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I think the rooster appeared sometime during the pandemic. It’s hard to say, but I’m pretty sure I first saw it during one of... Read More

“Never love a wild thing,” Holly Golightly advises. Because “you can’t give your heart to a wild thing: the more you... Read More

I bit into the best tomato I’ve ever eaten on the National Mall in Washington, D.C., in the shadow of the hulking headquarters of the... Read More

While watching Mortal Kombat II, a cheesy '90s throwback that's essentially a family-friendly fantasy picture with copious R-rated gore, I... Read More

I always imagined I would write something about Edmund White after his death. What I never imagined was the death itself. It came on the... Read More

I spent my twenties and early thirties immersed in the world of “Red Pill” content, an online, male-centric subculture. I began... Read More

The class I am teaching this semester is an undergraduate survey of lyric poetry. It’s a class I enjoy teaching and one I offer... Read More

I loved Bobby Cox. So did every soul who ever met the man. Those close to Cox knew this day was coming, and really were preparing since he... Read More

Jonathan Swift’s genius was to be understood by everyone. He was so insistent that his prose be plain enough for all readers that he... Read More

On the eve of America's bicentennial, the American Enterprise Institute published Irving Kristol's lecture, "The American Revolution as a... Read More

Jack Thorne has been thinking a lot lately about the evil that men do. It tends to start with boys, and it’s nourished by... Read More

Not too long ago, I had the privilege of spending a summer carrying out research at the University of Chicago for a book I am writing about... Read More

We still use the phrase “Big Tech” in some contexts—it has a righteous, trust-busting ring to it—but down off the... Read More

Fifty years ago, my mother, my two sisters, and I pulled into our local drive-in theater to see a newly released comedy about a little league... Read More

As a child, I loved to dress up in costumes and make-believe I had barely enough to survive. I played Little House on the Prairie or I played... Read More

“Advocatus sed non latro, res miranda populo.” The above Latin tag, usually applied to St. Ives (or Yves or Ivo), Patron of... Read More

In mid-2025, Bumble’s founder Whitney Wolfe Herd returned to the company she had left fourteen months earlier and offered a blunt... Read More

The American South has a rich and complex history that is layered with difficult social structures and racial tensions, yet also... Read More

In 1998, philosopher David Chalmers made a bet with neuroscientist Christof Koch about whether, in the next 25 years, any scientist would be... Read More

The Tony trailer has arrived, and we cannot know for sure what Anthony Bourdain would have thought of the young-Anthony-Bourdain movie it's... Read More

I first wrote about the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s annual Costume Institute fundraising gala in 2024 after a friend said it was... Read More

An entry on the mothballed Web 1.0–vintage online “Baseball Games” encyclopedia dedicated to the “great American... Read More

An Eastern Cape giant cycad in the Palm House at Kew Gardens in London is over 240 years old. It has lived most of its two centuries, since... Read More

The Devil Wears Prada 2 strutted to the top of the box office in the first days of its theatrical run — a surprise to no... Read More

“Have any of you ever encountered an obstacle that you later understood to be an opportunity?” the unnamed... Read More

When I first met Leonard Logsdail, I was deep in the costume design beat, writing about the often under-appreciated world of storytelling... Read More

The James Beard Foundation has now announced all of its nominees for the 2026 James Beard Awards. The awards represent one of the highest... Read More

What does it mean to be an American? This question has been asked, in one form or another, since the founding of the United States. The... Read More

On July 20, 2025, Marc Brown, a reporter for Los Angeles’s local ABC affiliate, asked Karen Bass, our current mayor, why the city... Read More

It’s no coincidence, it seems to me, that the decline of liberal democracy, as a fact and value, has succeeded the decline of liberal... Read More

National League baseball has just marked its 150th Opening Day. As plans to commemorate the centennial of American Independence took shape in... Read More

Members of the Class of 2026: As I stand before you today, preparing to deliver your commencement address, I am reminded of the advice I once... Read More

The book that won George Orwell his reputation as a serious writer was neither Animal Farm nor Nineteen Eighty-Four but a... Read More

Wallace Shawn has called a secret meeting of the bourgeoisie. Not for the vulgar elites but the cultivated kind. These are people Shawn... Read More