Emma Watson is Belle and Dan Stevens is the Beast in Bill Condon’s movie. Illustration by Malika Favre To say that the latest Disney production, “Beauty and the Beast,” is offering something brand-new would be wide of the mark. A scholarly paper published last year presented “phylogenetic analyses”…

WASHINGTON — Near the end of his meticulously formal, utterly impersonal news conference with Chancellor Angela Merkel, President Trump finally sought a sliver of common ground with his guest: They both, he said, had been wiretapped by former President Barack Obama. Ms. Merkel did a barely…

To understand the thinking of American presidents, historians, contemporaries, and political rivals, have often sought out the texts that most influenced them. George Washington, for example, was known to love Cato: A Tragedy , Joseph Addison’s civics-heavy play about the man who tried and failed to…

In 2008, the George W. Bush administration, which had started building about 670 miles of border fencing on mostly federally owned land in Arizona, California and New Mexico under the Secure Fence Act of 2006, tried to seize an acre or so in Cameron County, Tex., that belonged to Eloisa Tamez.…

Ian Grushinski grieves by a piece of the wreckage at a plane crash site near Smolensk, western Russia. (Mikhail Metzel/Associated Press) It’s important to acknowledge when you’ve been wrong, and I’ve probably never been so wrong as I was in an op-ed published on April 13, 2010. At the time, I was…

At the start of Jehoiakim’s reign, the prophet Jere­miah lumbered into the temple square and issued a blistering prophecy about God’s coming justice. God had instructed him to “not hold back a word,” and Jeremiah obeyed. “Repent or be destroyed!” he cried. His speech came at a price. He was nearly…

Photo: Wikipedia The classic arcade cabinet will soon be all but extinct. The niche market of manufacturing CRT televisions has officially hit a wall and the experience of playing a classic arcade game as it was originally intended will be a very rare thing in the near future. Dream Arcades Wants To…

photo credit: freepik The explosion of prototyping tools in the past few years has given designers an opportunity to create detailed interactions. Designers are spending hours and days learning these tools. However, many designers get lost in the technical details of the prototyping tool of choice.…

Jacob and Joe Weisberg. Photo: Neilson Barnard/Getty Images/Patrick McMulllan The A mericans tells the story of a Russian espionage operation so mind-boggling it seems absurd — or at least it did until, well, you know . The show, which stars Keri Russell and Matthew Rhys as Elizabeth and Philip…

Tickled The most frustrating thing about David Farrier and Dylan Reeve’s 2016 documentary Tickled is that it has no real resolution. Although the pair of New Zealand filmmakers ultimately made contact with David D’Amato, the strange, reclusive man responsible for publishing hundreds of “competitive…

“This is as good as it gets.” Six years ago, El-P was authoring “ Drones Over Brooklyn ”—a disturbingly accurate depiction of how 2017 has unfolded so far. The native New Yorker embodies a pessimistic world view that seeps into his music—“ We all dead, fuck it! ” is among his most memorable quotes…

UPDATED: You can now hear the essay “To Fall in Love With Anyone, Do This” read by the actress Gillian Jacobs in Modern Love: The Podcast. Look for the “play” button below or subscribe on iTunes or Google Play Music . To try the 36 questions described below, download our free app for your phone,…

Let's face it: really rich white guys have a whole range of options for how to spend their time and money when they can literally do and buy anything. They can hole up in a Vegas penthouse, hire an entirely Mormon staff because they're the only people worth trusting , grow ridiculously long…

Almost every day brings a fresh example of Donald Trump’s outrageous statements coming back to hurt him. PHOTOGRAPH BY ANDREW HARRER / BLOOMBERG VIA GETTY As a Presidential candidate, Donald Trump led a charmed existence. Whatever he said, no matter how outrageous, it didn't seem to hurt him. He…

“These images are part of our past … but the world has evolved, and so has Skol. This doesn’t represent us anymore.” How often do you hear a brand say that? Brazilian beer brand Skol is owning up to its sexist past. In a video for its latest campaign, “Reposter,” it openly shares previous ads in…

During the presidential campaign, then-candidate Trump said he would turn down any salary as President. Then, in his first big interview as President-elect in November, he again insisted , “No, I’m not gonna take the salary. I’m not taking it.” Instead of accepting the $400,000 presidents get paid…

WASHINGTON — When the journalist Kurt Eichenwald opened an animated image sent to him on Twitter in December, the message “You deserve a seizure for your posts” appeared in capital letters along with a blinding strobe light. Mr. Eichenwald, who has epilepsy, immediately suffered a seizure. On…

Where in the world is the secretary of state? According to the Korea Herald , U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson cut short his public visits with South Korean officials on Friday, citing “fatigue.” South Korea was the second of Tillerson’s three stops on his trip to Asia, after Japan. He was…

