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December 6, 2025
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No. 334
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In This Week’s Issue
GIRL, INTERRUPTED

As the pile-on against Olivia Nuzzi reaches a fever pitch, Three Women author Lisa Taddeo asks why we’re so quick to lynch women while the men keep flying free …

CRÈME DE LA KREMLIN

How Putin led the last Soviet generation—raised on a failing empire, emptied of belief, and craving Western comforts—to transform their cynicism into Russia’s ruling creed …

LORD OF THE LINES

Jailed for smuggling 400 tons of cocaine, a Honduran president now walks free after a Trump pardon. Is this repayment from the crypto bros whose island haven he enabled?

ROYAL ROYALTIES

Britain’s business of royal tchotchkes has never been more lucrative. Inside Buckingham Palace’s booming empire of monarch-approved merchandise—Princess Diana and Meghan Markle notwithstanding …

HIGH STEAKS

Raoul’s, the New York mainstay beloved by Chloë Sevigny and Robert De Niro, is turning 50 without dulling its edge—thanks to the fashion kids, artists, and romantics who keep its mythology alive …

MUSE BLUES

In a new book, Sue Roe digs up the tangled love lives behind Picasso’s masterpieces, giving voice to the women who mistook a playboy genius for a soulmate …

PUNCTUATION PANIC!

The humble em dash’s transformation into a “GPT-ism”—an obvious tell for A.I.-generated text—sparks a star-studded grammar debate with Seth Meyers, Lena Dunham, Judd Apatow, and others …

BUT, WAIT, THERE’S MORE!

Trump’s Palm Beach neighbors are up in arms over the Mar-a-Lago flight-path noise … a voyage through the Vietnam of Indochine … Lisette Model’s photos of the jazz greats, from Ella Fitzgerald to Louis Armstrong … Madrid honors Goya’s forgotten mentor … and our essential gifts for the aesthete!

But First …
Issue No. 334

The View from Here Vladimir Putin has spent the past decade re-writing the history of the Soviet collapse in service of his own ends. It worked

By Mikhail Zygar
Read On
Barry Blitt’s Sketchbook
An Affair to Remember

Olivia Nuzzi and the Sport of Kings For the Three Women author, a chance encounter with R.F.K. Jr.’s bird of prey sheds new light on the controversy that launched 1,000 think pieces and journalists to eat their own

By Lisa Taddeo
Read On
Games

The Weekly Waffle

A positively addictive word game to go with your morning coffee
The Crypto Trail

The Curious Case of the Narco-Prez Pardon If you want to smuggle hundreds of tons of drugs into the U.S.—and get pardoned—make sure you’ve got friends in tech places

By Jennifer Gould
PHOTO ILLUSTRATION BY CHOP CHOPPISH SHOP
Read On
Nutty Nimbys

Flying Into a Rage over Trump Noisy air traffic has been diverted from above Mar-a-Lago to other parts of tony Palm Beach. The neighbors are not amused

By David Millward
Read On
Small Talk
“Apologies to the family of the deceased for that mix-up in the requiem music, which was meant to be ‘Stairway to Heaven’ and not ‘Highway to Hell.’”
“Apologies to the family of the deceased for that mix-up in the requiem music, which was meant to be ‘Stairway to Heaven’ and not ‘Highway to Hell.’”
Air Supply

Gifts for the Aesthete

If they won’t dare deck the halls with anything less than small-batch, Venetian blown-glass ornaments, AIR SUPPLY has you covered with presents from Baccarat, Christofle, Menē, and more
Shop
Photo: Henry Clarke/Condé Nast/Getty Images (models)
Royal Follies

They’re Charging Your Card at Buckingham Palace Unknown to most Brits, the royal family runs a handful of official gift shops selling licensed merchandise—just don’t expect them to stock Meghan’s jam

By Jonathan Margolis
Read On
Guest Edit

Mafalda Muñoz and Gonzalo Machado’s Favorite Things

The Madrid-based husband-and-wife interior-design duo get in the holiday spirit with the scent of quince wafting over a table set with silver, and eating Roscón de Reyes from La Duquesita, preferably while wearing Anderson & Sheppard robes
Shop
Photo: Condé Nast/Getty Images (Veruschka holding frame)
Best
assemble Dior Nothing tears families apart post-holiday dinner like a heated game of Monopoly or Uno (or, dammit, even charades!) But puzzles… sleep Olivia von Halle When the New York weather forecast predicts a colder, snowier than usual winter, drastic measures must be taken. Thankfully… read Positively Fourth and Mercer What do Miles Davis, Prince, Meat Loaf, Larry David, Patti Smith, Bruce Springsteen, Ringo Starr… visit Maggie Rudy x Air Mail Newsstand Portland artist Maggie Rudy has a knack for knickknacks. She builds miniature, picturesque worlds… sip Château Mouton Rothschild Château Mouton Rothschild needs no introduction. A Premier Cru Classé from Bordeaux, the wine… pose Fouquet’s x Michael Avedon It’s not Christmas without a Christmas card. This year, why not swap the usual child-crying-on-a-bearded-man’s-lap… assemble Dior Nothing tears families apart post-holiday dinner like a heated game of Monopoly or Uno (or, dammit, even charades!) But puzzles… sleep Olivia von Halle When the New York weather forecast predicts a colder, snowier than usual winter, drastic measures must be taken. Thankfully… read Positively Fourth and Mercer What do Miles Davis, Prince, Meat Loaf, Larry David, Patti Smith, Bruce Springsteen, Ringo Starr… visit Maggie Rudy x Air Mail Newsstand Portland artist Maggie Rudy has a knack for knickknacks. She builds miniature, picturesque worlds… sip Château Mouton Rothschild Château Mouton Rothschild needs no introduction. A Premier Cru Classé from Bordeaux, the wine… pose Fouquet’s x Michael Avedon It’s not Christmas without a Christmas card. This year, why not swap the usual child-crying-on-a-bearded-man’s-lap…
Small Talk

