When Olson was at Stanford, he learned from a mentor who had honed a new method for developing drugs: function-oriented synthesis. Within a given molecule, specific groups of atoms could be catalogued according to their individual effects on the body. If you determined which group did what, then you could potentially synthesize a compound that … Read more
Enter Eva Stratt (Sandra Hüller), a government official with a barbed half smile and a will of iron, who drags Grace back to the world of top-flight science, which he left behind years before, after flaming out of academia. Stratt is the head of Project Hail Mary, a global rescue effort to stop the star-eaters … Read more
Elizabeth Cady Stanton believed that she was a person of “superior intelligence and courage.” This fuelled her radical politics—and her eventual descent into bigotry.
Still, the most remarkable performance at the Cherry Lane is by Peter Friedman, who plays the kind of father you rarely see in art: a good one. It’s a hard sort of acting to describe, a spectacle of humility and self-awareness, unshowy and confident. A businessman with a genial, chatty energy, Mae’s father, facing mortality, … Read more
new video loaded: A New Oscar for Best Casting This year, there’s a new category at the Oscars: the Academy Award for best achievement in casting. Our reporter Esther Zuckerman spoke with all five nominees to find out what makes good casting. By Esther Zuckerman, Léo Hamelin, Laura Salaberry and Edward Vega March 12, 2026
The crime novelist Patricia Cornwell has written more than forty books, which have altogether sold more than a hundred and twenty million copies. (This week, a long-awaited adaptation of her “Scarpetta” series, which centers on a forensic pathologist, premières on Amazon, with Nicole Kidman in the title role.) How does she do it? “I learned … Read more
On TikTok, the war against Iran began with a series of videos from influencer types in Dubai, Doha, and elsewhere in the Middle East. They sat on restaurant patios or on hotel-room balconies and pointed their phone cameras skyward to document missiles flying through the air of their respective cities, then disappearing into puffs of … Read more
Wardle had tried cryptic crosswords when he was younger, but found them to be impenetrable. “I didn’t know how to begin,” he told me. The rules could seem arcane, almost impossible to deduce. A clue containing the word “radio” could signal that “am” or “fm” belongs somewhere in the answer; “book” could imply “ot” or … Read more
Best picture is the only Oscar category decided by preferential ballot. Our reporter Marc Tracy explains how that works.
