
In Defense of Despair
Save this storySave this storySave this storySave this story The Joke I tell that no one laughs at goes like this: I picked a pretty rough time to actually want to be alive; in retrospect, back when I wanted to…
Save this storySave this storySave this storySave this story The Joke I tell that no one laughs at goes like this: I picked a pretty rough time to actually want to be alive; in retrospect, back when I wanted to…
Save this storySave this storySave this storySave this story Morgan Wallen is a country singer, almost defiantly so, though he is also popular on a scale that seems to circumvent genre entirely. Each of Wallen’s past two albums spent at…
Save this storySave this storySave this storySave this story Abelard and Heloise, Vladimir and Véra, Prince Albert and Queen Victoria: to these historic his and hers, I would add Carl and Dolly. That’s Dean and Parton, the Tennessee couple whose…
Save this storySave this storySave this storySave this story Writers who contemplate going onstage tend to fall into two camps: those who know better and those who should but don’t. Of the second kind, The New Yorker has, over its…
Save this storySave this storySave this storySave this story Imagine that someone in a position of great political power created a hundred billion raffle tickets and made them available for public purchase. If you buy the tickets, eventually you will…
Save this storySave this storySave this storySave this story The algorithm has been feeding me industrial-strength A.S.M.R.: short videos of computer-controlled lathes, in extreme closeup, doing elaborate milling of wood or metal rods. Sam Fleischner’s modest yet ambitious documentary “Jetty”…
Save this storySave this storySave this storySave this story Richard Kind is the Platonic ideal of a character actor. When he shows up in something—as Larry David’s cousin in “Curb Your Enthusiasm,” as Rudy Giuliani in “Bombshell”—you’re in for an…
Save this storySave this storySave this storySave this story The Boston Globe’s investigative Spotlight team has been reporting on wrongdoing for decades—before and after its stunning exposure, in 2003, of the vast Catholic Church child-sexual-abuse crisis, dramatized in Tom McCarthy’s…
Save this storySave this storySave this storySave this story The photo op is an emblem of a discarded time. Taken in 1991, during the second annual Great American Workout, a fitness event hosted on the South Lawn of the White…
Save this storySave this storySave this storySave this story This magazine’s ongoing centenary celebration has included a cinematic component: a series at Film Forum, “Tales from The New Yorker,” which featured movies connected to The New Yorker’s history, whether because…