Tag Archives: Culture

Literary Arts Preview: n+1 Magazine – Winter 2025

@nplusonemag (December 4, 2024): The Winter 2025 issue of n+1, RERUN features:

Hannah Zeavin on psychoanalysis’s Palestine exception

Will Tavlin on Netflix’s assault on cinema

Mina Tavakoli attends a ventriloquism convention

Nicholas Dames reads books about parents reading books

Dawn Lundy Martin on falling in and out of love with the university

New fiction by Rachel KhongJill Crawford, and Claire Baglin

Bassem Saad on the afterlives of Mahdi Amel

Alan Dean on Radu Jude, Romania’s Godard

Mark Krotov on the return of Trump

Plus the intellectual situation: the editors on Fredric Jameson

Culture: The American Scholar – Winter 2025

THE AMERICAN SCHOLAR (December 2, 2024): The latest issue featuresFrom Atop The Magic Mountain’ – One-Hundred years later, Thomas Mann’s epic remains as prophetic as ever.

Under a Spell Everlasting

Thomas Mann’s Magic Mountain, published a century ago, tells of a world unable to free itself from the cataclysm of war By Samantha Rose Hill

Aging Out

Many of us do not go gentle into that good night

The Fair Fields

Only rarely did the outside world intrude on an idyllic Connecticut childhood, but in the tumultuous 1960s, that intrusion included an encounter with evil

Preview: The New Yorker Magazine – Dec. 9, 2024

The Knicks players outside Madison Square Garden.

The New Yorker (December 2, 2024): The latest issue features John Cuneo’s “Garden Party” – The Knicks are making a joyful comeback.

Stopping the Press

After spending years painting the media as the “enemy of the people,” Donald Trump is ready to intensify his battle against the journalists who cover him. By David Remnick

R.F.K., Jr., Wants to Eliminate Fluoridated Water. He Used to Bottle and Sell It

Donald Trump’s nominee to lead H.H.S. once started a bottled-water line, Keeper Springs. What was in it? By Charles Bethea

On the Block: Where Jerry Lewis and Buddy Hackett Once Schvitzed

The tummlers have moved on, but the distinctive Friars Club building, in midtown, is going to the highest bidder. By Bruce Handy

Politics: The Guardian Weekly – Nov. 29, 2024

The Guardian Weekly (November 28, 2024): The new issue features last week’s escalation of Nato ballistic missile activity, in which UK and US-made missiles were launched into Russia for the first time, brought a predictably cold response from Vladimir Putin – who loosened Moscow’s nuclear doctrines and promised more attacks with a new, experimental ballistic missile.

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Spotlight | Does lame duck Biden have time to Trump-proof democracy?
The outgoing US president may only have weeks left in the White House, but activists say he can secure civil liberties, accelerate spending on climate and healthcare, and spare death row prisoners. David Smith reports

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Science | My weird, emotional week with an AI pet
Casio says Moflin can develop its own personality and build a rapport with its owner – and it doesn’t need food, exercise or a litter tray. But is it essentially comforting or alienating? Justin McCurry finds out

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Feature | Are we right to strive to save the world’s tiniest babies?
Doctors are pushing the limits of science and human biology to save more extremely premature babies than ever before. But when so few survive, are we putting them through needless suffering? By Sophie McBain

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Opinion | A social media ban is in everyone’s interests – not just kids under 16
Van Badham on why she resents being excluded from protection against monetised fear, anger and toxicity

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Culture | A road trip like no other: an epic drive on the Autobahn
Fifty years after electronic pioneers Kraftwerk released a 23-minute song about a road – and changed pop music for ever – Tim Jonze hits the highways of Düsseldorf and Hamburg in search of its futuristic brilliance

Preview: The New Yorker Magazine – Dec. 2, 2024

A young person works on a farmhouse as turkeys wearing Groucho goggles look on.

The New Yorker (November24, 2024): The latest issue features Tom Toro’s “Incognito” – Putting on a friendly face.

The Fundamental Problem with R.F.K., Jr.,’s Nomination to H.H.S.

Kennedy has many bad ideas. Yet the irony of our political moment is that his more reasonable positions are the ones that could sink his candidacy. By Dhruv Khullar

How Old Age Was Reborn

“The Golden Girls” reframed senior life as being about socializing and sex. But did the cultural narrative of advanced age as continued youth twist the dial too far? By Daniel Immerwahr

How to Make Fuel (or Booze) from Thin Air

Air Company, a startup that has used water and carbon dioxide to make vodka and to power automobiles, taste-tests its product and discusses getting Elon Musk’s business. By Adam Iscoe

Culture: New Humanist Magazine – Winter 2024-25

New Humanist's winter 2024 cover shows a futuristic blue face with the words: 'Our cyborg future?'

