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The New York Times Magazine – Feb 19, 2024

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THE NEW YORK TIMES MAGAZINE (February 17, 2024): The new issue features ‘Actors in the Wild’ – The best performers of the year, when they’re not on film….

Actors in the Wild

The best performers of the year — when they’re not on film.

James Nachtwey, an eminent photojournalist known for his intimate depictions of the front lines in places like Iraq, Afghanistan and Ukraine, had never photographed a movie star before. So for this year’s Great Performers issue, we asked him to capture a dozen of the world’s best actors away from the red carpets and awards ceremonies that often define how we see them. “My work has focused almost exclusively on conflicts and critical social issues, the polar opposite of what might be thought of as celebrity photography,” Nachtwey says. But he was intrigued by the challenge: “Art takes talent, but it’s also hard work, and exploring what actors practice in their daily lives to strengthen their art would be fascinating.”

Tubi Is Reviving a Lost Joy: Watching Really, Really Bad Movies

Their films have gone viral for their awful production values. But their success says fascinating things about what comes after prestige TV.

By Niela Orr

There’s a 2008 movie that offers an odd preview of today’s entertainment. In Michel Gondry’s “Be Kind Rewind,” a bizarre accident demagnetizes the entire inventory of a video rental store, so a clerk and his eccentric friend decide to remake all the films themselves, from “The Lion King” to “Driving Miss Daisy” to “2001: A Space Odyssey.” Their versions are 20 minutes long (at most), shot on an old hand-held video camera and produced in a delightfully quirky, ad hoc way: handcrafted props and sets, buddies working as extras, costumes from the local dry cleaner.

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The New York Times Magazine – Feb 11, 2024

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THE NEW YORK TIMES MAGAZINE (February 9, 2024): The new issue features ‘The Untold Story Of How Trump’s Former Chief Of Staff Rose From Cash-Strapped Roots To Washington Prominence, Before Becoming Embroiled In The Prosecutions That May Determine The 2024 Election….

How Mark Meadows Became the Least Trusted Man in Washington

The untold story of the rise and fall of Trump’s former chief of staff — and his role in the prosecutions that may determine the 2024 election.

How Oct. 7 Drove a Wedge Into the Democratic Party

Members of Congress, and candidates for their seats, have been drawn into bitter political clashes over the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

When George Santos, the indicted fabulist, was expelled from Congress in December, Nassau County Republicans scrambled to hunt up a new nominee. Santos was a catastrophe, but he had also flipped a New York Democratic stronghold, and party leaders wanted the best of him — the charisma, the conservatism and the history-making potential — with none of the debilitating drawbacks.

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The New York Times Magazine-February 4, 2024

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THE NEW YORK TIMES MAGAZINE (February 2, 2024): The new issue features ‘The Long Shadow of 1948’ – How the decisions that led to the founding of Israel left the region in a state of eternal conflict…

The Road to 1948

How the decisions that led to the founding of Israel left the region in a state of eternal conflict.

A discussion moderated by Emily Bazelon

One year matters more than any other for understanding the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. In 1948, Jews realized their wildly improbable dream of a state, and Palestinians experienced the mass flight and expulsion called the Nakba, or catastrophe. The events are burned into the collective memories of these two peoples — often in diametrically opposed ways — and continue to shape their trajectories.

John Malkovich on (Really) Being John Malkovich

By David Marchese

There’s a scene in that modern classic of screwball existentialism, “Being John Malkovich,” from 1999, in which John Malkovich, playing a version of himself, enters a portal that others have been using to climb inside his mind. Suddenly, Malkovich is in a world populated solely by variations on himself: Malkovich as a flirtatious sexpot, a genteel waiter, a jazz chanteuse, a bemused child, everyone speaking only the word “Malkovich.” In a way, that scene is a microcosm of the actor’s decades-long, always-interesting career.

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The New York Times Magazine- January 28, 2024

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THE NEW YORK TIMES MAGAZINE (January 26, 2024): The new issue features ‘America’s 21st-Century E-Commerce Economy Has Stoked A 19th-Century Form of Crime: The Train Robbery’….

