CATEGORIES

Aligning profit with planet

Regenerative technologies could help forge a path forward

Ideas for change

WEF Young Global Leaders share their hopes for a better future

OUR BURNING WORLD

L.A.'s devastating wildfires arrived against the backdrop of an ominous milestone for the planet

With the fall of the Assad regime, Syrians ascend

FOR 54 YEARS, THE ASSAD FAMily ruled Syria, relying on the ruthlessness of internal security forces that imprisoned and killed more than 100,000 people, and turned peaceful 2011 protests of the Arab Spring into a bloody civil war.

Bird flu could be the next big health risk. Where's the vaccine?

NOW THAT THE WORLD HAS ADJUSTED TO LIVING WITH COVID-19, a new infectious disease threat is looming—this time from wild birds. Highly pathogenic avian influenza, or H5N1 bird flu, is spreading among dairy cattle that provide our milk and starting to cause serious disease in people. An elderly man with underlying health conditions became the first to develop severe disease in the U.S. and died in early January, and a 13-year-old girl with asthma in Canada became so sick with H5N1 in late 2024 that she had to be put on a ventilator.

IN AND OUT AND BACK AGAIN

The hit mystery series Severance ups the stakes of its workplace thriller in a new season following a long hiatus

The person behind the pain

IT'S A STRANGE SENSATION, TO END up loving a movie that makes you feel physically uncomfortable for nearly its whole runtime. In Hard Truths, from veteran filmmaker Mike Leigh, Mari-anne Jean-Baptiste plays a woman at war with the world, and herself. She practically vibrates with belligerence: she can't go to the grocery store without having a run-in with the cashier; her husband mostly avoids her; her grown son spends his time locked in his room—his only relief is to leave the house for long walks to escape his mother's angry force field. Why would you care about this woman's story? For much of the film you may be yearning to get away from her. I was.

Meta ends fact-checks, sparking concern about misinformation

META SAID ON JAN. 7 IT WOULD abandon its fact-checking program in favor of a crowdsourced model that emphasizes \"free expression.\"

THE COMMITTED

Some Long COVID patients are being pressured into psychiatric wards

JIMMY CARTER 1924-2024: "To be true to ourselves, we must be true to others.'

AFTER A PRESIDENCY BESET BY CRISIS, A SINGULAR LEADER BECAME AN ICON OF SERVICE

TV SHOWS

An artistic triumph. A record-breaking 18 Emmy wins. An all-time viewership high for FX.

MOVIES

If you read only the synopsis of Babygirl before seeing it, you might imagine it's an erotic age-gap thriller about the workplace power dynamic between men and women.

BOOKS

Percival Everett's reimagining of Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, which won a National Book Award, is a sweeping story centering on Jim, the enslaved sidekick in Mark Twain's classic adventure tale.

ALBUMS

Singer Beth Gibbons hasn't released much music in the 30 years since her iconic band Portishead stormed out of the gate with seminal trip-hop record Dummy. Nor has she spoken to the press much, gaining a reputation for intense privacy.

PODCASTS

The most engrossing podcast Dan Taberski has produced since Missing Richard Simmons, Hysterical investigates a mysterious illness that spread among high school girls in Le Roy, N.Y., beginning in 2011, in what is believed to be the largest case of mass hysteria since the Salem witch trials.

Elton JOHN

Elton John has no address. Visitors to his home are given three names: the name of a house, the name of a hill, and the name of a town, which is near Windsor, as in Windsor Castle, where King Charles III lives.

Caitlin CLARK

A Fever coach has tasked me with standing under the basket to retrieve her misses. But as Clark, the two-time college national player of the year for the University of Iowa, reigning WNBA Rookie of the Year from the Indiana Fever, and emergent American sports icon, runs all over the court to launch long-range bombs, I barely have to move. Swish, swish, swish. She hits 14 shots in a row. A dozen in a row. Eleven in a row. Nine in a row. Another nine.

Lisa SU

It's the day after the U.S. presidential election, and like much of the nation she was awake until the early hours, transfixed as the results came in, only tearing herself away once it became clear that Donald Trump had won.

Donald TRUMP-THE CHOICE

A once and future President whose influence dominated this year

Mental Health Levels Up

2024's progress hints at things to come

An Uphill Battle

It was a complicated year for climate action, with glimmers of hope amid halting progress

Going All In

Tech companies raced ahead with AI, driving markets and stirring regulators

Wild Times

From pygmy hippo Moo Deng to Pesto the penguin, cute creatures did more than just take over the internet in 2024

The End Of an Era

Last year's Person of the Year, Taylor Swift, closes out her record-smashing tour

A timely thriller for a mad, mad world

A’70s-style paranoid thriller grounded in the partisan polarization of today

Freshwater reserves

A troubling dip

An exuberant ode to human possibility

VERY RARELY DOES THE RIGHT MOVIE ARRIVE AT precisely the right time, at a moment when compassion is in short supply and the collective human imagination has come to feel shrunken and desiccated.

Broadcasting a crisis for the world to see

ON SEPT. 5, 1972, A 32-YEAR-OLD PRODUCER NAMED Geoffrey S. Mason was working in a control room for ABC Sports in Munich while 12 hostages, including several members of the Israeli Olympic delegation, were being held in a building nearby.

The Power of the Peer

WITH MENTAL-HEALTH CARE IN SHORT SUPPLY, CAN REGULAR PEOPLE FILL THE GAP?

QUEERING THE STORY

Luca Guadagnino directs Daniel Craig in an adaptation of William S. Burroughs' 1985 novella Queer