clock menu more-arrow no yes

Culture

The host of You Must Remember This on writing a book as essential as her podcast

By Todd VanDerWerff

The darker side of Stan Lee’s legacy

By Alex Abad-Santos

Elite library sorters race to process books in cutthroat competition

By Constance Grady

Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald feels like a giant prologue for some other movie

By Aja Romano

Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald’s bonkers plot twist, explained

By Aja Romano

Elena Ferrante’s My Brilliant Friend doesn’t just compel people to read, but to travel

By Aditi Shrikant

Jonathan Franzen’s new essay collection is a bird-obsessed, condescending mess

By Constance Grady

The best movies out this weekend

13 great films now in theaters and on streaming.

View All Stories

The author of The Princess Bride shaped pop culture as few screenwriters have

By Aja Romano

Green Book builds a feel-good comedy atop an artifact of shameful segregation. Yikes.

By Alissa Wilkinson

HBO’s My Brilliant Friend adaptation is a knockout

By Todd VanDerWerff

Cam has the brilliant audacity to argue that the internet isn’t about connecting people

By Aja Romano

Bohemian Rhapsody loves Freddie Mercury’s voice. It fears his queerness.

By Aja Romano

The guidebook that helped black Americans travel during segregation

By Coleman Lowndes

In Widows, Viola Davis’s heist crew captivates even when the story stumbles

By Alissa Wilkinson

Netflix’s Ballad of Buster Scruggs is an old West folk tale, with a signature Coen brothers twist

By Alissa Wilkinson

Netflix’s The Princess Switch is the best kind of dumb, cozy Christmas movie

By Constance Grady

How Kristen Bell’s terrific performance grounds The Good Place’s wildest season yet

By Todd VanDerWerff, Alissa Wilkinson, and 1 other

Monica Lewinsky is finally having her moment

By Anna North

It took 46 years for Aretha Franklin’s concert doc to come out. The wait was worth it.

By Alissa Wilkinson

Jell-O is finally capitalizing on the Instagram slime trend

By Kaitlyn Tiffany

Sigrid Nunez wins the 2018 National Book Award for The Friend

By Constance Grady

We read all 25 National Book Award finalists for 2018. Here’s what we thought. 

By Constance Grady, Todd VanDerWerff, and 17 others

Watch: Every Stan Lee cameo from every single Marvel movie he appeared in

By Alex Abad-Santos

12 years after mocking Al Gore’s fight against climate change, South Park reconsiders

By Todd VanDerWerff

How corporate cash bought higher education

By Sean Illing

How Willem Dafoe learned to paint like Vincent Van Gogh

By Alissa Wilkinson

The best part of Michelle Obama’s new memoir is how much smack she talks about her husband

By Constance Grady

The 5 biggest takeaways from Michelle Obama’s revealing new memoir

By Stavros Agorakis

Michelle Obama left her job so her husband could be president. Now it’s her turn to shine.

By Anna North

Michelle Obama says she’ll “never forgive” Trump for putting her family at risk

By Constance Grady

Michelle Obama’s story of “talking white” shines a light on the complexities of code-switching

By P.R. Lockhart

Michelle Obama’s Becoming is a master class in walking the First Lady Tightrope

By Constance Grady

I was on a Forbes 30 under 30 list. Here are the hidden privileges that made me a “success.”

By Aditi Juneja

Game of Thrones’ final season will premiere in April 2019

By Alex Abad-Santos

“I didn’t really think he could win”: Michelle Obama’s new memoir reveals why she let Barack run for president

By Stavros Agorakis

Stan Lee, the godfather of Marvel comics, dies at 95

By Alex Abad-Santos

The Pokémon Detective Pikachu trailer is tearing Pokémon fans apart

By Alex Abad-Santos

Criminal profiling doesn’t work. TV shows should maybe stop celebrating it.

By Dylan Matthews

YouTube is full of cringey, clickbait DIY channels. They’re even weirder than you think.

By Rebecca Jennings

My parents give me $28,000 a year

By E.J. Roller

Riverdale’s return to the ’90s is the show at its nonsensical batshit best

By Constance Grady
More Stories