Our Favorite Cultural Artifacts of 2025
Our editors and staff on their most meaningful cultural encounters this year
Every year, we ask our staff: What was your most meaningful cultural encounter this year? We keep the remit deliberately broad—really nothing is off the table—and the result is a wide-ranging, idiosyncratic list. This year it features some of the most critically acclaimed hits of 2025, like Sinners and season four of Hacks, along with lesser-known gems like The Green Lives, by Sara Gilmore, and a performance by an award-winning organist. We hope the list will inspire and delight you.
—The Editors
The finale of The Summer I Turned Pretty, written by Jenny Han and Sarah Kucserka
If I were to be perfectly honest, I would tell you that the cultural event that most held my attention this year was the finale of The Summer I Turned Pretty. I would tell you that the denouement of twenty-six hours of TV watching was almost derangingly satisfying: the heroine strong but not deluded as to her faults, the hero upright and adoring. I would tell you that its depiction of Paris, both midnight dancing on the banks of the Seine and makeshift party in a bar, felt truer to my experience of living there at nineteen than most. I would tell you that the callbacks and Easter eggs were perfectly placed, with at least two Taylor Swift songs on the soundtrack to show you from whom the showrunner, Jenny Han, learned. And I would tell you that the finale dispersed a gloom that settled over my life, and made space for other sorts of art. If I were to be imperfectly honest, I would tell you that my richest cultural experience of the year was reading George Eliot’s Daniel Deronda for the first time, not seeing the finale of The Summer I Turned Pretty. But I couldn’t have read the one without watching the other. —Joanna Biggs, Deputy Editor
Nouvelle Vague and Blue Moon, directed by Richard Linklater
Richard Linklater released two films—two!—in October. His film Nouvelle Vague roams 1959 Paris with director Jean-Luc Godard (played by Guillaume Marbeck) as Godard shoots his debut, Breathless (1960). Blue Moon takes place in 1943, at Sardi’s restaurant in Manhattan. It follows lyricist Lorenz Hart (Ethan Hawke) on the night his ex–writing partner, Richard Rodgers, premieres Oklahoma! and secures a Broadway hit.
The films make mirror images. Both portray complicated artistic men. Godard is clever and insufferable, Hart witty and lonely. One is starting out, with youth and time to waste, the other crashing out, with dwindling options. Paris is open; New York is a windowless bar. Godard, an ambitious tyro, wants to change the world but can’t do so alone. His crew finds him exasperating; together they discover a new way to make films. Hart has already made an indelible mark on his field, but he has alienated himself from his collaborators. (“Blue Moon” was one of his hit songs.) He’s tortured by envy and alcoholism, in denial about his sexuality and future.
The costumes are beautiful, the dialogue electric, but homage and nostalgia are beside the point. A central theme of Linklater’s work has always been how people use their time and who they use it with. It’s a profound question. As an old Beach Boys song goes, “You need a mess of help to stand alone.” —Dan Fox, Senior Editor
Jack Whitten: The Messenger, MoMA
In the spring, I saw Jack Whitten: The Messenger, a MoMA retrospective spanning the six decades of the painter’s life. Each era seemed to follow a kind of rhythm, as if Whitten were struck with a new way of manipulating materials, which he’d then pursue obsessively, rapturously, until he’d almost exhausted it. First there were paintings made by dragging pools of paint across canvas with his own invention, part push broom, part squeegee. Then he moved off the floor, and with new handheld tools, also of his design, he made diagrammatic paintings that evoke a radar screen or a map. Each piece is an ancient relic but from the future—all born from the same strange alchemy. I felt awe mounting as I moved through the rooms. Toward the end of the show, I arrived in front of 9.11.01, an absolutely massive mosaic that Whitten completed at sixty-seven, memorializing that day, which he witnessed firsthand in Tribeca. Thousands of acrylic tiles form a loose pyramid infused with ash, hair, and animal blood. I usually leave a museum feeling oversaturated. But on that early-spring night, I left the MoMA vibrating, like I’d had brief access to a different frequency. —Will Frazier, Digital Director
Caught by the Tides, directed by Jia Zhangke
In June, a new friend invited me to see Caught by the Tides, a 2024 movie by the Chinese director Jia Zhangke. I like seeing films without much context (trailers are sacrilege), and I went into this one accordingly. Watching the movie felt like being inside another person’s dream: a wash of songs and cityscapes and close-ups of a beautiful woman’s face. Gradually, the face grows older and wearier, the landscapes more rural. I couldn’t fully grasp what was happening to the face’s owner; at some point, she stops dancing in fun wigs and instead begins to roam the industrializing countryside in search of her truant boyfriend. In an incredibly moving scene, the two finally reunite inside a supermarket during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Hours later, on the subway ride home, I learned that the movie is actually a collage of footage filmed over the course of more than two decades, including scenes from Jia’s other works. (The star is his wife and longtime muse, Zhao Tao.) Somehow this context made it seem like even more of a masterpiece: a feat of slow artmaking, real-life romance, and conceptual documentary that I still can’t stop thinking about. —Maggie Millner, Senior Editor
Sinners, written and directed by Ryan Coogler
I do love my couch, but nothing compares to watching a film on the big screen. Last April, I had the immense pleasure of visiting the TCL Chinese Theatre on Hollywood Boulevard. The outing was engineered by my son, whose wish on our visit to Los Angeles was to see a film on opening night at the legendary theater. Our only option? Sinners.
