The skeletons of 254 warriors from the fearsome Sacred Band of Thebes were discovered in a mass grave in Chaeronea. A number were buried with arms linked; if you look closely, you can see that some were holding hands.
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The skeletons of 254 warriors from the fearsome Sacred Band of Thebes were discovered in a mass grave in Chaeronea. A number were buried with arms linked; if you look closely, you can see that some were holding hands.
In 1972, in Kansas, a family of four picked up a hitchhiker. Then they got into a near-fatal car crash. The hitchhiker later chronicled the event in an acclaimed short story that became a movie—and a word-of-mouth hit among Gen Xers.
In 1941, at the age of 36, Greta Garbo, one of the biggest box-office draws in the world, stopped acting and, though she lived for half a century more, never made another film.
Is the "Thunder Road” lyric “Mary’s dress sways,” “Mary’s dress waves,” or neither? In 2021, David Remnick set out to solve a Springsteen mystery.
Haruki Murakami reflects on his T-shirt collection, including one he loves to wear in the U.S. “Americans sometimes call out, ‘Love the shirt!’ The ones who do this usually have that ‘I love ketchup’ look about them,” he writes.
Sabrina Carpenter “aspires not to normie perfectionism but to something more hectic, funnier, looser, more bonkers,” Amanda Petrusich writes. Read her review of the singer’s new album, “Man’s Best Friend.”
The risk of nuclear war has only grown, yet the public and government officials are increasingly cavalier. Some experts are trying to change that.
The science of misheard lyrics and the “mondegreen,” a misheard word or phrase that makes sense in your head, but is, in fact, entirely incorrect.
We’re used to algorithms guiding our choices. When machines can effortlessly generate the content we consume, though, what’s left for the human imagination?
Today’s Daily Cartoon, by Ali Solomon. #NewYorkerCartoons Sign up for our humor newsletter to get the Daily Cartoon right in your inbox: nyer.cm/NdcdPTJ
Humor is among the first aspects of personality to emerge in children; babies begin making jokes before they can use words. Why?
Texas Republicans are loath to work with their Democratic colleague. What tools does the minority party have left?
In Missouri, post-Dobbs anti-abortion legislation has caused some patients to seek care in other states. In 2024,155,000 people crossed state lines for abortions.
The Justice Department had once argued that Ghislaine Maxwell should be sentenced to at least 30 years in prison. Now its second-ranking official—and Donald Trump’s former lawyer—is aligned with a woman whose crimes the department had called “monstrous.”
“The Great British Bake Off” has become a phenomenon even among people who have never touched a stand mixer. In a new essay, Ruby Tandoh, a former contestant, writes about how TV’s most ambiently watchable show gets made.
Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., is trying to phase out COVID vaccines. How much damage can he do? A leading vaccine expert warns of the Trump Administration’s effort to limit COVID shots at pharmacies, which would be “disastrous” for the American public.
Music writers were once known for being much crankier than the average listener. But these days, they seem to have a sunnier outlook. What happened?
In 2019, Zac Brettler mysteriously plunged into the Thames from the balcony of a luxury flat in London. Roughly a year later, the prime suspect in Brettler’s case was found dead in the same apartment.
In a single day at Les Halles, in New York City, Anthony Bourdain once nourished himself with three double espressos, two beers, three cranberry juices, eight aspirins, a hunk of merguez sausage, and an “Industrial”—a beer stein filled with a Margarita.
Lora Webb Nichols’s photographs of boom and bust in her small Wyoming town might be the largest photographic record of the era and region.
The founders of the Sullivanian Institute may have come closer than any of their far more notorious peers to establishing a truly metropolitan cult—its members visible but its practices obscure.
An M.I.T. study found that 95% of companies that had invested in A.I. tools were seeing zero return. It jibes with the emerging idea that generative A.I., “in its current incarnation, simply isn’t all it’s been cracked up to be,” @johncassidysays.bsky.social writes.
Sometime between the fall of 1963 and the late summer of 1964, the actor and photographer Dennis Hopper stopped at an intersection in L.A., took out his Nikon, and made history.
A long life is a gift. But will we really be grateful for it?
