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    Carrie Coon Likes to ‘Play the Baddie’ in ‘The Gilded Age’

    Playing a new-money upstart in “The Gilded Age,” the actor isn’t afraid to go big. “You can’t take it too seriously,” she said. “You can’t take yourself too seriously.”Carrie Coon remembers vividly the first time she walked onto the Long Island set of the HBO series “The Gilded Age” and into the regal foyer of the mansion she occupies as Bertha Russell, wife of the railway tycoon George Russell (Morgan Spector).“I thought, ‘Oh, oh, oh, I have to fill this,’” she recalled.Delectably, Coon has. In Season 2 of the series, a rococo drama set in 1880s New York City, Bertha takes her fight to join Manhattan’s elite to the opera. She sponsors the nascent Metropolitan Opera as an alternative to the Academy of Music, which won’t accept her new money. Whether in intimate scenes or grand ones, Coon (“The Leftovers,” “Fargo”), as Bertha, gives a full-bodied, deep-voiced performance. A foyer? That’s nothing. This is a woman who can fill the Met.On an afternoon in late November, a few weeks before the “Gilded Age” finale aired, Coon joined a Zoom call in a white bathrobe and satiny makeup. She was attending the Met herself that night, along with many of her castmates. (In an unusually elegant publicity stunt, they would occupy a box at “Tannhauser.”)Although the show’s cast doesn’t lack for acting talent, Coon has become a fan favorite. This is probably because Bertha seems to enjoy herself so much, embracing each of the script’s melodramatic turns. Whether interfering in the relationships of her children, Larry (Harry Richardson) and Gladys (Taissa Farmiga), or tangling with her former lady’s maid (Kelley Curran), now a rival, Bertha seems to savor each squabble and brawl. So does Coon.“I love that feeling of taking over a space,” she said. “It’s a really satisfying and rare feeling as a woman to have that.”As the wife of a railway tycoon, Coon’s character, Bertha Russell, whose parents were potato farmers has to fight hard for recognition and access among New York’s social elite.Barbara Nitke/HBOIn between bites of a lunchtime sandwich, Coon discussed ambition, big choices and why no one recognizes her offscreen, even now. These are edited excerpts from the conversation. Mild Season 2 spoilers follow.Who is Bertha and what drives her?If Bertha had been of another time, Bertha would have been a C.E.O., an executive, a senator. She’s an ambitious woman in a time where there was no place for ambitious women besides the social sphere. The heart of Bertha is her interest in her children. Her son is fine — her son is a white man with lots of money. Her daughter, however, does need to be protected.Yet Bertha often sacrifices her children’s happiness in favor of the family’s social standing.Her myopia is really frustrating because what we see in the Russell’s marriage is that Bertha has, in fact, married for love and respect and ambition. But Bertha understands very well the obstacles for women, even women of a certain class. We’re not even touching on what’s going on for women of color and immigrants who are all working in this capitalist system that will crush them. Bertha is wrong about what she’s doing. But when it comes to our children, we do have these blind spots. It is ultimately about love and protection. She just goes about it without any nuance.Are there any limits to her ambition?I don’t think so. Limits are imposed on her externally. I don’t feel that she intrinsically has a sense of limits. Her cause is meritocratic in a way. She believes that you can and should be able to earn your place.You seem to move through the world more humbly. Is it freeing to play someone so different from you?It’s fun to play the baddie. It’s fun to traffic in your own capacity for ruthlessness. You are correct in assuming that’s not the way I move through the world. And yet in order to have any longevity in a business as ruthless as ours can be, for women in particular, you really have to have some of that gumption. Anybody who’s still in it, even if they don’t admit it, they have ambition at the root. But it’s terrific fun. In my life I’ve played a lot of really hapless moms — frenzied and lost and grasping. Grasping at this level is a much more delightful way to be at work.From left, Harry Richardson, Taissa Farmiga, Coon and Morgan Spector in a scene from Season 2, in which Bertha helps bring the New York Metropolitan Opera into being.Barbara Nitke/HBODoes Bertha know that she’s a villain?She’s not a villain. She helps build the Met! She believes that doors should be open to her. What makes anyone else better than she is? She comes from potato farmers, and here she is. Why wouldn’t you open the door to someone who’s worked that hard? That’s how I feel about people who pick up their children and carry them across rivers and deserts from Central America to get here. Those are the kind of people you want here. Those are resilient, astonishing people who will do anything for their loved ones.Your voice is pitched higher than Bertha’s. How did you find the particular pitch and rhythm of it?Certainly the rhythm came out of the writing. And then, in Season 1, when I come in and say, “Oh, what an interesting moment for me to arrive,” somehow my voice was just lower that day. I was like, Oh, there she is. It’s fun to be working down there. I never get recognized on the street; I don’t even get recognized by my crew when I’m out of my wig. Even my castmates at a party a couple of weeks ago didn’t recognize me. But people recognize the voice, though very rarely.And then her gait, her gestures. How did you find those?These costumes shape you in such a particular way. Women were supposed to glide, to be smooth. You weren’t supposed to see movement. But Bertha is an upstart and I felt that her hips should be involved. I don’t know how conscious that choice was. When you’re asked to walk into that foyer in a hat and a cashmere coat, you just have to sashay.In this season the show has leaned further into melodrama. How does it feel to play those big theatrical scenes?Terrifying, but wonderful. It just feels like you’re doing Eugene O’Neill all the time. But oh, gosh, we really do have fun. That’s the key to it: You can’t take it too seriously. You can’t take yourself too seriously. I’m not afraid of big choices, and I’m not afraid of people not liking Bertha, just like I’m not afraid, now that I’m 42, of anybody not liking me. So I try to have fun. There was one take when Bertha first saw Turner (Curran’s character) that was so hilariously broad. I staggered; I grabbed Morgan’s arm; I fell a little bit. As soon as the take was over, we howled because it was a hat on a hat on a hat on a hat.Walking in that first day, we had no idea what we were doing. We didn’t know how big it was going to be. We didn’t know how much space there was. But as we were shooting, we were like, OK, I think we can handle a little more size. In Season 2, some of the exposition is out of the way, we’ve got the characters introduced. Now we get to have a little more fun.This season focuses largely on the real-life battle between the Academy of Music and the nascent Metropolitan Opera. What is it a proxy war for?We always draw a parallel with the moment when the Kardashians were invited to the Met Ball. The world of celebrity and what money can afford you, it’s really emblematic of that. The opera also represents the struggle in this country, this feeling of people resisting inevitable change and holding on very tightly to an older way of life.Bertha ends the season in triumph. Could she have ended in any other way?I don’t think so. The show is exploring a very particular time, an extraordinary time of industry and change and growth. We know already that the moneyed people won, the new people won. Where they weren’t invited, they built something new from the ground up. So her rise is really inevitable. She’s an inexorable force. There’s nothing that will stop her. More

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    Was a Scandal the Best Thing to Happen to Hasan Minhaj?

