Alex Barron

Until recently, Chinese citizens could only speak privately about political taboos, like the detention of Uighurs; suddenly, an app offered a chance to talk out loud and honestly.

Paul Elie considers the influence of the President’s faith on his policy, and how Biden might bring “moral authority” to a Church damaged by decades of abuse scandals.

A programmer’s epiphany led to an innovation in game design that is still in use. Supposedly, he was so drunk that he couldn’t remember how it worked. We explore the origin of the myth.

A game designer explains how the forces behind QAnon have used the tools of alternate-reality games, creating a highly immersive fiction that they claim is true.

Dhruv Kullar, Anna Weiner, Simon Parkin, and Kevin Young reflect on the events of 2020.

The New Yorker staff writer reads a poem written for the holiday season.

The director of “Twelve Years a Slave” makes a series of films that draw upon his own history, in West Indian London.

The musician, who released a new album over the summer, describes how the coronavirus pandemic changed his creative process.

The novelist Donald Antrim on the power of music.

A New Yorker music critic on listening to classic field recordings while stuck in quarantine.

For a generation, Georgia has been a Republican stronghold. What changed?

Musicians Yo-Yo Ma and Emanuel Ax explain how familiar music has taken on a new tone during the pandemic.

The two comedians talk with the editor Susan Morrison at this year’s New Yorker Festival.

The writer and director talks theatre, rap, and film with Vinson Cunningham.

Many members of Phil Nordstrom’s evangelical church in Knoxville support the President, but he doesn’t. The pastor struggles over the extent to which he should express his views.

At home with a newborn, the writer and voracious cultural critic recommends a book, a record, and a reality show.

The cartoonist’s political awakening inspired his new show on Hulu. “Making people laugh and then punching them in the face with a serious issue,” he says, “is the way to work.”

During the Civil War, some men in Maryland’s Talbot County fought on the side of slavery. Now a small town struggles with the statue that honors them, and with the meaning of history.

In the Pulitzer Prize-winning historian’s new book, she asserts that racism in the United States is best understood as a caste system, not unlike the one that dominated in India. 

The lawyer and the New Yorker staff writer discusses his new book, which examines the Mueller investigation and the impeachment of Donald Trump.