My son advised me to go in blind; I’ve never been into vampires. We entered the theater and were hit with the smell of popcorn and a palpable must of cinematic history. Photos were taken with Darth Vader and Dorothy costumes in the lobby. We then found our way to our worn red velvet seats, which squeaked when we shifted. The ornate curtain rose, and to our surprise we were met with a huge state-of-the-art screen. The sound boomed. The theater was full, and boisterous, and everyone clapped. The depth of Coogler’s film astounded me—its nuanced depiction of race in Jim Crow Mississippi, its kinetic energy, its layers of horror and fantasy (and, yes, plenty of vampires), and its music and dancing, which somehow all enhanced one another. It was a perfect night, easily one of my top moviegoing experiences. —Jill Pellettieri, Editorial Director
Familiar Touch, written and directed by Sarah Friedland
I watched Familiar Touch, a film all about old people, the day after a wedding, an event full of young people. The sudden change of pace made me impatient. My first thought: This movie is too slow. An elderly woman in an assisted-living facility makes her way down the entire length of a hallway, one shuffle at a time. She floats in a lima-bean pool (some sort of hydrotherapy) for minutes on end.
Slow can be arty, indulgent, but this was not that kind of slow. This was don’t-break-your-hip slow. Can’t-remember-where-we’re-going slow. It did not awe me; it made me restless. It reminded me instantly, guiltily, of walks with my grandmother: her noisy breathing, the clack of her butterscotch lozenge, the same innocent question she asked five minutes ago.
And this is the deep, provocative power of the film, the first feature from director Sarah Friedland. Plenty of reviews will tell you it’s a tender, funny, profound portrait of aging in America. It is—and it’s beautiful too—but you should watch it because it’s not afraid to show us the speed at which life unwinds. Because you will catch yourself wishing it would hurry up. A foolish, youthful wish, which invites a question only you can answer: What are you hurrying toward? —Clare Sestanovich, Senior Editor
Yi Yi, written and directed by Edward Yang
I never doubted that I would enjoy Edward Yang’s final film, Yi Yi (2000), but its near-three-hour runtime meant that I could never find the perfect night to sally forth. This August, though, a new 4K print was touring, so I went with friends to see it at Lincoln Center.
What a gorgeous, surprising film! It is a sometimes slapstick, sometimes searing story of a Taipei family’s many complications: a grandmother in a coma, a granddaughter struggling with guilt, a child obsessed with photography. Best of all is Wu Nien-jen’s performance as NJ, who encounters a woman from his past while engaging in a marvelous friendship across linguistic barriers.
Halfway through, a poster for Star Wars: The Phantom Menace appears in the background. It took me back to when I was a kid, watching it with my best friend a few blocks from Lincoln Center. Two weeks later, he died. I thought of him at that moment, missing some of Yi Yi’s plot but still relishing the music, the dreamy shots, the colors. One of my friends next to me nudged me to offer a square of matcha chocolate. What a gift in this year of too many screens, with every vibration in the pocket a harbinger of stress, to disconnect, then reconnect with myself. —Adam Dalva, Contributing Editor
Isaac Chotiner
This year, no reading brought me greater pleasure than The New Yorker’s Q&A section. Staff writer Isaac Chotiner is a genius at entangling prominent figures in the webs of their own words, and this year his powers seemed to reach a terrifying apex. He made interviewees squirm on topics ranging from liberalism to the genocide in Gaza. My favorite is his interview with former Biden press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre, whose frequent contradictions and defensiveness prompted a dry reminder: “This is what you wrote your book about. I am not bringing this up randomly.”
