A Critic at Large Music writers were once known for being much crankier than the average listener. What happened? August 25, 2025 Writers are increasingly expected not just to take pop music seriously but to celebrate it—or else.Illustration by Hudson Christie When I was growing up, a critic was a…

This article was featured in the One Story to Read Today newsletter. Sign up for it here. The Bar Is Closed A short drive from my home in North Carolina is a small Mexican restaurant, with several tables and four stools at a bar facing the kitchen. On a sweltering afternoon last summer, I walked in…

Profiles He’s ruled with absolute power for five decades, forever adding to his list of oracular pronouncements—about producing TV, making comedy, and living the good life. January 13, 2025 In the comedy world, Michaels is a mysterious object of obsession. Conversations about him are peppered with…

Tens of thousands of people, at any given time, are idly listening to the ambient, muted beats that accompany the Lofi Girl livestream: in solo studying sessions, taking tests in a classroom, and using the tunes as a stand-in for white noise to aid sleep. The livestream, which is one of the longest…

Credit...Lettering by Abraham Lule. Photo illustration by Justin Metz. Men in the United States live around five years less than women. One clinic is trying to persuade men that getting checked out could save their life. Credit...Lettering by Abraham Lule. Photo illustration by Justin Metz. By Helen…

ways and memes The case for memes as a new form of comics Both comics and memes rely on the same interplay of visual and verbal elements for their humor. Jennifer Ouellette – Jul 29, 2025 3:18 PM | 71 Credit: Jennifer Ouellette via imgflip Credit: Jennifer Ouellette via imgflip Story text Size Width…

MoviesMoviesWith Akiva Schaffer behind the camera and Liam Neeson in front of it, ‘The Naked Gun’ honors its namesake by replicating its devotion to packing a movie to the brim with bits Paramount Pictures/Ringer illustration Aug. 1, 12:13 pm EDT • 7 min “Criticism,” wrote Roger Ebert in 1988,…

This is an updated & abridged version of the talk I gave at several conferences throughout 2022/23, including Beyond Tellerrand, CSS Day and FFConf. If you…

Guest Essay July 8, 2025 Listen to this article · 7:15 min Learn more By Mr. Dunne, a former General Motors executive, is an industry consultant who worked in China’s auto sector for more than two decades. Leer en español阅读简体中文版閱讀繁體中文版 You’ve probably heard of BYD. A middling player in the auto…

NBA How did a rural town in an isolated corner of the country produce the consensus no. 1 pick in the NBA draft? “The place I grew up in taught me to work for everything, to value fundamentals, and to never back down,” Flagg says. NBAHow did a rural town in an isolated corner of the country produce…

The cast of “It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia” in May.Credit...Sinna Nasseri for The New York Times. Over the last 20 years, television has changed, but the malignant narcissists of “It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia” have not. The cast of “It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia” in May.Credit...Sinna…

Day is turning to night, fair weather to one of those early-spring squalls that make the savanna west of Melbourne, Australia, feel like Ireland with eucalyptus trees. We are in the last day of location shooting on the series finale of The Leftovers, sheltering in a 19th-century clapboard church…

PoliticsPoliticsThe abrupt war between Elon Musk and Donald Trump illustrates a stark divide in approach between tech ideologues and politicians Getty Images/Ringer illustration June 6, 8:31 pm UTC • 6 min There will, in the next few weeks, be plenty of postmortems published about the political…

For decades, tech enthusiasts have made the 1993 video game Doom playable on screens of all sizes, including treadmills, calculators and pregnancy tests. (Even this article.) The early first-person shooter Doom can be played on a cornucopia of unexpected devices at the Computer History Museum…

I never saw any of this coming. Can’t even lie to you. If you’d told me when I was back in Brooklyn that five or six years down the line I’d be on a new team … with one of the best records in the entire NBA? I’d have thought: Where’d I get traded to? Boston? L.A.? Golden State? “No, Cleveland.” No…

NBA Led by Garland and Donovan Mitchell, the Cavs’ deep offensive roster is clicking, and the rest of the NBA should be on notice NBALed by Garland and Donovan Mitchell, the Cavs’ deep offensive roster is clicking, and the rest of the NBA should be on notice Jay Torres,…

Guest Essay March 23, 2025 Credit...Jules Magistry Listen to this article · 6:32 min Learn more By Mr. Rothpletz is a writer. It was an annual tradition. Every Thanksgiving, I would fly down to Florida before the rest of the family. My grandfather would pick me up at the airport. We’d talk about…

