Culture | Opinion

When art changes opinions or opens hearts, it changes the world as profoundly as any legislation does.

By Margaret Renkl

Politics has become so much like entertainment that the first thing we do to make sense of the moment is to test it against a sitcom.

By Armando Iannucci

We don’t let preadolescent kids work. Why do we let them appear in the most high-pressure athletic contests on a global stage?

By Linda Flanagan

The streaming era turned on a fire hose of content that’s drowning viewers. We need TV that feels created by humans, not served up by an algorithm.

By Priyanka Mattoo

She may yet add to her impressive Olympic legacy in Paris. But by changing the way we talk about mental health, Simone Biles has scored a different victory.

By Julie Kliegman

Disaster movies make for thrilling blockbusters. But the reality of a changing climate is slow-motion tragedy, broken bureaucracy and lingering tedium.

By Chris Vognar

Gen X’s quintessential bad girl was never really all that bad.

By Jennifer Weiner

Exactly what the vice-presidential candidate has renounced in exchange for power is in the public record for all to see.

By Ed Simon

The notion that you, too, can rise from the Barrio to Hollywood through sheer grit doesn’t speak to a generation disillusioned with the myth of meritocracy.

By Yarimar Bonilla

A fiction writer challenges an A.I. chatbot to a duel.

By Curtis Sittenfeld

Climbing is a sport in which the sexes are reaching parity. And that has led to pushback.

By Sasha DiGiulian

Pop culture is serving up dark visions full of labyrinthine bunkers, endless loops and characters who feel hopelessly mired. Welcome to the stucktopia.

By Hillary Kelly

On the other side of honesty is the possibility of change.

By Esau McCaulley

It would be so easy to find a new and less harmful way to celebrate the founding of a nation.

By Margaret Renkl

An alternative photographic history of the Pride march shows that real belonging starts in the crowd, where people find refuge and community.

By Jackson Davidow and Bruce Cratsley

The celebrated show is both a product of our unhealthy obsession with toxic restaurant culture and a potential remedy for it.

By Aaron Timms

Our kids’ lingo is not only better than any we used; it’s a useful window into the way they think.

By Stephen Marche

A pop diva inspires and unites fans in ways that few other cultural figures can. Which is why we should all be rooting for Celine Dion.

By Elamin Abdelmahmoud

We had a chance to treat sex categories in sports with curiosity and compassion instead of condemnation. We still can.

By Michael Waters

Everything Donald Trump knows about picking a running mate in 2024 he learned while hosting “The Apprentice.”

By Ramin Setoodeh

There were no trees. There was no road. I was the trees, and I was the road. That darkness was like no darkness I’ve ever known.

By Margaret Renkl

When I met Morgan Spurlock, he was trying to make amends. What I saw changed how I think about #MeToo.

By Lux Alptraum

Intentional periods of sexual abstinence can help us better understand the nature of our desire. If we do Dry January, why not Dry Spell July?

By B.D. McClay

Some say that becoming as dull as a rock is an effective way to disengage.

By Christina Caron

Betting puts pressure on pro athletes. The cracks are starting to show.

By Leigh Steinberg

Nashville’s Parthenon proves that doing the right thing with looted artifacts doesn’t have to be a fight.

By Margaret Renkl

The past can look very different with the passage of time.

By Andrew McCarthy

The Golden State Warriors were young once, and now they’re not.

By Ezekiel Kweku

The liberal arts are fading just when we need them most.

By Ezekiel J. Emanuel and Harun Küçük

Comedies make you laugh. Thrillers make you cheer. Some Hollywood films used to make you sob your eyes out. We need those movies again.

By Heather Havrilesky

We are very different writers, but I have kept Alice Munro in mind, daily and for decades, as an example to follow.

By Sheila Heti

Gotham’s 400th birthday calls for a celebration worthy of the great metropolis it is.

By Kenneth T. Jackson

A beef between two rap titans isn’t just about egos. It’s about the future of the genre, as determined by the legacy of its past.

By Laurence Ralph

It was one of the best Black musicals ever to make it to Broadway, and you’ve probably never heard of it.

