There will be future applications of “mixed reality,” I’m sure, and I hope they work with funkier material. Personally, I’d rather get clobbered by holographic McKellens than be told not to panic, which just made me miss Douglas Adams. Truly pleasurable interactive theatre requires a touch of panic, or, at least, of raw sensation. In … Read more
“There’s a kind of risk aversion that you tend to associate with liberal politics,” Edward Slingerland, a philosophy professor at the University of British Columbia and Dartmouth, said, of abstaining from alcohol. In 2021, Slingerland published a history of drinking, appropriately titled “Drunk.” The public-health establishment “wants to do everything it can to reduce risk … Read more
For the cover of the February 9, 2026, issue, the artist Till Lauer evokes the recent killings of civilians by ICE agents in Minneapolis, where thousands have gathered in the streets to protest and grieve. “I personally care about the right to protest far more than about the right to bear arms,” Lauer said. “However, … Read more
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The English writer Oliver Burkeman’s “Meditations for Mortals” introduces itself as a kind of handbook on how to cultivate more joy by acknowledging that “you’re never going to sort your life out.” Like his New York Times best-selling “Four Thousand Weeks,” “Meditations” aims to help readers who feel overwhelmed by the self-perpetuating demands of modern … Read more
For this week’s Infinite Scroll column, Brady Brickner-Wood is filling in for Kyle Chayka. What you expected from this past weekend’s winter storm likely depended on where you got your weather news. If you watched the Weather Channel or visited the National Weather Service web page, you’d have learned about the “increasing threat for accumulating … Read more
The second sentence is “Do not think that I am very much impressed by that as a boxing title, but it meant a lot to Cohn.” Even to my teen-age self, this was a weird sentence. The “much” seemed unnecessary, there only to call attention to itself, to the fact that someone was speaking. But … Read more
This past week, after the semi-famous Brooklyn Beckham confirmed, via Instagram, a long-simmering rift with his very famous parents, people urgently wanted to know: What happened at his wedding? The intrigue stemmed from Brooklyn’s contention that his parents, David and Victoria Beckham, the English former football star and Spice Girl, had tried to ruin his … Read more
“A new ‘Game of Thrones’ series!” you might be thinking. “Time to unroll my map of Westeros.” Well, unroll away—but “A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms,” despite its name, won’t require a refresher on the distance from Sunspear to Dragonstone. The six-episode series, which débuted this month on HBO, has a small-scale focus, and its … Read more
In Jimmy Chin and Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi’s Oscar-winning 2018 documentary, “Free Solo,” the world-class rock climber Alex Honnold expresses reservations about being shot by a film crew while he attempts to become the first person ever to scale Yosemite’s El Capitan monolith without ropes or a harness. “The idea of falling off . . . It’s, like, kind … Read more