New York Magazine December 15-28, 2025

1 New York’s latest issue spotlighted the Culturati 50, a selection of those who most shaped the culture in 2025, and their own favorite entertainments from the past year. Though their lists created a global splash, the most heated comments we received addressed the issue’s three features. First, Kerry Howley reported on the CDC under Robert F. Kennedy Jr. (“ ‘No One Is Coming to Help Us,’ ” December 1–14). Kat Tenbarge of Spitfire News noted, “I don’t think people comprehend the scale of destruction wrought by this administration already, not even close.” Hofstra University law professor Ian Marcus Amelkin concurred that what is happening at the CDC is “chilling, awful, unnecessary, and like so much of this administration, needlessly cruel.” University of Washington political-science professor Scott Lemieux said, “As…

FOR WEEKS, WE’VE BEEN MIRED in a public debate about whether blasting shipwrecked castaways in the Caribbean Sea and eastern Pacific Ocean is a war crime. Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth has overseen more than 20 missile strikes since September that have killed over 80 people; usually eager to flaunt the administration’s “warrior ethos,” he is suddenly hesitant to take responsibility. After a missile attack he had authorized killed 11 alleged smugglers on September 2, Hegseth proclaimed to Fox News that he “watched it live.” The secretary later hedged that he “didn’t stick around” for the whole mission, passing the buck to Admiral Frank “Mitch” Bradley, who commanded the operation and who Hegseth assured reporters “made the correct decision.” At issue was increased scrutiny of footage of the strike, reportedly…

CHANEL HAS STAGED its annual Métiers d’Art show at a landmark French château, an 18th-century schloss in Salzburg, and a historic courthouse in Dakar. But on December 2, Matthieu Blazy, the fashion house’s new artistic director, used a venue that has seen more rats than aristocrats: a subway station on the Lower East Side. The decommissioned Bowery station was given a fresh coat of burnt-orange paint and warmer lighting. Chanel set up a quaint newsstand and vintage turnstiles. Guests (including Tilda Swinton, Christine Baranski, Michael Stipe, and society doyenne Deeda Blair) sat on rows of replica benches painted in matching orange. The models stepped onto the platform, some arriving by train, cosplaying commuters—NYU students, rich widows, corporate killers—weaving up and down, pausing to check for oncoming trains. Where could that…

HONEY’S BISTRO, a fast-casual café just steps away from the LIRR in Glen Head, features many of the telltale signifiers of 2010s design and menu planning. A letter-board menu lines the wall, plastic cups are printed with GOOD VIBES SERVED DAILY, millennial pink is used liberally, and white-chocolate–pistachio matcha lattes are on offer. On a quiet Sunday afternoon, Michelle Eisen, a 42-year-old Starbucks barista turned union leader, settles on a wooden banquette, an empty cup in front of her. “This coffee-shop atmosphere was brought to the States by Howard,” she tells me, referencing Starbucks’ mogul-like chairman emeritus and former CEO Howard Schultz. “He nurtured that, and he built that.” Eisen, who was instrumental in the Starbucks unionization fight that has spread across the country and intensified since November into an…

IN 2021, the Hollywood producer Brian Grazer was on a bike trip in South America with some friends, including media mogul Barry Diller, former Allen & Company president Herbert Allen Jr., and former Activision chief Bobby Kotick. A registered Democrat at the time, Grazer was expressing his frustration with the woke fever gripping the country and was considering holding a salon at his Santa Barbara home to discuss the issue. Allen suggested Grazer get in touch with his son Herb Allen III, who now runs the family’s boutique investment bank, which is known for its billionaire-heavy media-tech confab, held each year in Sun Valley, Idaho. When Grazer spoke to the younger Allen, he said, “You should talk to Bari Weiss.” Weiss had recently arrived in Los Angeles from New York,…

MY GRANDFATHER Sidney Lipsyte, the son of immigrants who became a New York City public-school teacher and administrator, lived from 1904 to 2005, a good run I don’t expect to match. He witnessed, and sometimes experienced, a century of mayhem and invention: human flight, human spaceflight, pandemics, vaccines, economic devastation, Nazi conquest, atomic murder, peace treaties, civil rights, pacemakers, penicillin, the rise and fall of the Soviet Union. I’ll stop before this becomes a Billy Joel song, which is no knock on Long Island’s favorite son, though I do worry we started the fire or, at least, enthusiastically tended it. When my grandfather was 8, he and his brothers listened to distress calls from the Titanic on their homemade crystal-radio set. Sidney was 14 when his father died from the…