One minute, you're just living your life, and the next, you're mimicking bird calls. Here’s how it happens.
David Sedaris reflects on his sister’s death and what it meant for his family to go from six members to five.
Behold: an absurdly simple trick for choosing between “who” and “whom.”
Music writers were once known for being much crankier than the average listener. But these days, they seem to have a sunnier outlook. What happened?
What a 1939 archaeological discovery says about Britian’s past, its future, and its identity as an island nation.
Alexandra Schwartz profiles Patricia Lockwood, a writer whose lens “brings into focus the improbable and hilariously bizarre features lurking in the midst of ordinary life.”
“This was the practice: I was starting to get rid of my possessions, at least the useless ones, because possessions stood between me and death.” A Personal History by Ann Patchett.
Jia Tolentino reviews Elizabeth Gilbert’s new memoir, “All the Way to the River: Love, Loss, and Liberation.”
Today’s Daily Cartoon, by Ellis Rosen. #NewYorkerCartoons Sign up for our humor newsletter to get the Daily Cartoon right in your inbox: nyer.cm/T0v3KHI
Last year, voters in Missouri passed a measure to protect abortion rights. But Republicans in the state have repeatedly blocked the referendum from taking effect—and are adding a new measure to election ballots that would largely overturn it.
How did a civilized society come to embrace Hitler’s extreme ideas?
To read the 337-page transcript of Ghislaine Maxwell’s interview with the Deputy Attorney General, Todd Blanche, is to be horrified, even enraged, by Maxwell’s brazen airbrushing of her conduct, and by Blanche’s placid acceptance of her rendition of events.
On Saturday, at the U.S. Open, Coco Gauff’s painstaking attempt to improve her serve paid off as she beat Magdalena Fręch, finishing with a tidy four double faults. “It was a remarkable turnaround in a long, ongoing journey,” @louisathomas.bsky.social writes.
A hotel restaurant, especially a high-end one, “is a tough trick to pull off,” @hels.bsky.social writes. How does Lex Yard, the Waldorf-Astoria’s flagship dining room, hold up?
A leading vaccine expert warns of the Trump Administration’s effort to limit COVID shots at pharmacies, which would be “disastrous” for the American public.
What will it mean for culture when the live television band, something that has been an American institution for 70 years, goes extinct?
Coco Gauff is not the first top tennis player to change her service motion in the past couple years. But she’s doing it under the microscope of the press and fans during the U.S. Open—her biggest tournament of the year, @louisathomas.bsky.social writes.
“Let’s begin by saying that we are living through a very dangerous time.” So opens “A Talk to Teachers,” which James Baldwin delivered to a group of educators in October, 1963.
“Bourdain freely acknowledged that part of the reason he continued to work at such a frantic pace might have been a fear about where his mind might go if he ever sat still,” Patrick Radden Keefe wrote, in 2018.
What makes “The Great British Bake Off” so beloved is that it’s one of the most successful unscripted shows of the century and still feels like an underdog. Ruby Tandoh, a former contestant, shares stories from inside the tent.
In Ghislaine Maxwell’s Justice Department interview, she comes off as pathetic, loathsome, and utterly lacking in remorse. The entire operation was damage control—an attempt to exculpate President Trump from his own involvement with Jeffrey Epstein.
“As I approach the end of my life, I have even less and less interest in examining what have got to be very superficial evaluations or opinions about the significance of one’s life or one’s work,” Leonard Cohen said, in 2016.
A months-long investigation estimates that the profits from the Trump family’s ventures in private clubs, hotels, golf courses, crypto currencies, NFTs, and other businesses has raised President Trump’s net worth by billions of dollars.
The musician Nourished by Time’s confrontational, earnest new album is what you want to listen to, during this summer of divided consciousness, and in the colder seasons to come.
In their photo series “El Monte,” the photographers and twin brothers Erick and Elliot Jiménez create playful images inspired by Afro-Cuban religious traditions, embracing surreality, contradiction, artifice, and appropriation.
The Justice Department had once argued that Ghislaine Maxwell should be sentenced to at least 30 years in prison. Now its second-ranking official—and Donald Trump’s former lawyer—is aligned with a woman whose crimes the department had called “monstrous.”
