Film critic Justin Chang reviews 'The Farewell' the second feature by the Chinese-American writer director Lulu Wang. It tells a story from her own family's experience about a young woman who travels to China to pay a final visit to her grandmother, who has no idea that she has only a few months to live.
A new, Yiddish language production of the musical is currently running off-Broadway. Steven Skybell, who plays Tevye, and Joel Grey, who directs the show, explain why the play still resonates.
Mother Jones journalist Ari Berman says recent Supreme Court decisions on redistricting and the 2020 census citizenship question will help determine which party is in power in the next decade.
Book critic Maureen Corrigan reviews the new novel 'Copperhead' by Alexi Zentner which was informed by a violent confrontation with racial hatred -- the firebombing of his parent's office when Zentner was 18 years old.
After a traumatic injury and multiple surgeries, medical bio-ethicist Travis Rieder was in great pain and prescribed opioids. It took him a month to wean himself off, with great difficulty. Now he is an advocate for opioid use reform, and he wants doctors to better understand how to prescribe and how to help their patients wean themselves off.
Sarah Jessica Parker has spent much of her acting career exploring what it means to be in a relationship — and to be single. In the HBO series Sex and the City, which ran from 1998 until 2004, she played Carrie Bradshaw, a single writer chronicling her experiences with the Manhattan dating scene. Now, in the HBO comedy series, Divorce, she stars as Frances, a mother of two navigating the dissolution of her marriage.
In the viscerally unnerving films of Ari Aster, there's nothing more horrific than the reality of human grief. His haunted-house thriller, Hereditary, followed a family rocked by traumas so devastating that the eventual scenes of devil-worshipping naked boogeymen almost came as a relief. Aster's new movie, Midsommar, doesn't pack quite as terrifying a knockout punch, but it casts its own weirdly hypnotic spell. This is a slow-burning and deeply absorbing piece of filmmaking, full of strikingly beautiful images and driven less by shocks than ideas.
Midnight In Chernobyl author Adam Higginbotham spent years investigating the 1986 explosion and its aftermath. He says design flaws, human hubris and Soviet secrecy all contributed to the disaster.
Cables, who's experienced severe health problems recently, makes a comeback on a new album with his trio. The pianist's solos on I'm All Smiles reveal a deep sense of groove — and a mind at work.
Two current country hits by black musicians are challenging traditional notions of the genre. Lil Nas X's "Old Town Road" and Blanco Brown's "The Git Up" pulse with history and humor.
Verge journalist Casey Newton investigated working conditions for the people who determine what material can be posted to Facebook. Many are traumatized by the images of hate and violence they see.
The remarkable story of the first all-female crew to compete in an around-the world sailing race. In 1989, 26 year old skipper Tracy Edwards set out on what was an unthinkable journey for a woman - to sail the 33,000 mile Whitbread Around the World Race. Her story and that of her crew is told in the documentary 'Maiden.'
Dr. Paul Volberding and nurse Cliff Morrison were on the frontlines of the AIDS epidemic treating patients in the early 1980s before anyone understood what the disease was, or how it was spread. They are now featured in the new documentary '5B'.
Comic and actor Ramy Youssef is the son of Egyptian immigrants and a semi-observant Muslim who co-created and stars in the semi autobiographical Hulu series 'Ramy,' and has new HBO comedy special.
Book critic Maureen Corrigan reviews the new book by Mary Beth Keane, an under-the-radar novelist who's been awarded a Guggenheim, and a few years ago was named one of the National Book Foundation's "5 under 35" novelists to look out for.
Amber Scorah has written a new memoir about being a 3rd generation Jehovah's Witness, leaving her faith, and then dealing with a tragedy without her faith to turn to.
