The Best of The New Yorker
20+ most popular The New Yorker articles, as voted by our community.
Unparalleled reporting and commentary on politics and culture, plus humor and cartoons, fiction and poetry. Get our Daily newsletter: http://nyer.cm/gtI6pVM
Paywall possible
Trending
These are currently making the rounds on Refind.
How Should We Think About Our Different Styles of Thinking?
Some people say their thought takes place in images, some in words. But our mental processes are more mysterious than we realize.
The Year in Apps I Gave Up On
In 2022, the entire Internet began to feel something like a dying mall populated only by stores we don’t want to visit.
«me as an exercise solution, by encouraging me to go outside and run.»
A Philosophy Professor’s Final Class
This past spring, Richard Bernstein investigated the questions he’d been asking his whole career—about right, wrong, and what we owe to one another—one last time.
The World-Changing Race to Develop the Quantum Computer
Such a device could help address climate change and food scarcity, or break the Internet. Will the U.S. or China get there first?
What Monks Can Teach Us About Paying Attention
Lessons from a centuries-long war against distraction.
The New Yorker on Fiction
The Case Against the Trauma Plot
Fiction writers love it. Filmmakers can’t resist it. But does this trope deepen characters, or flatten them into a set of symptoms?
How William Gibson Keeps His Science Fiction Real
Midway through his career, the inventor of “cyberspace” turned his attention to a strange new world: the present.
The New Yorker on Food
Don’t Eat Before Reading This
Anthony Bourdain’s 1999 memoir about working in Manhattan restaurants. “Gastronomy is the science of pain. It was the unsavory side of professional cooking that attracted me to it in the first place.”
Anthony Bourdain and the Power of Telling the Truth
In his final years, Bourdain attained a new sort of celebrity as an activist, a revered elder statesman, and an overt and uncompromising figure of moral authority.
The New Yorker on Justice
How An Élite University Research Center Concealed Its Relationship with Jeffrey Epstein
New documents show that the M.I.T. Media Lab was aware of Epstein’s status as a convicted sex offender, and that Epstein directed contributions to the lab far exceeding the amounts M.I.T. has publicly…
Judith Butler Wants Us to Reshape Our Rage
The celebrity academic on the possibilities of nonviolence, the rise of the anti-“gender ideology” movement, and the militant potential of mourning.
The New Yorker on Politics
The Weakness of the Despot
An expert on Stalin discusses Putin, Russia, and the West.
American Democracy Isn’t Dead Yet, but It’s Getting There
A country that cannot even agree to investigate an assault on its Capitol is in big trouble, indeed.
«When Joe Biden was a Presidential candidate, he carried around a wonkish book of international comparative politics by two Harvard professors, “How Democracies Die,”»
The New Yorker on Race
The Genius of Toni Morrison’s Only Short Story
In the extraordinary “Recitatif,” Morrison withholds crucial details of racial identity, making the reader the subject of her experiment.
The Fight to Redefine Racism
In “How to Be an Antiracist,” Ibram X. Kendi argues that we should think of “racist” not as a pejorative but as a simple, widely encompassing term of description.
The New Yorker on Science
The Science of Mind Reading
Researchers are pursuing age-old questions about the nature of thoughts—and learning how to read them.
The Contrarian Coronavirus Theory That Informed the Trump Administration
Richard Epstein, a professor at N.Y.U. School of Law, discusses two articles he wrote, on the Hoover Institution Web site, entitled “Coronavirus Perspective” and “Coronavirus Overreaction,” and his…
The New Yorker on Silicon Valley
Silicon Valley Has an Empathy Vacuum
Silicon Valley fails to take into account the human consequences of its technological wizardry.
The New Yorker on Trump
Doomsday Prep for the Super-Rich
Some of the wealthiest people in America—in Silicon Valley, New York, and beyond—are getting ready for the crackup of civilization.
Donald Trump’s Ghostwriter Tells All
In “The Art of the Deal,” Tony Schwartz helped create the myth that Trump is a charming business genius. Now he calls him unfit to lead.
The New Yorker on TV
Werner Herzog Has Never Liked Introspection
A conversation with the filmmaker about the place of literature, the toll of war, and the conviction that his writing will outlast his movies.
The Best Movies of 2022
There was something new and extraordinary in the air this year, and it had to do with the intersection of history and memory.
The New Yorker on World
An American Tragedy
The electorate has, in its plurality, decided to live in Trump’s world of vanity, hate, arrogance, untruth, and recklessness.
Christopher Steele, the Man Behind the Trump Dossier
How the ex-spy tried to warn the world about Trump’s ties to Russia.
Popular
These are some all-time favorites with Refind users.
Why Facts Don’t Change Our Minds
New discoveries about the human mind show the limitations of reason.
We Know Less About Social Media Than We Think
There’s a general sense that social media is harmful—and that may be right. But studies offer surprisingly few easy answers.
The Surreal Case of a C.I.A. Hacker’s Revenge
A hot-headed coder is accused of exposing the agency’s hacking arsenal. Did he betray his country because he was pissed off at his colleagues?
The Man Who Thought Too Fast
Frank Ramsey—a philosopher, economist, and mathematician—was one of the greatest minds of the last century. Have we caught up with him yet?
The Rise and Fall of Getting Things Done
How personal productivity transformed work—and failed to.
«Productivity, we must recognize, can never be entirely personal. It must be connected to a system that we can study, analyze, and improve.»
What is Refind?
Every day Refind picks 5 links from around the web that make you smarter, tailored to your interests. is one of more than 10k sources we monitor.
How does Refind curate?
It’s a mix of human and algorithmic curation, following a number of steps:
- We monitor 10k+ sources and 1k+ thought leaders on hundreds of topics—publications, blogs, news sites, newsletters, Substack, Medium, Twitter, etc.
- In addition, our users save links from around the web using our Save buttons and our extensions.
- Our algorithm processes 100k+ new links every day and uses external signals to find the most relevant ones, focusing on timeless pieces.
- Our community of active users gets 5 links every day, tailored to their interests. They provide feedback via implicit and explicit signals: open, read, listen, share, add to reading list, save to «Made me smarter», «More/less like this», etc.
- Our algorithm uses these internal signals to refine the selection.
- In addition, we have expert curators who manually curate niche topics.
The result: lists of the best and most useful articles on hundreds of topics.
How does Refind detect «timeless» pieces?
We focus on pieces with long shelf-lives—not news. We determine «timelessness» via a number of metrics, for example, the consumption pattern of links over time.
How many sources does Refind monitor?
We monitor 10k+ content sources on hundreds of topics—publications, blogs, news sites, newsletters, Substack, Medium, Twitter, etc.
Can I submit a link?
Indirectly, by using Refind and saving links from outside (e.g., via our extensions).
How can I report a problem?
When you’re logged-in, you can flag any link via the «More» (...) menu. You can also report problems via email to hello@refind.com
Who uses Refind?
100k+ smart people start their day with Refind. To learn something new. To get inspired. To move forward. Our apps have a 4.9/5 rating.
Is Refind free?
Yes, it’s free!
How can I sign up?
Head over to our homepage and sign up by email or with your Twitter or Google account.