(Matt James/Ringer illustration) The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild ’s critical acclaim is staggering. So universal, in fact, that it’s getting heralded as one of the best games of all time. But to achieve that title, it has to go through its 1998 predecessor, The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of…

An oral history of how Puff Daddy, Biggie Smalls, an army of rappers, and an ocean of champagne changed hip-hop forever From Ashy to Classy The first album released by Bad Boy Entertainment—twenty years ago this month—was the Notorious B.I.G.’s Ready to Die, an instant classic and possibly the most…

Note: Amy Krouse Rosenthal died on March 13, 2017, 10 days after this essay was published. You can read her obituary here . In June, 2018, her husband published this response . I have been trying to write this for a while, but the morphine and lack of juicy cheeseburgers (what has it been now, five…

“What constitutes a life worthy of being remembered? How do you want to be remembered?” These are the kinds of questions Amy Krouse Rosenthal always asked in her work. When Amy died this week at 51, her obituary described her as a “children’s author, memoirist, and public speaker” who found “an…

Getty Angela Merkel, whether she wants the job or not, is the West’s last, best hope. This time the media hype surrounding a White House meeting is no wild exaggeration. When President Donald Trump and German Chancellor Angela Merkel finally get together on Friday, the leaders of the West’s two most…

BURBANK, Calif. — The mood at Walt Disney Studios here last spring was euphoric: A risky live-action remake of one of Disney’s most beloved animated films, “Beauty and the Beast,” was coming off without a hitch. Disney had assembled an all-star cast led by Emma Watson as Belle. A bet on untested…

“I always have my own rules, and I can bend them if I want,” White says. Photographs by Pari Dukovic for The New Yorker Last summer, Jack White bought a house in Kalamazoo, Michigan, that he had seen only in photographs. He wasn’t planning to live in it, except perhaps occasionally on retreats—he…

When Chance the Rapper appeared on the cover of Complex’s October/November 2013 issue , it was the first time the Chicago MC had fronted a major magazine cover, an accolade most unsigned artists only dream of. Almost four years later, Complex’s print incarnation has transformed into a video series…

Illustration by Sam Woolley Gambling on esports matches is, right now, unsafe and unfair for bettors, just as gambling on traditional sports is. As you’d expect, people are still doing it anyway; and as you’d expect, laws and regulations have struggled to keep up. The facts, neutrally stated, are…

I got dumped recently. I got dropped like a flaming bag of diarrhea. Discarded like spoiled yogurt. Tossed aside like chewed up gum. Through the bouts of weeping, anger, and general self loathing, I remembered this app called Tinder that I used to hear so much about. As I was too depressed to play…

Photo courtesy of @ticurazvannarcis In 2014, my friends and I set out to build the best possible web design tools. We built UI kits , Admin Dashboards , Templates , and Plugins . We’ve always tried to create products that are helpful in the development process, and that we ourselves would use for…

SAN FRANCISCO — The so-called Internet of Things, its proponents argue, offers many benefits: energy efficiency, technology so convenient it can anticipate what you want, even reduced congestion on the roads. Now here’s the bad news: Putting a bunch of wirelessly connected devices in one area could…

Art by Angelica Alzona. Whether it’s poorly reported stories of hacked Samsung TVs , sadly hilarious tales of hacked teddy bears , or even more bizarre claims about wiretapped microwaves , real, fake, and overblown accounts of all the things that can happen with the devices we choose to connect to…

Today some Google Home owners reported hearing something extra when they asked for a summary of the day ahead from the smart speaker: an advertisement for the opening of Beauty and the Beast . Several users on Reddit have noticed the audio ad and Bryson Meunier posted a clip to Twitter. Some Android…

Photo: NBC The wild ride that was the 2016 election season helped this season of Saturday Night Live get off to an incredibly strong start. But current events aren’t the only reason SNL has been on a roll — much of it has to do with the team of head writers Lorne Michaels has assembled: Bryan…

IN A series of lightning advances over the past few days, Iraq’s army has seized control of most of western Mosul, the last redoubt of Islamic State (IS) in the country. On March 7th, a day that may have marked a turning point, army units took Mosul’s main government complex, as well as the city’s…

(Getty Images/Ringer illustration) Baseball has always been a numbers game, but players and teams are getting smarter than ever — and fans are, too. Throughout The Ringer’s 2017 MLB preview , in a series we’re calling “How to Baseball,” our experts will explore the developments that stand to change…

ANKARA, Turkey — In a half-destroyed temple overlooking the Turkish capital, there is a carved inscription of a text known as “The Deeds of the Divine Augustus.” It is the most complete surviving version of the funerary inscription of the first Roman emperor, Augustus. Following its hagiographic…