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.
By Jill Abramson
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.
By Lauren Collins
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.
By Mark Yarm
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.
By Ben Taub
Daily Cartoon
Daily Cartoon: Thursday, December 3rd
“Someday, this all will be yours.”
By Benjamin Schwartz
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.
By Andrew Marantz
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.
By Jane Mayer
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.
By Adam Entous
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.
By Alexandra Schwartz
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.
By Nick Paumgarten
Teachable Moment
How to Raise a Boy
Fatherly, a platform for dads, threw a brunch to talk about men in the age of #MeToo.
By Sheila Yasmin Marikar
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.
By Victor LaValle
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.
By Karen Russell