The New Yorker
The Working Man and the Company Store
Joe Manchin was the last holdout of a once formidable state Democratic Party machine that kept West Virginia solidly blue for decades. Dan Kaufman reports on the campaign of Zach Shrewsbury, an ex-marine with a Eugene Debs tattoo, who is running for the seat, with an agenda based on bringing renewable-energy jobs to coal country.
Above the Fold
Essential reading for today.
Israel’s Politics of Protest
As demonstrations roil American campuses, the Israeli right is using them to its own ends.
A TikTok Ban Won’t Fix Social Media
You can take the platform away from American users, but it is far too late to contain the habits that it has unleashed.
Gaza’s Unexploded-Bomb Crisis
Clearing the territory of ordnance and rubble could pose a challenge unseen since the Second World War.
The Kids Are Not All Right. They Want to Be Heard
What explains the student movement against the war in Gaza? Sometimes the correct answer is the one right in front of you.
Can Suing People for Lying Save Democracy?
The lawyers at Protect Democracy have brought defamation suits against Rudy Giuliani, Kari Lake, and Project Veritas, hoping to limit the spread of disinformation. Others worry that their efforts could impinge on freedom of speech.
The Peculiar Delights of the Enormous Cicada Emergence
As loud as leaf blowers, as miraculous as math, the insects are set to overtake the landscape.
The Political Scene
What Is Hope Hicks Crying About?
During Donald Trump’s criminal trial, the former White House aide was inscrutable on the witness stand, despite breaking out into tears.
Is 2024 Doomed to Repeat 1968 or 2020—or Both?
Trump has now made clear that he won’t concede if he loses the election. Believe him.
Trump Is Making Victimhood a Legal Strategy
Will the jury believe that the former President’s sordid acquisition of the White House was political business as usual?
How Much Aid Is Actually Reaching Gazans?
The chief economist of the U.N.’s World Food Programme on imminent famine and what’s needed to avoid it.
New Tricks
The A-list animal trainer Bill Berloni has worked with pigs, geese, and butterflies. He recently prepared Bing for a starring role in the adaptation of Sigrid Nunez’s “The Friend.”
Campus Protests
Israel, Gaza, and the Turmoil at Harvard
Not since the Vietnam War has a protest movement reached campuses with such fury. The New Yorker Radio Hour examines the reverberations at one university in Boston.
Occupy Columbia
Scenes of dissent and defiance on the campus where scores of students were arrested for participating in pro-Palestine protests.
A Generation of Distrust
Among the protesters on college campuses—and among the students who oppose them, too—there is a deepening disillusionment with American institutions.
What the Origins of Humanity Can and Can’t Tell Us
There’s still much to be learned about our prehistory. But we can’t help using it to explain the societies we have or to justify the ones we want.
The Critics
How Does “Challengers” Make a Love Triangle Feel So Empty?
The fussy structure of Luca Guadagnino’s film dissipates the erotic charge on which the drama relies.
Dua Lipa Devotes Herself to Pleasure with “Radical Optimism”
In an era of postmodern, self-referential music, there’s something refreshing about the artist’s new album.
Our Collective Obsession with True Crime
Today’s audiences have a seemingly insatiable appetite for stories about people who do—or experience—terrible things. Is there a right way to turn real-life tragedy into mass entertainment?
Claire Messud’s New Novel Maps the Search for a Home That Never Was
“This Strange Eventful History” traces three generations of an itinerant French family with roots in colonial Algeria.
The Indestructible Art of Frank Stella
The artist, who has died at eighty-seven, rattled standards of modernist abstraction rather as Bob Dylan did those of folk music.
“The Contestant” Is More Than a Cautionary Tale
The documentary charts the rise of an early reality-TV star and the ethically queasy choices that cemented his fame—but it’s elevated by its interest in what came afterward.
What We’re Reading This Week
A detailed history of humanity’s prehistoric roots; a thoughtful study of four of Shakespeare’s female contemporaries; a novel that follows a family of globetrotters and interlopers searching for perfect love; and more.
Ideas
The Secret Society Chasing Our Fading Attention
As ads and apps reduce our ability to focus, an order purportedly reaching back centuries seeks to reset the world by understanding what happens between a person and a work of art.
The Hidden-Pregnancy Experiment
An attempt to hide personal news from online ad trackers makes clear how much surveillance we are engaged in, as both subjects and objects, and how insidious the problem is becoming.
Is Hunterbrook Media a News Outlet or a Hedge Fund?
The hybrid media-finance company wants to monetize investigative journalism in the public interest. Is it a visionary game changer or a cynical ploy?
How ECMO Is Redefining Death
A medical technology can keep people alive when they otherwise would have died. Where will it lead?
Can Turning Office Towers Into Apartments Save Downtowns?
Nathan Berman has helped rescue Manhattan’s financial district from a “doom loop” by carving attractive living spaces from hulking buildings that once housed fields of cubicles.
An Inside Job at the British Museum
While facing renewed accusations of cultural theft, the institution announced that it had been the victim of plain old-fashioned theft—by someone on the staff.
Puzzles & Games
Take a break and play.
In Case You Missed It
“Cherry”
A young actor, Marie-Lise Chouinard, faces her terminal-cancer diagnosis with grace and comedy, in Laurence Gagné-Frégeau’s short documentary.
The Talk of the Town
Death Skull let out a hysterical cackle, which echoed piercingly from the stone walls of his lair.
“Why so combative?” he said, emerging from the shadows. “At the end of the day, we’re not so different, you and I.”Continue reading »