    At the Beacon, the comic took a different tack after posting a video rebutting a New Yorker article on fabrications in his work. The crowd went wild.Finishing a story about a girl cheating on him in 11th grade, Hasan Minhaj turned to the audience at the Beacon Theater in Manhattan during the first of two shows on Friday night and said, “Don’t fact-check me.”The crowd came alive at this nod to the recent New Yorker article by Clare Malone exposing several of his onstage stories as fabrications. “I had to go head-to-head with one of the most dangerous organizations in the world,” he said, adding that he didn’t mean the U.S. military or the Israeli Defense Forces. “I am talking about a white woman with a keyboard.”Then he mocked the article as “water is wet” obvious before describing it as a sign of success. “I’ve made it: I got a real old scandal,” he said, adding, “A dorky scandal.” With regret in his voice, Minhaj said he didn’t molest a child or sleep with a porn star: “I got caught embellishing for dramatic effect.”Typical crisis management dictates you should move on, not fixate. But in our attention economy, where the most popular Netflix specials of the past year featured Chris Rock talking about the Slap and John Mulaney joking about going to rehab, comedians are wise to consider Rahm Emanuel’s famous political advice: Never let a good crisis go to waste. Minhaj split the difference. He did not linger on the story but dedicated a solid chunk of jokes to it that got one of the biggest responses of the night. There were moments when I even thought this scandal might be the best thing that ever happened to him.For such a polished, assured comedian, getting your image scuffed up a bit can add a little more tension to your comedy. David Sedaris faced a similar media firestorm and very few even remember it. In his new act, Minhaj mocked how politicians treat him as a spokesman for his people. (“They think I’m the brown whisperer,” he said.) The more nuanced critiques of his deceptions focused on the context of his work, firmly in “The Daily Show” tradition of blurring lines between silly comedy and grave journalism. The New Yorker article took some of that weight off him, shifting expectations.It’s notable that he released a 21-minute video defending himself and criticizing the New Yorker piece as misleading. (For a smart analysis that gets into the weeds on the issues, read Nadira Goffe from Slate.) Instead of downplaying the dust-up as he did onstage, he argued in the video that the New Yorker writer made him sound like “a psycho,” and he even expressed a few notes of contrition, promising to be “more thoughtful” about blending fiction and nonfiction. In a way, he did this at the Beacon, drawing attention to his lies, teaching his audience how to read him.Reactions to this article varied wildly. My least favorite was the popular genre of commenters who emerge after every scandal to pile on by saying, “I never liked their work anyway.” It manages the feat of trivializing moral and artistic issues.Yet the Minhaj controversy quietly opened a useful, long overdue discussion about truth in comedy that leverages nonfiction. More art than ever leans on the trust and authenticity of journalism, so it’s good for performers to think about the peculiar bargain they have struck with their audience and how to navigate it. There is an endless number of funny ways to tip off a crowd to your level of honesty.While I thought some of Minhaj’s fabrications were unnecessary and wrongheaded, I never thought he was a “psycho.” What I saw was a comic responding to the incentives of a culture that not only prefers its politics wrapped inside a personal emotional story, but also gives clout to dramatic displays of victimhood.We live in a time when seemingly everyone, no matter how rich, famous or successful, is angling to play the victim. Elon Musk invites sympathy by telling us that a company refusing to advertise on his site is equivalent to blackmail. When even Taylor Swift says she was canceled in the Time magazine article announcing her as Person of the Year, you know that the ability to repackage yourself as the underdog is limitless.As it happens, this provides an opening for jokes. In Leo Reich’s cleverly self-aware new special, “Literally Who Cares?” (Max), the young comic spoofs this tendency. He begins by saying his show is sponsored by his dad, who runs an incredible small business you might have heard of named Deutsche Bank. By the end, he insists he’s oppressed. “I read something recently that even if you haven’t been oppressed, you can feel like you have and it triggers the same endorphins.”The comic artist currently tackling this theme best is the filmmaker Kristoffer Borgli, whose feature “Sick of Myself” introduced audiences to a character who intentionally takes pills to make herself physically ill, to gain attention and fame. Borgli’s new movie, “Dream Scenario,” is about a beta male professor played by Nicolas Cage accused by a colleague of “searching for the insult.” In an outlandish twist, he starts showing up in people’s dreams doing violent things, and fragile students freak out in a parody of delicate sensitivities. The professor sees himself as the real victim and is then tempted by the embrace of Joe Rogan, Jordan Peterson and, of course, the French. In other words, this movie is riffing on the most popular victim narrative of our moment: Cancel culture.Thankfully, Minhaj doesn’t go there, but he gets close. At one point in his show, he said the real divide in the country was not between rich and poor, Democratic or Republican, but between “the insane” and “the insufferable.”The insane include the people who stormed the capitol. He calls them nuts, before adding: “but fun.” Then he grew more animated describing the insufferable by their “NPR tote-bag energy” and “hall monitor” tendencies. It was a head fake to The New Yorker article before a pivot to self-deprecation, poking fun at the time he corrected Ellen DeGeneres on her show for mispronouncing his name.“What was I expecting?” he asked. “She’s a billionaire who’s best friends with Oprah. She’s not a Sufi poet.”Minhaj is telling us that he was a member of the insufferable. A reformed one, perhaps? It repositions him less as a righteous political comic than a more self-questioning, personal comic, a move he had already begun to make; this scandal may have accelerated the shift.His show concluded with a long bit about therapy and family, in which, deploying one of his characteristic dramatic pauses, followed by whispery voice close to the microphone, he confessed his real kink: Acceptance. More

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    On ‘Survivor,’ the Clothing Choices Are More Deliberate Than You May Think

