World
Colum McCann’s Limp Novel of Digital Life
Have novels left anything unsaid about the internet of the past fifteen years? It feels as though they’ve exhausted the terrain, but perhaps they’ve just made the same points...
R.F.K., Jr., Anthony Fauci, and the Revolt Against Expertise
Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., was nine when his uncle was murdered and fourteen when his father was. Even in his youth, he recalled, he doubted that Oswald had acted alone....
Times Square’s Revolving Restaurant Comes Around Again
Seeing New York City from above—from the upper deck of the Empire State Building, or from the window of an airplane making an up-the-Hudson approach to LaGuardia Airport—is always...
The President Who Became a Prophet
On April 1st, the day before President Donald Trump’s tariffs cratered global markets, House Speaker Mike Johnson told reporters “to trust the President’s instinct on the economy.” In the...
The Everyday Dramas of Manhattan Rush Hour
Salacuse is the kind of person who always seems to have a project or five under way. I first met him in 2000, and we’ve been friends ever since....
Hilton Als on the Visionary World of Alva Rogers
I met Alva Rogers years ago, through a mutual friend, and her various incarnations—actress, singer, artistic director, writer, puppeteer—have always been remarkable to me. As a young woman, Rogers...
On “I’m the Problem,” Morgan Wallen Goes Back to God’s Country
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...
In Defense of Despair
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...
Robert Macfarlane on Books That Hold Water
The writer and scholar Robert Macfarlane has spent much of his life climbing up mountains and fishing on rivers, and his passion for each extends to his writing. Over...
How Donald Trump’s Crypto Dealings Push the Bounds of Corruption
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...
In “Jetty,” a Grand Infrastructure Project Becomes Both Visually and Politically Compelling
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...