The Rise of CliffsNotes Cinema
Oversimplified literary remakes miss the point of the works they are adapting.
Culture
Why Justin Bieber Played YouTube Onstage for Thousands of People
The pop star transformed the normal act of browsing your laptop into something interesting—and unsettling.
The New Age of Performance Anxiety
With the rise of screen culture, all the world has stage fright.
Where Did ‘Let Them’ Come From?
Years before Mel Robbins published her best-selling self-help book, a struggling writer posted a poem with a similar message.
Why Can’t Robots Stay Robots?
A hit animated film is the latest work to imbue machines with the primacy of human values.
I’ve Been Left Off My Friends’ Group Chat
How do I get over feeling excluded?
The 10 Best Albums of 2024
This year’s most exciting artists rejected consensus and did things their way.
Bob Dylan’s Carnival Act
His identity was a performance. His writing was sleight of hand. He bamboozled his own audience.
Can the Rodeo Save a Historic Black Town?
One woman’s quest to rescue Boley, Oklahoma
The Technology That Actually Runs Our World
The most dominant algorithms aren’t the ones choosing what songs Spotify serves you.
Chris Rock Knows How to Troll
This week’s Saturday Night Live highlighted the comedian’s talent for provocation.
Nickel Boys Is an Audacious Experiment
RaMell Ross’s interpretation of Colson Whitehead’s novel is unlike anything else in theaters.
A Mindset for the Trump Era
With authoritarianism rising everywhere, don’t forget about what the dissidents have to teach us.
Adapting One Hundred Years of Solitude Sounded Impossible. It Wasn’t.
Netflix’s rendition of Gabriel García Márquez’s masterpiece works better than he might have expected.