His interviews often read like ruthless dismantlings, but Chotiner’s currency is not cruelty. It’s a relentless insistence on clarity. His hyperattention is enough to make interviewees who are used to being taken unduly seriously or dismissed out of hand implode. Readers are lucky to experience it from the safety of the sidelines.
Beyond his probing prowess, his most impressive skill may simply be convincing people to talk to him. If I ran a PR firm, I’d ask my clients to repeat a simple two-part mantra every morning: “What do we do when Isaac Chotiner calls?” “Hang up.” —Oliver Egger, Administrative Assistant
Memoirs from Beyond the Grave by François-René de Chateaubriand
Catastrophe can seem like the rule these days, not the exception. Plus ça change, say some, and their patron saint is the French Romantic writer and diplomat François-René de Chateaubriand, whose masterwork, the monumental Memoirs from Beyond the Grave, is undergoing a resurrection in English by translator Alex Andriesse. (The third of four massive volumes is due out this December.) The book is a near-endless rumination on Chateaubriand’s own life, from his upbringing on a remote French island among declining aristocrats to his experience of the revolutionary and subsequent Napoleonic years, each, it seems, more catastrophic than the last. I’d been aware of Chateaubriand’s literary reputation for a long time (not to mention his culinary legacy), but I’d always felt too intimidated or ill-prepared to dig in (less so, I should say, with the steaks). Once I did, what I found was a singular voice, a strange, beguiling, engrossing vision. Chateaubriand’s Memoirs is a testament to literature’s persistence not despite but in and through the terrors—and occasional joys—of living. As W. G. Sebald, another great catastrophist and reader of Chateaubriand, put it: “The few sentences, uttered at the right time . . . would be the correct response to the compulsion of the system, which madness, and power, and art and science are forever passing down to one other.” —Jack Hanson, Associate Editor
Hacks, cocreated by Lucia Aniello, Paul W. Downs, and Jen Statsky
Hacks is a comedy show for people who also like sobbing. Featuring Jean Smart as a Vegas comic trying to realize her long-simmering dreams of a late-night talk show career and Hannah Einbinder as the idealistic writer who helps her do that, it’s a dark, ugly, and scathingly smart take on female ambition. Sitting perfectly at the intersection of “delightfully queer” and “interested in stuff that isn’t sex,” the show is ruthless in its depiction of mentorship’s cruel intimacies. Every season gets better and better—tune in for season three’s desperate wandering in the woods, followed by season four’s workplace sabotage and mistaken-identity twist on The Awakening, by Kate Chopin. All kinds of comedy characterize the series: slapstick, satire, one-liners, and humor so grave it takes place inside a mausoleum. I recommend watching it like I do: with one of your best friends, a rotation of La Croix’s strangest flavors (Sunshine?), popcorn (nutritional yeast optional), and your dogs. We watch, we chuckle, we say, “Oh my God, wait . . .” And then we laugh deliriously. —Lacey Jones, Associate Editor
Cole Escola’s Pee Pee Manor, directed by Todd Oldham
This year, I fell down the internet rabbit hole that is comedian, actor, and playwright Cole Escola’s YouTube channel, where they post comedic shorts as well as short films they call “lost pilots.”
The short film Pee Pee Manor, posted in early March 2020, seesaws tonally between horror and comedy. Its protagonist, Donna Germaine, is a middle-aged woman on the run. New to town, she fakes her name and résumé and clinches a job as a real estate agent—if she can sell the wretched Pee Pee Manor, a house that is haunted by the ghosts of former inhabitants who were killed (in the campiest ways possible). The locals, of course, want nothing to do with it.
