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In 1998, philosopher David Chalmers made a bet with neuroscientist Christof Koch about whether, in the next 25 years, any scientist would be... Read More

The Tony trailer has arrived, and we cannot know for sure what Anthony Bourdain would have thought of the young-Anthony-Bourdain movie it's... Read More

I first wrote about the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s annual Costume Institute fundraising gala in 2024 after a friend said it was... Read More

An entry on the mothballed Web 1.0–vintage online “Baseball Games” encyclopedia dedicated to the “great American... Read More

An Eastern Cape giant cycad in the Palm House at Kew Gardens in London is over 240 years old. It has lived most of its two centuries, since... Read More

The Devil Wears Prada 2 strutted to the top of the box office in the first days of its theatrical run — a surprise to no... Read More

“Have any of you ever encountered an obstacle that you later understood to be an opportunity?” the unnamed... Read More

When I first met Leonard Logsdail, I was deep in the costume design beat, writing about the often under-appreciated world of storytelling... Read More

The James Beard Foundation has now announced all of its nominees for the 2026 James Beard Awards. The awards represent one of the highest... Read More

What does it mean to be an American? This question has been asked, in one form or another, since the founding of the United States. The... Read More

On July 20, 2025, Marc Brown, a reporter for Los Angeles’s local ABC affiliate, asked Karen Bass, our current mayor, why the city... Read More

It’s no coincidence, it seems to me, that the decline of liberal democracy, as a fact and value, has succeeded the decline of liberal... Read More

National League baseball has just marked its 150th Opening Day. As plans to commemorate the centennial of American Independence took shape in... Read More

Members of the Class of 2026: As I stand before you today, preparing to deliver your commencement address, I am reminded of the advice I once... Read More

The book that won George Orwell his reputation as a serious writer was neither Animal Farm nor Nineteen Eighty-Four but a... Read More

Wallace Shawn has called a secret meeting of the bourgeoisie. Not for the vulgar elites but the cultivated kind. These are people Shawn... Read More

In my formative years, my perception of diamonds, engagements, and proposals was shaped largely by my favorite films from Hollywood’s... Read More

The first problem with the New York Times Magazine’s new list (“The 30 Greatest Living American Songwriters”) is that... Read More

It was only after Vigdis Hjorth’s father died that family estrangement became the central subject of her fiction. Prior to that, she... Read More

I first learned about Zoe B. Wallbrook’s debut novel, History Lessons, from a promotional email a few weeks after it came out. Its... Read More

On September 30, 1984, Beijing Municipality opened to the public its first modern subway track, Line 2. For about US$0.035, Beijingers could... Read More

Roughly three decades ago, it would have taken only a quick drive through the heart of Atlanta to see how much Ted Turner had made the city... Read More

I have always had a problem with the “extremism industry,” and I could never quite place what it was. It isn’t that... Read More

Lena Dunham released her second book, “Famesick,” last month. It’s a memoir chronicling the slightly more than a decade... Read More

Among the more curious features of my job as a critic who writes regularly about the motion picture industry is explaining to various... Read More

“It was just as nice as I hoped and dreamed it would be,” sobs a young bride in the final line of Joan Didion’s piece... Read More

We don’t make Keats anymore in the same way that we don’t make Technicolor movies. No one does the chemistry anymore, it’s... Read More

EACH NEW TRANSLATION of a work from a major author should spark a reevaluation of that author’s critical reception and public... Read More

An irritating thing about reviewing books translated from languages you think you know is getting past the title. Did the translator get it... Read More

David Copperfield nearly killed me. For the last several years I’ve given myself a goal of reading a certain number of classics... Read More

This is not a metaphor. I placed my key in the lock and tried to turn it to unlock the back door to my Midwestern home. Instead, the key got... Read More

Last week, in the decision for Louisiana v. Callais, the Supreme Court narrowed the reach of the Voting Rights Act so that it no longer... Read More

If the first few months of 2026 are any indication, this is going to be an exceptionally strong year for jazz, improvised, and related music.... Read More

I landed at JFK in late December, 1984. I had graduated from New York University just seven months before, but the city felt different. The... Read More

Grok, is this true? This question is asked thousands of times a day on Twitter as users fact-check, question, and prod various claims made on... Read More

Unless you were hiding out in a bunker in the middle of the desert from 2008 to 2013, you know that Bryan Cranston and Aaron Paul had... Read More

If you’re an avid listener of the Bill Simmons podcast1, you might have heard a recent bit he did with Zach Lowe, where they... Read More

What’s the one thing that every pundit and certified member of the Fourth Estate knows? Why, it’s that MAGA is... Read More