The New Yorker (July 22, 2024): The latest issue features Paul Rogers’s “Monsieur Hulot’s Olympics” – A French twist on the opening ceremony’s torch relay….

Where Do Republicans and Democrats Stand After the R.N.C.?

Biden imperilled his candidacy at the debate because of his inability to speak coherently. At the convention, Trump was doing something similar, and couldn’t stop. By Benjamin Wallace-Wells

Will Hezbollah and Israel Go to War?

Months of fighting at the border threaten to ignite an all-out conflict that could devastate the region.

Should We Abolish Prisons?

Our carceral system is characterized by frequent brutality and ingrained indifference. Finding a better way requires that we freely imagine alternatives. By Adam Gopnik

The New Yorker (July 15, 2024): The latest issue features Anita Kunz’s “The Face of Justice” – The remaking of the Supreme Court in Donald Trump’s image.

F.D.R.’s Election Lessons for Joe Biden and the Democrats

Less than six weeks before Democrats formally choose their nominee, the President is marching down a path of constant peril.

Inside the Trump Plan for 2025

A network of well-funded far-right activists is preparing for the former President’s return to the White House. By Jonathan Blitzer

Paradise Bronx

From the time of the Revolutionary War to the fires of the nineteen-seventies, the history of the borough has always been shaped by its in-between-ness.

By Ian Frazier

The New Yorker (July 8, 2024): The new digital issue features The Interviews Issue – A week of conversations with figures of note.

Nicolas Cage Is Still Evolving

The actor talks about the origins of “Adaptation,” his potential leap to television, and the art of “keeping it enigmatic.”

By Susan Orlean

The wobbly distinction between reality and artifice fascinates Nicolas Cage. The first time we encountered each other was in 2001, during the making of “Adaptation”—a film based on Charlie Kaufman’s struggle to adapt my book “The Orchid Thief” for the screen—in which Cage played Kaufman and his twin, Donald. He was in the middle of a scene, and I tiptoed onto the set as quietly as possible, convinced that any distraction would trigger one of the eruptions for which Cage had become famous. Between takes, he glanced at the handful of people watching, and exclaimed cheerily, “Oh, guys, look!” He pointed at me and a small, fuzzy-haired man I hadn’t noticed beside me. “It’s the real Charlie and the real Susan!” He seemed tickled by this collision between the characters in the movie and their real-life counterparts, and insisted that the crew take note. (Kaufman and I, who had never met before that moment, slunk away sheepishly.)

Ira Glass Hears It All

Three decades into “This American Life,” the host thinks the show is doing some of its best work yet—even if he’s still jealous of “The Daily.”

By Sarah Larson

It can be easy to take the greatness of “This American Life,” the weekly public-radio show and podcast hosted by Ira Glass, for granted. The show, which Glass co-founded in 1995 at WBEZ, in Chicago, has had the same essential format for twenty-eight years and more than eight hundred episodes. It was instrumental in creating a genre of audio journalism that has flourished in recent decades, especially since the podcast boom—which was initiated by the show’s first spinoff, “Serial,” in 2014. Like “The Daily Show” or Second City, “This American Life” has trained a generation of talented people, and Glass’s three-act structures, chatty cadences, and mixture of analysis and whimsy are now so familiar as to seem unremarkable.