FOND OF FLAGS

My wife is fond of fast food. I am not. My wife is particularly fond of the Wendy’s Baconator. I argue that it’s less expensive to order a Dave’s Double with a side of bacon, then put your own pretzels on top. (I’m fond of the Rold Gold Tiny Twists Original.)

TROPHY ROOM

Going on safari.

SCREEN GRAB

How CoComelon conquered children's television.

GREAT MIGRATIONS

\"Home\" and \"What Became of Us.\"

SICK, SAD WORLD

What COVID did to fiction.

CHICAGO ON THE SEINE CAMILLE BORDAS

I used to tell myself stories on the job, to make it feel exciting—spy stories, exfiltration stories, war stories. I used to come up with poignant little details that turned the repatriation cases I worked on into “Saving Private Ryan,” into “Johnny Got His Gun.”

A SEMBLANCE OF PEACE

How life in a co-living community changed after October 7th.

MOVE IN FOR THE CULL

The complicated calculus of killing some wild creatures to protect others.

EVERYTHING IN HAND

The C.I.A.'s covert ops have mattered-but not in the way that it hoped.

HIS BEAUTIFUL DARK TWISTED FANTASY

Ye bought a masterpiece by Tadao Ando-and gave it a violent remix.

Magical Thinking

GABRIEL GARCÍA MÁRQUEZ's One Hundred Years of Solitude has never been faithfully adapted for the screen partly because he wouldn't allow it in his lifetime. With a Netflix series now in the works, VF tracks the long journey of a masterpiece

FUNNY GIRL

AYO EDEBIRI IS explaining the shock of her fame to me over a spread of duck pot pie (hers) and Caesar salad topped with rib eye (mine) at Chicago's Armitage Alehouse. (Our food belongs in this celebrity interview because, well, The Bear.)

Beyond a BOUNDARY

With sped-up matches and a bevy of big-money backers, cricket is pitching an American resurgence

JUSTICE Without Borders

Inside the effort to prosecute Russians for Ukraine war crimes in Argentina

The Writing on THE WALL

The promise of poststrike opportunities kept TV writers from losing hope last year. Now a new season of bleak financial realities is testing their resolve all over again.

VANITIES

NICHOLAS GALITZINE kicks into high gear

TAKE NO PRISONERS

The State Department's hostage point man, Roger Carstens, works to free US citizens from captivity, whether they're being held by Vladimir Putin or Venezuelan dictator Nicolás Maduro. ADAM CIRALSKY embeds with America's top negotiators through 15 months of rescue efforts with the highest of stakes: liberty or death

THE HIT MAN

Between Anyone but You and the upcoming Twisters, GLEN POWELL has seen all kinds of action on the way to becoming one of Hollywood's hottest young stars

Shots in the Dark

The Ozempic weight-loss miracle has a dark side: As desperate patients contend with shortages and skyhigh prices, a world of criminals and con artists are filling the void with lifethreatening counterfeits. KATHERINE EBAN investigates our alarmingly active pharmaceutical underground

Bibbidi Bobbidi WHO?

Disney is on the hunt for a new CEO to replace the legendary Bob Iger when he retires (again) at the end of 2026. Inside a $200 billion kingdom looking for a new king or, for the first time ever, a queen

GOD EXPLAINS THE RULES OF HIS NEW BOARD GAME

Guys, want to play this new board game? It’s called Life. No, it’s not “one of God’s impossible-to-understand games that take three hours to learn.” It’ll be fun, I promise!

THE LONG RIDE

The surf legend Jock Sutherland's unlikely life.

RED LINE

With the election approaching, the U.S. and Mexico wrangle over border policy.

ARE WE DOOMED?

A course at the University of Chicago thinks it through.

SUBCONSCIOUSLY YOURS

Does every generation get the Freud it deserves?

Beyond Imagining

Bessie, Lotte, Ruth, Farah, and Bridget, who had been lunching together for half a century, joined in later years by Ilka, Hope, and, occasionally, Lucinella, had agreed without the need for discussion that they were not going to pass, pass away, and under no circumstances on.

BY A WHISKER

Louis Wain and the reinvention of the cat.

INSIDE JOB-"Hit Man"

Years before Hannah Arendt coined, in the pages of this magazine, the phrase \"the banality of evil,\" popular films and fiction were embodying that idea in the character of the hit man. In classic crime movies such as \"This Gun for Hire\" (1942) and \"Murder by Contract\" (1958), hit men figure much as Nazis do in political movies, as symbols of abstract evil.

WHATEVER YOU SAY

Rereading Jenny Holzer, at the Guggenheim.

STATES OF PLAY

Can advocates use state supreme courts to preserve-and perhaps expand-constitutional rights?