The New Yorker
THE TALK OF THE TOWN
According to the New York City Department of Records and Information Services, Zohran Mamdani will not actually be the city's hundred-and-eleventh mayor, as many people have assumed. A historian named Paul Hortenstine recently came across references to a previously unrecorded mayoral term served in 1674, by one Matthias Nicolls. Consequently, on New Year's Day, after Mamdani places his right hand on the Quran and is sworn in at City Hall, he will become our hundred-and-twelfth mayor—or possibly even our hundred-and-thirty-third, based on the department's best estimates. “The numbering of New York City ‘Mayors’ has been somewhat arbitrary and inconsistent,” a department official disclosed in a blog post this month. “There may even be other missing Mayors.”
10+ min |
December 29, 2025 - January 05, 2026
The New Yorker
PREMEDITATED
Tipped for the Oscars, “Hamnet” was released on November 26th. When the movie showed at film festivals, the director, Chloé Zhao, invited the audience to join her in an act of collective meditation before the screening. Among her instructions: “Close your eyes,” “Feel your own weight,” “Take deep breaths with sound,” “Sigh out loud,” and “Gently say to yourself, “This is my heart. These are our hearts.”
3 min |
December 29, 2025 - January 05, 2026
The New Yorker
Lawrence Wright on A. J. Liebling's "The Great State"
During the 1959 session of the Louisiana state legislature, Governor Earl Long, the less famous younger brother of Senator Huey Long, “went off his rocker,” as the tickled writer A. J. Liebling recounted in this magazine, adding, “The papers reported that he had cursed and hollered at the legislators, saying things that so embarrassed his wife, Miz Blanche, and his relatives that they had packed him off to Texas in a National Guard plane to get his brains repaired in an asylum.”
3 min |
December 29, 2025 - January 05, 2026
The New Yorker
FREUDIAN SLIPS
The psychology of fashion.
10+ min |
December 29, 2025 - January 05, 2026
The New Yorker
The Welfare State
The world beyond the ridgetop was a wall of gray cloud.
10+ min |
December 29, 2025 - January 05, 2026
The New Yorker
ON Y VA
\"Tartuffe\" closes out a year of Molière.
7 min |
December 29, 2025 - January 05, 2026
The New Yorker
THE VICTOR AND THE SPOILS
\"Marty Supreme.\"
6 min |
December 29, 2025 - January 05, 2026
The New Yorker
FOR RICHER OR POORER
Saying yes to the prenup.
10+ min |
December 29, 2025 - January 05, 2026
The New Yorker
ALPHABET SOUP
We know how to help kids with dyslexia, but often fail to. Why?
10+ min |
December 29, 2025 - January 05, 2026
The New Yorker
LAST HIGHWAY
How Willie Nelson sees America.
10+ min |
December 29, 2025 - January 05, 2026
The New Yorker
YES, BOSS
Peter Navarro, a tariff cheerleader, created the template of sycophancy for Trump Administration officials.
10 min |
December 29, 2025 - January 05, 2026
The New Yorker
THE SOUND OF SILENTS
Organists continue to perform imaginative accompaniments to century-old films.
5 min |
December 29, 2025 - January 05, 2026
The New Yorker
LOOK IT UP
Is the dictionary becoming extinct?
10+ min |
December 29, 2025 - January 05, 2026
The New Yorker
GREETINGS, FRIENDS!
As now the year two-oh-two-five, Somewhat ragged but alive, Reels and staggers to the finish, All its drawbacks can't diminish, Friends, how gladly 'tis we greet you! We aver, and do repeat, you Have our warm felicitations Full of gladsome protestations Of Christmastime regard! Though we have yet to rake the yard, Mercy! It's already snowing.
2 min |
December 22, 2025
The New Yorker
SELECTIVE MEMORY
\"Marjorie Prime\" and \"Anna Christie.\"
7 min |
December 22, 2025
The New Yorker
THE PUZZLE MAESTRO
For Stephen Sondheim, crafting crosswords and treasure hunts was as fun as writing musicals.
10+ min |
December 22, 2025
The New Yorker
CONSCIENTIOUS OBJECTORS
The second Presidency of Donald Trump has been unprecedented in myriad ways, perhaps above all in the way that he has managed to cajole, cow, or simply command people in his Administration to carry out even his most undemocratic wishes with remarkably little dissent.
4 min |
December 22, 2025
The New Yorker
NINE LIVES DEPT. NIGHT THOUGHTS
First, a moment of silence. The beloved cat of the actor-comedian Kumail Nanjiani died three months ago. Her name was Bagel. She was seventeen.
2 min |
December 22, 2025
The New Yorker
KICKS DEPT.ON THE LINE
On a chilly night last month, the Rockette Alumnae Association held its first black-tie charity ball, at the Edison Ballroom, in midtown.
4 min |
December 22, 2025
The New Yorker
RISK, DISCIPLINE
When Violet and I finally decided to get married, I was in the middle of a depression so deep it had developed into something more like psychosis.
10+ min |
December 22, 2025
The New Yorker
SPLIT TAKE
\"Is This Thing On?\"
6 min |
December 22, 2025
The New Yorker
HOW TO LEAVE THE U.S.A.
Why fed-up Americans are going Dutch.
10+ min |
December 15, 2025
The New Yorker
MIND OVER MATTER
Did the celebrated neurologist Oliver Sacks write his patients into case studies of his own psyche?
10+ min |
December 15, 2025
The New Yorker
BRIGHT LIGHTS, BIG CITY
The new Studio Museum in Harlem shows that Black art matters.
10 min |
December 15, 2025
The New Yorker
ALL RISE
A new Afghan bakery, in New York's golden age of bread.
7 min |
December 15, 2025
The New Yorker
TRADING PLACES
The ex-bankers behind HBO's \"Industry\" are the latest British élites to dramatize their own kind.
10+ min |
December 15, 2025
The New Yorker
THE TALK OF THE TOWN
In a federal courtroom in New York City last year, a crime boss from the most notorious drug cartel in Honduras took the stand to testify against Juan Orlando Hernández, the country's former President.
10+ min |
December 15, 2025
The New Yorker
PRISON BREAKS
A new study illuminates the origins of incarceration
10+ min |
December 15, 2025
The New Yorker
UNDERSTANDING THE SCIENCE
“Everyone thinks they're on this big journey now,” Debbie said, refilling her glass.
10+ min |
December 15, 2025
The New Yorker
Katy Waldman on Mary McCarthy's "One Touch of Nature"
I first encountered Mary McCarthy not through her novels or criticism but through her political reporting. A former editor recommended that I read “The Mask of State: Watergate Portraits” before covering Paul Manafort’s arraignment in 2017. (Were we ever so young?) I loved McCarthy’s witty cameos of malefactors—behold Maurice Stans, Nixon’s erstwhile Secretary of Commerce, “a silver-haired, sideburned super-accountant and magic fundraiser, who gave a day-and-a-half-long demonstration of the athletics of evasion, showing himself very fit for a man of his age.” McCarthy’s sentences were like mousetraps, snapping shut on both visual information and something deeper, the kind of quintessence that fictional characters possess and that we often long for real people to have, too.
2 min |