For the cover of the October 6, 2025, issue, the cartoonist R. Kikuo Johnson portrayed one of the simple pleasures afforded to new parents besieged by the pressures of a relentless consumer culture: the joy of watching your...
Mommy Pai’s, the latest venture from the masterminds behind Thai Diner and the late Uncle Boons, seems to follow this road map—on paper, at least. Open since August, just around the corner from Thai Diner, it’s a chicken-finger...
This past March, the Times writer and power podcaster Ezra Klein appeared on “Doomscroll,” a small but influential YouTube interview show hosted by the thirty-eight-year-old artist, researcher, and author Joshua Citarella. Klein, an avatar of the technocratic liberal...
When we think of the history of free-speech rights, we tend to think of the Anglo-American legal tradition. A virtue of Dabhoiwala’s book is that it is transnational, and there are discussions of free-speech traditions less familiar to...
The New York Film Festival, the centerpiece of the city’s year in cinephilia, is a victim of its own success. Many of its most noteworthy films are already scheduled for commercial release soon—which is cause for celebration, insofar...
Sasha Bonét’s matrilineal memoir, “The Waterbearers,” traces the lives of her mother and grandmother: powerful, complicated women whose personalities have been shaped by the rough edges of American society. Mothers, she suggests, can pass on both grace and...
The Harlem Renaissance—the subject that everyone had gathered to discuss—is described in the film by Major as the first time that Black people were recognized as creative people; by another participant, as affirming the greatness of Black people;...
Some actors you can watch doing the same thing over and over again. Cary Grant built a career on smirking suavity; Cate Blanchett has made an art form of falling apart with tragic intensity. Lately, Ethan Hawke has...
As at Four Horsemen, where an oeuf mayonnaise is zebra-striped with squid ink and humble beans are treated like precious gems, Curtola trusts his diners to venture beyond obvious crowd-pleasers. I was impressed to see how many tables...
