E dward George vividly remembers when he was first abducted – his word – by music. It was 1973 and he was 10 – the comics-loving son of Dominican immigrants flogging copies of West Indian World newspa

“I think people were surprised by the amount of resonance,” says Jodie Foster, who plays Ellie Arroway in Contact , of the movie’s reception. “We used to do that. We used to make movies that were reso

T his is my dream yard,” sighs Simon Fairlie, standing in a small quadrangle of rough stones strewn with hay, surrounded by low redbrick barns, where swallows dip in the summer. With its pair of soulf

Now that Tom’s back in the game, he can’t pretend the game is fun again. Photo: Macall Polay/HBO Note: Spoilers ahead for Succession season three, episode seven, “Too Much Birthday.” Last night’s epis

There’s a haunting line in Amitav Ghosh’s The Nutmeg’s Curse: Parables For A Planet In Crisis that stayed with me long after I had finished reading the book: “...The climactic changes of our era are n

I have billions of pixels in my cellphone, and you probably do too. But what is a pixel? Why do so many people think that pixels are little abutting squares? Now that we’re aswim in an ocean of zettap

Photo-Illustration: Intelligencer; Photo: Erin Scott/REUTERS When Vietnam’s communist rulers gave Facebook an ultimatum to censor anti-government posts earlier this year or leave the country, Mark Zuc

Vampire Veek Brought to you by our bloodlust. Matt Berry. Photo: Chris Buck for New York Magazine. Photographed at Pendry Manhattan West. Matt Berry plays men who do not fit in this world, who are eit

When Jesse Armstrong, the writer and creator of the HBO series “ Succession ,” arrived on set at Amerigo Vespucci Airport, in Florence, one morning in June, he was faced with an extravagant decision.

“I t was a queer, sultry summer, the summer they electrocuted the Rosenbergs…… ” So goes the opening sentence of Sylvia Plath’s 1963 novel The Bell Jar , referring to the Jewish American couple, Juliu

T he idea that all bias is some deviation from an unbiased center is itself a bias that prevents pundits, journalists, politicians and plenty of others from recognizing some of the most ugly and impac

This essay appears in the Spring 2021 issue of Modern Age . To subscribe, click here. What is it like, in 2021, to watch a movie like The Godfather , a film that practically defines the term classic ?

What Is the Meaning of All This Money? A series about the ever-more-chaotic future of finance. Animation: QuickHoney Intelligencer’s Jebediah Reed spoke to Scott Galloway, a host of the New York and V

social studies The Black Nerds Redefining the Culture By pushing back against centuries-old stereotypes, a historically overlooked community is claiming space it was long denied. Send any friend a sto

Robert Fludd, from Utriusque Cosmi Maioris Scilicet et Minoris Metaphysica, Physica atque Technica Historia , ca. 1617–21. [ Penn Digital Archives ] Embrace the “nothing.” Two years ago — or a century

A little over a decade ago, Jon Cruddas was diagnosed with a life-threatening illness and found himself spending a lot of time on a neurology ward. “When you confront death you rethink what is importa

Photographs by Mark Peterson / Redux W hen Grandmaster Jay walked into Million’s Crab, a seafood joint in suburban Cincinnati, the waitstaff looked alarmed. Million’s Crab is a family restaurant, and

No One’s Driving The big boat may be unstuck, but our deeply technologized, infinitely complex economy is just beginning to get jammed Photo: DigitalGlobe/ScapeWare3d/Getty Images Welcome to No One’s

Forty years after his death, Alfred Hitchcock is still the best-known film director there ever was, or perhaps will ever be. A time may come when he stands for Movies in the way Attila the Hun bestrid

F lying into Egypt in early February to make the most important presentation of his life, Ties van der Hoeven prepared by listening to the podcast 13 Minutes To The Moon – the story of how Nasa accomp

In every dream home a heartache: the Hapsburgian MCU, suburban cosa nostra , synthetic lovers, domestic realism, full-surrogacy , the falling rate of enjoyment , mothers & others , and how the sausage

Welcome to the 1,370 newly Not Boring people who have joined us since last Monday! 🤯 If you aren’t subscribed, join 37,892 smart, curious folks by subscribing here: 🎧 To get this essay straight in you

Read this first: Book Review: Fussell On Class Dear Republican Party: I hear you're having a post-Trump identity crisis . Your old platform of capitalism and liberty and whatever no longer excites peo

S even months ago, Sacha Baron Cohen was in the back of a speeding ambulance. It was an escape car, and he was fleeing a gun rally. The Borat producers had chosen the ambulance as it could blend in, a

In February, 1967, Jim Garrison, the New Orleans district attorney, wrote a five-page memo called “Time and Propinquity: Factors in Phase I,” which revealed some of the spurious connections he was mak

The playbook is clear: Talk death figures and data; If you don’t make it explicitly about people , it’s possible to abstract the horror out a little. Muddy the water further with discussions of ‘pre-e

When the cultural critic and theorist Mark Fisher took his own life on 13 January 2017 at the age of 48, he was a third of a way through delivering a lecture series titled “Postcapitalist Desire”, whi

Ideas The benefits of a $15 minimum would greatly outweigh the costs. January 29, 2021 Annie Lowrey Staff writer at The Atlantic Getty / The Atlantic The Biden administration and House and Senate Demo

My test came one drizzly afternoon in March 2017 when I was escorted into the Oval Office. Seated behind the Resolute Desk, President Donald J. Trump declined to rise or extend a handshake to me and m

As England and Scotland start another period of lockdown, we all have to come to terms with following stricter covid-19 restrictions, most likely for a relatively long period of time. The notion of be

For the young artist in quest of achievement, the limited time available, in the face of day jobs, is a classic obstacle, real or perceived. (Joe Swanberg and Greta Gerwig aptly called the film they c

information theory July 16, 2020 To recognize strange extraterrestrial life and solve biological mysteries on this planet, scientists are searching for an objective definition for life’s basic units.

Ideas What gives the 1965 Peanuts special its staying power? December 24, 2020 Caitlin Flanagan Staff writer at The Atlantic and author of Girl Land Peanuts / The Atlantic “Lights, please.” For half a

Adam Maida T he Doomsday Machine was never supposed to exist. It was meant to be a thought experiment that went like this: Imagine a device built with the sole purpose of destroying all human life. No

Health The coronavirus can cause insomnia and long-term changes in our nervous systems. But sleep could also be a key to ending the pandemic. James Hamblin December 21, 2020 Peter Cade / Getty The new

There is a law of physics that also applies to politics: energy cannot be created or destroyed. It can only be changed from one form to another. The story of Brexit is a story of energy conversion – t

“I’ve always been doing weird, stupid things and following my heart. It made no sense to handle my career the way I did, but I wouldn’t do it another way.” Photo: Katy Grannan for New York Magazine Th

T he great decline of the British middle class is as stark as it is little discussed. A year ago, Labour’s losses in the so-called red wall seemed to emphasise a historic collapse in its relationship

I keep hearing people complain that the ‘mainstream media’ does not understand economics and that we’re talked down to as if everything must be explained as if the economy is a household. In this thread I explain all you (and they) need to know. Economics in one thread then....

Win McNamee / Getty O n the evening of September 11, 1980, my mom was approached by a neighbor who held rank in the Turkish military. He told her to stock up on bread and rice. “Oh, another coup,” she