    Contestants’ wardrobes are more deliberate than you may think.Year after year, with each new crop of “Survivor” castaways, it’s easy to see that they’re meant to represent a familiar cross-section of archetypes.Even in their off-the-rack tank tops and cargo shorts, characters like the cranky old military vet, the arrogant corporate executive and the pharmaceutical rep next door are recognizable on sight.That’s no accident: While the conventions of reality TV encourage viewers to believe that these contestants arrive with whatever hastily selected items they can grab, their clothing is carefully vetted and assembled with producers and wardrobe staff to maximally portray players’ personalities and emphasize the show’s “Robinson Crusoe” mise-en-scène.Since it debuted in 2000, “Survivor,” which will soon finish airing its 45th season on CBS, has had an ever-shifting cast and has regularly introduced new twists for contestants as they compete to be the last person standing and win a cash prize. Over time, players’ wardrobes — dirt-crusted and minimal though they may be — have helped further plots and create through-lines in the series, which continues to draw among the highest ratings on network television.Jeff Probst, the host of “Survivor” and its executive producer and showrunner, said clothing was at the foundation of the show’s premise.“The idea is, what if you were shipwrecked with a group of strangers?” Mr. Probst said. “A lawyer’s clothing should look very different from a nurse, who looks different from a pizza maker.”Caitlin Moore, a “Survivor” casting producer, works alongside the show’s longtime wardrobe supervisor, Maria Sundeen, to help contestants select clothes for the show. It involves “a lot of going through the closets, trying to find the pieces that will work,” Ms. Moore said.“We are very much in a collaborative process, working together to come up with what really feels like a reflection of their own personality yet also meets the needs of production,” she added.For “Survivor: South Pacific,” producers asked John Cochran, who was then a student at Harvard Law School, to show up in a sweater vest to play up his Ivy League bona fides.Monty Brinton/CBS‘You Should Wear a Red Sweater Vest’John Cochran was completing his studies at Harvard Law School when he was cast in the 23rd season of “Survivor.” He and his mother were at a mall looking for practical attire that could get him through 39 days without shelter on the Samoan island of Upolu, he said, when he got a call from Ms. Moore.“We were, like, looking at REI camping stuff,” said Mr. Cochran, now 36 and a television writer in Los Angeles. “And Caitlin says, ‘We don’t know what you’re going to think of this, but we’re thinking you should wear a red sweater vest.’”Ms. Moore explained that red would be a color scheme for that season, he said. She was hoping to play up his Ivy League bona fides — and his nerdiness — with the vest, he added.Mr. Cochran initially balked at the request. “I’d never worn a sweater vest before,” he said. “I already exude nerdiness. I’m trying to downplay my ruddy complexion and rosacea and red hair.”Mr. Cochran, right, eventually ditched the pink collared shirt from “South Pacific” and just wore his red sweater vest as a tank top. “That was my ultimate act of rebellion,” he said.Monty Brinton/CBSBut in the first episode of “Survivor: South Pacific,” which was broadcast in 2011, Mr. Cochran could be seen furiously paddling a boat across that ocean in a crimson sweater vest, a pink collared shirt and khakis, the tropical sun beating down on his reddening face.This rather ridiculous image made the impression that Ms. Moore and her team had suspected it would, and when Mr. Cochran agreed to join the cast of “Survivor: Caramoan” the year after, it was a no-brainer that he would show up wearing the same attire.“It was a fun journey to go on,” Ms. Moore said, “and to see him start to lean into it.”Mr. Cochran said he acquiesced to the producers’ vision for his wardrobe partly because, as a fan of the show, he recalled how other contestants’ attire had helped them connect with viewers.He pointed to Rob Mariano, who was rarely without a Boston Red Sox hat in his many “Survivor” appearances, and to Rupert Boneham, another contestant in multiple seasons, who was known for wearing a tie-dyed tank top. (When Mr. Boneham ran a third-party campaign for governor of Indiana in 2012, he evoked his “Survivor” wardrobe by occasionally wearing tie-dye accessories. He finished third in that election, which was won by former Vice President Mike Pence.)“Whether it’s a tie-dye shirt or a Boston Red Sox cap,” Mr. Cochran said, “these discrete, identifiable items become so linked to the person.” His red vest, he added, became “my ‘Survivor’ costume.”Sandra Diaz-Twine spent hundreds of dollars on clothes for “Survivor: Pearl Islands,” but a plot twist that season meant that most of the items couldn’t be used.Robert Voets/CBSLillian Morris, a Boy Scout leader, dressed in a full scouting uniform for the “Pearl Islands” season.Monty Brinton/CBSA Sartorial Plot TwistMr. Probst said that the biggest change to the show’s approach to wardrobe came with its seventh season, “Survivor: Pearl Islands,” which was broadcast in 2003.Before then, each contestant had been permitted a knapsack of clothing items, including some survival gear. But for “Pearl Islands,” the players, who included Mr. Boneham, were surprised to enter the competition with significantly fewer items than they had worked with producers to select.Once cast members arrived at the shooting location, Mr. Probst said, they were asked to dress in certain outfits they had brought to wear for press photos that would be used to promote the show. Mr. Boneham wore his tie dye. Lillian Morris, a Boy Scout leader, dressed in a full scouting uniform. Shawn Cohen, an advertising sales executive, was in an Armani suit.But instead of going to a photo shoot, cast members were plunged immediately into the game, wearing only the clothes on their backs.“Some of the most iconic looks of ‘Survivor’ came from that season,” Mr. Probst said.Sandra Diaz-Twine, the winner of “Pearl Islands,” said she was shocked when she realized that most of the clothes the production crew had approved for her to bring couldn’t be used.“I had charged like $500, $600, on my credit card,” said Ms. Diaz-Twine, 49, who lives in Fayetteville, Ark., and has appeared in several subsequent seasons of the show. “I wanted to make sure that I had a different clean outfit like every day. And then they say you’re jumping off the boat with just the clothes on your back. I was like, Oh my god, I charged all this stuff to my credit card.”Since then, “Survivor” has gone back and forth on what clothing — and how much of it — contestants may bring. “We always listen to players,” Mr. Probst said. “It’s a give and take.”Rob Mariano on “Redemption Island,” the show’s 22nd season.Monty Brinton/CBSBuffs, Underwear and SwimsuitsOne garment worn by all contestants who have appeared on the show is the buff: a scarflike band of stretchy cotton emblazoned with the “Survivor” logo. It is rendered in different colors each season and has become one of the series’s sartorial signatures.“There are clearly guys who have ordered a buff before they go on the show and have put it on in the mirror looking at all the different ways they could wear it,” Mr. Probst said.Parvati Shallow, 41, a recurring contestant who first appeared in “Survivor: Cook Islands,” the show’s 13th season, broadcast in 2006, said the buff is critical for players who have only so many clothes. “You can wear it as a shirt, a skirt, a headpiece, a scarf,” she said.After her fourth and latest “Survivor” appearance, in the “Winners at War” season broadcast in 2020, Ms. Shallow, an executive coach and yoga teacher in Los Angeles, made headlines for criticizing the show’s dress code on a podcast hosted by another “Survivor” alum. She said she was pressured to compete in her underwear rather than the bathing suit she had requested. (In the seasons before “Winners at War,” producers began to discourage wearing swimsuits.)“It was a point of contention with me,” she said in a recent interview with The New York Times. “I went back and forth with wardrobe. They said no, nobody was getting a bathing suit.”She ultimately went with patterned undergarments that gave the impression of a swimsuit, but said it was not a happy compromise. “I had just had a baby,” she said. “I was like, My body looks nothing like it used to look like.”Mr. Probst said in an email that Ms. Shallow’s characterization was not accurate. He added that the choice to move away from bathing suits on the show was a creative one. “‘Survivor’ wardrobe has always centered around the conceit that the players were shipwrecked and left only with the clothes on their back,” he said.For Ms. Diaz-Twine, returning to “Survivor” after winning the “Pearl Islands” season offered the chance to upgrade those clothes. In preparation for the show’s 20th season, “Survivor: Heroes vs. Villains,” she said, “for the first time ever, I bought a Victoria’s Secret bra.”“I won a million dollars,” added Ms. Diaz-Twine, who will appear with Ms. Shallow in the second season of “The Traitors,” another reality TV competition, which will be released in January on Peacock. “I can’t show up in panties from Walmart.” More

