“If you’ve seen one pandemic,” epidemiologists like to joke, “you’ve seen... one pandemic.” Influenza strains and common colds differ year to year. The H1N1, or swine flu, pandemic of 2009 does not perfectly parallel the H2N2 pandemic of a half-century earlier. HIV/AIDS does not correlate with the gonorrhea outbreaks…
An odd moment occurs near the end of a recent New York Times interview with the acclaimed screenwriter and director Charlie Kaufman. The piece’s author, Jon Mooallem, is discussing how the writer of films like Being John Malkovich and Eternal Sunshine Of The Spotless Mind would like to see his work reviewed.…
The coronavirus pandemic and its attendant shutdown has had a way of warping one’s sense of time—alternately making the days go by in a blink or pass grudgingly slowly. One would be forgiven for forgetting what happened last week, let alone back in February. But even during a different sort of year, it’s easy to miss…
There’s no real discussion of the year’s best podcasts so far without addressing the apocalyptic elephant in the room: Many series were compelled to pivot their content to coronavirus-related storytelling beginning in March, while others bent over backwards to explain themselves as they released non-COVID-related…
It’s hard to imagine a world where Banned Book Club could be more relevant than it is right now. If it’s not clear from the title, the graphic novel revolves around a group of young people who meet to read and discuss books banned by their government. It’s set in South Korea in the early 1980s, a time that most…
I have a question. I’m a gay man in a relationship and we’re both really happy since we met a year ago. We’re “open” in the sense that he wants the option to be intimate with someone else if a connection happens and in turn he said he would be supportive of me being involved in my kinks. But I haven’t done anything…
For many queer youth, escape is the ultimate goal. Escaping a family that won’t accept you; escaping a society that diminishes you; and perhaps the hardest of all, escaping the internalized pain and trauma that eats away at you. Emo scenesters Kiki and Hana are trying to break free from their idle lives in Remy…
It’s officially summer, and The Big Orange Couch is the nostalgic audio equivalent of hearing the ice cream truck from your backyard kiddie pool. A breezy recap show for fans of old-school Nickelodeon classics, hosts Andrew and Joey showcase wildly specific knowledge of everything Nick. But their expertise really…
Every month, a deluge of new books comes flooding out from big publishers, indie houses, and self-publishing platforms. So every month, The A.V. Club narrows down the endless options to five of the books we’re most excited about.
Has there been a more corrupted term in recent years than “self-care”? What used to be a battle cry of resistance for Black and queer social justice activists, has morphed into a buzzword meant to sell expensive face creams, a yoga retreat in a five-star hotel, and any product that inches you closer to whatever…
With the resurgence of Dungeons & Dragons over the last few years, comics has seen a rise in dungeon-crawling fantasy stories that offer fresh takes on the conventions of role-playing games. First Second has already seen huge success with its graphic novel adaptations of the RPG podcast, The Adventure Zone, and on…
I’m committed to my male partner and he’s committed to me. (I’m a woman.) But we both understand we need to flirt and that we will both want to sleep with someone else at some point. We live together, we have a dog, and neither of us believes in marriage. We plan to purchase a house in the coming months. Here’s the…
Recorded before the pandemic, the most recent episode of Inappropriate Questions deals with grief, particularly the ways in which the question “How are you?” affects people dealing with loss. One of the guests this episode, Michael Cruz Kayne, lost his son a decade ago, and the other guest, Kayla Moryoussef, is a…
Late in Death In Her Hands, Ottessa Moshfegh’s third novel, the narrator recalls an incident with her dog, Charlie. One day she let Charlie loose in a park, where the pet soon shoved its face and rolled around in what the narrator at first thought was a dead animal, but which turned out to be shit. “I stood back…
I’m a 32-year-old straight guy. My wife and I have been married for four years and together for nine. We have a great marriage and all is well. We have been quarantining at home since March. During this time, we have been exploring things sexually, which has been really fun. We have also been talking more about our…
In our monthly book club, we discuss whatever we happen to be reading and ask everyone in the comments to do the same. What Are You Reading This Month?
If there was ever a time for African Americans to get drunk and complain about why we still have to remind folk that Black Lives Matter, it’s right now. Actually, the hosts of this weekly podcast have already been doing that for a couple years now. On each episode, Black Nerd Problems writer Oz Longworth Jr. and…
We explore some of Wikipedia’s oddities in our 6,101,066-week series, Wiki Wormhole.
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