Harry Belafonte, at age 89, has been a star for more than 60 years, as well as an activist, he says, since birth. But he feels that the civil-rights movement is in decline, and he's doing what he can to turn things around. Jon Lee Anderson journeys up the Amazon to witness a once-in-a-lifetime encounter: the emergence of an isolated tribe from the forest to make contact with other civilizations. And one of our writers tries out the new voice-recognition device from Amazon — living with Alexa, she says, is like 2001: A Space Odyssey crossed with The Golden Girls.
Illustration by Ping Zhu