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Last summer, I was invited to give a lecture on artificial intelligence and spirituality at the famed Chautauqua Institution in upstate New... Read More

There is a distinctive, deeply uncanny horror to the way Jimmy Fallon laughs. Look it up—there are literally hundreds of videos... Read More

The 1978 bestselling publication of The Stories of John Cheever took the U.S. literary world by storm, its huge success... Read More

Last month, the Public Culture Project at Harvard University hosted a conversation inspired by two essays in our winter... Read More

A longtime sociology professor at the University of Pennsylvania, Philip Rieff analyzed the telltale signs of a culture approaching its... Read More

“Last night at the bodega, I saw a 20-something girl who looked like she’d had the worst day imaginable,” Lena Dunham tells... Read More

It’s 5:45 a.m. on a Tuesday, and the Home Depot on Sunset Boulevard in Hollywood is already bustling.  I am standing in Aisle... Read More

Last Wednesday, acclaimed novelist Helen DeWitt went public with the dramatic tale of how she lost $175,000 because she couldn’t find... Read More

You wouldn’t know Anthony Bourdain died in 2018 by reading the headlines in the culture pages of America’s newspapers and... Read More

Marriage rates and birth rates are falling. Meanwhile, the average ages for marriage and motherhood are rising.... Read More

Susie Vogelman is young, beautiful, loaded, and completely and hopelessly addicted to OxyContin. After her roommate overdoses on prescription... Read More

Alarm bells ring so loudly at the start of T.C. Boyle’s new novel that I expected my wife to yell, “Turn that thing... Read More

Alex Wagner has returned to primetime hours on MS NOW — but not in the way viewers might expect. Read More

Long before academics and pundits began mourning the loss of the Habermasian public sphere, Walter Lippmann, America’s dean of... Read More

LIKE HER FIRST NOVEL, Things That Happened Before the Earthquake (2017), Chiara Barzini’s new book, Aqua: A Story of... Read More

At a certain point, coffee ceased to be sufficient. I wish I could remember when the most socially acceptable form of caffeine stopped doing... Read More

For most Americans who have ever eaten lunch, a chicken Caesar wrap is simply a tortilla-wrapped tangle of lettuce, grilled chicken, and... Read More

At Hackney’s Empire Theatre on Mare Street, east London, I’m seated next to Lena Dunham’s biggest fan. To my left, as it... Read More

One of the striking facts of the 21st century is that J.R.R. Tolkien’s stories became blockbuster movies and pretentious TV soap... Read More

Being a podcaster is a bit embarrassing. It’s much easier than writing (my intended career) but much better paid. The term itself is... Read More

In April 1976, an academic press published a book containing two novellas and one short story, all set in the American West. It was written... Read More

I had always read James Baldwin’s declaration “I want to be an honest man and a good writer” as a statement of artistic... Read More

Few social changes have come with the swiftness and lack of opposition that mass gambling liberalization has. As recently as 2017, most forms... Read More

By and large, most diners at Cote, the sleek and club-like New York City steakhouse, order the Butcher’s Feast. For $82 per person,... Read More

In 1977, Johnny Rotten leaned into his microphone and screamed what became the defining slogan of punk: No future. The Sex... Read More

Revisiting Playboy’s 2002 conversation with one of the last true American legends on what we can safely assume is his favorite holiday. Read More

“We are failing young men,” Dr. Michael “Robby” Robinavitch (Noah Wyle) waxes poetic, “because we don’t... Read More

There was a time when Louisiana was considered part of “The Wild West.”  Men came here from the colony states looking for... Read More

Governments around the world are finding ways to collect intimate data about their entire population. In many countries, they do it the... Read More

To Bobby Fijan, bringing the townhouse back to the American city is more than a real estate endeavor. It’s a quasi-religious calling to... Read More

I was doing a research project in the main reading room of the New York Public Library. That meant waiting for long periods of time for my... Read More

Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. has served on the US Supreme Court for 20 years, but has never gotten the attention—or credit—he... Read More

Along with Rembrandt van Rijn and Frans Hals, Johannes Vermeer (1632-1675) was a major artist during the Dutch Golden Age. He... Read More

This piece contains major spoilers for both the book and film versions of Andy Weir’s Project Hail Mary. I also include a brief... Read More

It was May 2020 and a teenager sat against a grey wall in a house in the Utah desert. His mother was next to him, holding a camera and... Read More