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    Michael Stone, Psychiatrist and Scholar Who Studied Evil, Dies at 90

    He attempted to define evil by plumbing the biographies and motivations of hundreds of violent felons who had committed heinous crimes.Dr. Michael H. Stone, a psychiatrist and scholar who sought to define evil and to differentiate its manifestations from the typical behavior of people who are mentally ill, died on Dec. 6 at his home in Manhattan. He was 90.The cause was complications of a stroke he had in January, his son David said.Dr. Stone was best known to the public as the author of the book “The Anatomy of Evil” (2009) and as the host from 2006 to 2008 of the television program “Most Evil,” for which he interviewed people imprisoned for murder to determine what motivated them to engage in an evil criminal act.He ranked the acts on a 22-category scale of his creation. Modeled on Dante’s nine circles of hell, his taxonomic scale ranged from justifiable homicide to murders committed by people whose primary motivation was to torture their victims.Only human beings are capable of evil, Dr. Stone wrote in “The Anatomy of Evil,” although evil is not a characteristic that people are born with. He acknowledged that while acts of evil were difficult to define, the word “evil” was derived from “over” or “beyond,” and could apply to “certain acts done by people who clearly intended to hurt or to kill others in an excruciatingly painful way.”For an act to be evil, he wrote, it must be “breathtakingly horrible” and premeditated, inflict “wildly excessive” suffering and “appear incomprehensible, bewildering, beyond the imagination of ordinary people in the community.”“Mike’s major contribution to psychiatry was sharpening the distinction between mental illness and evil,” Dr. Allen Frances. a former student of Dr. Stone’s who is now chairman emeritus of the department of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at Duke University School of Medicine in Durham, N.C., said in a phone interview.“The problem,” Dr. Frances said, “is that with every mass murderer, every crazy politician, every serial killer, the first tendency in the public mind and the media is that he’s mentally ill.” Dr. Stone, he said, helped to change that default position.Dr. Stone became known for his book “The Anatomy of Evil” and for hosting the TV program “Most Evil.”Prometheus BooksAnalyzing the biographies of more than 600 violent criminals, Dr. Stone identified two predominant personality traits: narcissism, to the point of having little or no ability to care about their victims; and aggression, in terms of exerting power over another person to inflict humiliation, suffering and death.In “The New Evil: Understanding the Emergence of Modern Violent Crime” (2019), a sequel to Dr. Stone’s 2009 book, he and Dr. Gary Brucato warned that since the 1960s there had been an “undeniable intensification and diversification” of evil acts committed mostly by criminals who “are not ‘sick’ in the psychiatric and legal sense, as much as psychopathic and morally depraved.”The reasons, they wrote, included greater civilian access to military weaponry; the diminution of both individual and personal responsibility, as preached by fascist and communist governments earlier in the 20th century; sexual liberation, which unleashed other inhibitions; the ease of communication on cellphones and the internet; the rise of moral relativism; and a backlash against feminism.In 2000, Dr. Stone figured in a sensational murder trial that tested the limits of doctor-patient confidentiality. He wanted to testify in the murder trial of Robert Bierenbaum, a plastic surgeon and former patient of his who was accused of killing his wife, Gail Katz-Bierenbaum, in 1985.Dr. Stone had written a letter to his patient’s wife two years before her death, advising her to live apart from her husband for her own safety. He had asked that she sign and return it, but she never did. He had also contacted Dr. Bierenbaum’s parents, with his permission.The judge ultimately excluded Dr. Stone’s testimony from the trial on the basis of professional confidentiality. But the testimony of several other witnesses about the letter contributed to Dr. Bierenbaum’s conviction.Dr. Stone identified two predominant personality traits in those who commit evil acts: narcissism and aggression.Librado Romero/The New York TimesMichael Howard Stone was born on Oct. 27, 1933, in Syracuse, N.Y., the grandson of Eastern European immigrants. His father, Moses Howard Stone, owned a wholesale paper business. His mother, Corinne (Gittleman) Stone, was a homemaker.A prodigy who learned Latin and Greek as a child, he was only 10 years old when he began seventh grade. As the youngest and smallest student in the school, as well as the only Jewish one, he formed an alliance with a 17-year-old classmate who was a boxer, his son David said: Mike would do the classmate’s homework, and the classmate would protect him from local antisemitic bullies.He entered Cornell University in Ithaca, N.Y., when he was 16, enrolling in a premedical curriculum but double-majoring in classics in case he was rejected by medical schools that had already met their quota of Jewish students. He enrolled in Cornell Medical School in Manhattan after graduating from Cornell in 1954 and received his medical degree in 1958.He originally studied hematology and cancer chemotherapy at Sloan Kettering Institute in Manhattan, but his mother’s chronic pain disorder prompted him to switch to neurology and then, eventually, to psychiatry. He did his residency at the New York State Psychiatric Institute at Columbia Presbyterian Hospital, where he met Dr. Clarice Kestenbaum, whom he married in 1965.He is survived by two sons, David and John Stone, from that marriage, which ended in divorce in 1978; his wife, Beth Eichstaedt; his stepchildren, Wendy Turner and Thomas Penders; three grandchildren; and one great-grandson.Dr. Stone spoke 16 languages and, like a vestige from another era, customarily wore three-piece suits. He was known for his impish sense of humor: His latest book, “The Funny Bone,” published this year, is a collection of his cartoons, jokes and poems.An amateur carpenter, he built the shelves that housed his library of 11,000 books. His collection included about 60 books on Hitler — further evidence, like his memories of childhood bullying, of his yearning to define evil.As a psychiatrist, a psychoanalyst and for many years a professor of clinical psychiatry at Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons, Dr. Stone also conducted a long-term study of patients with borderline personality disorders, including those who had contemplated suicide. He concluded that, often as a result of therapy and other treatment, the condition of about two-thirds of them had improved appreciably some 25 years later.In “The New Evil,” Dr. Stone and Dr. Brucato offered a possible explanation for why “particularly heinous and spectacular crimes,” especially those committed in America and by men, had been on the rise since the 1960s. They warned against “the rise of a sort of ‘false compassion,’ in which the most relentless, psychopathic persons are sometimes viewed as ‘victims.’”The two concluded by invoking a familiar metaphor: A frog dropped in a pot of boiling water will immediately try to escape; but, if placed in cold water that is gradually heated, the frog will remain complacent until it’s too late.“It is our ardent hope that, after a period of terrible growing pains, our culture will eventually learn that true power and control come only after a lifelong process of mastering and inhibiting the self,” they wrote. “Perhaps, as a first step, we should admit that the water in our collective pot is growing disquietingly warmer, day by day.” More

