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“Cashing Out” Examines an Investment Strategy That Profited from AIDS Deaths
September 10, 2025
As grateful as I am to the director Matt Nadel for making “Cashing Out,” a vital and outstanding film about a terrible time, it also made me angry—angry about...
Social Media Is Navigating Its Sectarian Phase
September 10, 2025
On September 1st, the author and statistician Nate Silver wrote a post on X diagnosing a new condition: “Blueskyism,” so named for the decentralized social network that has emerged...
Does Society Have Too Many Rules?
September 9, 2025
I live in a three-generation household. My wife and I, our son and daughter, and my in-laws share a single house in the Long Island suburbs. Our place is...
Stephen Shore’s Precocious Adolescent Eye
September 9, 2025
How did this happen? To begin with, Shore had an uncommonly encouraging and generous family. His uncle Leo, a naval engineer, noticed that his nephew was a budding tinkerer...
The 2025 National Book Awards Longlist
September 9, 2025
This week, The New Yorker is announcing the longlists for the 2025 National Book Awards, including Young People’s Literature, Translated Literature, Poetry, Nonfiction, and Fiction. Check back through Friday...
Kadir Nelson’s “The Soloist”
September 8, 2025
When the news is especially distressing, it can be easy to feel like art is futile; that you should, instead, focus your attention on all the suffering in the...
Why Christopher Marlowe Is Still Making Trouble
September 8, 2025
Do you know the one about the Jewish guy and the Muslim Turk? They gang up on this Christian friar and strangle him. Then they take him into the...
Bohuslav Martinů Is One of Music’s Great Chameleons
September 8, 2025
How does a singular musical personality emerge from an agglomeration of pitches? The characteristic quirks of major composers are easily identified: Beethoven’s hammering three- or four-note motives, Schubert’s juxtapositions...
Nostalgic Cravings at the Minnesota State Fair
September 8, 2025
In the lead-up to the Minnesota State Fair, a twelve-day fête of starch and fat which marks the end of every summer, the event’s organizers release a highly anticipated...
The War on Trans Art
September 8, 2025
In July, the artist Amy Sherald pulled out of a large-scale show at the Smithsonian after learning that she might not be able to include a portrait of Lady...
What’s the Deal with U.F.O.s?
September 7, 2025
I ran these notions by Arlan Andrews, a retired mechanical engineer and author who is the founder and director of SIGMA, a think tank of sci-fi writers that advises...
The Mystery of the Cat Mystery
September 6, 2025
Mid-pandemic, I was speaking with a semi-stranger at a playground where our children were playing semi-together. Her son, maybe six or seven years old, could effortlessly hitch himself up...