The N.F.L. Playoffs Offer a Thrilling, Troubling Reminder That Football Hasn’t Changed
The reckoning, if there ever really was a reckoning, did not last a week. A young man was resuscitated on a football field, as...
What’s the Matter with Men?
First, there was Adam, whose creation takes center stage on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel. Then, fashioned out of Adam’s spare rib, there...
What Monks Can Teach Us About Paying Attention
Who was the monkiest monk of them all? One candidate is Simeon Stylites, who lived alone atop a pillar near Aleppo for at least...
Clare Sestanovich on Keeping a Diary
In “Different People,” your story in this week’s issue of the magazine, Gilly, who’s twelve years old, starts keeping a diary. She finds her...
A Children’s Classic with a Refreshing Lack of Lessons
“I went to sleep with gum in my mouth,” the book begins, and that would be a good opening sentence on its own––Kafka with...
Colin Quinn Just Wants to Make Small Talk
Though theoretically pleasant, small talk—opening gambits, friendly chitchat, weather observations—tends to be the Rodney Dangerfield of conversation: it gets no respect. But the comedian...
Nobody Has My Condition But Me
In early 2021, Dr. Michael Ombrello, an investigator at the National Institutes of Health, received a message from doctors at Yale about a patient...
Brad Mehldau Trades Bach for the Beatles
Brad Mehldau is arguably the greatest working jazz pianist. Top five, for sure. He’s fifty-two—too old to be a wunderkind, too young to be...
“The Appointment” Skewers the Hypocrisy of the Abortion Debate
It’s usually the anti-abortion activists—the sign-wavers outside clinics, the tellers of post-op horror stories—who want to show you, in great detail, what a fetus...