Communist
fervor
34 1991 lm with the
tagline The secret
of life? The secrets
in the sauce
36 Symbols of
audience
disapproval

diversion
46 The world,
idiomatically
47 Soil
48 ____ lane
49 Poet who wrote,
Jupiter from on
high laughs at
lovers perjuries
51 Like E.T. and
Close Encounters
of the Third Kind
53 Finish ahead of
57 Summer, in much
of West Africa
58 Former Live
co-host with
Kathie Lee
60 The Rolling Stones
Get Yer ____ Out
61 Sidekick in 1990s
S.N.L. skits
62 Trident piece?
64 Clog, with up
66 Call before
reserving?
67 Stadium-store
souvenir
68 Stolas : women ::
____ : men
69 Distiller Walker
71 Ax, in a way
73 Bay, e.g.

Puzzles Online: Todays puzzle and more

than 9,000 past puzzles, nytimes.com/crosswords
($39.95 a year). For the daily puzzle commentary:
nytimes.com/wordplay.

74 First-year J.D.

student
75 Use, as a dish
77 Save, with away
78 Top choice
79 Brand with two

10

18

19

20

21

22

23
28
34

24
29

25

35

Fill the grid with digits so as not to repeat a digit in any row or column, and so that the digits within each
heavily outlined box will produce the target number shown, by using addition, subtraction, multiplication
or division, as indicated in the box. A 5x5 grid will use the digits 15. A 7x7 grid will use 17.

11

13

36

32

37

15

16

55

56

96

97

33

38

41
45

14

27

31

40

12

26

30

KENKEN

56

17

39
harnessed horses
in its logo
43
44
81 Dolls counterpart
83 Creepazoid
48
49
85 Trembling
57
58
88 Pilot
90 Success-s-s!
62
63
91 Meeting around
lunchtime
68
92 Illegal action
shown literally in 74
this answer?
79
80
94 Not deep, as
entertainment
85
86
87
98 Blushes
99 Cinnamon91
avored candy
100 Smarted
98
102 What spirits may
do
103
103 Workplaces where
108
109 110
gloves are worn,
for short
114
104 Ordering option
105 Has a quiet
117
evening, say
107 ____-Caps
108 For real?
117 Busy
111 On the double
118 Idyllic place
112 Confront
119 Part of a kite
aggressively
114 Incident not worth
DOWN
talking about
1 Lab vessel
115 Its capital is
2 Noted name in
Whitehorse
suits
116 Starting point for
Pompeii tourism
3 Long on screen

KenKen is a registered trademark of Nextoy, LLC. 2016 www.KENKEN.com. All rights reserved.

42
46

50

47
51

59
64

52

53

60
65

69

61
66

70

75

67
71

76
81

72

88

78
83

89

92

73

77
82

84
90

93

99

100

104

54

94
101

105

95
102

106

111

112

115

116

118

119

4 One going for a

33 Feature of many a

board position?
5 Like the moon
during a total
lunar eclipse
6 Designed to clear
the air
7 Jerry Siegel or
Joe Shuster, for
Superman
8 Department-store
eponym
9 Busybody, maybe
10 Coronary ____
11 Detroit Tiger
whose No. 5 is
retired
12 Cambridgeshire
city
13 Mobile home:
Abbr.
14 Accepted an
apology
15 Lasts
16 Calorie counters
temptation
17 Chow (down)
18 Turin title
19 Places to wallow
25 Crossed
26 Is angry
29 Keep, as a garden
31 Youth detention
center in England
32 Over the moon

reception
35 ____ Umbridge,
teacher of Dark
Arts at Hogwarts
37 Now
38 Something that
might fall o the
shelf ?
40 1948 John Wayne
lm
42 Chooses to lead
43 Legal maneuver
44 Requite
45 Cornell athletes
47 Tinder successes,
say
48 Strictly follow
50 Limbs ends
52 Trips in the dark?
54 Fake
55 Dual-channel
56 Stung herb
59 Sound heard at a
beach
61 Decorous
63 Baltic capital
65 Pages have four of
them
67 Frozen-aisle icon
69 Ginger feature
70 Miss badly, say
72 Lived
75 Symbol of
Washington State

