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The New Yorker

The Lede

Reporting and analysis on the affairs of the day.

At Least We Can Give Thanks for a Tree

Visiting the largest known white pine.

Should U.S. Aid to Israel Be Contingent on Human Rights?

Senator Ben Cardin, the head of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, argues that humanitarian concerns should not hold up funding for Israel’s war effort.

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.

Javier Milei’s Free-Market Fundamentalism

Argentina’s President-elect has been compared to Donald Trump, but his radical views on the economy set him apart.

The Supreme Court’s Self-Excusing Ethics Code

Under the Court’s new rules, the Justices appear not to have made any mistakes.

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Personal History

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.

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Annals of Giving Thanks

Essays from the archive on the history and spirit of the Thanksgiving holiday.

Magical Dinners

Chang-rae Lee recalls his family’s first Thanksgiving in the U.S., combining turkey and tastes from Korea.

The Invention of Thanksgiving

Philip Deloria deconstructs the myth of the holiday and explains its true history, including the relationship between the Pilgrims and Native Americans.

Friendsgiving Will Set You Free

The point of the holiday is the people, Bryan Washington writes. Your people. Whatever that means to you.

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Dispatch

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.

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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

Anne Taylor, 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.

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Profiles

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.

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The Critics

The Current Cinema

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?

Under Review

The Best Books We Read This Week

Our editors and critics review notable new fiction, nonfiction, and poetry.

Listening Booth

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 Art World

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.

On Television

Why Can’t We Quit “The Morning Show”?

Apple’s glossy experiment in prestige melodrama is utterly baffling—and must-watch TV.

The Theatre

“Hell’s Kitchen” Brings Alicia Keys’s Musical Power to the Public

The R. & B. titan shares a fictionalized version of her coming of age.

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Culture Desk

Lahaina Hallelujah

A cartoonist reflects on his family’s roots in Maui and the devastation of the wildfire.

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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.

Family Members at Thanksgiving, Ranked

This year, I’m going to work on my boundaries.

Two Truths and a Pie

National history meets personal history meets pastry.

Similarities Between the First Thanksgiving and the First Thanksgiving I Hosted

Both gatherings involved alcohol-induced candor and the Protestant work ethic.

Classic Thanksgiving Stories

The Tyrannosaurus bowed their heads reverently.

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Annals of Communications

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.

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The A.I. Issue

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.

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The Food Scene

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.

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Puzzles & Games

Take a break and play.

Name Drop: Make Me Laugh

Can you guess the identities of these nine comedy legends?

The Crossword

A puzzle that ranges in difficulty, with themes on Fridays.

Solve the latest puzzle

The Cryptic

A puzzle for lovers of wily wordplay.

Solve this week’s puzzle

Caption Contest

We provide a cartoon, you provide a caption.

Enter this week’s contest
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Listen to The New Yorker

The Kingpin Who Kidnapped Migrants for Ransom

An Eritrean trafficker promised to help Africans desperate to reach Europe—then brutalized them inside a Libyan compound while extorting their families back home. With his fortune, he partied in Dubai.

Bayard Rustin Gets to Shine in Our Era

The civil-rights mastermind was sidelined by his own movement. Now he’s back in the spotlight. What can we learn from his strategies of resistance?

Can Happiness Be Taught?

Bolstered by Oprah, a Harvard Business School professor thinks you should run your inner self like a company.

A Trans Teen in an Anti-Trans State

One family’s move to find gender-affirming care.

Fiction

“Beauty Contest”

Photograph by Kyoko Hamada for The New Yorker
My mother had two treasures. One was an opal ring, the only present she ever received from my late father. She kept it in a small box and took it out only once or twice a year, on special occasions, for a few short hours. The box, which was covered in deep-blue velvet, made a little sound, like a kitten yawning, when it was opened.

When I was alone in the house, I often opened the box to stare at the opal.Continue reading »

The Talk of the Town

Fetish Dept.

Johnny Marr Loves his Axes

Now You See It

The Statue Wars Turn to Cyberspace

London Postcard

Milk, the Book!

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