Different Ways to Keep in Touch with Your Long-Distance Friends

By McKayley Gourley and Kevin Burke

January 15, 2025

More Humor and Cartoons

Grammar tips from a thirty-eighty-year-old with an English degree.
Ten types of neighbors you may encounter in an apartment complex.
Plots of eighties movies had the protagonists been people of color.
Jobs you can add to your résumé as a single person.
Learn to appreciate the small things.
What I imagine strangers think about me when I read a book in public.

McKayley Gourley has been an editor at Reductress since 2022 and has contributed humor to The New Yorker since 2023.

Kevin Burke, a writer and a comedian, began contributing humor to The New Yorker in 2025.

The Lede

On the Ground During L.A.’s Wildfire Emergency

With four fires raging, tens of thousands have evacuated and others are confronting the precarity of where they live.

By Emily Witt

The Weekend Essay

Writing as Transformation

Words and phrases came from nowhere; I rarely had any sense of what they meant or to what context they belonged.

By Louise Glück

Letter from Israel

Netanyahu’s Media Poison Machine

The talk-show host Yinon Magal is at the center of a campaign to protect the Prime Minister and destroy the opposition.

By Ruth Margalit

Critic’s Notebook

Blake Lively, Justin Baldoni, and the Collapse of the Hollywood #MeToo Era

The reportage that thrived in the late twenty-tens cannot break through on today’s volatile Internet, where information is misinformation and victims are offenders.

By Doreen St. Félix

The Lede

An Arson Attack in Puerto Rico

A violent act on New Year’s Day allegedly committed by a tourist highlights rising tensions between the island and the mainland United States.

By Graciela Mochkofsky

A Reporter at Large

Do Russians Really Support the War in Ukraine?

A group of sociologists found that few Russians were steadfast supporters of the war. Most had something more complicated to say.

By Keith Gessen

Books

Does One Emotion Rule All Our Ethical Judgments?

When prehistoric predators abounded, the ability to perceive harm helped our ancestors survive. Some researchers wonder whether it fuels our greatest fights today.

By Elizabeth Kolbert

The Political Scene

Lauren Boebert’s Survival Instincts

The Colorado congresswoman’s inflammatory rhetoric has made her a national symbol of the Trumpist far right. She presents a different image closer to home.

By Peter Hessler

Open Questions

Why Can’t You Just Deal with It?

Often, it’s our most obviously necessary tasks that feel the most impossible.

By Joshua Rothman

Books

Yukio Mishima’s Death Cult

The writer spent his life cultivating beauty—on the page and in the mirror—only to end it with a samurai-style suicide. Both acts spoke to a long-standing obsession.

By Ian Buruma

The Front Row

The Empty Ambition of “The Brutalist”

Brady Corbet’s epic takes on weighty themes, but fails to infuse its characters with the stuff of life.

By Richard Brody

Crossword

The Crossword: Wednesday, January 15, 2025

A beginner-friendly puzzle.

By Caitlin Reid