107
113

6/19/16

TRAFFIC INTERSECTIONS

76 Oops!
80 Cusps
82 Annual December

pub crawl
84 Defects and all
85 Fats Dominos real

rst name
86 Grows sick of
87 Goong (around)
88 Kind of body
89 Most common

family name in
Vietnam
92 Webster shelfmate
93 Key part: Abbr.
95 Break from a band,
maybe
96 Crime writer
Joseph
97 Brings (out)
99 Harass
101 Fairy-tale gure
104 Evolutionary
diagram
105 Pre-fries?
106 Org. with
Divisions I-III
109 Social gathering
110 Like most
childrens
programming
111 Something said
repeatedly on a
ship
113 Sgt.s inferior

Netflix
(Continued from Page 55)

expenditures driving each other would

become a vicious circle instead.
Five years from now, will the networks have
taken the steps they need to prevent Netix
from dominating television? Will they have
improved their technology, withdrawn most of
their shows from Netix or embraced streaming without sacricing too much of their current
prots? Or is Netix in the process of disintermediating them, oering consumers such an
improved viewing experience that the networks
will instead be pushed to the sidelines?
Matthew Ball, a strategist for Otter Media, who
writes often about the future of television, thinks
the latter is more likely. He says that today, when
you have a cable subscription, you have access to
hundreds of channels in eect, they all share
you as a customer. The cable bundle puts you in
a television ecosystem, and you ip from one
show to the other depending on what you want to
watch. In the emerging on-demand world, television wont work that way: All the networks will
have their own streaming service and customers
will have to pay a fee for every one. The days
when networks could make money from people
who never watch their shows will end.
One consequence is that networks will have
to have one-on-one relationships with their viewers something they have little experience with,
and which Netix, with its ability to personalize
its interactions with its 81 million customers, has
mastered. Another consequence is that as streaming becomes the primary way people watch television, they are highly unlikely to pay for more than
a small handful of subscription-TV networks. What
they will want, Ball believes, is a dierent setup:
companies that oer far more programming than
any one network can provide. Netix, clearly, has
already created that kind of ecosystem. Netix is
ABC, it is Discovery, it is AMC, it is USA and all the
other networks, Ball said. Its subscribers dont
say, I love Netix for Westerns, but Ill go somewhere else for sci-. The old model just doesnt
work in an on-demand world.
In this vision of the future, Netixs most potent
competitor is likely to be Amazon, which is also
developing an extensive array of content, including many of its own original shows. Early on, it,
too, produced a highly praised series, Transparent. It, too, has no allegiance to the cable bundle.
And it has the kind of revenue exceeding $100
billion that neither the networks nor Netix
can approach. Compared to the networks, Netix
may have an imposing war chest, but in a ght
with Amazon, it would be outgunned.
According to Ball, what Netix is counting on
to maintain its primacy and to start making big
prots is unprecedented scale. Thats where the
eort to create a global network, the one that was