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    Mayim Bialik Out as ‘Jeopardy!’ Host

    The departure of Bialik, who had been absent from the show for months, leaves Ken Jennings, a former champion, as the sole host.Mayim Bialik, who received an Emmy nomination for her work on “Jeopardy!” after the death of longtime host Alex Trebek, said on Friday that she would not return to the popular game show, leaving Ken Jennings as the sole host.Bialik began hosting “Jeopardy!” on an interim basis in 2021, and on a permanent one last year. She has not appeared on the program or its “Celebrity Jeopardy!” offshoot for the past few months. In May, the entertainment news site Deadline reported that she had stepped away from “Jeopardy!” in solidarity with the Hollywood writers’ strike.“Sony has informed me that I will no longer be hosting the syndicated version of Jeopardy!” Bialik wrote on social media on Friday, referring to the firm that produces the show. “I am deeply grateful for the opportunity to have been part of the Jeopardy! family.”She did not mention the strike, which ended in the fall.Sony confirmed Bialik’s departure in a separate statement, saying only that the decision for Jennings to continue alone was made “to maintain continuity for our viewers.” The company thanked Bialik for her contributions and said that it hoped to continue to work with her on prime time specials, without elaborating.The shake up at “Jeopardy!” is the latest for a show that struggled to find a replacement for Trebek after his death in November 2020. Following a string of celebrity hosts, including LeVar Burton and Mehmet Oz, and a botched plan for executive producer Mike Richards to take over, Bialik filled in as a temporary host and split duties with Ken Jennings, a former champion.Bialik, who has a Ph.D. in neuroscience and is best known for starring in “The Big Bang Theory,” a television show, made it clear when she stepped in as interim host in 2021 that she wanted the position to become permanent.Some critics questioned her impartiality. Trebek had been celebrated for having a neutral and impartial air, while Ms. Bialik was outspoken on topics such as vaccines.But in July 2022, Bialik and Jennings were named permanent joint hosts, and both were nominated this year for an Emmy for “Outstanding Host for a Game Show.” More

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    ‘The Crown’: The History Behind the Final Episodes

