Janet Malcolm the Magician

There are two kinds of magicians: Those who purport to be doing something truly supernatural, drawing on the paranormal, and those who are honest with their audiences about fooling them.Janet Malcolm, who died last week at 86, was of the second type. Her journalism was filled with instances in which she alerted readers that she would be playing with...

3h

Blue Animals Are Different from All the Rest

Peacocks, panther chameleons, scarlet macaws, clown fish, toucans, blue-ringed octopuses, and so many more: The animal kingdom has countless denizens with extraordinarily colorful beauty. But in many cases, scientists know much more about how the animals use their colors than about how they make them. New work continues to reveal those secrets, which...

9h

The Interior Lives of TV Housewives

The creators of Kevin Can F**k Himself have yet to go on the record about this, but they’re clearly tired of lopsided sitcom marriages. The series, with its pointed title, seems to be a roast of shows starring the comedian Kevin James over the years, such as The King of Queens; notably, his characters’ spouses didn’t have lives of their own outside...

10h

The Vaccine Donations Aren’t Enough

Developing countries now account for more of the COVID-19s daily global death toll, at 85 percent and climbing, than high-income countries. Thanks to high vaccination rates, deaths in these rich countries have fallen from 59 to 15 percent of the global share, an all-time low, according to the Brookings Institution. The signs of this switch are jarring....

11h

The Real Problem With Globalization

Few ideas today are more unfashionable than globalization. Across the ideological spectrum, a once-robust consensus about the liberating power of free trade and financial markets has transformed into the conviction that the world has spun out of control. Economic inequality is rising in developing and developed countries alike. Hopes for a global human-rights...

1d

Modern China’s First Diplomats

When Chinese diplomats arrived in New York in 1971, they might as well have landed on another planet.The United Nations had just transferred China’s seat at the global body from Taipei to Beijing, a momentous step. Yet what first struck many of these new arrivals were the colors. On clothing, in shop fronts, and on neon signs, they saw a world that...

1d

In Sports, Vaccination Isn’t Just a Personal Choice

When the NBA announced Wednesday that Phoenix Suns point guard Chris Paul was being sidelined indefinitely under the league’s coronavirus-safety protocols, the next question was obvious: Had Paul been vaccinated?For COVID-19 concerns to interrupt Paul’s brilliant playoff run seemed particularly cruel—not only because the widespread availability of vaccines...

2d

Expect the Unexpected From the Delta Variant

This much is clear: The coronavirus is becoming more transmissible. Ever since the virus emerged in China, it has been gaining mutations that help it spread more easily among humans. The Alpha variant, first detected in the United Kingdom last year, is 50 percent more transmissible than the original version, and now the Delta variant, first detected...

2d

The Books Briefing: Finding Place as a Black American

As this year’s Juneteenth celebrations begin—commemorating when enslaved people in Galveston, Texas, were told that the Civil War had ended and they were now technically free—thinking about place can be illuminating. America has a long history of denying and violating the basic rights of Black people, leading many of these citizens to carve out spaces...

2d

Democrats Should Take the Deal on Voter ID

In order to secure his vote on the most significant voting-rights legislation in more than half a century, Senator Joe Manchin is demanding that every American be required to show identification in order to vote. Democrats shouldn’t hold their nose and take that deal.They should embrace it with open arms.Manchin has been frequently and fairly criticized...

2d