December 2025

“To our surprise, our model worked remarkably well and the observed supernova seems to match really well the death of stars that we see regularly.”

“To me, movie of the year in a few ways is ‘Sinners,’ which is from Ryan Coogler. It’s about twin brothers played by Michael B. Jordan who end up having to battle some vampires.”

“The global average temperature anomaly for January to November 2025 stands at 0.60C above the 1991–2020 average, or 1.48C above the 1850–1900 pre-industrial reference.”

“It tells the story of a young teen accused of murdering a classmate and is told in such an emotionally and technically compelling way.”

“This year’s crème de la crap.”

“The greatest baseball game of all-time.”

“Only about 1 percent of stars are known to host massive planets or brown dwarfs that can be directly photographed with today’s telescopes.”

“It’s a considerable difference, especially considering that summer is so short in the north.”

“2025 countered the narrative that the medium is somehow no longer interested in audio—with a slew of ambitious productions that emphasized podcasting as an art form in itself.”

“Many of this year’s best comedy specials share a reflective sense of mid-career reconsideration.”

“A slightly messy response to the dispiriting cleanness of modern life.”

“From the raiding of U.S. government databases to a hack every month in South Korea.”

“Reality has outpaced Pynchon’s fictional conspiracies.”

“Distilled emotional and moral explorations accessible across generations.”

“The pieces that rose to the very top of our editors’ lists.”

“A layered confrontation with the deaths, grief, and guilt that have animated her work for nearly 30 years.”

“Both creator and destroyer, the bulldozer offers a cautionary tale for how technology without proper safeguards can be misused to the detriment of individual and collective life.”

“I showcase the work of other writers who are total strangers to me, but have written some article or essay of exceptional merit.”

“The women in House 3 rarely had a chance to speak to the women in House 5, but when they did, the things they heard scared them.”

“They will try to discredit you. They will lie about you. They will attempt to silence what they don’t understand.”

“The curious paradox at the heart of space forecasting is that the satellites and supercomputers that empower the observations are themselves vectors of vulnerability.”

“With so much of the industry rallying around Sandfall Interactive’s RPG as one of the defining games of the year, it has become a symbol of what video games can still be.”

“E-bikes go really fast—faster than the surrounding people and cyclists and pedestrians would warrant.”

“In siblings Chuquimamani-Condori and Joshua Chuquimia Crampton’s dense, elaborate thicket of sound, traditional genres and ancestral wisdom coexist with digital ephemera and rapturous noise.”

“Social media promised connection, but it has delivered exhaustion.”

“Thomas McGuane—fisherman, hunter, rancher, writer—says ‘good riddance’ to his kind.”

“The world’s largest wooden structure, with a circumference of two kilometres and a diameter of 700 metres.”

“The music world refused to stand still in 2025. This wasn’t a year for playing it safe.”

“In 2016, at Changi Airport, in Singapore, a Malaysian businessman named Raejali Buntut missed a flight to Kuala Lumpur. He’d dozed off in the Plaza Premium Lounge. Instead of rebooking, he went to more lounges, hopping from one to the next, a total of thirty-one times. He didn’t leave the airport for eighteen days.”

“A plan in the Swiss Alps to tidy up Romansh—spoken by less than one per cent of the country—set off a decades-long quarrel over identity, belonging, and the sound of authenticity.”

“The future that scares me is not a robot uprising led by robots, but one led by billionaires.”