Innholdsfortegnelse for December 1-14, 2025 i New York Magazine

1 New York’s “Stupid Issue” (November 17–30) explored the rise of American inanity. Lane Brown contended that our current benighted state is owed to increasingly unfettered access to one another (“A Theory of Dumb”), an argument The American Prospect’s Ryan Cooper called “pretty convincing.” On Bluesky, Jamillah Knowles agreed that the phenomenon is real: “I feel I get dumber each day.” Many readers took issue with Brown’s premise and sources. Commenter matthughes2 said, “ ‘Intelligence’ changes with what life and society demand … We may be in an era of people being weird and annoying but I don’t think that means objectively stupidity.” Reliable Indicator said, “I would love to point out the irony of an article about people getting dumber that uses a halfassed research design to prove it.…

DOING KARAOKE is a great way to feel your exact age, something I only recently remembered. It was two days after Halloween, and my 44th birthday party at Lion’s Roar Karaoke House in Williamsburg was already in full swing. Younger attendees sang along with gusto to hits that were popular when they were in their 20s in the 2010s. During that decade, I was too occupied with reproduction and its consequences to pay much attention to the inexorable rise of Ariana Grande. Toward the end of the party, I performed “What’s Up,” by 4 Non Blondes, a song I’ve been karaokeing ever since its opening lines—“Twenty-five years and my life is still / trying to get up that great big hill of hope / for a destination”—were literally true. “Forty-four…

➸ The Year in Culture, as celebrated, assessed, and dissected by the 50 people who shaped film, TV, music, books, theater, art, and other amusing miscellany in 2025. Adam Friedland made The Adam Friedland Show appointment listening. Adam Scott broke our brains on Severance. Amaya “Papaya” Espinal hit reality-TV gold in Fiji. Ariana Madix controlled Love Island USA season seven’s chaos. Ben Ahlers was the new money you could root for on The Gilded Age. Benito Skinner became a voice of a generation. Bess Wohl made everyone and their mother cry with Liberation. Branden Jacobs-Jenkins brought Purpose to Broadway. Brittany Snow made straight women question their sexuality on The Hunting Wives. Cat Cohen popped up everywhere, from a soapy Netflix drama to an art-house Norwegian film. Chase Sui Wonders was a…

Executive production by Ruth Levy; production by Madi Overstreet and Madison Shelpuk (Scott); postproduction by Rachel Crowe; tailoring by Susan Balcunas; style assisting by Grace Providencia Wagner and Lexi Lang; digitech by Will Foerster; photo assisting by Reggie Desilus and Jonas Søndergaard. Owen Cooper: Grooming by Rheanne White using Bumble and bumble at Tracey Mattingly; wardrobe by Bottega Veneta (full look), Bulgari (jewelry). Claire Danes: Hair by Peter Butler at Tracey Mattingly; makeup by Matin at Tracey Mattingly; wardrobe by Ferragamo (suit and shirt), Church’s (shoes), Calvin Klein (socks), Bulgari (jewelry). Lindsay Lohan: Hair by Peter Gray using Oway USA at Home Agency; makeup by Hung Vanngo at the Wall Group; wardrobe by Jason Wu (dress), Bulgari (jewelry); special thanks to Waldorf Astoria New York. Lorde: Hair by Eduardo Mendez…

“WOMEN ARE HUMAN BEINGS,” intones one of the characters in Liberation, Bess Wohl’s new play about Second Wave feminism. “If you don’t believe that, at this point, I don’t know how I can help you.” The audience, gathered for a matinee on Broadway in mid-November, laughed dully in response. The grim joke was that the women onstage were already weary of ceaseless misogyny in 1970. And yet my phone had just been vibrating with texts and news alerts from 2025: about an infamous child-sex trafficker and his chummy emails with the most powerful men in America; about pregnant women dying thanks to a regressive Supreme Court decision; about the president telling a female reporter, “Quiet, piggy!” While I was supposed to marvel at the notion that people were over still…