    To close the show’s six-season run, the episodes open in 1997 and depict a heartthrob prince, an offensive party costume, several deaths and a marriage.After seven years of seamlessly blending royal fact and fiction, the second part of “The Crown” Season 6 brings the lavish Netflix show to a close.The final six episodes, which arrived on Thursday, open in 1997, and follow several story lines concerning members of the royal family and aspects of Tony Blair’s tenure as Britain’s prime minister. (Bertie Carvel plays Blair.)A grieving Prince William (Ed McVey) unexpectedly becomes a worldwide heartthrob and falls in love while studying at the University of St. Andrews. The queen (Imelda Staunton) grapples with her own mortality following the loss of her sister, Princess Margaret (Lesley Manville), and the Queen Mother (Marcia Warren), in a short space of time. In the finale, set in 2005, Prince Charles (Dominic West) finally marries his longtime partner, Camilla Parker Bowles (Olivia Williams).Here is a look at what The Times and other news outlets reported at the time. You can find more in the TimesMachine archive browser. (Warning: This feature contains spoilers for Season 6 of “The Crown.”)Episode 5, ‘Willsmania’Prince William (Ed McVey) returns to boarding school soon after the death of his mother. NetflixIn this episode, Prince William returns to school soon after Princess Diana’s funeral. He attended Eton College, the prestigious British boarding school known for educating prime ministers, Nobel laureates and, of course, aristocracy.In April 2017, the British tabloid The Sun reported that William returned to school just four days after the ceremony and received handwritten condolence letters from more than half of his fellow students.On the show, he is also handed a sack of letters from his fans across the globe, especially adoring young women. It is the beginning of the so-called “Willsmania” of the late ’90s, when William became the focus of intense international attention. This new heartthrob status is also made clear when he visits Vancouver with his father and younger brother Harry (Luther Ford), and young women line up to catch a glimpse.Young fans of Prince William cheered and screamed as he visited Vancouver, Canada, in 1998.Tim Graham Photo Library, via Getty ImagesOn June 22, 1998, The Times reported that the trip to Vancouver in March of that year “alerted the palace to what a pinup the 6-foot-1-inch prince with the shock of blond hair, blue eyes and downward looking shy smile so reminiscent of his mother has become to teenage girls.”The following year, Christina Ferrari, the managing editor of Teen People, a youth-focused version of People magazine, told The Times that Will was “an international superstar almost on the level of Leonardo DiCaprio.”Episode 6, ‘Ruritania’In the sixth season, Prime Minister Tony Blair is played by Bertie Carvel.Justin Downing/NetflixIn Episode 6, Queen Elizabeth seems threatened by the public’s positive reception of Blair, the new prime minister. “People really do seem to love him, and see him as a true son of England,” she says, “and a unifying national symbol, in a way they used to see me.”In February 1999, Warren Hoge wrote in The Times that Blair was a “youthful, articulate and visionary leader” and “the most popular prime minister in British history.”On the show, we see Blair telling the queen about his attempts to persuade President Bill Clinton to send troops to Kosovo to drive Serb forces out. The queen is concerned to learn that the prime minister has a new nickname: “King Tony.” According to a Times report from 1999, he was given that sarcastic nickname by attendees of that year’s NATO Summit, because of all the media attention he was getting.Queen Elizabeth and Blair toasting the New Year in London at the turn of the millennium.Pool photo by Tim GrahamAccording to that Times report, Blair made a “grand entrance” in Washington before embarking on a “media blitz” to garner American public support for fighting the Yugoslav president, Slobodan Milosevic. (White House officials said Clinton “did not feel upstaged.”)Episode 7, ‘Alma Mater’Meg Bellamy as Kate Middleton and McVey as Prince William.Justin Downing/NetflixViewers meet an 18-year-old Prince William, who informs journalists that he has met the requirements to attend his chosen college, St. Andrews, where he will go after taking a year off from his studies.In “The Crown,” the prince receives his exam results while with his family, but in reality, he had already left Britain for his year abroad. In video footage by ITN of Prince William at a news conference on Sept. 29, 2000, he told journalists that when he received his results, he was “in the middle of nowhere” in a jungle in Belize.At St. Andrews, the episode follows Kate Middleton (Meg Bellamy) and William as they adjust to university life. Despite William initially dating a woman named Lola Airdale-Cavendish-Kincaid and Middleton a man named Rupert, there is clear romantic chemistry between the pair.According to The Times of London, Prince William dated two women before Kate: Olivia Hunt, who they newspaper called “a brainy sort,” and Carly Massy-Birch, whom “William had a two-week snog with,” according to an anonymous source. Somebody else (also anonymous) told the paper that Kate had apparently dated Rupert Finch, “a handsome Norfolk boy,” whom she met when she arrived at college.Episode 8, ‘Ritz’In a flashback, the young princesses, Elizabeth (Viola Prettejohn), left, and Margaret (Beau Gadsdon), sneak out of Buckingham Palace to celebrate V-E Day.NetflixFlashbacks to the young princesses Margaret (Beau Gadsdon) and Elizabeth (Viola Prettejohn) celebrating the end of World World II on May 8, 1945, or V-E Day, show the pair sneaking out of Buckingham Palace to party among the public on the streets and at the Ritz hotel. An initially shy Elizabeth finds a large group of Americans swing dancing, and she joins in after some initial hesitation.“You dark horse. Who’d have known you could jive,” Margaret says to her older sister on their way back to the palace. “There must have been 50 men chasing you.”In reality, while Margaret and Elizabeth did take to the streets of London to celebrate the war’s end, it seems they had their parents’ permission. In 1985, the queen gave a televised speech to the British public, in which she “for the first time told her subjects how she and Princess Margaret had slipped into the crowds outside Buckingham Palace to join the V-E Day celebrations and had walked for miles through the city,” according to The Times.“I remember we were terrified of being recognized,” Queen Elizabeth is reported to have said.In May 2020, during another televised address, the queen spoke of the “jubilant scenes” the royal family saw from the balcony of Buckingham Palace earlier on V-E Day. “The sense of joy in the crowds who gathered outside and across the country was profound,” she said.Crowds in Piccadilly Circus, in London, celebrating the end of World War II in 1945.F Greaves/Daily Herald Archive/National Science & Media Museum, via Getty ImagesThis episode also follows Princess Margaret’s declining health, and a series of strokes she suffered between 1998 and 2001. The first was at a party on the Caribbean island of Mustique; in a second, in a bathtub, she suffered severe burns; and one more, in her bedroom, left her hospitalized. Margaret died soon after, in February 2002.“The Crown” shows the princess smoking and drinking against her doctor’s orders, but Margaret’s friends have refuted that she lived such a lifestyle. “I have seen far too much suggesting that Margaret was an unashamed hedonist who spent her life partying,” a friend told The Guardian after she died. “It truly misunderstands her.”Margaret’s obituary in The Times describes her as an “attractive and fun-loving” woman who “earned a reputation in her youth as a free spirit.”Episode 9, ‘Hope Street’The Egyptian businessman Mohamed al-Fayed (Salim Daw), who accuses the royal family of murdering Princess Diana.NetflixIn a television interview at the start of the ninth episode, the Egyptian businessman Mohamed al-Fayed (Salim Daw) calls the royal family “gangsters” who intentionally killed Princess Diana and his son, Dodi. Al-Fayed claims that when the “dracular British royal family” discovered that Diana was pregnant “with a Muslim child” — Dodi’s — “they killed her.”In reality, much like the show depicts, al-Fayed gave several interviews over many years in which he accused the royal family of playing a significant role in Princess Diana’s death.In 1998, The Times reported that al-Fayed told the British media that “there was a conspiracy, and I will not rest until I have established exactly what happened”; speaking on “60 Minutes Australia” in 1999, al-Fayed also claimed that MI6, aided by the C.I.A., had been spying on Dodi and Diana; and in a 2007 interview with Al Jazeera English, he called the crash “absolute clear horrendous murder.”The show also shows Operation Paget, a police inquiry that was opened to re-examine the incidents leading up to the car crash that killed the couple. In December 2006, The Times reported that the inquiry took three years, and cost British taxpayers 3.69 million pounds, about $7 million at the time. It concluded that Princess Diana “was killed the way the authorities always said she had been killed: in a car accident, along with her boyfriend, Dodi Fayed, and their driver, Henri Paul,” Sarah Lyall wrote.While the investigation into Diana’s death is ongoing on “The Crown,” Prince William continues his studies at St. Andrews, where the recently single Kate Middleton models in a charity fashion show. The show recreates the sheer dress the real-life Kate wore in 2002 for the college show, a piece designed by Charlotte Todd, who was a college student at the time. In 2011, and following the announcement of William and Kate’s engagement, Todd sold the dress for £78,000, according to The Daily Telegraph (around $125, 000 at the time).“The Crown” recreates the sheer dress Kate Middleton (Meg Bellamy) wore in 2002 for a college fashion show.Justin Downing/NetflixOn the show, soon after William attends the fashion show, the pair start formally dating and move in together, along with two friends. According to The Sun, the couple moved into 13A Hope Street with Olivia Bleasdale and a fellow Etonian, Fergus Boyd.Back at the palace, the queen is dealing with her mother’s death and the Golden Jubilee, an international celebration to mark 50 years of her reign. Elizabeth spends most of the episode worried about a lack of public interest, and whether a crowd will gather for her balcony appearance at Buckingham Palace. She is pleasantly surprised by the masses of people who attend.On June 5, 2002, The Times reported that over one million people cheered outside the gates of the palace for the jubilee. On the same day, The Guardian reported that the event was more successful than both critics and organizers had anticipated.Episode 10, ‘Sleep, Dearie Sleep’In the final episode, the queen contemplates plans for her funeral.NetflixTo wrap the show up, the final episode of “The Crown” finds a way to address the queen’s death — she died in 2022 — while still being set in 2005. We see her planning her own funeral, including choosing the bagpipe lament “Sleep, Dearie Sleep” to play at the funeral.According to The Times of London, it took 20 years to plan the queen’s real funeral, with the task falling to Edward Fitzalan-Howard, the 18th Duke of Norfolk, whose ancestors have been responsible for planning significant royal occasions since 1672. Before the queen’s death, “we had annual meetings in the throne room of Buckingham Palace,” the duke told the newspaper in 2022. “It started off with 20 people; by April this year, it had reached 280. I have had a lot of help from Buckingham Palace staff.”The queen’s personal piper, Paul Burns, did indeed play “Sleep, Dearie Sleep” to close the queen’s funeral on Sept. 19, 2022.Paul Burns playing the bagpipes at Queen Elizabeth’s funeral in 2022.Pool photo by Gareth CattermoleNegative press surrounding Prince Harry during his younger years also gets some screen time. The prince is photographed at a “colonials and natives” costume party, wearing a military outfit with a swastika on the arm, which soon makes front-page news. In the aftermath of the scandal, William and Harry argue about the part each had played in the choice of costume, which the show depicts William encouraging when the brothers shop for their costumes.On Jan. 13, 2005, a photograph of Prince Harry in the outfit, holding a drink and a cigarette, ran on the front page of The Sun. Harry apologized for his unsuitable costume choice in the accompanying article: “I am very sorry if I have caused an offense,” he said. “It was a poor choice of costume.” In his recent memoir, “Spare,” Harry wrote that William and Kate “howled” with laughter when they saw the costume.“The Crown” also portrays Blair’s fall from public grace. He has a new nickname, “Tony Bliar,” because many believed he misled the public over the invasion of Iraq in 2003. That year, The Times reported that at least 750,000 antiwar protesters gathered at a demonstration in London, and noted that Blair had lost the British public’s approval. “I do not seek unpopularity as a badge of honor,” Blair is reported to have said. “But sometimes it is the price of leadership and the cost of conviction.”With the queen’s blessing, Charles and Camilla were finally married in a televised civil wedding ceremony. In April 2005, The Times said: “Given all the twists of fate and circumstance that have conspired against it, perhaps the most wondrous thing about the wedding on Saturday between Prince Charles and Camilla Parker Bowles is that it took place at all.” More

