Zyzzyva Magazine – WINTER 2025-2026
Tag Archives: Magazines
THE GUARDIAN WEEKLY – DECEMBER 12, 2025 PREVIEW
THE GUARDIAN WEEKLY: The latest issue features ‘Blocked!’ – Why Australia banned kids from social media (and what they think of it)
Millions of teenagers in Australia woke up on Wednesday to find themselves locked out of social media accounts after the government introduced a ban for under-16s – the first of its kind – on the platforms.
Far from being a kneejerk response to a moral panic, it’s a move backed up by detailed investigation into the effects of unfettered online access on children – and one that several other countries are poised to follow. Australian eSafety research found seven in 10 children aged 10 to 15 had encountered content associated with harm online. Three-quarters of those had most recently encountered that – including misogyny, violence, disordered eating and suicide – on a social media platform.
“We are seeking to create some friction [in the] system to protect children where previously there has been close to none … We are treating big tech like the extractive industry it has become,” Australia’s eSafety commissioner, Julie Inman Grant, told an audience earlier this year.
Spotlight | Syria, one year after Assad
While country’s return to global stage has filled many Syrians with pride, domestically old grievances threaten efforts to rebuild the state. William Christou reports from Damascus
Feature | The inside story of the race to create the ultimate AI
In Silicon Valley, rival companies are spending trillions of dollars to reach a goal that could change humanity – or potentially destroy it. Robert Booth reports
Feature | On the trail of London’s snail farming don
Terry Ball – renowned shoe salesman, friend to former mafiosi – has vowed to spend his remaining years finding ways to cheat authorities he feels have cheated him. His greatest ruse? A tax-dodging snail empire. Jim Waterson caught up with him
Opinion | What words are left to describe Trump’s global rampage?
Deadly US boat strikes in the Caribbean are the latest example of a president corrupting both the law and morality, argues Jonathan Freedland
Culture | The best books of 2025
From fiction to food, people to poetry, science to sport: Guardian critics round up the year’s essential reads
THE NEW YORKER MAGAZINE – DECEMBER 15, 2025
THE NEW YORKER MAGAZINE: The latest cover features ‘Pierre-Emmanuel Lyet’s “Christmas Avenue”’ – The celebratory chaos of the season.
The Trump Administration’s Chaos in the Caribbean
Pete Hegseth’s conduct is a case study in how the government’s growing sense of heedlessness and unaccountability is shaping disastrous policy. By Jonathan Blitzer
Oliver Sacks Put Himself Into His Case Studies. What Was the Cost?
The scientist was famous for linking healing with storytelling. Sometimes that meant reshaping patients’ reality. By Rachel Aviv
How to Leave the U.S.A.
In the wake of President Trump’s reëlection, the number of aggrieved Americans seeking a new life abroad appears to be rising. The Netherlands offers one way out. By Atossa Araxia Abrahamian
PREVIEW: THE EUROPEAN CONSERVATIVE – WINTER ’25
PHILOSOPHY NOW MAGAZINE DECEMBER ’25/JANUARY 2026
PHILOSOPHY NOW MAGAZINE: The latest issue features ‘The Happiness Issue’
Hedonic Treadmills in the Vale of Tears
Michael Gracey looks at how philosophers have pursued happiness.
Arthur Schopenhauer: Philosophy’s Dr Feelgood
Arthur Schopenhauer (1788-1860), the author of The World as Will and Representation, was a profound metaphysician who also advocated basing ethics upon compassion. He was a great philosopher, but notoriously pessimistic, as the following quotations might suggest.
The Good Life Paradox
Matthew Hammerton points out that a meaningful life and a life that goes well for you might not be the same thing.
Deconstructing Happiness
Abdullah Rayhan breaks down ‘happiness’ with Boethius, Kierkegaard & Montaigne.
Ancient Indian Wisdom for a Restless Age
Jahnvi Borgohain looks at a variety of approaches to happiness.
The Necessary Ache
Tara Daneshmand on regret and the courage to choose.
THE NEW YORK TIMES MAGAZINE – Dec. 7, 2025
THE NEW YORK TIMES MAGAZINE: The 12.7.25 Issue features David Darlington on the dangers of e-bikes; Carlo Rotella on A.I. in the classroom; Lizzy Goodman on the music of Shaboozey; and more.
The Shocking Crash That Led One County to Reckon With the Dangers of E-Bikes
Unregulated e-bikes are a growing danger on American streets. In one Bay Area town, a terrible accident finally led to reform.
Why Does A.I. Write Like … That?
If only they were robotic! Instead, chatbots have developed a distinctive — and grating — voice .By Sam Kriss
He Had the Worst Bloody Nose of His Life. That Was Just the Beginning.
The man’s unchecked bleeding was a mystery for years before a scan revealed the cause. By Lisa Sanders, M.D.
The Dark Secrets of the Writer Behind ‘Train Dreams’
An adaptation of Denis Johnson’s novella arrives at the same time as a new biography, unlocking one of his best-loved and least-understood books.
THE GUARDIAN WEEKLY – DECEMBER 5, 2025 PREVIEW
Watching with horror from London last week as flames ripped through seven adjacent apartment blocks in Hong Kong, it was impossible not to think back to the Grenfell Tower fire of 2017, which exposed major systemic failures around UK social housing and eventually led to law changes around safety and accountability for high-rise buildings.
