Books & Culture

An app called Opal finally succeeded at curbing my time spent on social media through a combination of mild friction, encouragement, and guilt.

For many medical conditions, lifesaving treatments may be hiding in plain sight.

The discomfort of loneliness shapes us in ways we don’t recognize—and we may not like what we become without it.

In a maximum-security facility in upstate New York, students tackled Samuel Richardson’s “Clarissa” and Tolstoy’s “War and Peace,” finding a sense of purpose that transcended ordinary coursework.

On the day that Pat met Jim Dasterson in the barrier, he had less than a dollar in one pocket and an ounce of gin in the other.

The author of “Creation Lake” on how artists steal from the world.

The covert agency has long believed in the power of knowing one’s enemy. But these days the threats are coming from above.

The writer Geoff Dyer unravels a tale in which the intricacies of model airplanes and the comic horrors of school lunch mingle with something darker.

Rooted in Varda’s early photography, the Musée Carnavalet’s show illuminates and clarifies the singular nature of a great filmmaker’s achievement.

The sequel, which adds more A.I.-endowed robots and increases their powers, diminishes its dramatic impact.

Decades after “28 Days Later,” the director Danny Boyle and the screenwriter Alex Garland return to—and advance—a frighteningly effective franchise.

Albert Serra’s new documentary about the bullfighter Andrés Roca Rey offers a keenly observed—and surprisingly moving—depiction of the blood sport.

JR & Son is a new-old establishment that conjures the past while deliciously disrupting expectations.

The Sports Bra started as an inside joke between a chef and her friends. It created a national trend.

A new restaurant from the chef duo Samuel Clonts and Raymond Trinh puts caviar in unpredictable places.

Confidant is hoping to draw diners to the sprawling Brooklyn mall known as Industry City.

If human workers don’t have to read, write, or even think, it’s unclear what’s left for them to do.

The HBO series is peppered with references to real-life personages and historical events—but it lacks the anything-goes energy of the era in which it’s set.

The television series gives period-drama treatment to one of the most scandalous families of twentieth-century Europe.

The first season of Nathan Fielder’s mind-bending show seemed to exhaust all possibilities for its conceit. But the second is, somehow, even more berserk than the first.

Jordan Tannahill’s explicit new play fetishizes the British Royal Family but has more than sex on its mind.

The author discusses his story “Happy Days.”

“Call Me Izzy” and “Angry Alan” feature two stars up close and personal.

The spirit of August Strindberg infuses Hannah Moscovitch’s “Sexual Misconduct of the Middle Classes” and Jen Silverman’s adaptation of “Creditors.”

The artist’s album “New Threats from the Soul” is suffused with listlessness and yearning, dark jokes, and wordy disquisitions on desire.

The musician and “Portlandia” co-creator dissects an iconic rock-and-roll image: a 2003 photograph of Chan Marshall, better known as Cat Power, for a New Yorker profile.

Pygmalion’s visceral rendition of the B-Minor Mass.

The band members discuss when to leave a relationship, hoping people slide into their D.M.s, and their new album, “I Quit.”