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    Theater Review: In ‘White Gold,’ Rice Is a Sacred Starch

    The family-friendly circus troupe Phare highlights the richness of Cambodian culture with gravity-defying acrobatics, Indigenous music and rousing choreography.In Cambodia, nothing is harvested more often or eaten more frequently than rice. It’s a wonder then that such familiarity does not breed contempt — quite the opposite. For Cambodian people, the grain is worth its weight in gold.The family-friendly circus act “White Gold,” presented by the Cambodian Circus ensemble Phare and playing now at Stage 42 while the New Victory Theater undergoes renovations, details the nation’s inextricable link to the sanctified crop. Throughout the show, we watch a young man contend with rice as if it really is a rare metal, one that first brings great prosperity but soon incites competition and greed.“White Gold” evokes traditional Cambodian art and ancient religion from its opening act. A man draws an eight-point mandala — an intricate, geometric design used in spiritual practice — to the vibrating hum of a Khmer chant. The acts that follow continue to highlight the richness of Cambodian culture with acrobatics, Indigenous music (played by three onstage musicians) and rousing choreography (by Julien Clement), all without spoken dialogue. The story, conveyed entirely through movement and live painting, is based loosely on “Siddhartha,” the 1922 novel by Herman Hesse about a young man who renounces material possessions and embarks on a humble journey of self-discovery. In “White Gold,” our traveler abandons the bounty of his family home and winds up in a community plagued by avarice.There, he learns that traditional Buddhist values like kindness and patience clash with consumerism and the hunger to hoard more rice. As the stakes for the young man intensify, so do the ensemble’s stunts. The masterly Phare troupes acrobatic feats (tumbling, juggling, launching one another off a teeterboard) defy what most of us expect of gravity. Despite the story’s weighty roots, Bonthoeijn Houn, the artistic coach, embeds each act with moments of lighthearted theatricality; actors bulge their eyes and wag their butts, eliciting endless giggles from the audience of children and adults, both equally entertained.Even more exciting is witnessing the care that Phare members take in assuring one another’s safety, as the acrobats spot fellow performers like cheerleaders and clap to signify they’re ready to soar. Theater often prides itself on keeping labor unseen; this circus doesn’t mind showing it. During a Rola Bola act, Tida Kong stacks four cylinders in a perpendicular pattern and then hops on top. Later, during a hand balancing act, he tilts his body to alarming angles while several feet in the air. All of this happens while rice engulfs every inch of the New Victory stage, sometimes flowing like a waterfall from an overhanging tarp, other times splashing like ocean waves when characters throw it in the air. How any of Phare’s players withstand the gritty feel of it on bare or thinly covered feet remains a mystery. But if they’re in any pain, it’s not visible — only the mesmerizing beauty is. And unlike at the Big Top, an orchestra ticket seats you mere feet away.White GoldThrough Dec. 30 at Stage 42 presented by the New Victory Theater, Manhattan; newvictory.org. Running time: 1 hour.This review is supported by Critical Minded, an initiative to invest in the work of cultural critics from historically underrepresented backgrounds. More

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    Readers on the Best Movies, TV, Music and Theater of 2023