NEW HUMANIST MAGAZINE – WINTER 2024/2025 ISSUE: The new issue features ‘Our Cyborg Future?’

The new age of the cyborg?

Neurobiologist and journalist Moheb Costandi explores the rapidly-developing world of brain-computer interfaces. For some people, these devices are already transforming lives – but the technology is quickly overtaking the ethics.

A dangerous calculation

Peter Ward unpicks the dark philosophy of the tech billionaires and how it is infiltrating some of our most powerful organisations.

There’s a product for that

A recent film, The Substance, explored the growing pressure on all of us – particularly women – to modify our bodies, not only through make-up and cosmetic procedures but also through digital filters. Clare Chambers, professor of political philosophy at the University of Cambridge, talks to us about the power of resistance and allowing our bodies to be “good enough”.

New life in the veins

Peter Salmon recounts the bizarre history of blood transfusion – and why the super-rich remain fascinated by its possibilities.

Art Profiles: The Genius Of Auguste Renoir (1841-1919)

DW History and Culture (November 21, 2024): Discover the trailblazing spirit of Auguste Renoir, one of the founders of impressionism, whose canvases shattered centuries of artistic convention. In “Renoir – Portrait of Changing Times,” we see how Renoir took inspiration from the past, while transforming Parisian life undergoing societal change into timeless masterpieces.

Renoir’s impressionistic strokes capture the pulse of 1870s Paris, a city reeling from war and revolutionary change, whilst incorporating Rococo references. This documentary explores the genesis of Renoir’s vision, which melds tradition with the avant-garde. As his son later wrote, “Renoir loved fairy tales.

The everyday was like a fairy tale to him”. Like the fairytale world of Rococo Painting, Renoir’s impressionist works do not depict reality but create an alluring and beautiful fiction that still captures the imagination today.

#impressionism #dwhistoryandculture #renoir

Politics: The Guardian Weekly – Nov. 22, 2024

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The Guardian Weekly (November 21, 2024): The new issue features ‘The crisis in the Church of England’…

Existentialist crises might more commonly be associated with some who seek out religion, rather than with those religions themselves, but that’s where the Church of England has found itself in recent days.

The resignation of Justin Welby, the archbishop of Canterbury, followed a damning report into the church’s shameful failures over the serial child abuser John Smyth, which detailed even more disturbing details of cover-ups by some senior clergy.

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Spotlight | Trump’s shock-and-awe team
A flurry of controversial and extremist picks for Trump’s administration has provoked criticism and made heads spin. David Smith reports from Washington

2

Science | The inverse link between cancer and dementia
Scientists have long been aware of a curious connection between these common and feared diseases. At last, a clearer picture is emerging, writes Theres Lüthi

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Feature | Kernels of hope
During the siege of Leningrad, botanists in charge of an irreplaceable seed collection, the first of its kind, had to protect it from fire, rodents – and hunger. By Simon Parkin

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Opinion | Seven lessons from a long-serving economics editor
From Thatcher to Trump and Brexit, the Guardian’s outgoing economics editor, Larry Elliott, reflects on his 28 years in the role.

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Culture | Faking history
Film and TV have a slippery relationship with the truth when it comes to historical epics. Simon Usborne meets the experts whose advice goes unheeded

The Atlantic Magazine – December 2024 Preview

The Atlantic Magazine – November 20, 2024: The latest issue features ‘How the Ivy League Broke America’ – The meritocracy isn’t working. We need something new.

How the Ivy League Broke America

The meritocracy isn’t working. We need something new. By David Brooks

How One Woman Became the Scapegoat for America’s Reading Crisis

Lucy Calkins was an education superstar. Now she’s cast as the reason a generation of students struggles to read. Can she reclaim her good name?

The Exhibit That Will Change How You See Impressionism

The National Gallery’s “Paris 1874” explores the movement’s dark origins.

Preview: The New Yorker Magazine – Nov. 18, 2024

A view of the Manhattan Bridge seen through a window above a desk in Brooklyn.

The New Yorker (November 18, 2024): The latest issue features Javier Mariscal’s “Desk with a View” Sudden glimpses of urban artistry.

Javier Mariscal’s “Desk with a View”

Sudden glimpses of urban artistry. By Françoise MoulyArt by Javier Mariscal

Why N.S.A. Rules Say No to Smartphones, No to Texting, Yes to Podcasts

The agency, known for listening, is getting into the (extremely vetted) talking game, with “No Such Podcast.”