The Great Freight-Train Heists of the 21st Century

A photo illustration composed of an old black-and-white photograph of train robbers stealing amazon packages in color.

The explosion of the e-commerce economy has created an opportunity for thieves — and a conundrum for the railways.

College Is All About Curiosity. And That Requires Free Speech.

An illustration of a professor in front of a class that is shouting and picketing from the rafters.

True learning can only happen on campuses where academic freedom is paramount — within and outside the classroom.

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The New York Times Magazine- January 21, 2024

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THE NEW YORK TIMES MAGAZINE (January 19, 2024): The new issue features ‘The Whale Who Went AWOL’ – How do you solve a problem like Hvaldmir?; How Group Chats Rule the World – They quietly became the de facto spaces to share dumb jokes, grief or even plans for an insurrection…

The Whale Who Went AWOL

Hvaldimir escaped captivity and became a global celebrity. Now, no one can agree about what to do with him.

By Ferris Jabr

On April 26, 2019, a beluga whale appeared near Tufjord, a village in northern Norway, immediately alarming fishermen in the area. Belugas in that part of the world typically inhabit the remote Arctic and are rarely spotted as far south as the Norwegian mainland. Although they occasionally travel solo, they tend to live and move in groups. This particular whale was entirely alone and unusually comfortable around humans, trailing boats and opening his mouth as though expecting to be fed. And he seemed to be tangled in rope.

How Group Chats Rule the World

An illustration of people falling into chat bubbles.

They quietly became the de facto spaces to share dumb jokes, grief or even plans for an insurrection.

By Sophie Haigney

I am texting all the time. I am, at the very least, receiving texts all the time, a party to conversations in which I am alternately an eavesdropper and an active participant. This is because I am in a lot of group chats — constant, interlinked, text-message-based conversations among multiple friends that happen all day long. I dip into and out of these conversations, on my phone and on my computer. Sometimes I will put both away for two hours and return to find 279 new messages waiting.

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The New York Times Magazine- January 14, 2024

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THE NEW YORK TIMES MAGAZINE (January 12, 2024): The new issue features ‘Why Are American Drivers So Deadly’ – After decades of declining fatality, dangerous driving has surged again….

Why Are American Drivers So Deadly?

A photo illustration of a skeleton in a suit driving a car.

After decades of declining fatality rates, dangerous driving has surged again.

By Matthew Shaer

In the summer of 1999, a few years after graduating from medical school, Deborah Kuhls moved from New York to Maryland, where she had been accepted as a surgical fellow at the R Adams Cowley Shock Trauma Center in Baltimore. Founded by a pioneer in emergency medicine, Shock Trauma is one of the busiest critical-care facilities in the country — in an average year, doctors there see approximately 8,000 patients, many of them close to death.

The All-Time-Great Coach Who Makes Football Fun

Andy Reid with Mahomes and other Chiefs players.

Andy Reid’s diligence and sense of mischief have made him one of the game’s best-ever coaches. Can he get his struggling Chiefs back to the Super Bowl?

By Michael Sokolove

Andy Reid, the coach of the Kansas City Chiefs, has won more than 250 games in his career, fourth all-time, which puts him high on any list of the N.F.L.’s greatest coaches. Most of the others in that pantheon are men who personify the sport’s militaristic soul — Vince Lombardi, for example, the fabled coach of the 1960s-era Green Bay Packers, or Reid’s contemporary, the grim Bill Belichick of the New England Patriots. But Reid is no Lombardi or Belichick; he’s Steve Jobs. He’s a designer, a tinkerer, a product engineer who imbues his football with creativity and even an occasional touch of whimsy.

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The New York Times Magazine – January 7, 2024

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THE NEW YORK TIMES MAGAZINE (January 5, 2024): The new issue features “Letting Naomi Die” – Treatment wasn’t helping her anorexia, so doctors allowed her to stop, no matter the consequences. But is a ‘palliative’ approach to mental illness really ethical?

Should Patients Be Allowed to Die From Anorexia?

