Being wrong puts off neither prophets nor their followers. The term “cognitive dissonance,” coined by the psychologist Leon Festinger in the nineteen-fifties, described an imbalance between conviction and information. He had been studying a cult led by Dorothy...
For the cover of the February 3, 2025, issue, the artist Kadir Nelson captured the emotion he experienced when, walking downtown, he startled a flock of pigeons. “I felt that a painting of birds in flight might summon...
In his memoir, “Room to Dream,” from 2018, David Lynch recalled an idyllic time in his life. He was in his late twenties and had just finished shooting his first feature film, “Eraserhead.” After living on set, in...
A few months ago, when Tom Brady was beginning his career as an N.F.L. commentator for Fox Sports, a commercial aired. It begins with Brady, his face all angles, sitting at a desk in a nondescript room, looking...
The avant-garde company Heartbeat Opera is engaging in another innovative game of source-text telephone, this time with a new iteration of “Salome.” The original draws from Oscar Wilde’s eponymous play, with a German libretto adapted from Wilde’s French,...
Imani Perry teaches at Harvard and is the author of “South to America,” a genre-mixing exploration of the American South, and, most recently, “Black in Blues,” a critical appraisal of the role of the color blue in the...
Until two weeks ago, Oscar pundits were describing this awards season as “weird.” Unlike last year’s slate, dominated by Barbenheimer, the new crop of contenders had been thinned out by the actors’ and writers’ strikes, leaving room for...
It’s usually gauche to take pictures in church. But at St. John’s, the Episcopal Church just across a sedate Lafayette Square from the White House, photography is inevitable at least once every four years. Every Inauguration Day, many...
The Basque region is a big influence on the Otter’s ever-changing menu, as is New England (Stupak grew up in Massachusetts), not only in the crab-dip pasta but in a lobster roll (perfectly nice, if you like paying...
