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I told a friend once that my two favorite cities in the world are London and New Orleans, but I couldn’t see what they have in common.... Read More

Americans do not care for artificial intelligence. Recent polling shows that their attitudes mostly range from ambivalence to horror. Some... Read More

On a cool June evening in Berkeley, I watched a man named Victor try to shoot a beam of light out of his penis. Minutes earlier, he had... Read More

A hint of bluster met me as I biked to catch the Northeast Regional from DC to New York. It was still hard to believe that I was going: I had... Read More

WHEN SAUL BELLOW’S RAVELSTEIN came out in 2000, some took it personally. The character Abe Ravelstein, a gay man who dies of... Read More

Less than a week after David Hockney dies, I am watching him answer questions on the BBC in 1977 on YouTube. My kitten Pliny is sitting next... Read More

Although our cultural discourse has for years been preoccupied with the idea of intelligence—claims that younger generations... Read More

In The Origins of Totalitarianism, Hannah Arendt wrote, “Ideologies are never interested in the miracle of being. They are historical,... Read More

THE BRITISH AUTHOR J. G. Ballard (1930–2009) was one of the most brilliant and incisive, but also one of the most perplexing,... Read More

We called it, simply, The Service. The first time I entered its stash house—a $14,000-a-month penthouse near the Williamsburg... Read More

Before the subway had even left the station near my apartment—a short walk from where Jay-Z grew up in Bedford-Stuyvesant—the car... Read More

I began writing on Substack in March 2022, during what most veterans now see as a halcyon time. There was a lot of hype then about how you... Read More

In 2012, as a 33-year-old staff writer at The American Prospect in D.C., I had the opportunity to travel around the country, looking for... Read More

I recently went to a group exhibition put on by New York City’s Arthouse 2B, a Catholic artist collective. Now I need to admit that, as... Read More

As many DEI initiatives scale back and some public perception changes, many believe the era of "wokeness" has come to an end. Has it? A new... Read More

It would be tragic if China defeated America in the race for AI dominance, but America may suffer a more severe loss—losing its... Read More

On March 13, 1995, at a celebration of the centenary of cinema in Paris, Danish filmmakers Lars von Trier and Thomas Vinterberg announced... Read More

If you want the Smashburger, in New York City you’re in luck, because suddenly there’s a Smashburger joint every other block. If... Read More

On Thursday morning, PEN America, the free-speech organization, posted an article detailing the “isolation and exclusion” many... Read More

“My sister Emily was not a person of demonstrative character, nor one on the recesses of whose mind and feelings even those nearest and... Read More

About 2,000 years ago, the Roman philosopher Seneca warned of a crisis of attention. The problem wasn’t caused by smartphones or... Read More

On a Monday in June, like almost every Monday for the past two years, my brother and I walk into Gertrude’s, a bistro at the corner of... Read More

Argentine rock is one of the richest and most diverse in the world. It probably is, after American and British rock and in contention with... Read More

In 2021, after posting a tasteful brag about finally finishing his novel, Gabriel Hart found an eager literary agent in his DMs. Before he... Read More

IF THERE HAS BEEN A comprehensive study of the filmmaker-written novel, I have yet to encounter it. Should it indeed remain to be written, it... Read More

A couple days after I spoke with iconic essayist David Sedaris about his new book, The Land and Its People, a postcard—the first... Read More

“Social media is increasingly anti-social,” argues New York University psychology professor Jay Van Bavel. Only 7 percent of... Read More

The novelist Michael Connelly has given us some memorable characters over the years—the no-nonsense Harry Bosch, the quick-thinking and... Read More

I walk because it allows you to see a place in a way that you can’t when zooming through it, treating it as a spectacle to be... Read More

In Democracy in America, Alexis de Tocqueville outlined the utility of studying the ancients for certain individuals living under a modern... Read More

In the summer of 2023, Patrick Radden Keefe had the opportunity to go to London to observe the production of the FX adaptation of his 2018... Read More

We’ve all heard about the “problem with young men.” Those opining about it all seem to have their own miraculous... Read More

(Warning: spoilers ahead) The surprising (to some) box office success of the brand-new Young Washington during America’s... Read More

A recent number-one box-office movie was Steven Spielberg’s Disclosure Day, an alien sci-fi thriller that seemed poised to return... Read More

In October 1961, two young men — boys, really — met by chance while waiting at a train station in London’s eastern suburbs.... Read More

I do not often write about movies. In fact, I have not written an essay about one in more than thirty years. The last time I did so followed... Read More

Conventional wisdom holds that the United States is the most violent and dangerous nation in the developed world. This dark view is... Read More

It is axiomatic that countries hosting the World Cup try to put their best face forward. During the monthlong tournament, streets are cleared... Read More

Downtown is not the most beautiful part of Toronto, but it’s certainly the most identifiable, a stretch of skyscrapers spanning the... Read More