Innehållsförteckning för September 22-October 5, 2025 från New York Magazine

1 For New York’s latest cover story, Allison P. Davis profiled the once and future pop star Lizzo (“Fish Out of Water,” September 8–21) as she prepares for a comeback under the shadow of lawsuits related to her workplace environment. On Jezebel, Audra Heinrichs wrote, “Nowhere in the story does Lizzo take responsibility for the allegations, nor does she express regret for how her behavior might’ve possibly just landed poorly among those who once worked for her. What has she learned over the last year? Well, not to trust people.” Fishy1 concurred: “Nope. This is just crisis management.” Commenter Crookede felt “this profile really beautifully lays out her complexity and the challenge of being a pop star who doesn’t fit any mold. She’s immensely talented and basically became the mascot…

THE SUBJECT is an axle around which a certain kind of mind interminably spins. It turns out that I have more than a few acquaintances who have become AI People, but when I ask them about it, they launch into a theory they have or send me a paper they’ve written, and the abstraction of artificial intelligence layered onto the abstraction of money feels like listening to someone explain the rules of a card game no one wants to play. I am in San Francisco trying to get away from that kind of mind. The kids I spend a little time with speak with disdain of B2B software and with respect for hard problems. They are accustomed to taking off their shoes and placing them in a pile in the…

I’M WEARING THE life-changing pants now, curled up in a chair. Writers can work in their pajamas, but I don’t like to. I stay in them through the late morning, then it’s pants-and-a-little-makeup time. It cues my brain that I am at work. The pants are from Loup, a Brooklyn-based clothing brand with stores in Manhattan and Hudson, where I began working because I wanted extra money, to work retail again, and to be in the world and off my computer. It was winter when I took the walk through Hudson that brought me to them. When I reached the Loup store, I saw the chalkboard outside reading LIFE-CHANGING PANTS. There was also a HELP WANTED sign in the window. I’d been in the depths of unexplained infertility for over…

ON A RECENT FRIDAY NIGHT, as the prime-time evening rush was starting to subside, I dined with Harry Styles and Zoë Kravitz, the are-they-or-aren’t-they couple of the moment. He, Errol Flynn–ish with his new mustache, and she, doe-eyed and sylphlike, were at a table in the back. I was at a window seat up front, but why split hairs? We all wanted to be at I Cavallini. “The little horses,” as the name translates, is the ten-years-later follow-up to the Four Horsemen, the demi-size, sneakily ambitious wine bar that helped uncap natural wine as a New York phenomenon. Chef Nick Curtola’s small plates at the Four Horsemen—“4H,” as it’s called by the cognoscenti—are inventive but approachable, far-reaching and freely borrowing. (Curtola credits California roots and European training for the mix,…

For more culture coverage and streaming recommendations, see vulture.com. THEATER 1. See Oratorio for Living Things Across the universe. Signature Theatre, opening September 30. Physics, cosmology, jazz, and gospel blend with the classical oratorio form in the nonpareil composer Heather Christian’s work of music theater, one of the most sublime pieces to come out of the pandemic and a total knockout when it premiered at Greenwich House in 2022. SARA HOLDREN MOVIES 2. Go to Chantal Akerman: The Long View Inner lives on film. Museum of Modern Art, through October 16. Akerman’s 1975 Jeanne Dielman, 23, Quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles is the greatest movie of all time, per the last Sight and Sound critics poll, and features more potato peeling than any other cinematic masterpiece. Now, the Belgian filmmaker…

“LIKE WATCHING Rome burn,” one news anchor said as Donald Trump’s attack on the media industry entered a new phase. The president has never done well with criticism, constantly going after news organizations and private companies and individuals perceived to be insufficiently supportive or ingratiating. “This is the environment that we’re all operating in, and we’ve known this for a while, where, whether it’s legitimate or not, you have the government as an actor trying to control and shape coverage through a combination of means, one of which is threats,” the news anchor said. But lately those threats feel less empty: The assassination of right-wing activist Charlie Kirk has given the administration further opportunity to use its power to influence the media industry and its output—“consequence culture,” as they are…