By John McWhorter

We need to rethink the policy of preserving families, seemingly at all costs.

By Naomi Schaefer Riley

In an era of sexual decline, celebrities are dressing up in outfits that are barely there. But no one seems to be enjoying it much.

By Mireille Silcoff

We must be able to create a more civic-minded internet, with tools that would empower users to better control what they see.

By Ethan Zuckerman

We live in a complex world. We can’t afford to make art that serves up only simple moral lessons.

By Jen Silverman

The effects of semaglutide drugs won’t be just cosmetic.

By David Wallace-Wells

An artist in Ukraine considers “The Zone of Interest” and what happens when the horrors on the other side of the wall are too close to home to ignore.

By Zhenya Oliinyk

Tiger Woods said he owes his career to Charlie Sifford, the first Black member of the P.G.A. But the golf world has done far too little to promote Black players.

By Peter May

A new film is not a dangerous provocation. It’s a necessary warning.

By Stephen Marche

Larry David’s long-running show was hilarious, but it also revolved around a complex view of modern philosophy.

By Mark Ralkowski

Stephen King’s debut novel, about a bullied girl who gets revenge, used to horrify me. Now I find Carrie’s story inspiring.

By Amanda Jayatissa

Beyoncé singing country music in this political climate was always going to cause a stir.

By Tressie McMillan Cottom

How an introvert rediscovered the power of friendship on an improbable 15-person adventure.

By Tom Vanderbilt

As a professional climber, I needed to be able to suffer to stand out. Then I began to question that mentality.

By Beth Rodden

Her special is a harbinger of how the weight-loss industry is rebranding: Obesity is a disease, and — for the first time — it’s not your fault.

By Tressie McMillan Cottom

Private equity is cannibalizing the music industry by buying up old hits and pushing them back into our cultural consciousness.

By Marc Hogan

The conviction of a “Rust” crew member in a tragic on-set death highlights what Hollywood must do to avoid fatal accidents.

By Kaj Larsen

The Oscar-winning film centers on one man’s remarkable history. My uncle’s life tells a very different story about the fallout of the atomic bomb.

By Ariel Kaminer

In the movie’s central love triangle, I rooted for one outcome. But my dating life told a different story.

By Euny Hong

“Zone of Interest” avoids the pitfalls of fictionalizing the Holocaust. It is also unsettlingly relevant to our current moment.

By David Klion

In a popular TV show, my grandmother is fictionalized as one of Truman Capote’s swans. I wish she’d had the chance to tell her story in her way.

By Belle Burden

It’s time to find out what the film industry’s new normal looks like.

By Mark Harris

The literary canon is constantly evolving — and critics’ often-frustrating kvetching about reissues is a key part of that evolution.

By Apoorva Tadepalli

Spring training means new hope for a glorious season. But for me, it’s the prospect of losing that keeps me hooked.

By Chris Vognar

Chaim Soutine’s identity was never integral to his art, even as a Jew whose death Nazis caused. Artists in Gaza, Syria and Ukraine share his universality.

By Celeste Marcus

I ask my writing students to stand in another person’s shoes. They’re finding it harder and harder to do.

By Rachel Kadish

Midsize cultural venues are teetering on the brink. To save them, we need to fund them like other forms of essential infrastructure.

By Laura Raicovich and Laura Hanna

He’s best known for a red-state anthem. But he existed in a tradition of country rabble-rousers of all political stripes.

By Michael Patrick F. Smith

The city is rewriting its antiquated zoning code. We should seize the chance to create a metropolis of opportunity that evolves with the times.

By Cara Eckholm

Mental health practitioners are hiking, camping and braving the elements with their clients — all in an effort to help them connect with the Earth, and with themselves.

By Christina Caron

The gig economy is expanding and exploiting more workers.

By Terri Gerstein

Marketing is consuming our culture to the point that the product seems almost irrelevant to its own success.

By Natasha Degen

It’s easy to make fun of him. It’s also dangerous and it needs to stop.

By David Kamp

The best shows of the last two decades were the product of unusual creativity and incredible risk. Too bad the TV business has left those qualities behind.

By Peter Biskind

The way this 24-year relationship came to an end tells us everything we need to know about why it succeeded.

