Attention audio peeps! You don’t want to miss this conversation with the excellent Ben Calhoun, featuring close listening, hog rectum, all the good stuff: open.spotify.com/episode/3ahC7x…

It felt like Jane Mayer and Susan Glasser and I have been training for years to talk about a Musk-Trump inferno--the vanity, the campaign finance, the history back to the Borgias, the Putinism of it all.

Happy Pride! 🏳️‍🌈 I reviewed The Sexual Evolution by Nathan Lents for The Guardian: theguardian.com/books/2025/jun…

"Ms. Ukeles saw an entire universe of exploitation, both in the labor markets and in our domestic arrangements, that was being ignored at the expense of all the attention paid to subverting the erotic expectations of men." She is so cool: nytimes.com/2025/06/14/nyr…

The “Everyone is Welcome Here” sign that sparked a viral nationwide controversy can no longer be displayed in Idaho schools, according to an Idaho attorney general’s office opinion released late Friday. idahoednews.org/news/attorney-… #idedu #everyoneiswelcomehere

“So many of these new gadgets are straightforwardly presented as salves for the massive ennui that plays bass notes beneath the music of contemporary corporate culture.” newyorker.com/culture/critic…

I spoke w/ Women's Prize winner Yael van der Wouden about her novel The Safekeep. We talked about the bureaucracy of war, the millennial fantasy of home ownership, her experience of hearing she looked like Anne Frank as a kid, and more! Intelligence Squared open.spotify.com/episode/6VzKdx…...

Palace intrigue, queer alliances, war with Scotland, war with France, the Black Death-- the 14th century has it all. For the latest episode of Intelligence Squared I spoke with historian Helen Carr about her new book, The Sceptred Isle: open.spotify.com/episode/2QT2s4…

I wrote about the official voice of the U.S. government, and what it's meant to do to us: motherjones.com/politics/2025/…

Terrific Bloomberg Weekend essay: “The fight for the soul of the South is nothing less than a fight over the future of America itself.”

What a surprise to learn that Astrid Holleeder stepped out of anonymity this week (after ~10 years). When I recorded the radio companion to this New Yorker piece with her in Amsterdam in 2018, she was still in hiding. A most unusual production experience: wnycstudios.org/podcasts/tnyra…

“In Walker’s treatment, sections of man and horse have been cut apart and resoldered together in a tangle of hooves, haunches, bridles and necks, the parts more or less recognizable but the whole an entirely new, unsettled being.” nytimes.com/2025/09/08/art…

The Trump administration has axed nearly two dozen projects addressing health and environmental issues in Southern Black communities: washingtonpost.com/nation/2025/09…

This is such a painstakingly reported, clear-eyed account of the hellish search for accountability after a “preventable death.” lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v47/…

.Indignity has left Twitter for BlueSky but this deserves wide circulation. It's hard to keep up with America: indignity.net/audience-captu…

Cool layout for the The Guardian September paperback roundup, featuring (a condensed version of) my review of What Iranians Want by Arash Azizi آرش عزیزی: theguardian.com/books/ng-inter…

Tonight! I’m looking forward to speaking with poet Raymond Antrobus about his new memoir, The Quiet Ear, at the Kiln Theatre with Intelligence Squared. Come by if you can! kilntheatre.com/whats-on/raymo…