The comparisons with Hong Kong were not just visually obvious but also because the semi-autonomous city’s worst fire in decades appears to have followed months of complaints from residents about shoddy materials used in building works.
Hong Kong is of course a very different place to London, with politicians facing less public accountability in a political climate that makes it much harder for citizens to express dissent. But, as anger rises, hard questions are nevertheless being asked of authorities amid accusations of negligence and corruption.
Five essential reads in this week’s edition
The big story | Can Europe unite to tame Russia – without the US?
Washington’s Putin-appeasing plan for peace in Ukraine has failed, but many heard the death knell sound for European reliance on US protection, writes Patrick Wintour
Spotlight | If Rachel Reeves goes, will Keir Starmer fall with her?
British prime ministers rarely sack their chancellors – and when they do it almost inevitably leads to their own downfall. After last week’s budget, Starmer knows the same is true of him and Reeves, says Jessica Elgot
Feature | The dangerous rise of extremist Buddhism
Buddhism is still largely viewed as a peaceful philosophy – but across much of south-east Asia, the religion has been weaponised to serve nationalist goals. Sonia Faleiro investigates
Opinion | From the West Bank to Syria and Lebanon, Israel’s onslaught continues
Broken ceasefires, bombing, ground incursions and mounting deaths: Israeli imperialism is now expanding across the region, says Nesrine Malik
Culture | Ethan Hawke and Richard Linklater: two men on the moon
As their 11th movie together, Blue Moon, is released, the actor and director tell Xan Brooks about musicals, the legacy of Philip Seymour Hoffman and what being bald and short does to your flirting skills
LITERARY REVIEW – DECEMBER 2025
LITERARY REVIEW : The latest issue features Peter Marshall on Holbein * Joanna Kavenna on Camus * Sophie Oliver on Margaret Atwood * Dorian Lynskey on George Orwell * Daisy Dunn on Clodia of Rome * David Andress on Jean-Paul Marat * John Foot on the Spanish Civil War * Jerry White on high-rise buildings * Edward Shawcross on Mexico * Daniel A Bell on the Chinese examination system * Anna Reid on Russian women * Charles Darwent on Barnett Newman * Robert Crawford on T S Eliot * Ian Sansom on William Golding * Mark Lawson on John Updike * Charles Shaar Murray on musicians * Patrick Porter on NATO * Thomas Morris on Renaissance diagrams * Diane Purkiss on palmistry * Nigel Andrew on penguins * John Mullan on pedants * Molly Pepper Steemson on Anthony Bourdain * Mark Ford on Helen Vendler * Emma Smith on book
Holbein: Renaissance Master By Elizabeth Goldring
It’s an irony to savour: the man who invented the Tudors was a German. If Henry VIII, his wives and courtiers exercise a stronger hold on the public imagination than their Plantagenet precursors or Stuart successors, it is because we can all picture them so clearly. That, in turn, is due to an extraordinary sequence of portraits and drawings produced between the late 1520s and early 1540s by Hans Holbein of Augsburg (c 1497–1543), many of which have become instantly recognisable.
Doublethink & Doubt
Orwell: 2+2=5 By Raoul Peck (dir)
George Orwell: Life and Legacy By Robert Colls
Nobody under the age of seventy-five has heard George Orwell’s voice. The only extant video footage is in a silent movie of the Eton Wall Game. None of his many wartime recordings for the BBC Eastern Service has survived. By all accounts his voice, damaged by a bullet to the throat during the Spanish Civil War, was thin, flat and weak. In fact, the controller of the BBC Overseas Service complained that putting on ‘so wholly unsuitable a voice’ made the BBC appear ‘ignorant of the essential needs of the microphone and of the audience’.
THE NEW YORKER MAGAZINE – DECEMBER 8, 2025
THE NEW YORKER MAGAZINE: The latest cover features ‘Klaas Verplancke’s “White House of Gold” – Mar-a-Lago extravagance on Pennsylvania Avenue.
In the Line of Fire
During the Trump era, political violence has become an increasingly urgent problem. Elected officials from both parties are struggling to respond. By Benjamin Wallace-Wells
The Undermining of the C.D.C.
The Department of Health and Human Services maintains that it is hewing to “gold standard, evidence-based science”—doublespeak that might unsettle Orwell. By Dhruv Khullar
What Makes Goethe So Special?
The German poet’s dauntingly eclectic accomplishments were founded on a tireless interrogation of how a life should be lived. By Merve Emre
SCIENCE MAGAZINE – NOVEMBER 27, 2025
SCIENCE MAGAZINE: The latest issue features ‘Herding Cats’ – Ancient DNA suggests later arrival for domestic cats in Europe.
Gene expression dynamics in neonatal sepsis
Rapid gene expression changes during treatment of neonatal sepsis indicate reversibility of host immune response and enable prognostic approaches.
Artificial ‘nose’ tells people when certain smells are present
Technology that uses a less known sensory system to substitute for olfaction could one day help anosmic people detect some odors
Global carbon emissions will soon flatten or decline
With China’s surge in renewable energy, greenhouse gases are reaching a turning point
Intellicurious 