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The New Yorker @newyorker.com · 9h

Ted Bundy, Charles Manson, and other infamous figures lived in and around Tacoma in the 60s. Did their psychopathy have a common cause?

Did Lead Poisoning Create a Generation of Serial Killers?

Ted Bundy, Charles Manson, and many other notorious figures lived in and around Tacoma in the sixties. A new book argues that there was something in the water.

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The New Yorker @newyorker.com · 10h

Abridging has always been in vogue. Now, apps like Blinkist take entire books and crunch them down to a series of what are called Blinks—which amount to around 2,000 words. “Is that what books are coming to, a handy social lubricant?” Anthony Lane asks.

Can You Read a Book in a Quarter of an Hour?

Phone apps now offer to boil down entire books into micro-synopses. What they leave out is revealing.

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The New Yorker @newyorker.com · 11h

The case of Alma Mahler-Werfel “dramatizes how opportunity, environment, and other contingencies shape artistic careers.” Alex Ross reassesses the life and work of the most legendary widow of the 20th century.

The Aesthetic Empire of Alma Mahler-Werfel

Notorious for her marriages and affairs, the widow of genius is gaining new attention for her music.

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The New Yorker @newyorker.com · 13h

How an Israeli strike on Qatar, Hamas’s shifting calculus, and Donald Trump’s impatience could change the trajectory of the two-year war in Gaza.

Why Israel and Hamas Might Finally Have a Deal

How an Israeli strike on Qatar, Hamas’ shifting calculus, and Donald Trump’s impatience could change the trajectory of the two-year war.

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The New Yorker @newyorker.com · 13h

“We’ll tell our grandkids that we defeated fascism with six-dollar clickers”: how a group of community activists is tracking ICE’s movements in Los Angeles.

The Volunteers Tracking ICE in Los Angeles

How a small group of activists dubbed the “Peace Patrol” stymie the deployment of federal agents in California.

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The New Yorker @newyorker.com · 13h

How an Israeli strike on Qatar, Hamas’s shifting calculus, and Donald Trump’s impatience could change the trajectory of the two-year war in Gaza.

Why Israel and Hamas Might Finally Have a Deal

How an Israeli strike on Qatar, Hamas’ shifting calculus, and Donald Trump’s impatience could change the trajectory of the two-year war.

www.newyorker.com

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The New Yorker @newyorker.com · 15h

One of the most prolific and notorious rapists in American history may have operated unchecked because of police corruption.

How Police Let One of America’s Most Prolific Predators Get Away

When a prosecutor began chasing an accused serial rapist, she lost her job but unravelled a scandal. Why were the police refusing to investigate Sean Williams?

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The New Yorker @newyorker.com · 15h

The events in New York’s prisons this year have revealed a system so dysfunctional that multiple officers were arrested for murder and thousands of employees stopped reporting for work. Jennifer Gonnerman reports.

A Year of Convulsions in New York’s Prisons

Jennifer Gonnerman reports on how two murders and a strike exposed a system at its breaking point.

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The New Yorker @newyorker.com · 16h

The photographer Nancy Floyd began taking a self-portrait each morning in 1982 and sustained the practice on and off for nearly four decades.

The Photographer Who Set Out to Watch Herself Age

Nancy Floyd began taking a self-portrait each morning in 1982 and sustained the practice on and off for nearly four decades.

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The New Yorker @newyorker.com · 16h

After doctors discovered Beverly Gage’s novel genetic mutation, she became a medical curiosity. “Doctors often blurt out that my situation is ‘fascinating’ before catching themselves,” she writes. “Nobody really wants to be fascinating in quite this way.”

Nobody Has My Condition But Me

Medical researchers find my genetic mutation endlessly fascinating. But being unique isn’t a plus when you’re a patient.

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The New Yorker @newyorker.com · 17h

Movies now relentlessly signpost their meaning and intent. “Artists and audiences sometimes defend this legibility as democratic, a way to reach everyone,” Namwali Serpell writes. “It is, in fact, condescending.”

The New Literalism Plaguing Today’s Biggest Movies

Buzzy films from “Anora” to “The Substance” are undone by a relentless signposting of meaning and intent.

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The New Yorker @newyorker.com · 17h

Sanna Marin, the 30-something Prime Minister of Finland, became the subject of intense media scrutiny when videos of her clubbing went viral. The Finnish press were “smelling blood,” she said. Her new memoir is an effort to set the record straight.

The Prime Minister Who Tried to Have a Life Outside the Office

As the thirtysomething leader of Finland, Sanna Marin pursued an ambitious policy agenda. The press focussed on her nights out and how she paid for breakfast.

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The New Yorker @newyorker.com · 18h

“The Life of a Showgirl” is full of sexual innuendos and dated lingo that makes some Swifties cringe. Is Travis Kelce to blame?

