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The New Yorker

Black and white portrait of Padma Lakshmi. Lakshmi wears dark pants and a white blouse. Her hair is down.
Profiles

Padma Lakshmi Walks Into a Bar

Since leaving “Top Chef,” Lakshmi has found herself in a period of professional uncertainty, Helen Rosner writes. What better time to try standup comedy?

April 23, 2024

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Above the Fold

Essential reading for today.

The Haiti That Still Dreams

Lately, some of our family gatherings are incantations of grief. But they can also turn into storytelling sessions of a different kind.

Who’s Afraid of Judging Donald Trump? Lots of People

At the ex-President’s criminal trial, where Trump has been reprimanded for intimidating a potential juror, it has been challenging to find twelve people willing to sit in the jury box.

The War Games of Israel and Iran

While Netanyahu and the Islamic Republic exchange ballistic “messages,” the question of Palestine demands the moral and strategic courage of actual statesmen.

A Baltimore Oriole Who Swings the Bat Like a Legend-to-Be

Jackson Holliday has had perfect swinging form since he was three years old. As a major leaguer, though, he’s still in his infancy.

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Our Local Correspondents

No Reservations

Bots, mercenaries, and table scalpers have turned the restaurant reservation system inside out.

April 22, 2024

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Magazine

The Food Issue

New items on the menu throughout the week.

April 22, 2024

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Find new offerings in The New Yorker Store, including limited-edition totes.Browse and buy »

The Political Scene

Did Mike Johnson Just Get Religion on Ukraine?

The Speaker’s sudden willingness to bring foreign-aid bills to the House floor risks his Speakership—and Trump’s wrath.

Will Biden’s Pro-Labor Feats Matter in November?

The President is winning over union leaders, but not necessarily rank-and-file voters.

The Supreme Court Asks What Enron Has to Do with January 6th and Trump

The former President notwithstanding, the government’s position in Fischer v. United States is unsettling.

When a Pro-Free-Speech Dean Shuts Down a Student Protest

An online argument erupted after a video of a law professor grabbing a microphone from a student went viral. But the debate has obscured some fairly basic truths.

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The New Yorker Interview

Jonathan Haidt Wants You to Take Away Your Kid’s Phone

The social psychologist discusses the “great rewiring” of children’s brains, why social-media companies are to blame, and how to reverse course.

April 20, 2024

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The Critics

The Tortured Poetry of Taylor Swift’s New Album

“The Tortured Poets Department” has moments of tenderness. But it suffers from being too long and too familiar.

“Civil War” Is a Tale of Bad News

Alex Garland’s grim political fantasy about secession and violence revolves around a war photographer but has little to say about the making and consumption of news images.

American Confinement in “We Grown Now” and “Stress Positions”

A crisis turns home into a place of constraint in two new independent features.

In Justine Kurland’s Photographs, a Mother and Son Hit the Road

Some of the portraits in “This Train” have an Edenic quality to them, as if Kurland is asking: What if my kid and I were the only two people in the world?

How Stories About Human-Robot Relationships Push Our Buttons

Two new novels, “Annie Bot” and “Loneliness & Company,” reflect anxieties about A.I. coming for our hearts as well as for our jobs.

Ralph Fiennes Sidles His Way Into Power as Macbeth

A hit British production of Shakespeare’s ever-timely tragedy arrives in D.C.

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Under Review

What We’re Reading This Week

A collection of piquant essays on our predilection for minimalism, a striking début novel that touches on the welfare system, a memoir that charts the investigation of a mother’s murder across a quarter century, and more.

April 17, 2024

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From the Food Issue

A Tamarind Tree’s Sweet and Sour Inheritance

My ancestor was gifted a huge orchard just outside Delhi. The fruits it produced were the taste of my childhood.

The Most Treasured Jar in My Pantry

There is nothing “plain” about vanilla when your extract is home-brewed.

Fifteen Essential Cookbooks

The kitchen guides that New Yorker writers and editors can’t do without.

The Crossword: A Foodie Puzzle

Today’s theme: Jam-packed.

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Peruse a gallery ofcartoons from the issue »
Photo Booth

When Babies Rule the Dinner Table

In the past two decades, American parents have started to ditch the purées and give babies more choice—and more power—at mealtime. 

April 22, 2024

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Ideas

How to Die in Good Health

The average American celebrates just one healthy birthday after the age of sixty-five. Maybe it doesn’t have to be this way.

How Gullible Are You?

Don’t believe what they’re telling you about misinformation. People may espouse symbolic beliefs, but they don’t treat them the same as factual beliefs.

