The Battle of the Plastics
Credit-card companies are battling for affluent young customers with increasingly lavish, one-of-a-kind experiences. How long can it last?
When It Comes to Book Parties, More Is, Apparently, More
If Mark Ronson, Keith McNally, a Real Housewife, and an artist’s wife are anything to go by, it’s not enough to have just one book party anymore
The Shop That Put the Swing in Swinging London
At Granny Takes a Trip, the Chelsea clothing store whose customers included John Lennon, Mick Jagger, and Lou Reed, it was difficult to tell who was a pop star and who wasn’t
Is Sam Altman a Psycho C.E.O.?
Without guilt or guardrails, the co-founder of OpenAI has created a trillion-dollar empire built on appropriation, bootlicking, and slop
Religious Nuts
From salted peanuts to caffeinated wine to CBD-infused tea, churches, monasteries, and convents create some of the world’s finest gourmet victuals
The Last Enlightenment Man
Harvard psychologist Steven Pinker is battling the woke left and the woo-woo right
The Girlbosses Next Door
Whitney Wolfe Herd, of Bumble; Leandra Medine Cohen, of Man Repeller; Audrey Gelman, of the Wing … The female founders are back, baby. Is anyone surprised?
When the Art World Lost Its Mind (and Money)
NFTs once promised to revolutionize creativity and commerce. Four years later, the market has collapsed, fortunes have vanished, and the art scene is still reckoning with what it all meant
Beware Calabrians Speaking Greek
Nestled among the mountains at the tip of Italy’s boot is a constellation of villages that still speak a Greek dialect dating back more than 3,000 years
What Happened to the Godfather of Pop Art?
How the contents of Larry Rivers’s estate and foundation ended up in a second-tier gallery near New Hope, Pennsylvania
War of the Gourmet Grocers
Fighting over everything from chicken salad to trad-wife protein powder, a spate of Manhattan prepared-food stores are vying to take the place of the mother ship, Dean & DeLuca
The Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Warfare
Inside the feud between Harry Potter author J. K. Rowling and her former protégé, Hermione actress Emma Watson
Science Defiance
Top researchers are putting their work—and retirements—on hold to combat Trump’s assault on scientific truth
The Oracle of Oxford
Larry Ellison, who surpassed Elon Musk last week to become the world’s richest man, is transforming the city into the new Silicon Valley
The New Fountain of Youth
Forget red-light therapy and intermittent fasting: a new study finds the secret to staying young is being ageist
Finding Love, the Old-Fashioned Way
From backgammon clubs to cornhole speed dating, Gen Z–ers with app fatigue are looking for their other halves in real life
Death Becomes Them
Now even funerals are a scene for the social climbing and peacocking of the Instagram age
Dude, Where’s My Tote?
From listening to Lana Del Rey to reading Sally Rooney, straight men are making a point of rejecting toxic masculinity and embracing feminine tastes in order to find love. Behold the rise of the “performative male”
Is the Gulf Art Boom a Mirage?
The art market is abuzz over the Middle East—but when autocrats are footing the bill, how long can it last?
What Does Your A.I. Say About You?
There was a time when a person’s bookshelf or record collection betrayed their soul. Today, it is their sidebar of A.I. tabs—be it ChatGPT, Claude, or Grok
A Pop Star’s Best Friend
Travis Kelce and Taylor Swift’s engagement this week has broken the Internet, but her ring—purportedly worth $1 million—is breaking the scale
The Great Waterlily Weigh-Off
From Junior’s cheesecakes to Ted Drewes frozen custards, gardens across the world are competing for how much weight their Victoria waterlilies can hold—and getting creative with their measuring tools
Politicians in Diapers!
“Our nation’s finest leaders … where they belong”: inside the infantile world of Diaper Diplomacy, a video-shorts series taking the Internet by storm
The Good, the Bad, and the Bunny
Puerto Rican rapper Bad Bunny has brought local fans and international stars together for his concert residency, which doubles as one big party