HUDSON IUORIO Third-grader, Upper East Side Get anything good? I got a Pokémon pack, and I also got Pokémon cards. I got a Charizard and I got a Jolteon VMAX and I got an Incineroar GX. Who do you play with? I’m not really allowed to bring my Pokémon cards to school because they got banned. People traded them and were getting upset because they traded stuff that they didn’t actually want to trade. For example, some of them were like, “I want to trade something,” then they say, “No trade-backs!” and the other person wants the card back. Then they say “no” and they just keep it. THE LOOK BOOK: POKÉ COURT PATRONS What brought you into the store today? I work all throughout the city, and I just…

For more culture coverage and streaming recommendations, see vulture.com. ART 1. See Richard Prince An icon who plays with icons. Gagosian, 555 West 24th Street; through December 20. Prince is one of the best-known artists alive. His photographic appropriation and other strategies of retrofitting preexisting material, famously Marlboro Men, is now so fecund that it is impossible to pin down. That’s a great thing in today’s product-dominated art world. JERRY SALTZ CLASSICAL 2. Hear Chamber Orchestra of Europe The supergroup starts a new cycle. Carnegie Hall, December 9. This murmuration of musicians from many countries, one of the world’s great ensembles, will make its way through all of Brahms’s symphonies and concertos over the next four years. First come the Tragic Overture, the Double Concerto (with violinist Veronika Eberle and…

It was February when measles killed 6-year-old Kayley Fehr and it was April when measles killed 8-year old Daisy Hildebrand and it was May when measles brought the man from the Agency to the health-food store in Seminole, Texas. The man was a 53-year-old highly credentialed, chatty bald former Brooklynite physician given to posting photos of his bare abs; he had once appeared on the cover of a magazine in a pin-striped suit and a shirt unbuttoned to reveal a leather harness over his chest. The cover line read THE GOOD DOCTOR. He did not spend much time in Texas, but he did have a tattoo of Jesus on his stomach, and he did find many of the people he met in Texas awesome. He was one of a handful…

➽ IT’S NOT EVERY DAY that a cutting board becomes the buzz of cooks around the city. As Strategist kitchen and dining writer Emma Wartzman points out, some are standards, like Boos Blocks from John Boos & Co. Others have been, at one time or another, kind of trendy, such as Material Kitchen’s and Fredericks & Mae’s. Now, Wartzman is ready to declare a new “It” model: the Kama-Asa black cutting board (from $33), which she first noticed in chef Musashi Osaki’s online cooking videos. She wasn’t the only person who clocked it; many commenters had inquired about the striking slate-colored piece. Osaki discovered the board, from the Japanese brand Kama-Asa, while working at the restaurant House in Greenpoint and immediately bought his own. “I noticed how nice it was…

CAN A DINER be 86’d in advance? That’s the interpretive riddle at the heart of the Eighty Six, the new tenant at the forever-infamous former Chumley’s at 86 Bedford Street in the West Village. Chumley’s, which operated through Prohibition, is said to be the birthplace of the phrase “getting 86’d,” as in getting tossed out—in the bad old days, the fate of too-drunk patrons through Chumley’s side door, the better not to attract the attention of the police. The Eighty Six has now moved into this haunted, hallowed space, which has played host to a succession of establishments attempting to capitalize on its history. The heavy green door with the peephole behind a metal grille endures, and even its very name recalls its ancestor. But don’t worry about getting kicked…

Merry Christmas, Ted Cooper! The premise is cute: A fumbling weatherman wants to bring some cheer to his high-school crush. But you’ll want to watch it because it’s a sincerely delightful holiday movie. (Hallmark) Christmas at the Catnip Café She (Erin Cahill) inherited her aunt’s upstate New York cat café, and she’s going to sell the whole business and make bank. But wait! What about the handsome veterinarian (Paul Campbell) who co-owns the place? (Hallmark) The Christmas Campaign The romance is between two ad people working on a campaign for Santa’s Pajamas, but the real draw is the boss, played by Vivica A. Fox, and the mother, played by Jackée Harry. (Lifetime) She’s Making a List Christmas-movie season is not complete without Lacey Chabert. This time she’s an inspector for…