Books & Culture
Infinite Scroll
The Trump Assassination Attempt Meets the Internet’s Brain-Rot Era
Today’s social platforms can instantly convert even the most harrowing news events into misleading tidbits and gleefully empty jokes.
By Kyle Chayka
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Persons of Interest
Mdou Moctar’s Guitar-Bending Cry for Justice
How the Tuareg band merges political anguish and musical transcendence.
By Hanif Abdurraqib
Cultural Comment
Are Hollywood’s Jewish Founders Worth Defending?
Jews in the industry called for the Academy Museum to highlight the men who created the movie business. A voice in my head went, Uh-oh.
By Michael Schulman
The New Yorker Interview
Upward Spiral
Four years after the release of his Oscar-winning drama, “Minari,” the director Lee Isaac Chung enters the eye of the summer-movie storm with “Twisters.”
By Justin Chang
The Weekend Essay
The Surreal Simulations of a Reality-TV Restaurant Empire
It’s a reunion every night at the “Vanderpump” establishments in Los Angeles.
By Naomi Fry
Books
Flash Fiction
“Damages”
Tug too hard on a little footsy, and you wind up with a footsy in hand and a baby in tears.
By Irene Pujadas
Under Review
The Best Books We’ve Read in 2024 So Far
Our editors and critics review notable new fiction, nonfiction, and poetry.
By The New Yorker
Under Review
The Paradoxical Paradise of the Garden
Olivia Laing’s memoir of restoring a garden unearths the politics and history of cultivating a plot.
By Katie Kadue
Books
Briefly Noted
“The God of the Woods,” “Gretel and the Great War,” “They Called It Peace,” and “The Friday Afternoon Club.”
Movies
The Front Row
“Fly Me to the Moon” Lacks Mission Control
This rom-com about the marketing of the Apollo space program, starring Scarlett Johansson and Channing Tatum, has an inconsistent tone and a vague point of view.
By Richard Brody
The New Yorker Interview
Kevin Costner Goes West Again
The actor and director, whose film “Horizon: An American Saga” has been in the making for decades, thinks of the Western as America’s Shakespeare.
By David Remnick
The Front Row
An Ingenious New French Comedy of Art and Friendship
The director Pascale Bodet works wonders in “Vas-Tu Renoncer?,” based on the relationship of Édouard Manet and Charles Baudelaire.
By Richard Brody
The New Yorker Interview
Nicolas Cage Is Still Evolving
The actor talks about the origins of “Adaptation,” his potential leap to television, and the art of “keeping it enigmatic.”
By Susan Orlean
Food
The Food Scene
A Brooklyn Tasting Menu with Manhattan Ambition
Clover Hill offers the kind of technique-oriented cooking that usually emerges from the city’s billionaire canteens—and prices to match.
By Helen Rosner
The Food Scene
The Central Park Boathouse Is Back, and It’s Perfectly Fine
Recently reopened under new management, the pricey tourist-bait canteen is more satisfying than it has any right to be.
By Helen Rosner
On and Off the Menu
The Era of the Line Cook
In a dinner series called the Line Up, line cooks, sous-chefs, and chefs de cuisine from buzzy New York restaurants get to be executive chefs for a night.
By Hannah Goldfield
The Food Scene
One Weird Night at Frog Club
If a self-consciously clubby restaurant suddenly becomes easy to get into, what’s the point of going at all?
By Helen Rosner
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Photo Booth
The Spectacle of Donald Trump’s R.N.C.
An inside look at the Republican Party’s weeklong celebration of the former President.
By Antonia HitchensPhotography by Sinna Nasseri
Television
On Television
Kendrick Lamar’s Freedom Summer
In his new video for “Not Like Us,” the hip-hop artist claims victory in his long battle with Drake.
By Vinson Cunningham
On Television
“Clipped,” Reviewed: A Romp Back Through an N.B.A. Racism Scandal
The FX series about the fallout from a leaked recording of the Los Angeles Clippers’ owner is extremely entertaining, especially if you are not hoping to learn anything about race.
