The New Yorker
Are You Crying Yet?
Max Richter’s song “On the Nature of Daylight” has popped up in countless sob fests including “Arrival” and “Hamnet.” With billions of streams, he’s become one of the most popular and successful composers of our time. Jane Bua reports.
Today’s Mix
A Whistle-Blower Speaks Out About Trump’s Crackdown on Campus Antisemitism
A Justice Department lawyer assigned to work on an Administration task force began to suspect that the investigations were “outcome-driven.”
Can You Fire the Vice-President via Truth Social?
Donald Trump came close on Thursday, ousting J. D. Vance as his Iran negotiator days after the Veep blamed the war for the Republicans’ midterm losses.
I Am a 2026 National Book Award Finalist. The U.S. Denied My Visa
After my memoir, “Huna,” was nominated, I made plans to attend the ceremony in New York—only to be found ineligible for a visitor visa.
Jensen Huang, the Man Behind the A.I. Revolution
The C.E.O. of Nvidia has resigned following news of extramarital affairs, including one with an alleged Chinese spy. This Profile, from 2023, follows the engineer who bet it all on a new kind of chip.
What It Takes to Save a Town from Wildfire
Catastrophic blazes are exposing the limits of individual precautions. Can communities build a system of collective defense?
The Lede
A daily column on what you need to know.
The Candidates Who Defeated the Politics of White Grievance
Will Democrats’ breakthrough in the South transform their party’s view of a winning campaign?
The Afterlife of Diana’s Revenge Dress
Three decades ago, the Princess of Wales responded to Charles’s televised confession of infidelity with what would become the most famous little black dress of all time. Now it’s up for auction—and Camilla is Queen.
Is Jensen Huang’s Affair a Crisis for the A.I. Boom?
It’s not yet clear what the Nvidia C.E.O.—or the Trump Administration—knew about the alleged Chinese spy he was involved with.
Breaking the Decade-Long Trump Fever
The President’s unique brand of lurid authoritarianism has finally lost appeal, and he has lost the plot.
Why Russia and Ukraine Keep Resisting Trump’s Art of the Deal
The White House is leading a new round of negotiations this week to end the war, but all sides remain deeply at odds.
How France Took Over Basketball
The country spent decades building a development system to cultivate the tallest and most talented kids. Now the best player in the world is French, and its national team poses a serious threat to U.S. Olympic dominance.
Now What?
A kaleidoscopic set of conversations about what comes after the historic power shift of the midterms, in U.S. politics, technology, and global relations. Ro Khanna and Nick Solheim on the President’s future; Brad Sherman, Tess Bridgeman, and Chris Van Hollen on overseas wars; Tom Steyer, Oren Cass, and Jared Bernstein on the economy; Astra Taylor and Dean Ball on A.I.; and more.
Goings On
Recommendations on what to read, eat, watch, listen to, and more.
How Sombr Went from TikTok to M.S.G.
Sheldon Pearce on the musician’s style of open-book transparency and his upcoming performance at the Garden. Plus: Richard Brody on what to see at the cinema, the legacy of Merce Cunningham, and more.
What Is It About Rock Music and Fascism?
A recent survey of pop stars’ flirtations with Nazi imagery raises questions about power, media, and spectacle, Alex Ross writes.
“Bitter Christmas” Is Pedro Almodóvar’s Gift to Us
Justin Chang reviews the dazzling meta-drama, of two filmmakers—one the brainchild of the other—that ponders what friends owe one another and what artists owe themselves.
Intimate Books About Self-Analysis and Spirituality
Meghan O’Gieblyn, the author of “Will and Attention,” on writing about oneself.
An Exiled Filmmaker’s Unsparing View of Contemporary Russia
Andrey Zvyagintsev’s “Minotaur” is the first independent feature to portray Russian life during the war with Ukraine.
Gift Guides
Our writers recommend their favorite gear and treasures.
Gifts for Discerning Design Lovers
Everyday objects that are utilitarian, durable, minimalist, and aesthetic—and likely to sell out.
The Best Gifts for Kids Are Small. Or Big. Or Lots. Or Stomp
No one cares as much about presents as children do. No pressure!
