The image of Donald Trump, his face smeared with blood after a bullet grazed his ear, marked a watershed moment in the already high-stakes 2024 US presidential election campaign. Opening our special report on the Pennsylvania rally shooting, Washington bureau chief David Smith examines how it could fuel Trump’s base and stoke further division in American politics.
Five essential reads in this week’s edition
1 Spotlight | On paw patrol in Sumatra National Geographic explorer and photographer Danielle Khan Da Silva joins an all-female group of Indigenous rangers who protect a rare Indonesian rainforest ecosystem.
2 Spotlight | Evasive action The doctors who treat cancer share their expert advice on what simple things we can all do to lessen the risk of getting the disease with Sarah Phillips.
3 Feature | Too hot to handle As heatwaves become a common occurrence, outdoor workers are particularly vulnerable, explains Samira Shackle, as she documents the death from heat of one French labourer.
4 Opinion | Simon Tisdall on the Nato summit The 75-year-old alliance was created to counteract Moscow’s power and needs to keep its focus on containing Russian ambition.
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.
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.
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
The Guardian Weekly (June 19, 2024) – The new issue featuresEmmanuel Macron’s ballot box gamble – Could the far right gain political power in France? Plus: the record detectives fighting back against bootleggers
Spotlight | Kharkiv under siege Luke Harding and Artem Mazhulin report from Ukraine’s second city where living conditions are increasingly precarious
Environment | The fight to save Norway’s arctic foxes Captive breeding has helped reduce threats from predators and the climate crisis – but can the species survive long-term?
Feature | The vinyl frontier John Harris meets the record detectives going after music’s retro bootleggers
Opinion | Starmer’s quiet man appeal The UK Labour leader has been accused of being a “political robot”. But, argues Jonathan Freedland, that’s exactly why he’s so far ahead in the opinion polls
Culture | Alive and Kicken On its 50th anniversary, culture writer Eliza Apperly pays tribute to the Berlin gallery that helped pioneer photography as an art discipline
News, Views and Reviews For The Intellectually Curious
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