Are you a coder? Please take our new survey (it's short and fun) about how you use AI at work. HTML is deceptive. It looks easy. And easy HTML is easy. With a few tags you can write your name on a webpage, make it bigger or smaller, add “is awesome” in bold or italics, and even—for those of us who…

NBANBAThe three defining NBA players of this generation are nearing the ends of their storied careers. What’s left to chase? “Of course, championships and accolades and awards are important,” Kevin Durant told The Ringer, “but I didn’t think about that as a kid.” Getty Images/Ringer illustration…

TV Ahead of ‘SNL50,’ we asked Amy Poehler, Seth Meyers, Bill Hader, and more to tell us which of their sketches they hold closest to their hearts TVAhead of ‘SNL50,’ we asked Amy Poehler, Seth Meyers, Bill Hader, and more to tell us which of their sketches they hold closest to their hearts Getty…

Reactions Like 1.0K Laugh 18 Interesting 3 Wow 2 Fire 1 Celebrate 1 LAS COLINAS, Texas -- Jimmy Haslam confidently stepped through the halls of the Ritz-Carlton

NBANBAWe’re celebrating LeBron’s 40th birthday with 40 facts and figures that attempt to capture just how preposterously great he’s been Getty Images/AP Images/Ringer illustration Dec. 30, 8:17 am EST • 8 min LeBron James celebrates his 40th birthday today. And though the one-time “Chosen One” is…

The ultimate productivity hack is saying no. Not doing something will always be faster than doing it. This statement reminds me of the old computer programming saying, “Remember that there is no code faster than no code.” The same philosophy applies in other areas of life. For example, there is no…

Dudley Newright is the author of the New Right Poast , a newsletter diligently cataloguing and curating the latest and best – and most hilarious and/or cringeworthy – content, personalities, and internet drama bubbling up out of the so-called “New Right.” It’s fun, irreverent, refreshingly…

A friend once asked me whether she had a drinking problem. “I have to have three glasses of wine a day!” she said. I laughed. Only three? “But I have to have them.” I told her I drank 10 glasses of wine a day, and then we both laughed. We were bloggers at the time, living in New York, in our 20s.…

Decca’s sons, Jake, back row second left, and Jody, back row second right, with their friends at the family home in London DEAN BELCHER FOR THE SUNDAY TIMES MAGAZINE By the time the experiment was rea

WillWill Arnett used to leave BoJack Horseman recording sessions feeling disoriented. He’d step outside a dark Hollywoo(d) studio blinded by late-morning

It is the laugh you hear first. Heh heh heh heh heh. Unhurried. Like he’s got all the time in the world to do it. Some of the buildings here at Château Miraval, where Brad Pitt is just now tumbling ou

Credit...Damon Winter/The New York Times OpinionGuest Essay How a Naked Man on a Tropical Island Created Our Current Political Insanity Credit...Damon…

Search Find anything you save across the site in your account The Weekend Essay To create a novel or a painting, an artist makes choices that are fundamentally alien to artificial intelligence. August

Credit...John Holcroft Critic’s Notebook I Reviewed Restaurants for 12 Years. They’ve Changed, and Not for the Better. In his last essay as a restaurant critic, Pete Wells reflects on a dining world o

A Brand-New Electric Bus, No Charge. (That Was One Problem.) In tiny Wymore, Neb., a sleek new battery-powered school bus became a Rorschach test for the future. A Brand-New Electric Bus, No Charge. (

Image: Alex Parkin and Cath Virginia / The Verge, Getty Images In the summer of 2017, I was brought on to be the third host of a weekly Game of Thrones recap show that streamed on Facebook Live. At th

The Great Read∂On Comedy *That’s his opinion. And yet he’s setting a new standard for what life after late-night can look like. (Hint: It’s a lot like what he did on talk shows.) Conan O’Brien has bui

It may be the most consequential Defensive Player of the Year award in NBA history. In 1987-88, Michael Jordan became the first player ever to win the scoring

Illustration by Matt Mahurin It is generally bad practice to take sitcom theme songs at their word, but since Cheers debuted in 1982, our culture has normalized the idea that sometimes we want to go w

TroyTroy Lindsay Brown had never fallen from 150 feet before. Throughout his young but extensive Hollywood career, the 24-year-old stunt performer had dropped,

Credit...Mike Osborne for The New York Times OpinionGuest Essay Try Living in Elon Musk’s Company Town Credit...Mike Osborne for The New York Times By