The Gray Tick

Since leaving Iran fifteen years ago I have felt a permanent anxiety for loved ones there. Never is it sharper than when the regime shuts the Internet down.

January 13, 2026

Flicking the War Switch

Even when it comes to the president’s most serious power, Trump has established that he will do whatever produces the images he likes.

June 26, 2025

Khamenei’s Dilemma

As protests in Iran continue, the regime’s attempts to crack down on them may create an unstoppable spiral of state violence and popular fury.

November 24, 2022 issue

The Enigma of Iranianism

The terms “electoral collusion,” “alternative facts,” and “deep state” may have not existed at the time of the American-backed coup in Iran. But they were an essential part of the CIA toolkit.

June 7, 2018 issue

The Iranian Revolution

“The most glaring misperception of all has been the failure to grasp the part that Islam would play in mobilizing the revolutionary opposition to the Shah and in shaping post-revolution Iranian society.”

June 26, 1980 issue

Tehran Winter

“The city was free, but it remained the Shah’s creation. In the winter of 1980, a year after the revolution, it was still awaiting purpose.”

October 8, 1981 issue

An Appeal in Iran

“On the occasion of the commencement of the third year of the revolution, we the undersigned writers and intellectuals of the country feel that it is our duty to go over the record of the past two years under the present leaders of our society and to explore what has happened.”

June 11, 1981 issue

Terror in Iran

“All prisoners have a common destiny. With twenty-six books to my name I was kept in a dark solitary confinement cell of four feet by eight feet.”

October 28, 1976 issue

Richard Hell on Godlike and Poetry as a Way of Life

Episode 5 of Private Life

March 11, 2026

From the Archive: “The Mystery of JonBenét Ramsey”

Episode 4 of Private Life

March 4, 2026

Joyce Carol Oates on True Crime, Her Improbable Life, and Joan Didion

Episode 3 of Private Life

February 25, 2026

The Docteur Is In

The Congolese rumba pioneer Docteur Nico helped define the sound of African decolonization—and became one of the great visionaries of the electric guitar.

March 11, 2026

The New War on Speech

In modern US history, there has never been an attack on free expression quite like Donald Trump’s.

March 10, 2026

Iran Transformed

To understand the regime the US now seeks to obliterate, we have to return to the political and economic convulsions that produced last January’s uprising.

March 8, 2026

The Lie of ‘Preventive’ War

Never has Donald Trump’s willful blindness to legal limits been more evident than in his decision to start a war with Iran.

March 6, 2026

Fool’s Errands

What will come of the US igniting yet another war in the Middle East?

March 4, 2026

Building the Electrostate

The long story of public power suggests that state ownership can in fact appeal to the broad American public.

February 26, 2026

The Stony Dark Within

Rainer Maria Rilke’s temperament, it could be said, was fragile, ghost-haunted, unironic, unthrifty, reliant, romantic, intermittently animistic, and decidedly non-avant-garde.

February 25, 2026

Trading with the Enemy

By striking down Trump’s tariffs, the Supreme Court acted like a court should, in response to a president who acted like a president shouldn’t.

February 23, 2026

Timekeepers

In The Secret Agent, his sad, riotous new feature, the Brazilian filmmaker Kleber Mendonça Filho at once archives a vanished world and mythologizes it. 

February 22, 2026

‘There’s Nothing for Me Here’

What caused Venezuela’s collapse, and who is responsible? A recent memoir tells the story as so many families have lived it.

May 29, 2025 issue

Chavismo’s Chokehold

The party of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro maintains a strong hold on state institutions, but it has lost the people’s mandate. Will there be a transfer of power to the opposition candidate, Edmundo González—the true victor of this summer’s election?

September 19, 2024 issue

The Triumph of a Musical Adventure

“Over the last forty years, through a succession of often controversial political regimes, Venezuela has become widely known for a highly developed system of orchestras and socially directed musical education that is now being adapted and much imitated.”

September 24, 2015 issue

The Last Caudillo

All these years later, it’s still hard to know whether his was a dictablanda (a soft dictatorship) or not. For all his anti-imperialist fulminations, the flow of Venezuelan oil to US ports was not interrupted for a single day. For all his socialist preaching, his country remained firmly capitalist.

March 6, 2013

The Sense of an Endling

In the early nineteenth century, the idea of species extinction was an alien concept. That changed after an expedition to Iceland in search of the last of the great auks.

December 5, 2024 issue

Coq au Pépin

More than almost any other public figure, Jacques Pépin has followed the trajectory of twentieth-century cuisine, from the Hôtel Plaza Athénée to Howard Johnson’s, and from his Burgundy backyard to national television.

October 5, 2023 issue

Intrepid Navigators

Migration’s demands on birds are as daunting mentally as they are physically.

February 25, 2021 issue

They Covered the Sky, and Then…

Perhaps, in ethical terms, it doesn’t much matter whether overhunting was or was not the sole cause of the passenger pigeon’s extinction. Practically speaking, though, it matters a good deal.

January 9, 2014 issue

‘Like a Gossamer Sheet’

“The first time I experienced life on the West Bank, staying over in Palestinian homes, a whole new horizon opened up for me. I entered into that life, its personal friendships, its language, its ravishing landscapes, and its evident suffering. All of it felt meaningful and real.”

March 14, 2026

En Pointe 

“I’m struck by ballet’s ability to create something extraordinarily beautiful out of something so difficult and so taxing on the brain and body.”

March 7, 2026

For the Fossil Record

“I took the opportunity to observe the surviving lemurs in their natural habitats—and it was love at first sight.”

February 28, 2026

Home Free

“Every writer, sooner or later, must face the fact that our characters are taken directly from our own lives, so there will be friends, relatives, and acquaintances who are going to feel like they’ve been pushed under the bus.”

February 21, 2026

Gaza: The Threat of Partition

By putting the possibility of reconstruction out of reach for many Palestinians in Gaza, the current UN-endorsed “peace plan” may make it impossible for them to remain. 

November 23, 2025

What ‘Day After’ for Gaza?

The most influential plans for rebuilding Gaza start from the premise that Palestinians have no right to determine their future.

October 25, 2025

‘A Life That Is Not a Life’

My friend Awdah Hathaleen devoted himself to ending Israel’s occupation of the West Bank. His killing demonstrates just how little distance remains between settlers and the state.

September 5, 2025

‘Infinite License’

The memory of the Holocaust has, perversely, been enlisted to justify both the eradication of Gaza and the extraordinary silence with which that violence has been met.

April 24, 2025 issue