Tag Archives: culture-features

Culture has always had room for renegades who tell inappropriate truths, stunning us with the kind of fearless candor that is first alarming, then funny, and then, ultimately, persuasive. Standup comedian Matt Rife is not one of them, but he has put immense effort into projecting this persona — and …

One of the best, and worst, parts of the internet is how easily it lets us spread gossip. From celebrity feuds to Twitter main characters, any juicy story can go viral in an instant — and any poster can become a top-notch storyteller. But how do we stay a little …

Meagan Duhamel, a 2018 Olympic gold medalist, describes the controversy over figure skater Kamila Valieva’s failed drug test and subsequent backlash as “heartbreaking.” On Thursday, tears rolled down the cheeks of 15-year-old Valieva after she failed to medal — and fell and stumbled a handful of times — at the …

The athletes wouldn’t dare take a knee —not in China. There would be no fists raised toward Xi Jingping or Vladimir Putin in the skybox, what with endorsements on the line. But young activists had briefed more than two-dozen members of Team USA in the run-up to the Winter Olympics, …

Virgil Abloh, the multihyphenate creative who passed away on Sunday, inspired a clear and rapacious passion from his fans, which in addition to athletes, celebrities, and everyone in between, included legions of young people around the globe — devotees of his many aesthetic whims. But for Abloh’s detractors, the relationship …

In the fall of 2018, Paradise, California, a small town among the high, forested buttes at the northern end of the Central Valley, was a tinderbox. The hot summer had sucked the moisture out of the grass and the pine forest. Demon winds blew through the trees and canyons. Everyone …

As the world now knows,one of the more surprising names to have popped up around Jeffrey Epstein is Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates. It’s been widely reported that Gates had flown on Epstein’s plane at least once, and visited his home multiple times — but the depth of their relationship is …

This piece originally appeared as part of Rolling Stone’s annual Hot List, in the July/August 2021 issue of the magazine. Recently this thing has been happening to Brandan Robertson. He’ll be at a gay bar, minding his own business (sort of), when someone will approach to ask, “Are you a …

The Covid pandemic is not over, and may not be over for a long while yet. But with vaccination rates up, this might be a good moment to pause and think about what a microscopic virus has done to our world. Already there’s a literary pandemic of excellent books emerging, …

Deja Foxx was unpacking in her dorm room to start her sophomore year at Columbia University when Meena Harris DM’d her about working on her Aunt Kamala’s presidential campaign. “I just started repacking,” Foxx says, laughing. “I wasn’t going to sit in a classroom and talk about Plato and Aristotle …