By Jeff Benedict

I grew up watching the brief beauty of my sister’s life weaponized to usher in an era of mass incarceration and true crime obsession.

By Annie Nichol

A monumental art exhibit at the Met explored the kind of rivalry that can complicate, and fortify, a friendship. I recognized it all too well.

By Thomas Beller

Tommy DeVito, the Giants’ improbable quarterback, brought new popularity to an age-old hand gesture. Here’s why you should raise your pinched fingers high.

By Mark Rotella

Whether she is conscious of it or not, Ms. Swift signals to queer people — in our language — that she has some affinity for queer identity.

By Anna Marks

How the left, not just the right, helped bring Gay down.

By Ross Douthat

For 25 years, Britney Spears has been a convenient scapegoat for whatever her audience needed. But if we truly want her to be free, we finally have to let her go.

By Andi Zeisler

What if, instead of focusing on improving ourselves, we focused on improving the world?

By Roger Rosenblatt

The primary online destination for book lovers has become synonymous with backbiting, scandal and deceit. But it’s not too late to fix it.

By Maris Kreizman

We’re long past the point where complaining about parenting feels taboo. In fact, now it’s the joy of raising a child that we need to share more freely.

By Karen Kicak

Steven Spielberg’s “Munich” was considered by many to be a flop in 2005. But its examination of the moral toll of vengeance couldn’t feel more relevant.

By Lisa Schwarzbaum

Blessings for same-sex couples are a welcome step in an imperfect journey.

By Patrick Healy

The antics of the royal family might seem easy to dismiss. But they still wield a lot of power over us.

By Arianne Chernock

She believed the court’s decisions were mostly careful byproducts of an emerging social consensus. That may have been true then, but not today.

By Linda Greenhouse

No matter how dark the days, we can find light in our own hearts, and we can be one another’s light.

By Mary Pipher

Many of my progressive Jewish friends are finding it hard to celebrate. But in a dark year, we should embrace a festival of light.

By Mireille Silcoff

Her concert tour and her new film “Renaissance” show us what a more inclusive and loving church might look like.

By Michael Eric Dyson

Napoleon’s story hasn’t changed. But in an age when many people feel buffeted by forces beyond their control, the notion of the Great Man struggles to inspire us.

By Mark Mazower

Sondheim has been canonized, with revivals and revues everywhere. It’s a development he might have greeted with deep ambivalence.

By Ben Brantley

We are shaped by the landscapes we are born to as inescapably as any other earthly creature born to any other ecosystem.

By Margaret Renkl

Sidestep old grudges and political disagreements, and give yourself the gift of peace.

By Catherine Pearson

After my daughter’s death, I have been approaching this holiday with trepidation.

By Sarah Wildman

Silicon Valley has immersed us in an expensive, pervasive and perennially annoying type of automated capitalism.

By David Mack

In a break from the past, the Western world’s wealthiest people no longer try to support the societies they live in.

By Guido Alfani

Malcolm X still looms over our current moment. But the version of the man that we meet now is much more human, relatable, problematic and inspirational, for all his flaws.

By Peniel E. Joseph

The film director helped populate the Internet with sad girls and elevate the cultural allure of feminine ennui. Has she put pop culture in a gilded cage?

By Emily Yoshida

Few people can relate to a life of fame and excess like Matthew Perry’s. But many of us can recognize a struggle with shame.

By Heather Havrilesky

Children’s literature, in its simplicity, brevity and empathy, can make it a singularly effective way to understand the chaos of the world.

By Miriam Udel

Ancient wisdom can help keep us from becoming calloused over.

By David Brooks

The facts behind a new film offer crucial lessons about American history. Why aren’t students in Oklahoma learning about this story in school?

By Jim Gray and David Grann

Something is deeply wrong at America’s colleges and universities.

By Ezekiel J. Emanuel

If an alien put all of humanity in a line and was tasked with picking out our species’ unusual abdomens, the perfectly flat ones would be anomalous.

By Amelia Tait

When you’re Muslim American, you’re very familiar with a particular kind of story. You might have even told a few yourself.

By Meher Ahmad