Culture

Save this storySave this storySave this storySave this story Life in America is deeply anxious. Where are we headed? How bad could it get? Who are we, anyway? What’s particularly scary is that everyone’s scared. Even the people whose candidate…

Save this storySave this storySave this storySave this story Pickles are a dollar each. Sugar-free cough drops go for a nickel. The sub special with three meats and two kinds of cheese is just $5.50. Only the newborn doesn’t have…

Save this storySave this storySave this storySave this story The artifice of musicals and the exaggeration of melodrama derive their importance not as escapes from reality but as illuminations of it. The two genres converge to startling effect in “Emilia…

Save this storySave this storySave this storySave this story The new movie “Conclave,” faithfully adapted from Robert Harris’s 2016 novel, tells the story of a vexed papal election by depicting the Vatican of melodramatic legend: dark corridors, footfalls, sotto-voce conversations;…

Save this storySave this storySave this storySave this storyYou’re reading the Food Scene newsletter, Helen Rosner’s guide to what, where, and how to eat. Sign up to receive it in your in-box. The walls in the dining room at Bridges…

Save this storySave this storySave this storySave this story About midway through “Social Studies,” Lauren Greenfield’s new five-part FX docuseries about teens and their relationship to social media, we see one of the show’s protagonists—an eighteen-year-old University of Arizona freshman…

Save this storySave this storySave this storySave this story Madame Bovary, c’est moi. The phrase, often attributed to Gustave Flaubert, may be better known than any line in his novels. But many scholars consider the remark to be apocryphal. It…

Save this storySave this storySave this storySave this story Hilton AlsStaff writer You’re reading the Goings On newsletter, a guide to what we’re watching, listening to, and doing this week. Sign up to receive it in your in-box. It’s hard…

Dumbarton Oaks, Washington, D.C.’s own rural manor house, opens again for the winter season. Credit: image via Shutterstock For the last few weeks, most people in Washington, D.C. have been feverishly counting down the days until the presidential election. Not…

The fast food chain is in the news as a proxy for “regular” America, but in the global era, it has become all things to all peoples. The late M. Stanton Evans used to say that when he went to…