Gifts for Cats That Are Worth Knocking Off the Table
Scratchers that aren’t total eyesores, books and accessories for cat-obsessed humans, and some ideas for dog people, too.
An N.B.A. Player Got Hooked on Sports Betting. Soon, He Became the Bet
Jontay Porter got deep into FanDuel, and in debt to the wrong people. The only way out, it seemed, was to gamble on himself.
The Critics
How an Unlikely Charles de Gaulle Bio-Pic Conquered France
Bringing the French general to the big screen has historically been a fraught enterprise. Antonin Baudry says that his two-part epic succeeded because it “managed to crack the character.”
What Is Biography For?
In “Transcendence for Beginners,” the philosopher Clare Carlisle suggests that any life, even an ordinary one, is a portal to divinity.
In “The Heart” and “I Became We,” the Rise of the Hive-Mind Musical
In this new kind of show, an ensemble tells an individual’s story in unison, sometimes down to the thoughts inside her head.
The Mothers We Pay
Two début novels, Courtney Bush’s “Learning” and K Chiucarello’s “Nanny Nanny,” look at the rewards—and the perils—of losing one’s self in child care.
Why Are We So Good at Feeling Bad?
A behavioral economist sets out to explain why we’re so prone to overreacting and spiralling.
The Labyrinthine Betrayals of “Minotaur”
In Andrey Zvyagintsev’s remake of a Claude Chabrol classic, current affairs become entangled with a crime of passion.
What We’re Reading
The staff writer Nick Paumgarten’s memoir—elegant, funny, and moving—traces a life in ice hockey; an examination of Shakespeare before he became the Shakespeare of “Hamlet” and “King Lear”; and more.
Our Columnists
The Technofeudalist Nightmare of K-12 Curricula
Public schools are financing private capital’s love affair with ed-tech and A.I. Students are paying the price.
Changing Our Relationship to Technology Will Require Collective Action
Many of us are making individual efforts to use our phones less, or to avoid A.I. But we will need to work together.
The Death Knell of Digital Search
Companies such as Google used to be our portals to the rest of the web. Can the internet as we know it survive when A.I. answers all of our questions?
The Next Left
With the D.S.A. gaining members and influence, American socialism is enjoying a resurgence. Yet Democrats have long borrowed its most workable ideas, and now Silicon Valley has taken up its dream of liberating workers. Can socialists transform a system so adept at absorbing their demands?
The New Yorker Festival
Enjoy recordings of select events from this year’s weekend of conversations and performances.
“Allies in Exile”
Displaced by war, two Syrian filmmakers, Hasan Kattan and Fadi al-Halabi, document their wait for asylum in the U.K., forging a friendship through storytelling amid rising anti-immigrant protests.
Ideas
The Telephone’s Tangled History of Intimacy and Control
How an invention that brought distant voices close rewrote the rules of conversation and raised an unsettling question: Who else might be listening?
The Year Math Changed Forever
A.I. is solving problems that stumped the field for decades. Mathematicians look to Terence Tao for guidance on their altered world.
Is God Another Addiction?
A remarkable memoir recounts a writer’s struggles with alcoholism and religious faith—and the unsettling ways in which each has fed her longing for the other.
Wikipedia’s Pyrrhic Victory
The wonder of the online world was built by a community of eccentric volunteers. Can it survive the A.I. models it helped train?
How Takashi Yamazaki Brought Godzilla Back to Life
In 2024, the Japanese director’s revival of the famed saga won a surprise Oscar. He describes how he tried to make the latest installment, “Godzilla Minus Zero,” live up to its predecessor.
Puzzles & Games
Take a break and play.
In Case You Missed It
The first time I met Omitsu was the summer before my third year of elementary school, in the seventh or eighth year of the Taisho era, 1918 or 1919.
I had been left in the care of my uncle, who brewed sake in Shinano, a small farming village a couple of miles outside the city of Nagano, in order to be able to attend the local school. My father, who was a government official, had been posted in Taiwan, and my mother had accompanied him there.Continue reading »
The Talk of the Town
Fun, fizzy dispatches from the city and beyond.