In Defense of the Em Dash Sofia Coppola, Michael Lewis, Monica Lewinsky, and others make their case for the humble punctuation mark amid the great A.I.-chatbot appropriation

By Carolina de Armas
Photo illustration by Chop Choppish Shop
Read On
Books
Elroy Rosenberg On

Hidden Portraits: Six Women Who Shaped Picasso’s Life

by Sue Roe
Read On
Small Talk
The Restaurant Life

The Stalwart of SoHo For the past 50 years, Raoul’s has been a stomping ground for New York luminaries like Chloë Sevigny, Robert De Niro, and Gwyneth Paltrow. Now it’s being discovered by a new generation

By Christine Muhlke
Read On
Highlight
The Adoration of the Shepherds, by Anton Raphael Mengs, 1770.

Spain’s Unsung Hero

Around the middle of the 18th century, Anton Raphael Mengs was the most renowned painter in Europe. Still, you’d be forgiven for not knowing his name. Few artists have fallen as fast, or as hard, from favor. The exhibition “Anton Raphael Mengs (1728–1779),” which just opened at Spain’s national art museum, the Prado in Madrid, brings the artist back into the spotlight. READ ON

Read On
Around the World in Culture
Miami
Art Basel, the most talked-about fair in the world, heads back to Miami Beach this week with 287 exhibitors… Paris
Ahead of next year’s Renault museum opening, the French dealer is auctioning off 100 cars of all ilks… New York
The Alvin Ailey American Dance Company launches its first season under the artistic director Alicia Graf Mack… Theaters
Quentin Tarantino’s two Kill Bill films hit U.K. and U.S. cinemas as a single feature—complete with never-before-seen content… London
Caravaggio’s life-size cupid, Amor Vincit Omnia, goes on view at the Wallace Collection, marking its first appearance in the U.K.… London
Bryan Cranston and Paapa Essiedu star in a West End production of Arthur Miller’s All My Sons, a critique of the American Dream…
Travel

As Seen in Indochine Vietnam’s Hạ Long Bay has long been the stuff of cinematic legend. Now a new hotel makes it more accessible—and luxurious—than ever

By Alexander Lobrano
Read On
Open Book

All That Jazz Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington, Billie Holiday … a new coffee-table book captures the American music scene of the 1950s with never-before-seen photographs by Lisette Model and text by Langston Hughes

15
Louis Armstrong, photographed by Lisette Model on a tour bus at the Newport Jazz Festival, in Rhode Island, 1956.
Ella Fitzgerald at the Newport Jazz Festival, 1956.
Top, the record producer Ollie McLaughlin and other attendees of the Newport Jazz Festival at an after-party in the critic Marshall Stearns’s hotel room, 1956; above, the drummer Art Taylor at the New York Jazz Festival, 1957.
The bassist Percy Heath at the New York Jazz Festival, 1956.
Billie Holiday rehearsing at the home of the musician William Dufty and his wife Maely Bartholomew, New York, 1956.
The trumpeter Dizzy Gillespie at the New York Jazz Festival, 1956.
Top, Armstrong and the singer Velma Middleton at Basin Street East, a nightclub in New York, circa 1954–56; above, the singer Joe Williams at the New York Jazz Festival, 1957.
Three photographers at the Newport Jazz Festival, 1956.
The saxophonist and flautist Bud Shank at the New York Jazz Festival, 1956.
The publicist Harriette Kahrs at the Newport Jazz Festival, 1956.
Top, the musician Josh White Jr. and his father, the singer and guitarist Josh White, at the Music Inn, a venue in Lenox, Massachusetts, 1956; top, Armstrong at Basin Street East, circa 1954–56.
Gillespie at the Music Inn, 1956.
Two attendees of the Newport Jazz Festival, 1956.
The pianist Bud Powell at the New York Jazz Festival, 1957.
Top, Gillespie outside the Music Inn, 1956; above, the pianist and organist Count Basie at the New York Jazz Festival, 1957.
Read On
Marcellus Hall’s Sketchbook
Saturday-night lights.
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In Memoriam

Peter Bogdanovich Milton Esterow Duncan Hannah Jane Larkworthy Douglas McGrath Richard David Story André Leon Talley David Yaffe

Issue No. 334
December 6, 2025
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Issue No. 334
December 6, 2025
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