What makes “The Great British Bake Off” so beloved is that it’s one of the most successful unscripted shows of the century and still feels like an underdog. Ruby Tandoh, a former contestant, shares stories from inside the tent.
Beginning in the 1960s, a German sexologist was allowed to place foster children under the care of pedophiles. Why did the government support his experiment?
Nuns from a convent outside Waco have repeatedly visited the women on Texas’s death row—and even made them affiliates of their order. Lawrence Wright reports on a powerful spiritual alliance.
It’s time for your midlife girls’ trip. Before you depart, read the waiver to understand the risks, expenses, and excursions ahead.
In the 80s, a fact checker found that an unedited issue of The New Yorker contained 1,000 errors. (This figure itself wouldn’t survive a fact-check, but never mind.) Zach Helfand delves into the history of the vaunted department.
Neuroscientists have long believed that our bodies are paralyzed during REM sleep to prevent us from acting out our dreams, and the twitches we make are movements that slip through the cracks—but recent research tells another story.
“You don’t make it to the world of competitive televised baking by accident.” The food writer Ruby Tandoh recounts tales from her experience as a contestant on “The Great British Bake Off.”
Neuroscientists have long believed that our bodies are paralyzed during REM sleep to prevent us from acting out our dreams, and the twitches we make are movements that slip through the cracks—but recent research tells another story.
Despite its fascinating setting, Kate Riley’s “Ruth,” which follows a woman born into an insular Christian commune, has little to say about community or faith, Hannah Gold writes.
A sexual-wellness company made millions from selling “orgasmic meditation.” Then its leaders were convicted of forced labor conspiracy.
In 1995, Lillian Ross observed, with an anthropologist’s eye, the rituals of private-school teens on the Upper East Side. #NewYorkerArchive
Jia Tolentino writes about Elizabeth Gilbert’s new memoir, and considers how the author’s unique brand of self-narration has impacted the culture.
Beginning in the 1960s, a German sexologist was allowed to place foster children under the care of pedophiles. Why did the government support his experiment?
Music writers were once known for being much crankier than the average listener. But these days, they seem to have a sunnier outlook. What happened?
A history of extraction and exploitation feels ever-present in New Orleans, but it was perhaps most visible after Hurricane Katrina, which occurred 20 years ago this week.
In 1972, in Kansas, a family of four picked up a hitchhiker. What happened on that drive became part of literary history.
“Query,” Joyce Carol Oates wrote on the first page of her journal, when she was 34. “Does the individual exist?” Rachel Aviv explores the central question of the writer’s life and work.
For Hanif Abdurraqib, the pleasure of Racing Mount Pleasant, who have a new album out, “is not just in the orchestral nature of the band’s makeup and sound but in hearing a group with the ambition to get the most out of every song.”
The sexual-wellness company OneTaste specialized in “orgasmic meditation,” a ritual focussed on the female orgasm. But the company’s leadership preyed on young, impressionable women who were seduced by the idea of sexual freedom.
At the turn of the 20th century, many Americans came to believe that Mars was inhabited by an advanced civilization. Jon Allsop writes about our obsession with Martians, and what it may reveal about our current mass delusions.
A months-long investigation estimates that the profits from the Trump family's ventures in private clubs, hotels, golf courses, crypto currencies, NFTs, and other businesses has raised President Trump’s net worth by billions of dollars.
A cartoon by Sophie Lucido Johnson and Sammi Skolmoski. #NewYorkerCartoons See more from this week’s issue: nyer.cm/Bk1xLeZ
Patricia Lockwood wrote her new novel, “Will There Ever Be Another You,” inside the fog of COVID. If the story baffles you, that’s the point, she said. nyer.cm/FHwJfj5
At Tuesday’s Cabinet meeting, Donald Trump’s performance “seemed right out of the Kremlin playbook,” @sbg1.bsky.social writes. What did he reveal about his Administration’s true plans?
“Eat, Pray, Love” was a huge hit in part because readers imagined they could be like its author, Elizabeth Gilbert. Her new book, “All the Way to the River,” shows how dubious that notion was.