Get Real

Video-game engines were designed to mimic the mechanics of the real world. How perfectly can reality be simulated?

What Is Noise?

Sometimes we embrace it, sometimes we hate it—and everything depends on who is making it.

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Dispatch

East Palestine, After the Crash

More than a year after a train derailment and chemical fire in Ohio that made international news, residents contend with lingering sickness, uncertainty, and, for some, a desire to just move on.

April 19, 2024

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Persons of Interest

How Wilbert Rideau Published a Magazine in a Maximum-Security Prison

For decades he investigated America’s prison system—from the inside.

Byung-Chul Han Is the Internet’s Favorite Philosopher

In treatises such as “The Burnout Society” and his latest, “The Crisis of Narration,” Han diagnoses the frenetic aimlessness of the digital age.

Maggie Rogers’s Journey from Viral Fame to Religious Studies

The singer-songwriter’s sudden celebrity made her a kind of minister without training. So she went and got some.

Park Chan-wook Comes to American Television

With “The Sympathizer,” the director of “Oldboy” and “The Handmaiden” comes to American television.

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The Weekend Essay

The “Epic Row” Over a New Epoch

Scientists, journalists, and artists often say that we live in the Anthropocene, a new age in which humans shape the Earth. Why do some leading geologists reject the term?

April 20, 2024

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Puzzles & Games

Take a break and play.

The Crossword: A Foodie Puzzle

Today’s theme: Jam-packed.

Solve the latest puzzle

The Mini

A bite-size crossword, for a quick diversion.

Solve the latest puzzle

Name Drop

Can you guess the notable person in six clues or fewer?

Play a quiz from the vault

Cartoon Caption Contest

We provide a cartoon, you provide a caption.

Enter this week’s contest
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In Case You Missed It

How Gaza’s Largest Mental-Health Organization Works Through War
Dr. Yasser Abu-Jamei on providing counselling services to Palestinian children: “When relatives are killed, we try somehow to calm the child and then ask questions: What are you going to do tomorrow? What are you going to do the day after tomorrow?”
The Highest Tree House in the Amazon
In 2023, conservationists and carpenters converged on Peru to build luxury accommodations in the rain-forest canopy.
Trump’s America, Seen Through the Eyes of Russell Banks
In his last book, “American Spirits,” Banks took stories from the news about rural, working-class life and turned them into fables of national despair.
A Meltdown at a Middle School in a Liberal Town
A post-pandemic fight about racism, the respectful treatment of trans kids, and the role of teachers’ unions has divided Amherst, Massachusetts.
They were newly married, each for the second time after living alone for years, like two grazing creatures from separate pastures suddenly finding themselves—who knows why—herded into the same meadow and grazing the same turf.

That they were “not young,” though described by observers as “amazingly youthful,” must have been a strong component of their attraction to each other.Continue reading »

The Talk of the Town

Hearing the Voices of Grenfell Tower

The survivors of the deadly 2017 London fire speak in a theatre piece opening at St. Ann’s Warehouse.

The Evanescent Art of the Sandcastle

In a new book, “The Work of Art,” Adam Moss, the former editor-in-chief of New York magazine, draws out artists on what makes them make art.

Culling the Kim’s Video Mother Lode

“Interview with a Vampire”? Out. Snuff compilation? In. The cinematographer Sean Price Williams sorts the dusty stock of the legendary movie-rental store in a FiDi basement.

The Death Valley Lake That’s Gone in a Flash

Lake Manly forms in Badwater Basin only after especially heavy rains. Paddlers grab their paddles and go.

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Shouts & Murmurs

Cartoons, comics, and other funny stuff. Sign up for the Humor newsletter.

Recommendations from the Guy Who Works at Your Local Dispensary

Turpentine Gelato, Fiscal Daydream, and . . . what was the question again?

How I Use the Internet, According to Nineties Action Movies

I pull up a digitized photo on the screen. Leaning in, I drag a bright-green box around a detail in the image, type rapidly for a full fifteen seconds, and then softly say, “Enhance.”

Trump on Trial: The Defense Rests

But is quickly roused awake!

Stories from the Trump Bible

And Jesus said to Pontius Pilate, “This trial is very unfair. You are a corrupt judge, and your wife is a very nasty woman.”

Overheard in New York: Waiting for the Eclipse

“She’s a flat-earther.”

U.F.C. Fighter on How to Protect Yourself from Being Swept Off Your Feet

The Eye Gouge: The eye gouge prevents love at first sight by ending their sight. This is why the Three Stooges never got laid.

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