announced in January at the Consumer Electronics Show, comes in. In April, when the company
announced its rst-quarter results, it said it had
added 4.5 million international subscribers. Yet
success, and prots, are still some way o, as
Hastings is the rst to acknowledge.
YouTube, he notes, is available in more than 50
languages; Netix can be seen in only 20 languages.
Netix was primarily attracting people in its new
countries who speak English as it races to localize its service in each country. Netix is ordering
shows with an international avor, like Narcos,
but so far it has only a handful up and running.
Netix wants to make the best Bollywood movie
thats ever been produced, Hastings told an Indian
publication; it wants to make Japanese anime; it
wants to make local lms for every market; it wants
global rights when it licenses shows something
that, once again, contravenes Hollywoods conventional business model, in which rights are sold
on a country-by-country basis. The company still
has much to learn about each countrys quirks and
tastes and customs, and it will be a while before it
can hope to earn a prot from its global customers.
To my surprise, Hastings spoke to me about the
current moment as a period of stability. It took
me a while to understand what he meant, given
how unstable the television industry seems to
be right now. But Netix has spent much of its
existence zigging and zagging, responding to
the pressures of the marketplace.
When we were in the DVD business, Hastings said, it was hard to see how we would get
to streaming. Then it was hard to see how to go
from a domestic company to a global one. And
how to go from a company that licensed shows
to one that had its own original shows. Now it
knew exactly where it was going. Our challenges are execution challenges, he told me.
Asked what the competitive landscape would
look like ve years in the future, he returned to
the analogy he used earlier with the evolution
of the telephone. Landlines had been losing out
to mobile phones for the past 15 years, he said,
but it had been a gradual process. The same, he
believed, would be true of television.
There wont be a dramatic tipping point, he
said. What you will see is that the bundle gets
used less and less. For now, even as Hulu and
Amazon were emerging as rivals, he claimed that
the true competition was still for users time: not
just the time they spent watching cable but the
time they spent reading books, attending concerts.
And Hastings was aware that even after the bundle is vanquished, the disruption of his industry
will be far from complete. Prospective threats?
he mused when I asked him about all the competition. Movies and television could become like
opera and novels, because there are so many other
forms of entertainment. Someday, movies and TV
shows will be historic relics. But that might not be
for another 100 years.

Answers to puzzles of 6.12.16

ATTENDING PHYSICIANS
A S S U M E

A B A C K

D O U B T S

P O M P O M

D R P E

U T E R O
P A R

P S Y C H

T E

E S

C P A S

B O O R S
B O O N E
I

B M

G N S

L O M

P E A S

S E X T S
G E N E

M I
M E H

S A B E

M A Y
P O T

A L

N O R C A

G R O S S

L A Y S
A T T

T R E A T
I

N A B
A F R O

Z A R D O F D R O Z

T A L

M T A

S E

U M P
N T E R

H A H A

G E R E

D O D R N O H A R M

T E R N S

C H O

T H E W I

G O O G O O

T E

S O O N

J A N E T

D R J C R E W

P R E O P

B A B Y D R R U T H

C O A L

E V A N S

A T S

D R W H O S Y O U R D A D D Y
O

T E A M U S A

P P E R S P R A Y

G R E A T
L

E A N N

D E N T
G M E N

B R
I

C E

N H A S T E

T H E D O C T O R

L O R E T S

N A V A J O

S O C C E R

S Y O S S E T

M A Y O R

A S H O R E

KENKEN

ACROSTIC
(JOYCE CAROL) OATES, THE LOST LANDSCAPE
My way of taking pictures was to scribble earnestly
with Crayolas. . . . Grass would be horizontal motions
of the green crayon. . . . Chickens were upright scribbles,
vaguely humanoid in expression. My parents, I would
not attempt.
A.
B.
C.
D.
E.
F.
G.

H. Estate tax
I. Lynchburg
J. Overpower
K. Scarecrow
L. Thankless
M. Lily white
N. Ambiguity

Opponent
Allowance
Turban
Economize
Swingers
Truthful
Hypnotism

WINDING DOWN

Nugatory
Dressage
Symbiosis
Checklist
Ambrosia
Profanity
Eiderdown

SKYSCRAPERS
S

G
R A C

D I

S
A M
A
H
E R O M A N
U
N
O B A L L A
D
R
T

O.
P.
Q.
R.
S.
T.
U.

R A W L

1 4 1 2
4 1 2 3
3 2 3 4
3 4 1

3
4
1
2

Answers to puzzle on Page 54

SPELLING BEE
Primarily, primally (3 points). Also: Airmail, alarm,
amply, impair, impala, imply, limply, llama, malaria,
malarial, mamma, mammal, mammary, mammy,
marry, pimply, primal, primary, primly, primp. If
you found other legitimate dictionary words in the
beehive, feel free to include them in your score.

