Beautiful World, Where Are You
Sally Rooney's books mix moderately annoying Marxism with moderately depressing sex and produce results much better than you'd expect.
Reviews
The Best of Cold War Culture
Books, films, and more related to the dissolution of the Soviet Union
Loki
Even the most powerful cosmic demigod can be foiled by the even-more-powerful machinations of bureaucracy.
The Industrial Revolutions
The new podcast charts the changes to society wrought by mechanization, mass production, and scientific advancement.
The Chosen
Christian media has a track record of creating hopelessly bad productions, but Dallas Jenkins' TV series is a cut above.
The Family Firm
Context, tradeoffs, and preferences matter—both in parenting and outside of it.
The Sims 4: Cottage Living
You can finally set up a farm with crops and animals such as cows, llamas, and chickens—heedless of zoning rules!
The Innocence Files
Netflix's limited series documents how bad forensics, faulty witness testimony, and misconduct by police and prosecutors let us down.
We Are Satellites
Sci-fi novelist Sarah Pinsker's new book deals with the ways technology shapes how we conceive of the inner self.
Project Hail Mary
In the new sci-fi novel, humanity manages to save itself not with social revolution but through reason, technology, and innovation.
Pandemic Legacy
The board game lets gamers indulge in a little cooperative epidemiological roleplay.
Summer of Soul (…Or, When the Revolution Could Not Be Televised)
Unearthed relics tell the story of the long-forgotten Harlem Cultural Festival, which featured the likes of Nina Simone, B.B. King, and Stevie Wonder.
Exit Scam
A new podcast gives an autopsy of how a shadowy and charismatic crypto enthusiast was able to lure in so many people.
Undoing Drugs
Harm reduction invites a radical reconsideration of the way the government deals with politically disfavored intoxicants.
Bo Burnham: Inside
The Netflix comedy special deals with the loneliness brought on by the pandemic.
In the Heights
The movie tells the story of an immigrant community coming together to forge its own future through commerce.
COVID Diaries NYC
The HBO documentary provides plenty of examples of people conflating moral and medical judgments.
Fugitive Telemetry
The book's cyborg-protagonist exhibits a Holmesian disdain for the fallibility and frailty of the human investigators with whom it's forced to collaborate.
Trots and Bonnie
Shary Flenniken portrayed her comic strip characters "with a complete lack of adult-world moralizing or editorial restraint."
Falcon and the Winter Soldier
Dull platitudes about diversity from the Marvel Cinematic Universe
Philly D.A.
For progressive Philadelphia District Attorney Larry Krasner, getting elected was the easy part.
Celebration of Life for Margo St. James
St. James fought for sex workers at a time when the mainstream U.S. feminist movement was hostile to them and leftist organizers portrayed them as victims.
Autopsy of a Crime Lab
The book argues that judges should take their responsibility as gatekeepers of scientific and technical evidence more seriously.
The Things They Fancied
For a zine about "the sick and twisted hobbies of rich people throughout history," little time is spent actually indicting the aristocracy.
Rose Island
The new film never wavers in its appreciation for these seasteading heroes as they piss off all the right people in pursuit of their slice of utopia.
Tacky's Revolt
Historian Vincent Brown's new book examines the 18th-century slave insurrection, arguing it was really four different wars at once.
One Night in Miami
The movie depicts the fictionalized gathering of Cassius Clay, Malcolm X, Jim Brown, and Sam Cooke, who spar over what each is doing to advance civil rights.
WandaVision
The show perfectly encapsulates the feelings of grief, confusion, and isolation born of the pandemic.
In & Of Itself
Derek DelGaudio's In & Of Itself is not merely a magic show or a one-man play.
Kingdom of Silence
The new documentary traces the evolution of journalist Jamal Khashoggi's attitude toward the Saudi regime.
Want Me
In her new memoir, journalist Tracy Clark-Flory weaves in a quarter-century of cultural advice, warnings, and gripes about the sex lives of millennials.
The Third Temptation
To Austin Rogers, the trio of temptations presented to Jesus in the Gospel of Matthew has key political implications.
Historical Dictionary of Science Fiction
For sci fi fans who enjoy getting lost in internet rabbit holes
The Expanse
People are people and politics is politics, no matter how far you get from planet Earth.
Tomorrow, the World
As France fell to Nazi Germany, America's elites glanced nervously eastward and began to envision the U.S. as the new defender of global order.
Let Me Tell You What I Mean
Didion reminds us that while youth culture and political leaders may change, our underlying drives and delusions seldom do.
40 Years a Prisoner
The new HBO documentary looks at what happened before, during, and after the 1978 MOVE shootout in Philadelphia.
Townscaper
A new type of city-building game which will make you feel like you've been administered a digital Valium
History of Swear Words
The most interesting aspect of the series is how it unintentionally reveals our conflicted relationship with profanity.
