Katy Waldman

❤️

How to Recover from Caring Too Much If you laugh at unfunny jokes, raise your hand too quickly, or can’t decide on your favorite color, you may be exhibiting a fawn response.

Two new books consider fawning—a trauma response involving ingratiating, people-pleasing behavior—and how we can unlearn it. www.newyorker.com/magazine/202...

Greatly enjoyed my colleague @xwaldie.bsky.social's anti-anti-fawning piece; turns out fawning has a great artistic tradition, on stage and screen (as here: two pieces, and a better translation of the full, hair-raising Nietzsche passage:
www.newyorker.com/culture/rich...

Contemporary escapism: scroll past "Trump threatens to invoke Insurrection Act after people in Minneapolis protest ICE shooting a woman in the face," "Trump is risking global catastrophe by kidnapping the leader of Venezuela and menacing NATO," click on "people are mad about autistic Barbie"

It was a bad point, the point was bad

How to Recover from Caring Too Much If you laugh at unfunny jokes, raise your hand too quickly, or can’t decide on your favorite color, you may be exhibiting a fawn response.

www.newyorker.com/magazine/202...

So I thought these authors really had a point

Reposts equal I want to die bsky.app/profile/jody...

Influencers and OnlyFans models dominate US ‘extraordinary’ artist visas Work permits increasingly being awarded on basis of online reach, favouring content creators

Algorithmic America

Reupping my 2025 Trump Kennedy Center Honors bingo card for no particular reason

The Most Scathing Book Reviews of 2025 Pans, glorious pans. No end-of-year roundup would be complete without them. Among the books being driven into the woods by pitchfork-wielding villagers this year: Louis C.K.’s masturbatory debut no…

omg what an honor! um i'd like to thank the academy, james frey, my parents for ruining my personality (just kidding mom and dad it's not your fault!) lithub.com/the-most-sca...

Not Zoltan Maga at the white nationalist soiree!

Katy Waldman on Mary McCarthy’s “One Touch of Nature” A reader trusts the author’s voice instinctively, charmed by its opaline assessments and zinging aperçus. Still, one can quibble.

A “take” on (or ode to) Mary McCarthy in last week’s mag www.newyorker.com/magazine/tak...

This was my Trump Kennedy Center Honors bingo card (12/6)

How the Kennedy Center Has Been Transformed by Trumpism The President was drawn to the institution for its cultural prestige. He and his allies made it radioactive.

Donld Trump’s takeover of the Kennedy Center has led to a year of embarrassment and chaos for the once venerable art institution.
www.newyorker.com/culture/the-...

How the Kennedy Center Has Been Transformed by Trumpism The President was drawn to the institution for its cultural prestige. He and his allies made it radioactive.

Wrote about Trump’s Kennedy Center Honors www.newyorker.com/culture/the-...

How the Kennedy Center Has Been Transformed by Trumpism The President was drawn to the institution for its cultural prestige. He and his allies made it radioactive.

The 48th Kennedy Center Honors was “a tacky, supersized love letter to the center’s self-installed chairman, President Donald Trump,” @xwaldie.bsky.social writes.
www.newyorker.com/culture/the-...

Solvej Balle’s Novels Rewire the Time Loop Most stories in the genre build to a moment of escape. “On the Calculation of Volume” imagines a woman making a life inside an infinitely repeating November 18th.

www.newyorker.com/magazine/202...

YouTube video by Mark Cee Happy Valentines Day - OutKast (HD)

Happy Solvej Balle day! (Every day the eighteenth) m.youtube.com/watch?v=kRAW...

Solvej Balle’s Novels Rewire the Time Loop Most stories in the genre build to a moment of escape. “On the Calculation of Volume” imagines a woman making a life inside an infinitely repeating November 18th.

Most stories in the time-loop genre build to a moment of escape. “On the Calculation of Volume” imagines a woman making a life inside an infinitely repeating November 18th. https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2025/11/17/on-the-calculation-of-volume-solvej-balle-book-review

Is something going on with lettuce in NY being rotten?

How Corporate Feminism Went from “Love Me” to “Buy Me” A decade ago, Sheryl Sandberg’s “Lean In” aimed to tear down the obstacles that kept women from reaching the top. Now her successors want to tear down everything.

“According to the spokespeople of grind culture, the choice is clear: your individuality can make money for you or it can make money for somebody else,” Katy Waldman writes.

Today’s self-help books for working women abandon the pretense that they have anything to do with feminism, or even work. Instead, everything is content. https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2025/10/27/how-corporate-feminism-went-from-love-me-to-buy-me

How Corporate Feminism Went from “Love Me” to “Buy Me” A decade ago, Sheryl Sandberg’s “Lean In” aimed to tear down the obstacles that kept women from reaching the top. Now her successors want to tear down everything.

Wrote about the state of corporate feminist self-help! www.newyorker.com/magazine/202...

You know what bsky.app/profile/blip...

Ian McEwan Casts the Climate Crisis as a Story of Adultery His new novel, “What We Can Know,” imagines the historians of the twenty-second century, who long for the world that they’ve missed out on.

For the fall books issue of @newyorker.com, I reviewed Ian McEwan's excellent new novel, which features city-drowning floods, "the famous group Radiohead," and a metric ton of adultery. www.newyorker.com/magazine/202...

Ian McEwan Casts the Climate Crisis as a Story of Adultery His new novel, “What We Can Know,” imagines the historians of the twenty-second century, who long for the world that they’ve missed out on.

“What We Can Know,” Ian McEwan’s 18th novel, takes place in the 22nd century, after a nuclear disaster. “Much of the novel’s charm lies in its re-creation of our era as seen from the future,” Katy Waldman writes.

Well, that’s lovely, thank you. Esp given the source. And thank you for explaining anime to me via the NYTM. That was delightful.

Josh! Thanks so much. (I disagree but am flattered.)

Seeing ice cream cones during their spawning runs really takes your breath away. They’ll only do this once in their entire lives.