This week, it’s all ping pong and Pandora with a discussion of Timothée Chalamet in Marty Supreme and those blue people in Avatar: Fire and Ash. Plus, Michael Schulman joins the panel to debate the age old question: do the Avatar movies have any cultural impact? slate.trib.al/Z88VOUm

Five years ago, I went under general anesthesia for gallbladder surgery, woke up hours later, groggily checked the news on my phone, and went "WHAT." Missed the whole damn insurrection.

This story is wild. Worth every word. www.nytimes.com/2025/12/30/s...

Here are a few New Yorker stories I loved working on this year, starting with an inquiry into the life and work of Charlotte Zwerin, an unsung pioneer of cinema vérité—who just happened to live for four decades in the apartment I live in now, and died in my bedroom. www.newyorker.com/magazine/202...

Tatiana Schlossberg, daughter of Caroline Kennedy, has died at 35. In November, she wrote about receiving a terminal diagnosis following the birth of her daughter. newyorkermag.visitlink.me/hsZC7S

I found this story riveting, not only because Suzy is a relative of mine and I've been hearing about this saga for YEARS. What happens when your widowed dad finds love again—with a would-be Presidential assassin? Wild stuff. www.nytimes.com/2025/12/30/s...

I think it's interesting that the Avatar films don't seem to have much of a life or cultural impact outside the theater but I also think it's extremely weird that such an observation is commonly met with the angriest sorts of responses

This wonderful @michaelschulman.bsky.social piece about puzzles & Sondheim is stuffed with funny, sticky details: www.newyorker.com/magazine/202...

Happy Boxing Day to all the haters and losers.

Gonna be a little bit ~different~ today and pay tribute to the queer icons of Christmas. Starting with fussy, frustrated, child-hating Professor Hinkle from "Frosty the Snowman."

Ah, my annual Christmas ritual of telling my teenage nieces all the famous people I interviewed this year and being met with baffled, unimpressed blank stares.

Speaking of which, there are SO MANY good movies out in theaters this week (that aren't about blue aliens)! Go see "The Testament of Ann Lee" for singing Shakers, "No Other Choice" for late-capitalist mayhem, "Is This Thing On?" for marriage trouble, or "Marty Supreme" for sexy ping pong.

For my last New Yorker piece of the year, I visited the Shaker room at the Met with the director Mona Fastvold, whose film "The Testament of Ann Lee" opens on Christmas Day and is absolutely weird and wonderful. www.newyorker.com/magazine/202...

Pro tip: don't air promos for stories you catch & kill, defeats the purpose

The latest episode of “Who? Weekly” has a breakdown of this weird John Travolta / Riley Keough story that blew my mind. www.nbcnews.com/news/amp/rcn...

Grateful to be on this list, for my story about a woman from Long Island who loves the Rangers and talking shit. Thanks to everyone who read and subscribes! www.newyorker.com/culture/2025...

Can’t wait to find out what’s in store this time around for modern cinema’s greatest adventure hero [googles to jog memory of name] Jake Sully! Played by [googles again] Sam Worthington!

Bowen Yang became a breakout star during his first season as a cast member on “S.N.L.” “You don’t know quite what he’s going to do,” Lorne Michaels said. Revisit a Profile of Yang, from 2024, amid Yang’s announcement that he’s leaving the show. newyorkermag.visitlink.me/2O0qvh

Sorry, "Heated Rivalry," the gayest thing related to professional hockey in 2025 was me going to a Rangers game with Patti LuPone.

The Vanity Fair photographer from the Susie Wiles story. Holy. Shit. www.washingtonpost.com/style/power/...

If you need a laff this week, here’s where to find it.

The Oscars' second century will be on YouTube. I did not see that coming!

Since Stephen Sondheim’s death, in 2021, there have been a flurry of books about his life and his singular influence on musical theatre. A new addition zeroes in on a lesser-known side of the composer: his passion for puzzles and games. newyorkermag.visitlink.me/88XJYg

I hope this lady shows up at his next press conference

Here's my annual list of the top ten performances of the year. Featuring Emma Stone, Bad Bunny, Paul Reubens, Michael B. Jordan, Sarah Snook...and a lil cameo from Satan. www.newyorker.com/culture/2025...