The fear, uncertain laughter, and determination that animate Donna’s face offered an unlikely balm in a year that offered mostly horrors. And unlike tickets to Escola’s Tony Award–winning Broadway play, Oh, Mary!, this short is blessedly free of charge. Watch it to find out the worst possible way to put out a lit cigarette. —Sam Karagulin, Assistant Editor
Mark William Lewis by Mark William Lewis
I love singers with deep voices—to me, baritones evoke introspection. Their voices can feel shadowy, even conspiratorial. Maybe it’s because my voice is deep, so it sparks in me a hope that perhaps I, too, can sing. One of my favorite baritones is Mark William Lewis, whose eponymous album was released in September. Lewis’s low croon sounds stark at times, but his virtuosity on guitar and his mesmerizing lyrics add streaks of warmth to what initially feels forbidding. He transforms the usual sound of traditional instruments (guitars, drums, harmonica) to build an atmosphere of modern alienation—yet somehow still leaves room for a palpable desire for connection. My year involved a long, life-draining commute; Lewis’s music helped me stay engaged in the deadening thrum of traffic. I appreciate the way he can make lyrics feel uplifting without singing them at a higher pitch. For example, on “Tomorrow is Perfect,” Lewis electrifies the lines “And life moves so fast these days / You never get, you never get to just be alone” by singing it antiphonally. It helps that the drums boom too. —Tobi Kassim, Senior Reader
Anna Lapwood at the Church of St. Ignatius Loyola in Manhattan
This March, my sister flew to meet me in New York so we could go to an organ concert. Crazy? Maybe. But she’s been a fan of Anna Lapwood, the organ prodigy whose TikToks garner hundreds of thousands of views, for longer than most. Lapwood is a one-woman orchestra: her hands and feet play multiple lines of music across several manuals (keyboards), drawing sound from pipes sometimes tens of meters away from the keyboard. (Every organ has different configurations of pipes, and acoustics vary in every church, making each organ a unique, building-sized instrument.) Lapwood is also a gifted teacher, and between pieces she taught us about the music and her instrument.
As she played, I felt immersed in the music, buffeted by it, nearly brought to tears by the physical experience of the sound as much as the notes themselves. It was energizing, too, to hear Lapwood’s renditions of classical music (Maurice Duruflé’s “Prélude et fugue sur le nom d’Alain”), minimalism (Philip Glass’s “Mad Rush”), and movie soundtracks (a newly transcribed Pirates of the Caribbean suite), played as if they naturally belonged together. And why not? Lapwood is committed to sharing music of all kinds with all kinds of people. In her words: “If you came for Pirates, I hope you leave with the Duruflé, and if you came for Duruflé, I hope you leave with the Pirates.” —Caitlin Kossmann, Editorial Assistant
Mixtapes from Mississippi Records
In September, I (temporarily) moved to the suburbs. The last time I spent this much time in a car, I was in high school. I’m thirty-one now, different in many important ways, but like I did then, I still drive my beloved 2006 Honda CR-V, tape deck and all. For nearly twenty years, I’d relied on the early aughts’ answer to planned obsolescence: the cassette-tape-to-AUX-cord-adapter. But the sound quality was iffy, and I had finally broken up with Spotify, so I needed an alternative way to soundtrack my commute. Before I moved, my friend Sam gifted me a handful of mixtapes from the archival music label Mississippi Records. They’re mostly bootleg compilations, with themes like “ultimate summer fun mix #4,” “gospel,” and “difficult children’s music.” The labels are hand-scribbled, sometimes the tapes skip or crackle, and often I blow on the cartridge for good luck, hoping my tape deck doesn’t jam. They’re deliriously idiosyncratic, equal parts jubilant and mournful. They remind me that we don’t have to succumb to empty playlists of composite user data. Real people, with their imperfections and their curiosity and their care, have and will long continue to put their time, energy, and passion into the sounds that punctuate our days. Next up? “Wrong time to be right (postwar folk music).” —Dolma Ombadykow, Assistant Editor
The Green Lives by Sara Gilmore
In Sara Gilmore’s new book of poems, The Green Lives, the titles pay tribute to symbols left by migrant people on fences, buildings, and trees after the Civil War and the Great Depression. The symbols shared meanings with others on the road: a diamond meant “keep quiet,” a U meant “you may camp here.” These poems affected me deeply, as they seemed to speak directly to ongoing crises experienced by those I love who have been forced out of normalcy into “states of precarity and abandon, for which no understanding holds.” In the preface, Gilmore writes that through these poems, she “tried to articulate feelings that aren’t yet recognized as feelings.” She has succeeded. When I read these poems, old feelings rose to the surface—and they weren’t always my own. They were taking flight, hovering over the earth, as dispersed as pain. “No stone for the place, / just this weeping diminishment / inclined to weeping description.” —Hannah Piette, Assistant Editor
In case you missed it, we compiled our most-read poetry and prose from the year, too.