Shadow Business

Feature: Why is there so much of it—and yet not enough to go around? Adam Simon on the “huge stakes” of global competition for the metal.

Feature: Why is Los Angeles’s entertainment industry in such crisis? Andrew deWaard on the shape-shifting effects of financialization and monopoly.

Feature: What’s online gambling doing to American society? Gerda Reith on the new “ecosystem” tech, finance, and marketing firms are cultivating together.

Feature: How did the open web go into such “rapid decline”? Michael Socolow on why search engines have gotten worse, old links no longer work, and the internet is increasingly siloed.

Feature: Why is betting everywhere now? Gerda Reith on how it became so mixed up in sports—and then everything else.