The first few days without a cellphone were difficult. I felt liberated from the static of Facebook and Twitter but feared that I had missed some email or call that someone had died.
— Mary Pilon
As the issue of youth fitness - from obesity to proper exercise regimens - takes on more resonance in schools and communities across the country, CrossFit Kids and other preschool fitness programs are raising questions about when and how children should start playing organized sports or hitting the gym.
Historically, companies haven't hesitated to end their relationships with professional athletes amid scandals.
The fear among athletes and organizers is that sailing is becoming more associated with silver hair than silver trophies.
While most American labor unions have struggled for the past several decades, professional baseball players comprise one of the strongest packs of organized workers in the world.
When most people think of Tae Kwon Do - which, in the United States, is not all that often - they think of sparring, a form of competition that both men and women perform at the Olympics.
The conditions for harassment are built into the very structure of the trucking business, beginning with the training process.
If workplaces that enlist happiness consultants really care about worker satisfaction, why not offer better maternity and paternity policies? Daycare options? They could advise managers to stop calling workers to come in on weekends or expect them to answer emails late on weeknights.
Instagram influencers project a specific, highly crafted image of perfection - one that is largely white, thin, and psychologically Zen. Critics argue that this boom, in turn, has helped fuel excessive self-promotion in which we post about only the good moments rather than reality - essentially, a distorted echo chamber.
Despite the laserlike focus it generates, 'Tetris' has no clear endpoint and no easily defined opponents. Unlike with most other video games, you're playing only against yourself, without any concrete goals other than to keep on fitting blocks into other blocks.
I'm astonished at how quickly the Great Recession came and went.
I think that when you talk to people about Monopoly, they love talking about their memories associated with it. And for me, I'm the same way. I mean, when I think about Monopoly, I think of my family playing at the holidays.
Lizzie Magie was a pretty astonishing woman. She was an outspoken feminist, she had acted, she had done some performing, she had written some poetry, and she was a game designer.
Before she made her bid for the U.S. presidency in 1872, Victoria Woodhull worked as one of the first female stockbrokers in the country, starting a firm, Woodhull, Claflin & Company, with her sister in 1870.
Throughout the Great Recession of 2008, the average 401(k) balance lost anywhere from 25 to 40 percent of value. Nobody was more harmed than baby boomers or recent retirees, who, unlike younger workers, didn't have the time for the market to rebound or were no longer contributing and therefore unable to invest when stocks were cheap.
A 401(k) is essentially a basket of mutual funds intended to help people save for retirement.
So who or what is to blame for baseball games that go on forever? Two oft-cited culprits are constant replay calls and batters who leave the box in between every pitch to adjust their gloves and helmet and shin guards and elbow pads and then knock the dirt off their cleats before working up their stride for the next at-bat.
One of sports journalism's great ironies is that covering an Olympics can be wildly unhealthy. NBC shows athletes in peak health performing on the ice and snow, but not the haggard reporters subsisting for three weeks on stadium starches, cheap beer, deadlines, and little sleep.
We spend millions on fitness each year, yet we seem to get fatter.
Like Barack Obama's father, Trump's mother was an immigrant. But Trump doesn't often bring up his Scottish ancestry on the campaign trail.
Yachting may call to mind champagne flutes and seersucker, but danger and risk have always been a part of the America's Cup.
For generations, minor-league baseball has been seen as the scrappier, sometimes seedier, counterpart to its big-league sibling. Games are often cloaked in strange and sometimes awkward theme nights. Some of the mascots are ragged or downright bizarre. The ballparks are smaller and filled with fewer fans.
For years, women in India were largely discouraged from participating in high-level sports - and, unless the women were wealthy, good facilities were hard to come by, anyway.
Trucking-company terminals are places where paperwork gets filled out, driving orders are given, and partners are assigned. They can often be social hubs for drivers, breaking up the monotony and solitude they face on the road.
Recognizing chronic sadness may encourage someone to reach out to a friend, family member, or counselor rather than concealing the distress.
Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube have sparked a booming industry of so-called influencers - people with large-scale followings who are paid considerable sums by large companies to tout their products or ideas.
To play 'Tetris' is to knowingly opt in to something that has no end and no way of winning.
If bingeing on bad emergency-room-themed television has taught me anything, it's that crisis situations bring out the best and worst in people.
I remember, often, when you tell people you're doing a book about board games, they think you're totally nuts. And that might be warranted. But I feel like if we can't get the story of Monopoly right... what hope is there for anything else?
Typically, if a politician makes immigration an issue, it's because of the belief that immigrants are taking jobs from Americans.
Wall Street trading floors have long been seen as bastions of testosterone that rewarded, literally, those with sharp elbows who could throw a punch.
Individual participation in the stock market through 401(k)s helped fuel the go-go days of Wall Street in the 1980s and birthed asset management juggernauts like Fidelity, Vanguard, Pimco, BlackRock, and dozens of others.
Precisely at the moment when an athletic career is most on the line and fan perceptions of a Herculean, supra-human performance are highest, an athlete's brain may be at its most vulnerable.
Football, like boxing, will never go away, just occupy a different role in the American zeitgeist.
Women's combat sports have been on a good run in the United States. Claressa Shields won a gold medal in women's boxing at the London Olympics in 2012, when it became a medal sport. American women won medals in taekwondo and judo as well.
The fitness industry has long thrived off the well-intended coming through their doors and signing up with dreams of self-improvement, only to fade into their couches. Those who stick with it often feel like hamsters on treadmills.
The America's Cup World Series was created in 2011, with an eye toward conjuring more off-cycle interest and marketing opportunities. It coincided with the ascent of foiling catamarans, a type of boat that goes faster and looks almost Photoshopped, the way it practically floats in air when it races.
It's not uncommon for some Khmer boxers to fight with dangerous frequency, sometimes as often as weekly or bi-weekly, getting up to three hundred or more fights in a career, with the length of a career varying from fighter to fighter, some engaging in bouts far past their prime.
'Power breaking,' also called Hanmadang - which means something like celebration or festival in Korean - involves breaking large amounts of wood, concrete, granite, and the like with specific hand and foot techniques. Practitioners rely on repeated resistance training and the idea that, over time, the body can adapt to stress.
Without federal assistance, most elderly Americans would be unable to afford long-term care - and most nursing homes would be unable to keep the doors open.
In a culture obsessed with happiness, Americans may not be allowing for acceptance that it's OK to sometimes not be perky.
Human beings have kicked around the concept of what individual happiness means for centuries, from the Bible to the ancient Greeks to the 1859 bestseller 'Self-Help.'
The greatest obstacle in 'Tetris' is time and one's own ability to navigate it - kind of like life itself.
Once you let go of the idea of waiting for a magical lightning bolt of genius to hit, you can really get to work.
Journalists know that often you don't grab stories, they grab you.
I think that my main business is as a news person.
Women in finance bore the brunt of layoffs more than their male counterparts during the Great Recession in 2008 and were also more likely to have been in back office jobs that were replaced by computers.
In the 1880s, women were decades away from earning the right to vote. Few owned property - if they were even permitted to do so. In addition to childcare obligations, many toiled in work that was either underpaid or not paid at all. Essentially, the gears of progress for women were moving slowly in just about every arena of life.
By the middle of the century, retirement culture - exemplified by timeshares in Florida, the golf industry, and AARP membership - was booming. Americans, it turned out, were pretty good at figuring out how not to do anything in their twilight years.
London, Ontario, sits halfway between Detroit and Buffalo, a description that applies as much to its soul as to its geographical coordinates.