Entranced by the concept of doing an escape room with Stephen Sondheim, Mia Farrow, and Bernadette Peters

For The New Yorker’s Cartoons & Puzzles issue, I wrote about Stephen Sondheim’s lifelong obsession with games and puzzles, and a delightful new book about it called "Matching Minds with Sondheim." This was the most fun I had writing anything all year. www.newyorker.com/magazine/202...

This is…some fucked up shit. www.tmz.com/2025/12/14/r...

Happy 100th, Dick Van Dyke! You dancin' fool! www.youtube.com/watch?v=AAHM...

America has Ella McCay fever!

I stopped by my local bookstore in the West Village last week, two days after American Canto came out. They didn't know what it was, had no copies, and said no customers had asked for it. Huge divide from the amount of space this topic has taken up in media circles.

"Jay Kelly": should have been told from the perspective of the Adam Sandler character, the manager who gives up his life to a movie-star client who never gives anything back.

Yay!

Related: my barber used to be a munchkin in the Broadway production of "Wicked," so whenever my husband or I get a haircut we say we're going to "see the munchkin."

So Nessarose is Governor of Munchkinland, and this guy is Mayor of Munchkin City, in the county of the land of Oz? How much municipal governance do the munchkins require? Do they ever clash, like Cuomo and De Blasio?

FYI this is an immediate block. You’re under no obligation to pay for my or anyone else’s work, but you won’t come onto my feed to complain about us earning a living.

This week, Rose Byrne has won Best Actress from the NY critics, LA critics, and Nat'l Board of Review. Is the Oscar race less in the bag for Jessie Buckley than we thought? Re-upping my piece on Rose and her harrowing performance in "If I Had Legs I'd Kick You." www.newyorker.com/culture/pers...

Chloe Zhao is a fascinating person and filmmaker, and I was rapt while having this long talk with her, which covers "Hamnet," her upbringing in Beijing, her foray into the MCU, and how neurodivergence shapes the way she sees the world. www.newyorker.com/culture/the-...

Lots to enjoy about the “New Yorker at 100” doc on Netflix (blink and you’ll miss me asking Molly Ringwald what her favorite cartoon is), but one takeaway is that John Hersey, author of the journalism classic “Hiroshima,” was a babe.

This...should have been two separate emails.

It feels now like this season's Oscars are, more than anything, an Irish wake for the Warner Bros. that put out "Sinners" and "One Battle After Another"—big, bold, awards-worthy movies that audiences loved seeing in theaters—and then got gobbled up by Netflix.

Lesser of two evils?

This helped me figure out why this heartfelt, gorgeously shot little movie left me cold: "The problem lies in the specific quality of the prose, which, for all its meticulous restraint, is also at unnecessary pains to spell out every last meaning."

There's none finer than @helenshaw.bsky.social. The Times's enormous gain is The New Yorker's enormous loss. Also, everyone who jumped to the conclusion that NYT was replacing critics with TikTok influencers and Thus Dies Criticism should perhaps have taken a beat. www.nytco.com/press/helen-...

Oh, are Marty Supreme reviews out today? Might as well tell you it's my favorite movie of the year!

Between "Overcompensating," "Boots," and "Heated Rivalry," what's with this trend of shows about closeted gay men in hypermasculine spaces, all set in the recent past? It feels regressive—as if it's more titillating to sell abs and repression than something forward-thinking.

Noticing that a lot of people commenting on this seem to have Didn’t-Read-the-Piece-itis. (It’s very good.)

So many memories of watching Stoppard plays in a state of euphoria, but I'll never forget the all-day marathon of "The Coast of Utopia" at Lincoln Center in 2007, which I covered for Talk of the Town. Somehow I ended up eating Chinese at Carol Kane's apartment. RIP. www.newyorker.com/magazine/200...

Happy Thanksgiving, from my family to yours.