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Sons

American Chronicles

Did George Washington Have an Enslaved Son?

West Ford’s descendants want to prove his parentage—and save the freedmen’s village he founded.
Paris Postcard

A Son Sends Josephine Baker to the Panthéon

Brian Bouillon-Baker—one of the twelve children of the St. Louis-born entertainer, French Resistance fighter, and destroyer of stereotypes—visits France’s hall of “great men” for the induction of his Maman, the first woman of color to be so honored.
Dept. of Fandom

Rachel, Joey, Monica, Phoebe, Chandler, Ross . . . and Wolfgang

Wolfgang Van Halen, the front man of Mammoth WVH and the son of Eddie Van Halen, pays a visit, in between stadium shows with Guns N’ Roses, to his happy place: the Friends Experience, in Gramercy Park.
Shouts & Murmurs

Freezing

The New Yorker Documentary

The Masculinity Lessons of “Father and Gun”

A documentary short explores the lessons being passed from fathers to sons at a California shooting range.
A Reporter at Large

Murder in Malta

After a journalist was assassinated, her sons found clues in her unfinished work that cracked the case and brought down the government.
Daily Cartoon

Daily Cartoon: Thursday, December 3rd

“Someday, this all will be yours.”
Commemoration Dept.

The Terrence Malick–Lil Peep Connection

The reclusive director of “Days of Heaven” helped make “Everybody’s Everything,” a film about the late emo rapper, whose grandfather, the historian John Womack, Jr., is an old Harvard friend.
Dept. of Dynasties

No, James Murdoch Doesn’t Watch “Succession”

After leaving the family empire, Rupert Murdoch’s son is investing in comics, championing Pete Buttigieg, and fighting threats to democracy that sound an awful lot like Fox News.
A Reporter at Large

Will Hunter Biden Jeopardize His Father’s Campaign?

Joe Biden’s son is under scrutiny for his business dealings and tumultuous personal life.
Fiction

Asleep at the Wheel

American Icon

Who’s Afraid of George Washington?

The novelist Rumaan Alam and the photographer David Land are unloading twenty-two amateur paintings of the first President.
Fiction

Audition

Annals of Gaming

How Fortnite Captured Teens’ Hearts and Minds

The craze for the third-person shooter game has elements of Beatlemania, the opioid crisis, and eating Tide Pods.
Teachable Moment

How to Raise a Boy

Fatherly, a platform for dads, threw a brunch to talk about men in the age of #MeToo.
Personal History

The Recipe for Life

A father, a son, and their secret superpowers.
Shouts & Murmurs

Letters from a Gold Rush Mother

Tech Support

Calling Out the Robocaller

My wife was bombarded with automated calls from our son’s school—would she volunteer for the vegetable share, the bake sale, the harvest festival? My phone never buzzed once.
Fiction

The Sinking of the Houston

Screens

The Addictive Insufficiency of Baby Monitors

No camera is sensitive enough to record the uncanny speed at which a child grows and transforms. It spools up time, but it can’t stop it.