Do We Still Like Taylor Swift When She’s Happy?

The weak lyricism in the Travis Kelce-inspired songs on “The Life of a Showgirl” has led to some of the most virulent and sexist anti-Swift discourse in years.

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The New Yorker @newyorker.com · 18h

“The second you start getting paid like an adult, you’re expected—it doesn’t matter what people say!—to *act* like an adult.” In a new Profile, Keri Russell reflects on her career, which began on “The All New Mickey Mouse Club” when she was 15-years-old.

Keri Russell’s Emotional Transparency Has Anchored Three Decades of TV

But, offscreen, she’s not even sure that she wants to be an actress.

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The New Yorker @newyorker.com · 19h

On his first major headlining tour, the Baton Rouge rapper NBA YoungBoy is the calmest person in the room. “There is something miraculous about his ability to make rap lyrics feel like spiritual testimony,” Kelefa Sanneh writes.

NBA YoungBoy Stands Alone

On his first major headlining tour, the Baton Rouge rapper is the calmest person in the room.

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The New Yorker @newyorker.com · 19h

Incarcerated people have long talked about a “blue wall of silence” in prisons: an unspoken agreement among correction officers to cover up for one another’s abuses. A report filed after the murder of Robert Brooks exemplifies this phenomenon.

A Year of Convulsions in New York’s Prisons

Jennifer Gonnerman reports on how two murders and a strike exposed a system at its breaking point.

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The New Yorker @newyorker.com · 1d

Older technologies have aided and perhaps enfeebled writers. “But with A.I. we’re so thoroughly able to outsource our thinking that it makes us more average, too,” Kyle Chayka writes.

A.I. Is Homogenizing Our Thoughts

Recent studies suggest that tools such as ChatGPT make our brains less active and our writing less original.

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The New Yorker @newyorker.com · 1d

The cover of this week’s issue is “Winds of Change,” by Brian Stauffer. See what’s inside:
nyer.cm/iRqfN8r

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The New Yorker @newyorker.com · 1d

The war in Gaza may be on the verge of ending. Isaac Chotiner talks to an expert on international peace to try to understand what a deal between Israel and Hamas might look like and why it might finally be close to happening.

Why Israel and Hamas Might Finally Have a Deal

How an Israeli strike on Qatar, Hamas’ shifting calculus, and Donald Trump’s impatience could change the trajectory of the two-year war.

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The New Yorker @newyorker.com · 1d

Bari Weiss was announced as the editor-in-chief of CBS News at a moment that feels almost existential for the outlet, whose owners have been widely and credibly accused of kowtowing to Trump, Jon Allsop writes.

What Will Bari Weiss Do to CBS News?

A change in leadership at the network has been seen as part of an effort to appease Donald Trump. But there may be other motivations.

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The New Yorker @newyorker.com · 1d

“Hothead Paisan” remains perhaps the most iconic of all the underground queer comics from the ’90s. Beloved by fans for its mix of old-timey cartoon violence with the struggles of queer existence, it gives expression to lesbian rage, Jo Livingstone writes.

The Violent, Hilarious Return of “Hothead Paisan”

Diane DiMassa’s “homicidal lesbian terrorist” was a star of underground comics in the nineties, but her “rage therapy” has lost none of its edge.

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The New Yorker @newyorker.com · 1d

Gustavo Dudamel, who officially begins his tenure as the New York Philharmonic’s music director next season but is already effectively in charge, has never been a brazenly political artist, yet politics has a way of catching up to him, Alex Ross writes.

A Season of Rage at the Philharmonic and the Met

Gustavo Dudamel conducts John Corigliano’s blistering First Symphony, and Chuck Schumer faces a hostile crowd at the opening night of “Kavalier & Clay,” Alex Ross writes.

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The New Yorker @newyorker.com · 1d

Baseball is America’s pastime and football America’s sport, but rodeo may as well be America itself: raw courage along with pure idiocy, a never-ending tug of war between myth and reality, Casey Cep writes.

The Guts and Glory of “Indian Rodeo”

For more than a decade, Jeremiah Murphy has been trying to capture the beauty of a deeply American sport.

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The New Yorker @newyorker.com · 1d

Keri Russell’s emotional transparency has anchored three decades of television. But, offscreen, she’s not even sure that she wants to be an actress. Read Emily Nussbaum’s Profile of the star.

Keri Russell’s Emotional Transparency Has Anchored Three Decades of TV

But, offscreen, she’s not even sure that she wants to be an actress.

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The New Yorker @newyorker.com · 1d

A cartoon by Amy Hwang. #NewYorkerCartoons

See more from this week’s issue: nyer.cm/109KyIV

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