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
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A Coder Considers the Waning Days of the Craft
Coding has always felt to me like an endlessly deep and rich domain. Now I find myself wanting to write a eulogy for it.
How Will A.I. Learn Next?
As chatbots threaten their own best sources of data, they will have to find new kinds of knowledge.
The Crimes Behind the Seafood You Eat
China has invested heavily in an armada of far-flung fishing vessels, in part to extend its global influence. This maritime expansion has come at grave human cost.
Can Happiness Be Taught?
Bolstered by Oprah, a Harvard Business School professor thinks you should run your inner self like a company.
Life After “Calvin and Hobbes”
Bill Watterson’s return to print, after nearly three decades, comes in the form of a fable called “The Mysteries,” which shares with his famous comic strip a sense of enchantment.
The New Yorker on Books
What’s the Point of Reading Writing by Humans?
Maybe one day journalism could be replaced with an immense surveillance state with a GPT-4 plug-in. Why would we want that?
The Best Books of 2022 So Far
Reviews of the year’s notable new fiction, poetry, and nonfiction.
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 Music
The Secret Sound of Stax
The rediscovery of demos performed by the songwriters of the legendary Memphis recording studio reveals a hidden history of soul.
A Unified Field Theory of Bob Dylan
He’s in his eighties. How does he keep it fresh?
The New Yorker on Politics
Elon Musk’s Shadow Rule
How the U.S. government came to rely on the tech billionaire—and is now struggling to rein him in.
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 Russia
Why John Mearsheimer Blames the U.S. for the Crisis in Ukraine
For years, the political scientist has claimed that Putin’s aggression toward Ukraine is caused by Western intervention. Have recent events changed his mind?
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 Lonely Work of Moderating Hacker News
Can a human touch make Silicon Valley’s biggest discussion forum a more thoughtful place?
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
How Much More Netflix Can the World Absorb?
Bela Bajaria, who oversees the streaming giant’s hyper-aggressive approach to TV-making, says success is about “recognizing that people like having more.”
After “Barbie,” Mattel Is Raiding Its Entire Toybox
In an era when “pre-awareness” rules Hollywood, the company is ginning up plots for everything from Hot Wheels to UNO.
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.
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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.
How the Internet Turned Us Into Content Machines
Two new books examine how social media traps users in a brutal race to the bottom.
«According to Smith, the Internet actually limits attention, in the sense of a deep aesthetic experience that changes the person who is engaging.»
A Guide to Getting Rid of Almost Everything
Once you’ve thanked and said goodbye to the items that do not spark joy, what can you do with them?
ChatGPT Is a Blurry JPEG of the Web
OpenAI’s chatbot offers paraphrases, whereas Google offers quotes. Which do we prefer?
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