DAVID PATERSON Former New York governor, Upper East Side You breakdanced on the runway! It wasn’t my best performance because when I put my hands down to go up on my hands, I slid across the floor and that caused me to come down. So I had to go up a second time, and that was pretty good but it wasn’t what I’m capable of. When would you say was your heyday for breakdancing? I think in college in the late ’70s. And then I won a couple of limbo championships back in the day at amusement parks and that kind of thing. This was like my claim to fame before I went into politics. How low could you go? I could get pretty low. THE LOOK BOOK: REPS ON…

FOR YEARS, ASTOR PLACE was the corner of Starbucks and Starbucks. Two outposts were located a few hundred feet apart, both thriving despite their proximity. By 2024, they were gone, but you’d be forgiven for missing the funeral—you probably didn’t even miss the cold brew. There are now at least ten places to get a nice coffee within five minutes of Astor Place, and none of them is a Starbucks. A few blocks south, one such place to find good coffee is not a coffee shop at all; it’s a J.Crew. Thanks to a partnership between the mall favorite and Jack’s Stir Brew Coffee, the store has its own espresso bar, clad in green ceramic tiles and kitted out with a few stools in case anyone wants to linger. Why…

A House of Dynamite Kathryn Bigelow’s latest is a riveting thriller about different sectors of the national-security apparatus attempting to stop a mysterious missile and the growing menace of nuclear proliferation. No Other Choice Park Chan-wook is back in his deranged-satirist mode with this tale of a dedicated paper-mill employee who loses his job and decides to kill all the people he might have to compete against for his next one. Peter Hujar’s Diary Ben Whishaw and Rebecca Hall give two of their best performances in this loving, atmospheric re-creation of a 1974 interview the photographer gave to Linda Rosenkrantz. Scarlet Perhaps the strangest and most visually delightful of the recent spate of Hamlet adaptations is this spectacular anime fantasy in which an ass-kicking Princess of Denmark vows revenge on…

WHAT’S THAT JANGLE you hear around town? It’s a chaotic cacophony of Labubu figurines, lip glosses, carabiners, water bottles, Pokémon cards, raccoon tails, rabbit feet, dice, tiny Eiffel Towers, Beanie Babies, and, of course, keys, all of them dangling from Prada purses, L.L.Bean backpacks, and Baggu totes. Bag-charm self-expression has hit a peak. Where once we might have wondered what was in our fellow subway riders’ carryalls, now the contents hang out in public view, grinning up at us in the form of emoji plushies and framed photos of boyfriends and K-pop stars. Fashion Week attendees carried designer bags adorned with … miniature designer bags. Elementary-school kids went back to class hauling backpacks heavy with Touchland hand sanitizers in Jibbitzadorned carrying cases made by Crocs and lip balms strapped into…

➸ FOR PARENTS STAVING OFF their children’s incessant pleas for a smartphone, the Tin Can phone ($100)—a deceptively sophisticated landline designed to keep kids social yet screen free—can’t come soon enough. The first two preorders sold out thanks to steady buzz from Jonathan Haidt groupies, and it’ll be December before most kids can get their hands on it. The Tin Can looks like something D. J. Tanner might have had in her bedroom (complete with a twirly cord), but it’s Wi-Fi-enabled and connects to an app; parents can monitor who’s called. There’s an incentive to persuade friend groups to get Tin Cans (it’s free to talk to anyone else who has one), and springing for a “Party Line” ($10 a month) opens the plan to outside calling—cheaper than most landlines.…

SHERRI SHEPHERD BEGAN her career as a stand-up working the Black comedy circuit alongside Jamie Foxx and Chris Tucker. She spent nearly two decades hustling—on stages, in legal offices, taking guest TV spots—before landing the part that would launch her into the mainstream: a recurring role on 30 Rock as the wife of Tracy Morgan’s character. That same year, she pivoted to live TV, joining Joy Behar, Whoopi Goldberg, Elisabeth Hasselbeck, and Barbara Walters on the set of the hit daytime talk show The View. It was a trial by fire for Shepherd. During her tenure, she was openly critiqued for her lack of political knowledge and reproached for her Christian-fundamentalist views on evolution. Her willingness to talk about her personal life freely, however—from her husband’s cheating to her abortions…