By collecting fairy tales—as well as legends, songs, and myths—the Brothers Grimm sought to create a cohesive national identity for German speakers.
In advance of the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence next year, the Trump White House sent a letter to the Smithsonian, announcing its intention to conduct an extensive review of all semiquincentennial plans. nyer.cm/vYIAkWB
What makes “The Great British Bake Off” so beloved is that it’s one of the most successful unscripted shows of the century and still feels like an underdog. Ruby Tandoh, a former contestant, shares stories from inside the tent.
The idea of perfectionism as a form of admirable striving is a dangerous misconception. “I can’t stand it when people talk about perfectionism as something positive,” a psychology professor said. “They don’t realize the deep human toll.”
A.I. tools unlocked “the sort of creative life I only dreamed of when I was younger,” one of the creators of an A.I. sketch-comedy show said. The technology put him in mind of “the auteur culture of the 60s and 70s.”
How biohackers are working to extend the human lifespan and get rich doing it.
Should we consider the 20th century novel to be something different from the 19th-century novel or, for that matter, from the 21st-century novel?
From the start, it’s apparent that Darren Aronofsky’s new film, “Caught Stealing,” “hits the sweet spot of his cinematic artistry—the right scale, the right scope,” @tnyfrontrow.bsky.social writes.
Zohran Mamdani has promised to make every bus route in New York City faster—and fare-free. What would that look like?
“In seventh grade, I tried to get out of frog dissection by telling Mrs. Graeber that I was Hindu and it was against my religion.” Read “Ritu,” by Akhil Sharma, the final story in this summer’s Flash Fiction series.
The “Love, Brooklyn” and “Moonlight” actor André Holland recommends some of his favorite books that have fed his thinking on community.
With more A.I. creation, “it’s possible that the very notion of ‘content’ will go away, and that content will be replaced with live synthesis that’s designed to have an effect on the recipient,” the Silicon Valley pioneer Jaron Lanier said.
“I’d hoped that having a baby would force us to find a better version of our relationship,” Leslie Jamison wrote, in 2024, about the dissolution of her marriage after having a baby. “But it seemed to be doing almost the opposite.”
What didn’t make it past the cutting-room floor during the filming of “This Is Spinal Tap”? Rob Reiner, who made his directorial début with the film, reveals some of the subplots that could have been.
Jessica Winter writes about the school shooting in Minnesota—a preventable tragedy enabled by a conservative ideology. nyer.cm/wiEaDSA
Astrid Holleeder—who was the star witness in the murder trial of her mob-boss brother after secretly recording his confessions—has stepped out of anonymity for the first time in nearly a decade. Revisit Patrick Radden Keefe’s reporting on the case.
Hanif Abdurraqib reviews a new album by Racing Mount Pleasant, “a band that dwells in emotional quietude without sacrificing sonic grandeur.”
In a new Q. & A., @ichotiner.bsky.social speaks with the U.S. Ambassador to Israel during the Biden Administration about how the former President handled the war in Gaza and working with Netanyahu’s government.
From “Maury” to 23andMe, Jennifer Wilson writes about the secrets DNA tests can reveal—and what happens when the truth comes out.
“I think writing a novel is also a project in becoming a completely different personality.” Hua Hsu profiles the 29-year-old author R. F. Kuang, whose new novel, “Katabasis,” satirizes academic life.
Companies have invested billions of dollars into A.I. tools that promise to increase productivity, and, by extension, profits. But why are so many organizations seeing zero return?
A24’s embrace of the specific and the strange has convinced fans that, in an era dominated by formulaic franchises, the studio promises something different. Alex Barasch reports on recent strategy shifts at a company that has been shrouded in mystery.
Will A.I. culture submerge human originality in a sea of unmotivated, formulaic art, or allow for the expression of new visions?
Scientists believe that climate change played a key role in the landslide that destroyed the Swiss village of Blatten. Still, residents are rebuilding—not downplaying the risks of future disasters so much as making the case for adapting to them.
In 2019, the telecommunications magnate Patrick Drahi bought Sotheby’s. Since then, the auction house has assumed a new, unstable identity: as both the billionaire’s indulgence and the subject of his latest corporate experiment.