“Tiger King” is prestige trash: narratively ambitious but self-aware. True crime is far from journalism. (Exotic’s history was more thoroughly investigated in a New York magazine story by Robert Moor.) In the series’ final episode,[…]
Chailkin and Goode are less interested in getting to the truth of the matter than in revelling in their subjects’ chintzy vanity projects: Baskin’s YouTube channel (“Hey, all you cool cats and kittens”), Doc Antle’s[…]
As Goode recently told Rolling Stone, “What fascinated Rebecca and I was the ‘Best in Show’ aspect, where the people are almost more interesting than the exotic animals they’re keeping.” Goode’s choice of inspirational comparison—a[…]
The structure of the modern plague novel, all the way to Stephen King’s “The Stand” and beyond, is a series of variations on “A Journal of the Plague Year” (a story set within the walls[…]
In the long centuries during which the plague ravaged Europe, the quarantined, if they were lucky enough to have books, read them. If not, and if they were well enough, they told stories. In Giovanni[…]
The Talmud is not a book to be read, but a book to do things with – not a book to think about but a book to think with; and beginning to read the Talmud[…]
For the first few decades after the Second World War, per-capita U.S. economic growth averaged between two and three per cent a year. In the nineties, however, it dipped below two per cent. In the[…]
When it comes to people whose lives aren’t going well, American culture is a harsh judge: if you can’t find enough work, if your wages are too low, if you can’t be counted on to[…]
I think there are ultimately four characteristics in candidates that I think drive our perceptions and our decisions: competence (can this person do this job); policies (does this person have clear prescriptions to deal with[…]
This idea of power simply emanating downward still animates apologetics for authoritarianism, but it also leads to excitement about top-down health-care programs that everyone knows will never be enacted by executive fiat. It inspires, too,[…]