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Yesterday, I was at the gym, struggling to squat properly and sweatily listening to Ezra Klein interview an Anthropic executive, when it... Read More

The Academy Awards might be just as famous for their perceived blunders as their prestige; that’s what happens when you have... Read More

The Short American Century, which began in 1945 and continued until 2016, was made up of four distinct eras. The first, from the victory in... Read More

Coiled at the center of Paul Thomas Anderson’s One Battle After Another is a shadowy club committed to the “racial... Read More

Giancarlo DiTrapano was a friend, so take all this with a gram of salt. Gian had two arts at which he was preternaturally talented, what... Read More

Watching Harry Styles’s performance of “Aperture” at the Brit Awards, there was a moment when I thought: is this the... Read More

“This discovery, oh king,” said the god, “will make the Egyptians wiser and improve their memories: it’s a magic... Read More

A Laundry List Read More

A fool says that Point Blank lacks character development. A second fool, the kind moved to disputation, hence to stating the... Read More

Drifting around urban Japan in his 1983 film Sans Soleil, Chris Marker paused to contemplate the video game Pac-Man, manufactured... Read More

Several prominent basketball coaches, including current and past college and professional coaches, released a letter last week denouncing the... Read More

When I was in business school at the University of Pittsburgh in the early 2010s, I played in my one and only fantasy football league. I was... Read More

For years, Donald Trump has been among the most vociferous critics of cancel culture, saying it has “absolutely no place in the United... Read More

Harry Styles’s fourth album, Kiss All the Time. Disco, Occasionally, is thrilling if you aren’t paying much attention to it. It... Read More

On the banks of the Rhine rises one of the most recognizable structures in Europe — a cathedral whose story spans centuries of faith,... Read More

She’s alive! Finally. When Maggie Gyllenhaal sat down to rewatch “The Bride of Frankenstein,” the 1935 James... Read More

There’s a scene in My Year of Rest and Relaxation, the novel by Otessa Moshfegh, where the protagonist takes a dump on a piece of... Read More

I date my coming of age as a writer to Fall 2003, when my nonfiction short “Kilbrennan” was published in the North Dakota... Read More

In the first TV ad for Joe Biden’s ill-fated reelection campaign, a somber narrator warned Americans that the values we hold most dear... Read More

In Sirāt, a band of ravers drive deep into the Moroccan desert searching for the next gathering where they can dance freely. A father and... Read More

In the first short story in Will Self’s first book, The Quantity Theory of Insanity, published in 1991, the narrator’s mother... Read More

Feeling like things in America are divided right now? Turns out, it’s not just here. In a survey of 23,000 people from 29 countries,... Read More

In her prose poem, “Toni Morrison,” Nikki Giovanni imagines cooking a “Toni Morrison stew.” Read More

Sometimes opportunity knocks in booms and bangs. I told a good friend a week ago that I was heading to North Adams, Mass., a short drive... Read More

I read Emma Gannon’s new book A Year of Nothing in one sitting earlier this year. This was no great feat. It is a very... Read More

I would estimate that in 20 years of writing for a public audience, I’ve maybe made reference to any kind of sexual or romantic... Read More

In the early months of 1836, a 33-year-old Ralph Waldo Emerson sat in the Old Manse in Concord, gazing down the hill to the Concord River... Read More

The work of Tom Stoppard, who passed away last November, is commonly described as dazzling, clever, and emotionally powerful—all of... Read More

There’s a line by Heinrich Heine that irked me when I first read it and irks me now when I read it again: “Psychical pain is more... Read More

Bob Dylan invokes Walt Whitman in “I Contain Multitudes,” the opening track on Rough and Ready Ways, which the singer... Read More

It is perhaps in the nature of academics to fret about declining standards, especially as these academics age and become ever less attuned to... Read More

History has been kind to Marcus Aurelius, emperor of Rome from 161-180 A.D. Born to a patrician family in 121 A.D., his father died when he... Read More