President Biden has proposed radical changes to the Court. Reviewing them is a reminder of why reform is so hard, despite dissatisfaction and a wealth of ideas.
Julie Benko, who hit it big after going on in place of Beanie Feldstein in “Funny Girl,” has a lot of advice for the Vice-President, now that she’s done with waiting in the wings.
By Zach Helfand
What Does Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., Actually Want?
The third-party Presidential candidate has a troubled past, a shambolic campaign, and some surprisingly good poll numbers.
Fifty years after Shirley Chisholm ran for the Presidency, we find ourselves yet again questioning the durability of outmoded presumptions about race and gender. By Jelani Cobb
The Republican National Convention and the Iconography of Triumph
In Milwaukee, with a candidate who had just cheated death, the resentment rhetoric of Trump’s 2016 campaign gave way to an atmosphere of festive certainty. By Anthony Lane
Gillian Anderson’s Sex Education
She became famous playing buttoned-up Agent Scully. But in midlife her characters often have a strong erotic charge—and now she’s edited “Want,” a book of sexual fantasies. By Rebecca Mead
Where Do Republicans and Democrats Stand After the R.N.C.?
Biden imperilled his candidacy at the debate because of his inability to speak coherently. At the convention, Trump was doing something similar, and couldn’t stop. By Benjamin Wallace-Wells
Will Hezbollah and Israel Go to War?
Months of fighting at the border threaten to ignite an all-out conflict that could devastate the region.
Should We Abolish Prisons?
Our carceral system is characterized by frequent brutality and ingrained indifference. Finding a better way requires that we freely imagine alternatives. By Adam Gopnik
From the time of the Revolutionary War to the fires of the nineteen-seventies, the history of the borough has always been shaped by its in-between-ness.
London Review of Books (LRB) – July 18 , 2024: The latest issue features ‘Bad Times For Biden’; James Butler on ‘What’s a Majority For?; Poems by A.E. Stallings and Rae Armantrout and Thomas Meaney on Red Power Politics…
The Rise and Fall of Treason in English History by Allen D. Boyer and Mark Nicholls
Stephen Sedley
Poem: ‘Hell’
Rae Armantrout
The Last Politician: Inside Joe Biden’s White House and the Struggle for America’s Future by Franklin Foer
The Fight of His Life: Inside Joe Biden’s White House by Chris Whipple
The Internationalists: The Fight to Restore American Foreign Policy after Trump by Alexander Ward
At the William Morris Gallery: On Mingei
Thomas Meaney
Indigenous Continent: The Epic Contest for North America by Pekka Hämäläinen
The Rediscovery of America: Native Peoples and the Unmaking of US History by Ned Blackhawk
Our History Is the Future: Standing Rock Versus the Dakota Access Pipeline and the Long Tradition of Indigenous Resistance by Nick Estes
The actor talks about the origins of “Adaptation,” his potential leap to television, and the art of “keeping it enigmatic.”
By Susan Orlean
The wobbly distinction between reality and artifice fascinates Nicolas Cage. The first time we encountered each other was in 2001, during the making of “Adaptation”—a film based on Charlie Kaufman’s struggle to adapt my book “The Orchid Thief” for the screen—in which Cage played Kaufman and his twin, Donald. He was in the middle of a scene, and I tiptoed onto the set as quietly as possible, convinced that any distraction would trigger one of the eruptions for which Cage had become famous. Between takes, he glanced at the handful of people watching, and exclaimed cheerily, “Oh, guys, look!” He pointed at me and a small, fuzzy-haired man I hadn’t noticed beside me. “It’s the real Charlie and the real Susan!” He seemed tickled by this collision between the characters in the movie and their real-life counterparts, and insisted that the crew take note. (Kaufman and I, who had never met before that moment, slunk away sheepishly.)
It can be easy to take the greatness of “This American Life,” the weekly public-radio show and podcast hosted by Ira Glass, for granted. The show, which Glass co-founded in 1995 at WBEZ, in Chicago, has had the same essential format for twenty-eight years and more than eight hundred episodes. It was instrumental in creating a genre of audio journalism that has flourished in recent decades, especially since the podcast boom—which was initiated by the show’s first spinoff, “Serial,” in 2014. Like “The Daily Show” or Second City, “This American Life” has trained a generation of talented people, and Glass’s three-act structures, chatty cadences, and mixture of analysis and whimsy are now so familiar as to seem unremarkable.
Apollo Magazine (June 2, 2024): The new July/August 2024 issue features
• On the road with Ed Ruscha
• An interview with Jeremy Frey
• How to build a 21st-century museum
• France chases the Olympic dream
Plus: Hildegard Bechtler on the art of stage design, very fancy Victorian ice creams, the art market braces for stormy weather, a Madonna pregnant with meaning and a preview of Parcours des Mondes; reviews of Kafka in Oxford, the gardeners of the Bloomsbury Group, and the silversmith who struck gold for Tiffany & Co.
The New Yorker (July 1, 2024): The new issue‘s cover features Kadir Nelson’s “Soft-Serve” – Keeping it cool while keeping cool…
Finally, a Leap Forward on Immigration Policy
President Biden has offered help to undocumented spouses of U.S. citizens, in the most consequential act of immigration relief in more than a decade. By Jonathan Blitzer
High-Roller Presidential Donor Perks
Give now to get your name on the wing of a fighter jet!
Taffy Brodesser-Akner’s Scabrous Satire of the Super-Rich
In “Long Island Compromise,” wealth is a curse. Or is that just what we’d like to think?
The New Yorker (June 24, 2024): The new issue‘s cover features Klaas Verplancke’s “Chilling” – Coming up with creative ways to stay coo;…
What Can We Expect from the Biden-Trump Debate?
Until recently, it wasn’t clear that the two men would ever share a stage again. Now there’s a potential for even greater stakes and strangeness than four years ago. By Evan Osnos
The Doctor Tom Brady and Leonardo DiCaprio Call When They Get Hurt
Neal ElAttrache, the surgeon to the stars of sport and screen, can fix anything. By Zach Helfand
John Fetterman’s War
Is the Pennsylvania senator trolling the left or offering a way forward for Democrats? By Benjamin Wallace-Wells
News, Views and Reviews For The Intellectually Curious