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How Zohran Mamdani Became the Main Character of New York City
On paper, a thirty-three-year-old socialist would seem an unlikely contender for mayor of New York City. But Zohran Mamdani’s campaign proved compelling enough to make him the front-runner to lead th…
Published on 4 months, 2 weeks ago
Late Night's Last Laugh
Two weeks ago, when Paramount cancelled “The Late Show with Stephen Colbert,” insiders in Hollywood and Washington alike deemed the move suspicious: Colbert had just called his parent company’s payou…
Published on 4 months, 3 weeks ago
“Eddington” and the American Berserk
Ari Aster’s wildly divisive new movie “Eddington” drops audiences back into the chaos of May, 2020: a moment when the confluence of the COVID-19 pandemic, the murder of George Floyd and subsequent Bl…
Published on 5 months, 1 week ago
“Materialists,” “Too Much,” and the Modern Rom-Com
Audiences have been bemoaning the death of the romantic comedy for years, but the genre persists—albeit often in a different form from the screwballs of the nineteen-forties or the “chick flicks” of …
Published on 5 months, 2 weeks ago
Why We Travel
It’s a confusing time to travel. Tourism is projected to hit record-breaking levels this year, and its toll on the culture and ecosystems of popular vacation spots is increasingly hard to ignore. Soc…
Published on 5 months, 3 weeks ago
The Diva Is Dead, Long Live the Diva
The word “diva” comes from the world of opera, where divinely talented singers have enraptured audiences for centuries. But preternatural gifts often go hand in hand with bad behavior—as in the case …
Published on 5 months, 4 weeks ago
Why We Turn Grief Into Art
Yiyun Li’s “Things in Nature Merely Grow” is a bracingly candid memoir of profound loss: one written in the wake of her son James’s death by suicide, seven years after her older son Vincent died in t…
Published on 6 months ago
Our Romance with Jane Austen
Though Jane Austen went largely unrecognized in her own lifetime—four of her six novels were published anonymously, and the other two only after her death—her name is now synonymous with the period r…
Published on 6 months, 1 week ago
“Mountainhead” and the Age of the Pathetic Billionaire
“Succession” creator Jesse Armstrong’s latest work, a ripped-from-the-headlines sendup of tech billionaires called “Mountainhead,” is arguably an extension of his over-all project: making the ultra-w…
Published on 6 months, 2 weeks ago
Lessons from “Sesame Street”
“Sesame Street,” which first aired on PBS in 1969, was born of a progressive idea: that children from all socioeconomic backgrounds should have access to free, high-quality, expressly educational en…
Published on 6 months, 3 weeks ago