World

Chloé Zhao Has Looked Into the Void
How did this book make its way to you?I was driving through New Mexico to the Telluride Film Festival, and that’s when Amblin [Steven Spielberg’s production company] called me...
A Holiday Gift Guide: Gear for the Coffee Nerd
When you make a purchase using a link on this page, we may receive a commission. Thank you for supporting The New Yorker.You probably know somebody who loves coffee: drinking...
Sarah Sherman Is Grosser Than You Think
Once Sherman began her set, though, storming onstage with her middle fingers raised and immediately insulting the audience (“Shut up! Fuck you!”), I realized that I was in for...
Are We Getting Stupider?
For nineteenth-century writers like Gustave Flaubert, the concept of stupidity came to encompass the lazy drivel of cliché and received opinion; one of Flaubert’s characters says that, in mass...
Building a State of Fear in “Extremist”
On November 16, 2023, Sasha Skochilenko, a thirty-three-year-old artist, poet, and musician, stood in court to give what is known in the Russian judicial system as the “last word”—final...
The Composer Making a Hip-Hop Musical About Anne Frank
A few years ago, Andrew Fox was struck by a transcendently bad idea. He would turn the story of Anne Frank into a satirical hip-hop musical: intersectional, inclusive, and...
The Best Podcasts of 2025
Ah, 2025—yet another heck of a year! In the audio realm, as elsewhere, inventiveness is essential during challenging times—so when video-chat podcasts predominate, celebrity-hosted podcasts won’t stop proliferating, and...
Now Watch Me Read
Performing personhood has perhaps never been as panoptical, and top of mind, as it is today. Social-media platforms prioritize the fastidious maintenance and monitoring of online personas, creating spaces...
The High-Born Rebel Who Took Up the Cause of the Commoner
Much like her childhood identification with communism, her writing began as something of a joke. She was utterly devoted to the Party’s ideals, but she also had a keen...
The Best Albums of 2025
Looking back at the songs I played the most in 2025, I can sense my own hunger for music that felt wounded, carnal, unfamiliar, tactile, and askew—far from the...
“An Enemy of the People” Becomes a Spanish Opera
Perhaps Rigola should have been more willful in his handling of the text, since his libretto unfolds more like a selection of highlights from the play than like a...
How the Ceramicist Alev Ebüzziya Siesbye Makes Bowls That Hold Time
Each pot takes six to seven hours to build, with coils that she flattens into thick bands. She starts a new series by drawing the forms she has in...