The power of the people made itself felt in a rewarding way in the past few months, after a Facebook petition was created calling for Betty White to host “Saturday Night Live.” Eventually, more than half a million people signed, and, in a move of great good sense and great good humor, Lorne Michaels, the show’s producer, duly invited White (or, rather, re- invited her—she had been asked several times before). The result was a lot of fun: an eighty-eight-year-old woman, with a sixty-year television career, kicking some energy and professionalism into a show that, while technically not dead, stubbornly refuses to really live. White obeys all the rules of good behavior except when it comes to what she says; you just don’t expect someone with her grandmotherly sparkle to be quite so wicked and dirty.
Denne historien er fra August 19, 2024-utgaven av The New Yorker.
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Denne historien er fra August 19, 2024-utgaven av The New Yorker.
Start din 7-dagers gratis prøveperiode på Magzter GOLD for å få tilgang til tusenvis av utvalgte premiumhistorier og 9000+ magasiner og aviser.
Allerede abonnent? Logg på
Drug of Choice - The natural world contains many billions of potential medications. The question is how to find the ones that work.
AI. is transforming the way medicines are made. Bacteria produce numerous molecules that could become medicines, but most of them aren’t easily identified or synthesized with the technology that exists today. A small percentage of them, however, can be constructed by following instructions in the bacteria’s DNA. Burian helped me search the sequence for genes that looked familiar enough to be understandable but unfamiliar enough to produce novel compounds. We settled on a string of DNA that coded for seven linked amino acids, the same number found in vancomycin. Then Burian introduced me to Robert Boer, a synthetic chemist who would help me conjure our drug candidate.
Screams from a Marriage
‘Beetlejuice Beetlejuice.”
Fly with Me
The children’s books of Katherine Rundell.
The Mystery of Pain
Garth Greenwell’s novel of extreme affliction and ordinary happiness.
The Show Must Go On
What if Ronald Reagan’ Presidency never really ended?
LAST COFFEEHOUSE ON TRAVIS
For a few months, I stayed with my aunt's friend in Midtown, back when she could still afford to live there.
Tales from the New World
The novelist Richard Powers considers our changing earth.
Land of the Flea
What America 1s buying and selling.
The Dark Time
On the Arctic border of Russia and Norway, an espionage war is emerging.
The Post-Moral Age
If conscience is merely a biological artifact, must we give up on goodness?
