The New Yorker
Occupy Columbia
On April 17th, dozens of students fanned out on the school’s east lawn to demand that the university divest from companies with ties to Israel. On April 30th, the N.Y.P.D. arrested more than a hundred campus protesters. The photographer Nina Berman captured slices of this fraught and fractured moment in the university’s history.
Above the Fold
Essential reading for today.
How Much Aid Is Actually Reaching Gazans?
The chief economist of the U.N.’s World Food Programme on imminent famine and what’s needed to avoid it.
The Revenge of the Home Page
As social networks become less reliable distributors of the news, consumers of digital journalism are seeking out an older form of online real estate.
“Challengers” Is Essentially a Well-Shot Commercial
Because the film has so little to say, viewers are free to simply focus on the vibes, an area where Luca Guadagnino, its director, has most distinguished himself.
The Dead Rise at the Venice Biennale
Stifled by a weird and desperate present, the show finds some life in the treasures of the past.
Is Hunterbrook Media a News Outlet or a Hedge Fund?
The hybrid media-finance company wants to monetize investigative journalism in the public interest. Is it a visionary game changer or a cynical ploy?
On Native Grounds
The Secretary of the Interior, Deb Haaland, faces the cruel history of the agency she now leads. As the first Native American Cabinet member, she has made it part of her job to address the travesties of the past.
The Political Scene
Trump’s Sleepy, Sleazy Criminal Trial
In his hush-money trial, for the first time in a decade, the former President is struggling to command attention.
Can the Left be Free?
The liberal economist Joseph Stiglitz wants to take back the language of liberty from the right.
Joe Biden’s Pro-Labor Feats
The President is winning over union leaders, but will the efforts matter with rank-and-file voters in November?
Biden and the Politics of Home Efficiency
Congressional Republicans say efficiency requirements are threats to liberty, but the Biden Administration’s new building codes are the latest in a long list of environmental wins.
Work Sucks. What Could Salvage It?
New books examine the place of work in our lives—and how people throughout history have tried to change it.
The Critics
“The Fall Guy” Is Gravity-Defying Fun, in Every Sense
Starring Ryan Gosling and Emily Blunt, this action-comedy about a stuntman, by the stuntman turned director David Leitch, sticks its landings, but don’t expect characterization.
Three Broadway Shows Put Motherhood in the Spotlight
Paula Vogel’s “Mother Play,” Shaina Taub’s “Suffs,” and Amy Herzog’s “Mary Jane” strike back at the mother-as-monster dramatic trope.
“The Contestant” Is More Than a Cautionary Tale
The documentary charts the rise of one of the earliest reality-TV stars and the ethically queasy production choices that cemented his fame—but it’s elevated by its interest in what came afterward.
Why Normal Music Reviews No Longer Make Sense for Taylor Swift
Critics argue that “The Tortured Poets Department” sounds too much like Swift’s previous albums. Fans argue that that’s the whole point.
Hayao Miyazaki’s Anti-Comfort Movie
“The Boy and the Heron” finds the filmmaker revising—and sometimes upending—the themes that have defined his career.
Love Means Nothing in Tennis but Everything in “Challengers”
Zendaya, Josh O’Connor, and Mike Faist sustain a three-way rally of romance in Luca Guadagnino’s almost absurdly sexy sports film.
What We’re Reading This Week
A story collection that exhibits a unique delicacy in chronicling Black life in the nineteen-fifties and sixties, a novel that cleverly intertwines paeans to the pleasures of eating with indictments of Japan’s standards for women, an immensely entertaining history constructed around medieval guidebooks and travelogues, and more.
The Food Issue
Spoiler Alert: Leftovers for Dinner
How to host a dinner party for nine using a pre-trash haul from Too Good to Go and other food-waste apps. Carb-averse guests, beware.
In Search of Lost Flavors in Flushing
Rediscovering the tastes of childhood in New York’s biggest Chinatown.
Why You Can’t Get a Restaurant Reservation
How bots, mercenaries, and table scalpers have turned the restaurant reservation system inside out.
The Secret Society Chasing Our Fading Attention
As ads and apps reduce our ability to focus, members of an order purportedly reaching back centuries seek to reset the world by understanding what happens between a person and a work of art.
Ideas
How ECMO Is Redefining Death
A medical technology can keep people alive when they otherwise would have died. Where will it lead?
A Clandestine Movement to Evangelize in Muslim Countries
What’s behind the surprising rise in evangelical Christian missionaries from Latin America working in the Middle East.
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.
Exposing Abu Ghraib
Twenty years ago this week, Seymour M. Hersh published a bombshell article about the torture and abuse carried out by American soldiers and contractors at the prison in Iraq. The reporting helped to set off a scandal that reverberated around the world. Some of the perpetrators had documented their own crimes with photos and video. In his 2004 exposé, Hersh named not only the men and women behind the abuse but also the soldier who brought the episode to light.
Academic Freedom Under Fire
Politicians despise it. Administrators aren’t defending it. But it made our universities great—and we’ll miss it when it’s gone.
Puzzles & Games
Take a break and play.
In Case You Missed It
It’s foul out there, he called, but she wasn’t in the main room.
He saw the signs of water ingress in the planks below the cabin windows. A wet stain that caught the light.Continue reading »
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