Treatment wasn’t helping her anorexia, so doctors allowed her to stop — no matter the consequences. But is a “palliative” approach to mental illness really ethical?

By Katie Engelhart

The doctors told Naomi that she could not leave the hospital. She was lying in a narrow bed at Denver Health Medical Center. Someone said something about a judge and a court order. Someone used the phrase “gravely disabled.” Naomi did not think she was gravely disabled. Still, she decided not to fight it. She could deny that she was mentally incompetent — but this would probably just be taken as proof of her mental incompetence. Of her lack of insight. She would, instead, “succumb to it.”

What If People Don’t Need to Care About Climate Change to Fix It?

By David Marchese

“It seems like we’ve been battling climate change for decades and made no progress,” Dr. Hannah Ritchie says. “I want to push back on that.” Ritchie, a senior researcher in the Program on Global Development at the University of Oxford and deputy editor at the online publication Our World in Data, is the author of the upcoming book, “Not the End of the World.” In it, she argues that the flood of doom-laden stats and stories about climate change is obscuring our ability to imagine solutions to the crisis and envision a sustainable, livable future.

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The New York Times Magazine – Dec 31, 2023

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THE NEW YORK TIMES MAGAZINE (December 30, 2023):

Rosalynn Carter Was a Political Genius

Rosalynn Carter, the first lady, traveling in Texas in September 1978.

She fell in love with a future president at 17. Marriage never waylaid her dreams.

By MICHAEL PATERNITI

Three miles lie between this life and another, between their two houses, hers in downtown Plains, Ga., and his family farm in the country surrounded by peanuts planted in red clay. Three miles between the ordinary and extraordinary.

When Sinead O’Connor Unleashed Her Ghosts

Uncovering the unlikely story behind the singer’s first album.

By JOHN JEREMIAH SULLIVAN

To say that Sinead O’Connor never quite regained the musical heights of her 1987 debut album, “The Lion and the Cobra,” is not to slight the rest of her output, which contained jewels. There is no getting back to a record like that first one. It was in some sense literally scary: The label had to change the original cover art, which showed a bald O’Connor hissing like a banshee cat, for the American release. In the version we saw, she looks down, arms crossed, mouth closed, vulnerable. The music had both sides of her in it.

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The New York Times Magazine – Dec 24, 2023

December 22, 2023 She Seeks Serene Leave a comment

THE NEW YORK TIMES MAGAZINE (December 22, 2023):

He Was My Role Model. My Mentor. My Supplier.

A portrait of Lonnie in a car looking into the camera.

Decades after I left hustling to become a writer, why did I seek out the man who drew me into that world?

By Mitchell S. Jackson

O.G. rings me in the a.m. to say he’s just touched down in Phoenix. It’s the day before he said he’d arrive, and while there was a time when I’d treat the seeming opacity of his plans as par, the call’s a minor surprise. He asks for my address and tells me he can drop by as soon as he grabs his rental car. “Cool,” I say, as if the call ain’t ramped my pulse, as if my crib is presentable for guests. It isn’t. So I shoot out of bed and get to cleaning and straightening the first floor, going so far as to light a candle. It’s been umpteen years since I’ve seen O.G. — Lonnie’s his name — and God forbid he judge me anything less than hella fastidious.

In Jordan, a Sprawling Palestinian Diaspora Looks Towards Gaza

The story of 2.3 million Palestinian refugees in Jordan has been shaped by generations of war and exile.Photographs

by MOISES SAMAN

How Do You Make a Movie About the Holocaust?

A photo illustration of various stills from movies about the holocaust collaged together.

With “The Zone of Interest,” Jonathan Glazer is just the latest director to confront the problem.

Poetry makes nothing happen, W.H. Auden said in 1939, when words must have seemed especially impotent; but cinema is another matter. For several decades after the end of the Second World War, what’s come to be seen as its central catastrophe — the near-total destruction of the European Jews — was consigned to the status of a footnote. The neglect was rooted in guilt: Many nations eagerly collaborated in the killing, while others did nothing to prevent it. Consumed by their own suffering, most people simply didn’t want to know, and a conspiracy of silence was established.