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This week marks the 30th anniversary of Infinite Jest, the 1996 Clue-murder-weapon-heavy masterwork that made author David... Read More

When I started smoking I was sixteen, and my life was very complicated. Large portions of each day were spent trying to disguise the fact... Read More

Amid winter’s deep chill we all yearn for an engrossing book and a fireside chair—or at least a quilt or electric blanket.... Read More

It’s perhaps cliché to point out how the virtual world has transformed our conception of connection. But how that online... Read More

Attention dilemmas focus on the dramatic loss of the ability to concentrate. A post-literate society does not erase literacy; it... Read More

Under a certain strain of authoritarianism, a regime-approved vanity movie wouldn’t even need to premiere in cinemas. Cars... Read More

1. The sound of the South is the distant whine of leaf blowers on a blue afternoon. 2. In the Laws, Plato wrote: “with regard to... Read More

They say you should never meet your heroes, a rule that is not always correct. But I did have a salutary session some years ago when a friend... Read More

The Republican leader of Pennsylvania's state Senate saluted his allies in labor earlier this month after their successful, years-long effort... Read More

America’s power to wage war hangs more on the sex life of the greater sage-grouse than you might guess. You wouldn’t want to... Read More

The Metropolitan Opera has been making headlines lately — for all the wrong reasons. It’s not that the... Read More

Like the American two-party political system, American education today has two educational models. On one side is the Progressive style of... Read More

For decades, Los Angeles business and political figures have focused their attention on creating a sleek, vibrant downtown. The common... Read More

There’s an old joke about two men running from a bear. The first says to the second “do you really think you can outrun a... Read More

The 20th century was an era of consolidation and centralisation. Power shifted away from localities, communities and families, moving ever... Read More

What is the future of Trumpism? “Melania,” the new documentary from Amazon, offers a striking answer. Following the first lady... Read More

As the documentary Melania prepared to debut on Friday, its promotional posters across Los Angeles were vandalized with graffiti... Read More

Sydney Sweeney arrived at her Cosmopolitan shoot armed with lingerie and conviction: She was ready to pose nearly naked... Read More

You may have heard of the recent (still not yet peer-reviewed) study at MIT that showed that students using Large Language Models... Read More

Imagine AI agents that can access your entire computer, email accounts, and trading accounts if you let them. The “agents” are... Read More

“Hell is empty,” declares Ariel in Shakespeare’s The Tempest, “and all the devils are here.” To imagine that... Read More

Banned as it’s been, everybody knows what The Bluest Eye is about: a little black girl who wishes she had blue eyes. That’s... Read More

The film adaptation of a well-known literary work is a deceptively complicated endeavor. While appropriating a great story might seem to ease... Read More

Lewis Pullman was not going to be the one to fuck this up. He knew how much was riding on this scene—how much of the indie film’s... Read More

At some point over the past 15 years, kids stopped reading. Or at least their teachers stopped asking them to read the way they once... Read More

There are two different approaches to speaking and writing. The first I’ll call “assertion as expression.” The idea behind... Read More

Two series in 2016, two paths for serial television. The first is Stranger Things. Stranger Things debuted on Netflix in the summer of... Read More