The New Yorker
One Family’s Perilous Escape from Gaza City
When Israel invaded Kamal Al-Mashharawi’s neighborhood, he crowded into a basement with his extended family. “The world is closing in on us,” he wrote on WhatsApp. Adam Rasgon reconstructs Mashharawi’s journey through his photos, videos, and messages.
The Lede
Reporting and analysis on the affairs of the day.
The Intimate Reality of the J.F.K. Assassination
A visit to Dealey Plaza, after years of thinking and reading about the Kennedy assassination, came as a shock.
Chaos in the Cradle of A.I.
The Sam Altman saga at OpenAI underscores an unsettling truth: nobody knows what A.I. safety really means.
Should U.S. Aid to Israel Be Contingent on Human Rights?
The head of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee argues that humanitarian concerns shouldn’t hold up funding for Israel’s war effort.
The Supreme Court’s Self-Excusing Ethics Code
Under the Court’s new rules, the Justices appear not to have made any mistakes.
The Free-Market Fundamentalism of Argentina’s Javier Milei
The President-elect has been compared to Donald Trump, but his radical views on the economy set him apart.
Elon Musk’s Poisoned Platform
Users and advertisers are fleeing X after Musk’s message supporting an antisemitic conspiracy theory.
Lahaina Hallelujah
A cartoonist reflects on his family’s roots in Maui and the devastation of the wildfire.
The Fall of My Teen-Age Self
This particular April, I’d sworn to my mother I wasn’t smoking. Therefore: stolen cigarettes. Therefore: windowsill.
The Israel-Hamas War
The Making of the World’s Go-To Hostage Negotiator
How Qatar became one of the world’s most prominent mediators of hostage situations.
The Trauma of Gaza’s Doctors
The head of mission for Doctors Without Borders in Palestine on the horrors of practicing medicine under siege.
Escalating Violence Between Israel and Lebanon
There’s a sense of history repeating itself along the border, where tens of thousands have been displaced and the civilian death toll is climbing.
The Use of Children, Hostages, and the Vulnerable in War
The war in Gaza has the feel of history sliding backward.
Joyce Carol Oates’s Relentless, Prolific Search for a Self
In more than a hundred works of fiction, Oates has investigated the question of personality—while doubting that she actually has one.
Thanksgiving Reads & Recipes
The Open Secret of Thanksgiving, and a Recipe
Whether the feast is transcendent or mediocre, whether you are fond of your dinner companions or can’t stand them, the day is defined by something else.
Win Thanksgiving (and Post-Thanksgiving) with Double Stock
A true double stock is a culinary showpiece, an investment of time and ingredients that is worthy of its own spotlight.
All the Newspapers’ Men
In Martin Baron’s “Collision of Power” and Adam Nagourney’s “The Times,” two well-known journalists turn their investigative power on their institutions—and themselves.
Dept. of Hoopla
Giving thanks for humor.
Ingredient-Substitution Guide for Thanksgiving Recipes
For one can of pumpkin purée, steal three rotting jack-o’-lanterns from your neighbors’ front steps.
The Cranberry Sauce Has Something to Say
Look, do you think I don’t see what you see? I’m repulsive. I stick out like a sore thumb. A red, wobbly sore thumb.
Similarities Between the First Thanksgiving and the First Thanksgiving I Hosted
Both gatherings involved alcohol-induced candor and the Protestant work ethic.
John Woo Returns to Hollywood
The Hong Kong filmmaker talks about his quest to make personal genre movies, his enduring faith in friendship, and his new, dialogue-free revenge drama, “Silent Night.”
The Critics
Ridley Scott’s “Napoleon” Cannot Quite Vanquish Its Subject
Joaquin Phoenix summons a general prowling the battlements of his own brain, but is Napoleon’s life just too big for any one movie?
André 3000 Disrupts Our Sense of Time
André Benjamin’s début solo album of deeply soothing instrumental music asks for little beyond our attention.
The Artist Making Wellness Culture Look a Little Sick
In “Needy Machines,” Ilana Harris-Babou continues her study of self-improvement, taking on everything from luxury bathrooms to health-care documents.
The Surprising Sweetness of the Ayn Rand Fangirl Novel
Lexi Freiman’s “The Book of Ayn” paints an obsession with the godmother of libertarianism as a useful but transient phase.
Why Can’t We Quit “The Morning Show”?
Apple’s glossy experiment in prestige melodrama is utterly baffling—and must-watch TV.
Nostalgia Isn’t What It Used to Be
As our faith in the future plummets and the present blends with the past, we doomscroll and catastrophize and feel certain that we’ve reached the point where history has fallen apart.
A Mother’s Grief in New Haven
Laquvia Jones lost both of her sons to shootings. Now she wonders why a city with a deep sense of community—and one of the wealthiest universities in the world—can’t figure out how to address gun violence.
Annals of Artificial Intelligence
The Godfather of A.I. Fears What He’s Built
Geoffrey Hinton has spent a lifetime teaching computers to learn. Now he worries that artificial brains are better than ours.
A Coder Considers the Waning Days of the Craft
Coding has always felt to me like an endlessly deep and rich domain. Now I find myself wanting to write a eulogy for it.
Does A.I. Lead Police to Ignore Contradictory Evidence?
Too often, a facial-recognition search represents virtually the entirety of a police investigation.
What the Doomsayers Get Wrong About Deepfakes
Experts have warned that realistic A.I.-generated videos might wreak havoc through deception. What’s happened is troubling in a different way.
John Updike on the Kennedy Assassination
Sixty years ago this afternoon, stunned onlookers witnessed the shooting of President John F. Kennedy as his motorcade passed through Dealey Plaza, in Dallas. Millions more would watch the tragedy on TV. The days that followed, which included the vigilante killing of the assassin, Lee Harvey Oswald, on live TV, were among the strangest in American history.
Updike’s words, in this Comment from 1963, still impart an otherworldly feeling: something “unsearchably significant” had happened.
A Food-Themed Holiday Gift Guide
Kitchen tools, culinary trinkets, tinned treats, dinner-party fixings, and many more curios for the person of appetites in your life.
Puzzles & Games
Take a break and play.
Name Drop: Make Me Laugh
Can you guess the identities of these nine comedy legends?
A Hidden Stash of Extraordinary Self-Portraits
A début monograph by Carla Williams lets the world in on a quietly thrilling collection of images that have been tucked away for nearly four decades.
Listen to The New Yorker
The Kingpin Who Kidnapped Migrants for Ransom
Bayard Rustin Gets to Shine in Our Era
Can Happiness Be Taught?
A Trans Teen in an Anti-Trans State
When I was alone in the house, I often opened the box to stare at the opal.Continue reading »
