Category Culture

In the winter of 1969, at fifty-two years old and after decades of revolutionizing the way we hear notes and silence, the jazz pianist and composer Thelonious Monk was invited to record a conversation and solo session for French television.…

It wasn’t until the sixth episode of the shape-shifting and genre-curious new “Star Wars” series “Andor” that I figured out what had been nagging at me. The episode, titled “The Eye,” centers on rebel fighters as they plan to infiltrate…

In an interview with German Catholic media earlier today, Bishop Johan Bonnay of Antwerp said “communion with the Pope is sacred to me” and argued the Flemmish bishops’ proposed rubric for blessing homosexual couples is “in line with Pope Francis.”…

Most afternoons, around 4:30 P.M., a pair of words, separated by a comma and followed by an exclamation point, pops into my head; sometimes I say them aloud. The first, a profane four letters beginning with “F,” is not worth…

The capital of South Korea makes a good first impression, not least with its infrastructure. This May, Seoul’s ever-expanding subway system opened another addition, an extension of the Shinbundang Line that connects four existing stations. The northernmost, Sinsa, lies in…

Save this storySave this storySave this storySave this story There is a point in Jean-Christophe Klotz’s documentary “Filmmakers for the Prosecution” when the producer Sandra Schulberg describes emptying out the New York City loft where her mother, Barbara, lived until…

The end of the pandemic in New York has been declared so many times—I have heralded many a false spring myself—and each time with a stumbling, unhappy one-step-forward, one-step-back rhythm, that to declare it over for good feels squishy and…

Andrew Breitbart said, “Politics is downstream from culture.” And yet, strangely, he didn’t go on to become a painter or a playwright or an operatic tenor. He went into politics. I’m sure Breitbart meant it at the time. At some…

Over a fifth-anniversary dinner with my girlfriend recently, conversation turned to a mystery that has driven us both mad for almost the entire duration of our relationship. It is an image of a cartoon character, who appears on a clunky…

Old-fashioned corruption is the best-known method for running a city—works pretty good at the parish level, too. I know whereof I speak. I was born and raised in southern Louisiana, home to arguably the most corrupt politics in America. Mayor…