    When our critics shared their top film, TV, pop music and theater picks, readers suggested “Billions,” “The Holdovers,” “Sabbath’s Theater” and others.Every year, our critics review numerous movies, television shows, musicals, plays, operas, dance performances, music and more. And come December, they whittle down their favorites to a list of 10.But what are best-of lists if not an invitation to critique?Here’s a look at readers’ comments across several popular categories.Television | Movies | Theater | Pop MusicCharlie (Joe Locke) and Nick (Kit Connor) in Season 2 of “Heartstopper.”NetflixBest TVIn a year when the television industry was turned upside down by strikes, and when corporate fantasies of unlimited growth seemed to find some kind of ceiling, there was still almost too much good stuff to keep up with. Luckily, we have three critics who do that for a living — and luckier still, they offered three different prisms through which to view the year in TV, at home and abroad.Of course, there is no world in which “Succession” and “Reservation Dogs” weren’t each going to appear twice, and our readers seemed OK with that. As for other reader favorites like “Only Murders in the Building” and “The Gilded Age,” maybe next year. (Sorry, “Billions,” your time is up.)Here’s a look at what some of our readers said.Michel Forest of Montreal, Quebec:No love for “Billions”? Come on! Sure, it was cartoonish at times, but it was such a fun show to watch, with great acting and some of the best dialogue on TV. Anyway, I’ll watch anything with Paul Giamatti and Damian Lewis, they are such great actors!Jodi Schorb of Gainesville, Fla.:I thought Season Two of “Heartstopper” was honest and adorable. One can only take so many murder-mysteries and moody thrillers. It’s hard to make an earnest comedy, let alone one that treats gay, transgender, straight and (a surprise) asexual protagonists with such tenderness. If we are going to add one rom-com on the list, “Heartstopper” deserves some love.Richard Laible of Winnetka, Ill.:Great list EXCEPT you left off the best show of the year, “Lessons in Chemistry”! You should really send out an edited list … and maybe an apology (j/k).Barry Keoghan stars in “Saltburn.”Amazon StudiosBest Movies“Barbenheimer” signaled a great year for movies, and our critics recognized the “Oppenheimer” half of the phenomenon, along with “Killers of the Flower Moon,” “Menus-Plaisirs — Les Troisgros,” “Past Lives” and others. Readers, on the other hand, questioned the merits of “Asteroid City” and “Oppenheimer,” and named “The Holdovers,” “Anatomy of a Fall” and “Barbie” as favorites.Peter Malbin of New York City:I just saw “Saltburn,” and it was outstanding. Well-acted and original film set in Oxford and an English manor house. The story is entertaining and sexy. Barry Keoghan is brilliant! He was also in “Banshees of Inisherin.” “Saltburn” should be at the top of the lists!Beth Samuelson of Oakland, Calif.:Where is “Maestro” on these lists? A terrific film that should not be missed. And the reviews have been excellent!Charise M. Hoge of Bethesda, Md.:The exclusion of “Barbie” from this list is like putting her back in the box … that powerful (yes, powerful) film deserves recognition.Jill Krupnik of Brooklyn, N.Y.:I am a little surprised that my personal favorite — the wondrous “The Boy and the Heron” — didn’t make even an honorable mention, but here we are.Perhaps Brian Seifert of Cincinnati summed it up best:Critics see a lot of junk, so they like the intense, quality-issue movies that come along. Average people deal with a lot of junk, so they like lighter entertainment to escape and relax. The two groups have never been farther apart.From left, Grey Henson and Ashley D. Kelley in the musical “Shucked.”Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesBest Theater“Purlie Victorious,” “A Doll’s House” and “Just for Us” were among Jesse Green’s picks for the year’s best theater. Many of the plays and musicals that resonated in 2023 deftly married elements of drama and comedy. Our readers pointed out some of the shows that — despite being fan favorites or being beautifully performed — didn’t make our list.Eric Bogosian, the New York actor and playwright, praised “Sabbath’s Theater,” as did several other commenters. “What are you afraid of? Great performances by three of our greatest actors and actresses? Please …,” he wrote.Marcia W. Orange of Fort Lee, N.J.:“Shucked” deserved more love and attention. It was the most original and laugh-out-loud-funny show I have seen in years … even better than “Book of Mormon.” What a pity more people haven’t seen it.Joseph LaFalce of South Orange, N.J.:How can any roundup of the best of 2023 not include the phenomenal “Parade,” including the unique staging and heartbreaking performances by Ben Platt and Micaela Diamond?Raissa Lim of New York City:RIP to the magnificent “Here Lies Love” by David Byrne. It was the best Broadway show I saw this year, and the best theater experience of my life. Never again will Broadway see that same confluence of superb talents come together to create an extraordinary and indescribable experience. It was a brand-new kind of art form, not the standard narrative theater audiences have come to expect, so perhaps the wrong standards were sometimes applied when assessing it. Its minor narrative weaknesses were more than offset by other elements such as video artistry, lighting, set design, music, choreography — making for an overall spectacular whole. I’m sorry for those obstinate souls who didn’t see it for their own obscure reasons. They missed a once-in-a-lifetime experience (that does NOT glorify the Marcoses but instead pays tribute to a true hero). Indeed, perhaps bovine audiences get what they deserve when flying cars and dancing lions beat out truly groundbreaking artistic excellence at the box office.Caroline Polachek at the Montreux Jazz Festival in July.Valentin Flauraud/Keystone, via Associated PressBest Pop MusicOne of the albums that had the biggest impact in 2023 actually came out at the tail end of 2022: SZA’s “SOS.” Between their albums and song lists, our three pop music critics agreed “SOS” was one of the year’s best, along with LPs from Olivia Rodrigo and 100 gecs. Beyond that, their tastes widely diverged from one another — and, it turns out, from our readers’. (Michael Hasse, a reader in Paris, created this helpful Spotify playlist with albums recommended in the comments.)Roddy P Glass of London:I will add my vote to “Now and Then,” though secretly, in the quiet of my heart, I know it comes nowhere near the standard the Beatles have always given us: perfection.”Penny Beach of Boise, Idaho:Where is Noah Kahan? Definitely should be on this list.Charles Grissom of Raleigh, N.C.:I know these lists are about pop music, and that is driven by 20-somethings. But Jimmy Buffett’s posthumous 2023 album “Equal Strain on All Parts” is wonderful music and storytelling, and the song “Portugal or PEI” is an absolute gem.Patrick Tierney of Louisville, Ky.:I love these lists but [Lindsay] Zoladz’s in particular. Rodrigo, Polachek, and Debby Friday all made my top 10 and show how much the present and future of pop/rock/dance music is led by creative young women. I’d add to the group three very different artists — yeule, Die Spitz, Avalon Emerson — that made this a great year for new music.Scott McGlasson of Minneapolis, Minn.:None of my faves of the year were even mentioned: Tim Hecker, the Necks, the National, Blonde Redhead, PJ Harvey. I know, I’m old and not a music critic…John Franz of East Bangor, Pa.:I was shocked to see some songs and performers I’ve actually heard of. Peter Gabriel’s album is brilliant. Not sure if the new Stones album is their best work. I found Dolly’s album hilarious; she’s a gem who I never listened to much before this new album. That’s about it. Seems to me that any song from the Tedeschi Trucks album should be on the list. Kenny Wayne Shepherd. And how about Jason Isbell’s great new album.Dan Cain of Washington, D.C.:I vote for Yo La Tengo’s “This Stupid World.” Best album in a while from one of the founding bands of indie rock. Just listen to the first 30 seconds of the opening track, ideally at a very loud volume. It’s great.Paul Kevin Smith of Austin, Texas:I don’t know why she doesn’t get more attention, but Jessie Ware’s “Begin Again” was a perfect pop/disco song released this year.And we’ll leave the last words to John Weston of Chicago:So many comments here seem to rest on the idea that musical progress ended when John Bonham died, Lynyrd Skynyrd crashed, the Beatles broke up, the Big Bopper died, or Chuck Berry or Bessie Smith (let’s be honest, none of y’all would have cared when she died … like most of the world at the time), when “The Rite of Spring” was first performed, when Beethoven finished his Ninth Symphony or with Liszt’s use of the tritone in “Dante Sonata” (how dare he!).To all of those such commenters and thinkers, I shall quote the one and only Bob Dylan (referenced by many on this thread):Mothers and fathers throughout the land/Don’t criticize what you can’t understand/Your sons and your daughters are beyond your command/Your old road is rapidly aging/Please get out of the new one if you can’t lend a hand/For the times they are a changin’. More