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Art in the Age of Artificial Intelligence
Generative A.I., once an uncanny novelty, is now being used to create not only images and videos but entire “artists.” Its boosters claim that the technology is merely a tool to facilitate human crea…
Published on 2 months ago
I Need a Critic: October, 2025, Edition
In the latest installment of the Critics at Large advice series, Vinson Cunningham, Naomi Fry, and Alexandra Schwartz answer listeners’ questions about a range of conundrums. Some seek to immerse the…
Published on 2 months, 1 week ago
How the Trad Wife Took Over
Scrutiny of the figure of the “trad wife” has hit a fever pitch. These influencers’ accounts feature kempt, feminine women embracing hyper-traditional roles in marriage and home-making—and, in doing …
Published on 2 months, 2 weeks ago
One Paul Thomas Anderson Film After Another
Over the course of his three-decade career, the director Paul Thomas Anderson has dramatized the nineteen-seventies porn industry (“Boogie Nights”), the Californian oil boom (“There Will Be Blood”), …
Published on 2 months, 3 weeks ago
What's Cooking?
In contemporary cookbooks—and in the burgeoning realm of online cooking content—there’s often a life style on display alongside the recipes. Samin Nosrat is a fixture of this landscape, and her new b…
Published on 3 months ago
“The Paper,” “The Lowdown,” and the Drama of Journalism
In the past twenty years, more than a third of all American newspapers have shuttered; trust in media institutions is now at a historic low. And yet we’re still drawn to depictions of reporters onscr…
Published on 3 months, 1 week ago
Why We're All In on Gambling
Last week, it was announced that Polymarket—a site where you can bet on basically anything, from the likelihood of a government shutdown to the winner of New York City’s mayoral race—will be allowed …
Published on 3 months, 2 weeks ago
Our Fads, Ourselves
Though the character known as Labubu has been around for a decade, the toy version—around six inches tall, sporting bunny ears and a demonic grin—is only just becoming a must-have accessory. On this …
Published on 3 months, 3 weeks ago
How to Watch a Movie
In the early days of the Hollywood studio system, producers exerted far greater creative control than any individual director. Then, in the mid-twentieth century, a group of young French critics issu…
Published on 4 months ago
Les Américains à Paris
Nineteenth-century Americans regarded Paris as a libertine paradise: a smorgasbord of food and fashion, of night life and sex. Today, the pull toward France endures, though the precise nature of its …
Published on 4 months, 1 week ago