How Michael Jordan Made $300 Million in 2024 Michael Jordan hung up his high tops for good more than two decades ago but still earns more than any athlete on the planet. Illustration by Lorenzo Gordon

His 2024 haul pushed his career earnings to $3 billion, or $4.15 billion when adjusted for inflation and highest all-time among athletes before accounting for taxes, expenses and investment gains.

Terms of Jordan’s Nike contract have never been revealed. The club paid him $92 million over 14 years—he also made $2 million during his final two seasons in Washington—but it was almost always Nike that represented the biggest line item on his annual tax return.

After three years at UNC, Jordan was the third pick in the 1984 NBA Draft and was paid $555,000 by the Bulls during his rookie season. Read more about it here.

Grandmaster Magnus Carlsen: The Freestylist

Magnus Carlsen strolls across the parking lot of Millerntor Stadium in Hamburg as the journalists scurry into hiding. No questions are allowed.

DER SPIEGEL 16/2025

The article you are reading originally appeared in German in issue 16/2025 (April 12th, 2025) of DER SPIEGEL.

SPIEGEL International

This Monday in mid-January marks the first time that the world’s top-ranked player has competed for FC St. As if the superstar of the chess world were a skittish doe that would take flight at the slightest rustle.

Carlsen has been promised that no journalists will be on site, say the organizers of a meet and greet. Read more about it here.

How a ‘Beginners’ Mindset’ Can Help You Learn Anything

Credit: Surf Simply

Tom Vanderbilt’s fascination with the process of life-long learning began with his daughter’s hobbies: piano, soccer, Tae Kwon Do. At no point did he hope to fully master the abilities or to show off his prowess with an extraordinary feat, such as winning American Idol. 

“As adults, we instantly put pressure on ourselves with goals,” he says. “We feel like we don’t have the luxury to engage in learning for learning’s sake.” Instead, he wanted to revel in the pleasure of the process. 

Vanderbilt details his journey in his January 2021 book Beginners, which combines his own personal revelations with the cutting-edge science of skill acquisition. As she exercised her mind, he would answer emails, play with his phone or stare into space until his daughter had finished. 

He soon recognised the hypocrisy of the situation. “I was impressing upon her the importance of having a broad education in all these different skills,” he says. “But she might have easily asked me, ‘Well, why don’t you do all these things then?’”  

Starting with chess lessons, he decided to spend a year pursuing a range of new skills himself. Read more about it here.

Inside the Cultish Dreamworld of Augusta National

Inside the Cultish Dreamworld of Augusta National

June 14, 2019XEmailPrintSave StorySave this storySave this storySave this storySave this story

Beneath Augusta National, the world’s most exclusive golf club and most venerated domain of cultivated grass, there is a vast network of pipes and mechanical blowers, which help drain and ventilate the putting greens. The SubAir System was developed in the nineteen-nineties, by the aptly named course superintendent Marsh Benson, in an effort to mitigate the effects of nature on this precious facsimile of it. When the system’s fans blow one way, they provide air to the densely seeded bent grass of the putting surface. Read more about it here.

Can Cowboy Fever Make Bull Riding the Next UFC?

Can Cowboy Fever Make Bull Riding the Next UFC?

April 3, 2025Save this storySaveSave this storySave

The professional Bull Riders have been coming to New York’s Madison Square Garden since 2007, but, in the first week of this year, they arrive in a city that is saturated with cowboy fever at every level. Post Malone went country; Shaboozey spent a record-tying 19 weeks at the top of the charts; Yellowstone, America’s most watched show for stretches of its five seasons, spawned three spin-offs. It started with fashion and design a few years ago: Western influences were on mood boards and runways, and people showed up to their office jobs in cowboy boots. Read more about it here.