Becoming a Parent During the Pandemic Was the Hardest Thing I’ve Ever Done
This completely different person I’ve become since I gave birth is someone virtually no one knows.
Frontiers of Sports
The Title IX Loophole That Hurts NCAA Women’s Teams
A little-known Supreme Court ruling makes it legal for the league to promote its men’s and women’s teams unequally.
The Dark Side of the Houseplant Boom
American culture is becoming more and more preoccupied with nature. What if all the celebrations of the wild world are actually manifestations of grief?
Don’t Underrate the Political Spouse
How Lady Bird Johnson and Nancy Reagan advanced their husbands’ ambitions—and their own
The Western Rides Again
A new cohort of directors, all women, is exploring the death wish that infuses the genre—and proposing visions of repair.
The Interior Lives of Hoarders
Cultural portrayals of hoarding tend to invite pity rather than empathy, revulsion rather than self-reflection. A new entrant in the field masterfully refocuses the lens.
Who Wants to Watch Black Pain?
More Black storytellers are turning to the horror genre to unpack the traumas of racism. But some viewers are growing tired of these stories.
An Ode to the Left Hand
Get in touch with your nondominant side.
The True Costs and Benefits of Fracking
New York is getting more out of the domestic oil boom than North Dakota ever will.
When Love Is Optimized, Is It Still Love?
Television, of late, has been obsessing over technological advances that don’t yet exist—rather than the innovations that are already changing our romantic lives.
Hormone Monsters
Television turns to magical realism to explore the trials of early adolescence.
Taylor Swift Knew Everything When She Was Young
The singer’s rerecording of her second album makes a statement about her past—and delivers a blow to her rivals.
The Nature You See in Documentaries Is Beautiful and False
Nature documentaries mislead viewers into thinking that there are lots of untouched landscapes left. There aren’t.
The Beautiful Things
The Fierce Vulnerability of DMX
The rapper, who has died at age 50, used his gruff voice to project strength—even as he spoke honestly about human weakness.
When Meanness Was Celebrated
For decades, the media have chronicled a Hollywood mega-producer’s reputation as a bully—and even praised him for it.
‘Very American Photographs’
Street photography as collaboration
Elizabeth McCracken on the Mysteries of Married Life
“Weddings are public; marriages are supposed to be private, or so I always thought.”
The Irish Wedding
A short story
Americans Are Turning Spare Bedrooms Into Giant Closets
As stores disappear, shopping in your own wardrobe becomes the ultimate luxury.
The Crime Drama That Will Enthrall and Repel You
In the ornately violent AMC series Gangs of London, even the pigeons are on cocaine.
The Awful Wisdom of the Hostage
What a new memoir reveals about endurance—and extreme remorse