The Best Podcasts of 2022 So Far

Much ink has been spilled—including in this very magazine—about the proliferation of podcasts. Spotify, Amazon, Apple, and smaller podcasting platforms seem to be in an arms race to produce new shows, even as the monetization model for podcasts (the vast majority of which we’ve all been enjoying for free for over a decade now) remains hazy. As we are learning from the rise and…

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The Band’s Robbie Robertson Dies at 80

Robbie Robertson, The Band’s lead guitarist and songwriter who in such classics as “The Weight,” “Up on Cripple Creek” and “The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down” mined and helped reshape American music, has died at 80.

Robertson died surrounded by family, a statement from his manager said.

From their years as Bob Dylan’s masterful backing group to their own s…

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There’s Something Sad About Barbenheimer

In anticipation of the movie event of summer 2023 known as Barbenheimer, the best and wittiest unpaid advertising Universal and Warner Bros. Pictures could have hoped for wasn’t an Instagram post of a grinning Tom Cruise, along with Mission: Impossible 7 director Christopher McQuarrie, brandishing tickets for Oppenheimer and Barbie. It was a recent tweet from television …

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What to Know About ‘Star Wars- Ahsoka’

The Star Wars universe is expanding once again. After making her live-action debut in The Mandalorian, Ahsoka Tano now has her very own spinoff series.

Star Wars: Ahsoka is set to drop its first two episodes on Disney+ at 9 pm E.T. on Tuesday, August 22, with Rosario Dawson—who first appeared as Tano in The Mandalorian season 2—reprising her role a…

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Ariana Grande’s New Single -Yes And–

Ariana Grande uses her music to bookmark the major moments in her life—the good, the bad, and the ugly. Sweetener, released in 2018, was her first album after the 2017 terrorist attack at her concert in Manchester, England, killed 22 people. On it, she sang about working through the trauma on “No Tears Left to Cry” and honored the victims of the attack on “Get Well Soon.” The…

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What to Know About Temu and Its Super Bowl Ads

A shopping app splurged on a repeat ad on Super Bowl Sunday, and it wasn’t a household name like Amazon. It was Temu, a ecommerce app that is connected to Chinese company Pinduoduo. The app, although only four-months old, has recently been one of the most downloaded free apps in the U.S. on Apple’s App Store and Google Play.

The 30-second commercial, which played in tw…

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What the Debate Over Cleopatra’s ‘Race’ Gets Wrong

The monumental legacy of Cleopatra, Queen of the Ptolemaic Kingdom of Egypt, is frequently eclipsed by reductive contemporary discussions over her identity. She has been variously claimed as Macedonian, Greek, Egyptian, and African.

Debates over Cleopatra’s “race” were reactivated after Netflix released a trailer for its four-part docudrama Queen Cleopatra last w…

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The True Story Behind American Nightmare

Warning: This post contains spoilers for American Nightmare.

Denise Huskins says that when she was released on March 25, 2015, by one of the men who had kidnapped her two days earlier, the last thing she was thinking about was ensuring everything she had been through sounded believable. But almost immediately after reaching safety, Huskins, then 29, star…

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Warner Bros. Discovery in Merger Talks With Paramount Global

Warner Bros. Discovery Inc. held talks on a possible merger with Paramount Global, potentially combining two of the biggest media companies in the world, according to people with knowledge of the matter.

The talks are preliminary and may not lead to an agreement, said one of the people, who asked not to be identified because the discussions are at such an early stage.

David Zaslav, …

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