I didn’t know that I needed an opera podcast in my life until I heard the trailer for “Aria Code,” a new ten-episode series from the New York classical-music station WQXR and the Metropolitan Opera, and swooned with joy. Three Read More …
One recent afternoon, I found myself spellbound by the brown bears of Alaska’s Katmai National Park, and spent longer than I care to admit watching them fishing and feasting on the sockeye salmon of Brooks Falls. Several bears stood in Read More …
Last week, the Australian musician Nick Cave sent his e-mail subscribers an unusual missive. He made no pressing announcements, nor did he alert his fans about coming tour dates. Named “Issue #6,” the message was part of an ongoing newsletter Read More …
Last week, after Christine Blasey Ford went public with an allegation that Brett Kavanaugh sexually assaulted her at a party in high school, the Yale Daily News published an old photograph that directed scrutiny to the Supreme Court nominee’s college Read More …
Before there was Individual-1, there was, a decade ago, Public Official A—the swoop-coiffed, boisterously ridiculous Illinois governor Rod Blagojevich, who, we recall, had “this thing” that was “fucking golden”—Barack Obama’s former Senate seat—and wasn’t going to just give it up Read More …
In the last couple of years, several icons of the state of Minnesota—think Keillor, Franken, Klobuchar—have got a bit scuffed on the road to glory. Not Dominick Argento, America’s leading composer of lyric opera, who died last week, at ninety-one, Read More …
Fifty years ago this week, the Democrats held their National Convention in Chicago (August 26th to 29th), an assembly torn apart by pro- and antiwar factions in the hall and violent clashes in the street. It was the convention that, Read More …
The New York sessions for Bob Dylan’s 1975 album, “Blood on the Tracks,” have always been ground zero for Dylan’s reputation as a cipher and a curmudgeon in the recording studio, intent on speeding through the proceedings and capturing lightning Read More …
The animator Sara Litzenberger, who is twenty-three, is not yet famous, but she has recently been receiving a lot of attention: her début film, “Undiscovered,” a three-minute animated short, won awards at this year’s SXSW, Clermont-Ferrand, and Aspen film festivals. Read More …
The guidebook said that if we got off the bus at a certain point on the Karakoram Highway, a shepherd would greet us and let us stay in a yurt for a modest fee. The highway was a dirt road Read More …