By Hanif Abdurraqib
On Television
“The Bear” Is Overstuffed and Undercooked
The Hulu series about a Chicago sandwich joint once felt like the best kind of prestige TV—but the new season, like its Michelin-hungry protagonist, has lost sight of what made it great.
By Inkoo Kang
On Television
A Succession Battle Over America’s Largest Ren Faire
A new HBO documentary series follows King George, the eighty-six-year-old overlord of the Texas Renaissance Festival, and the vicious competition to replace him.
By Carrie Battan
The Theatre
The Theatre
“Cats: The Jellicle Ball” Lands on Its Feet
The directors Zhailon Levingston and Bill Rauch cross Andrew Lloyd Webber’s juggernaut musical with queer ballroom culture to electrifying effect.
By Helen Shaw
The Theatre
Sandra Oh and a Cast of Downtown All-Stars Illuminate a Period Thriller
The British playwright Lucy Kirkwood’s “The Welkin” exorcises the jury-room drama.
By Helen Shaw
The Theatre
Great Migrations, in Two Plays
Samm-Art Williams’s “Home,” on Broadway, and Shayan Lotfi’s “What Became of Us,” at Atlantic Theatre Company, portray the politics and the emotions of leaving home.
By Vinson Cunningham
The Theatre
Three London Shows Put a New Spin on Old Classics
Superb stagecraft illuminates Robert Icke’s “Player Kings,” Benedict Andrews’s “The Cherry Orchard,” and Ian Rickson’s “London Tide.”
By Helen Shaw
Music
Pop Music
Clairo Believes in Charm as an Aesthetic and Spiritual Principle
The artist discusses her new album, moving upstate, and the wallop and jolt of romantic connection.
By Amanda Petrusich
Pop Music
Ivan Cornejo’s Mexican American Heartache
“Regional Mexican” music is booming, but one young singer is in no mood to celebrate.
By Kelefa Sanneh
Musical Events
Guillaume de Machaut’s Medieval Love Songs
The fourteenth-century composer’s expressions of longing can still leave an audience spellbound.
By Alex Ross
Pop Music
Lizzy McAlpine Wants to Go Offline
The artist, who got famous by going viral, discusses refusing to play the TikTok game with her new record, turning to a life of slowness and privacy, and maybe auditioning for a musical.
By Amanda Petrusich
More in Culture
On Television
Julio Torres’s “Fantasmas” Finds Truth in Fantasy
In the comedian and writer’s new HBO show, guest stars and surreal distractions provide witty symbolic keys to serious themes.
By Vinson Cunningham
The Current Cinema
“Twisters” Takes the Fun Out of Heavy Weather
The original “Twister” had no compunction about making tornadoes look awesome. Lee Isaac Chung’s sequel treats them as deadly serious.
By Richard Brody
Goings On
Hilton Als on Nora Burns’s Memory Play “David’s Friend”
Also: the mysterious folksinger Jessica Pratt, “Le Prophète” at Bard SummerScape, Molly Fischer’s book picks for new parents, and more.
Screening Room
A Life-or-Death Decision Among Friends, in “Hamster”
A tragic accident turns a lighthearted gathering into a moral quandary for a young Iranian couple.
Film by Fatima Nofely
In the Dark
In the Dark’s New Season Examines a Crime That Went Unpunished
The New Yorker investigative podcast asks why one of the most high-profile war-crimes prosecutions in U.S. history failed to deliver justice.
By The New Yorker
Cover Story
Anita Kunz’s “The Face of Justice”
The remaking of the Supreme Court in Donald Trump’s image.
By Françoise MoulyArt by Anita Kunz
Dancing
Does Ballet Need Narrative?
“Woolf Works,” a dance triptych by Wayne McGregor, is based on the life and work of Virginia Woolf, but its engagement with her ideas is frustratingly intermittent.
By Jennifer Homans