The New York Times Magazine

57

W. Kamau
Bell Has Just
The Thing
To End Racism
Interview by Ana Marie Cox

Your show, United Shades of America,

,
debuted this year on CNN, but one of your
ur
side gigs is co-hosting a podcast called
d
Denzel Washington Is the Greatest Actorr
of All Time Period. When you ask, Whos
s
the greatest of all time, period? you hear
ar
a lot of the same actors: De Niro, Pacino,
o,
DiCaprio. Why cant it be Denzel? The poddcast has also become, in part, about diversiity in Hollywood, but the people who listen
n
to the podcast get really mad if we dont
t
talk about Denzel Washington enough.
Recently you were on the radio show
w
Wits and you did a speed round of thee
Am I Racist? game, where you joked
d
that you could do it for hours. Part of mee
thinks that could be really handy, but it
must be a burden. Ive turned the annoyying questions that white people ask into a
e.
career, so I understand thats where I live.
Do you have white friends who ask you
u
about their racism a lot? You know that
at
quote, Some people are born into greattness, some people have greatness thrust
st
upon them? Some people are born into
o
racism, some people have racism thrust
st
upon them. I spent a lot of my youth not
ot
knowing how to answer all those questions,
s,
feeling like I didnt have access to the black
k
experience because I wasnt black the way
y
g.
I was told the black experience was going.
I was like: Dude, Im in the same private
school that you are. Im not around a lot
of black people either.
How did you get out of that mind-set? I
started reading a lot about Muhammad Ali.
I thought: This is the guy I relate to. I felt
like I could nd my place in blackness.

58

6.19.16

Age: 43
Occupation:
Television host and
stand-up comedian
Hometown:
Chicago

Belll is the
W. Kamau Bel
B
h
hostt of United
h
hos
Shades of America
on CNN. He is also
a host of the
podcasts Denzel
Washington Is the
Greatest Actor of All
Time Period and
Kamau Right Now!

Photograph by Jonathan Sprague

His Top 5 Denzel

Washington Movies:
1. Malcolm X
2. Training Day
3. The Book of Eli
4. Inside Man
5. Out of Time

Alis dea
death, like Princes, sparked another
convers
conversation about the idea of celebrities
transcending race. I got so oended by that.
transcen
If you say,
sa I dont care if Muhammad Ali
was a Muslim
M
or not, he was just great, what
youre really
r
saying is, I dont care about
Muhammad Ali. Same with Prince being
Muham
black. When
W
you say, I dont care about
Muslims or blacks, this person was great,
Muslim
what yo
youre saying is, I hate Muslims and
blacks, b
but in this one case I like this person
so much Im making an exception.
Its a pr
privilege of whiteness not to think
of yourself
your
as white or as having a race.
Yeah. Part
Pa of the next stage of my career
is sort of
o encouraging liberal white people to claim
c
their whiteness. When the
good w
white people of the left wont
claim their
th whiteness, they think theyre
doing a good thing, when theyre actually
opting out
o of Americas biggest and most
dening problem.
Your wife
wif is white, and youve talked about
how tha
that relationship has informed your
view of how white people get to choose
a narro
narrower slice of whiteness. I have an
upfront, sort of in-the-trenches knowlupfront
edge of w
white peoples trying to avoid their
whiteness and replace it with something
whitene
else. Wh
When I met my wife, we went through
the who
whole race-slash-ethnicity conversation, and she told me she was Italian. Later
on, I nd out shes a quarter Italian, at best.
For me tto nd out that level of detail, I got
to go tal
talk to Skip Gates and get some DNA
swabs. E
Even if I nd out, its not something
thats go
going to help anybody understand
anything about me. Im African-American.
I was bo
born and raised in America.
During the run of your one-man show
in the B
Bay Area, you oered two-for-one
tickets to
t people who came with a friend
of a dierent race. That is a thousand
percent true.
That sou
sounds like a gimmick of sorts. Yeah,
its a gim
gimmick! Its a gimmick to end racism.
If Marti
Martin Luther King Jr. had thought of
it, the M
March on Washington would have
looked ccompletely dierent. Not that Im
criticizi
criticizing Martin Luther King Jr.
Did it work?
w
It did! Audiences were 50
percent people of color sometimes, which
meant that when I did jokes about racism,
the right people could hear the jokes. I
needed everybody in the room to make
this work, and it did. I ended racism every
time. Its just then people left and went
back to their regular lives and started
being racist again.

Interview has been condensed and edited.

Talk

Here to steal your heart.

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