We stand before the world with a dire warning. Unless we, as a united front, address this generational crisis, we risk permanently exhausting one of our greatest resources. Our findings are shocking and sobering, but hopefully, this will inspire world governments to make sub...
Dear parents, Get ready to drop a leg on summer, because it’s back-to-school season. And thanks to the Secretary of Education—and former WWE CEO—Linda McMahon, there are gonna be some big changes to the curriculum, including yours truly running the show. McMahon and the big-...
What he says: Thank god football’s back. What he means: I miss my friends. - - -
What he says: Can you believe Travis Kelce is going as late as the seventh round in a lot of leagues? What he means: I’ve never been more anxious about the passage of time. I graduated from coll...
PLAYERS: Infertility can be played alone, in a couple, or with a friend who promised that if you were still single at 40, they’d hook you up. OBJECTIVE: The goal is to strategically bankrupt yourself physically, financially, and emotionally to become a parent. Average playin...
A group of librarians is called a cardigan. A collection of empty chairs is called an author reading. A collection of Eric Carle books covered in spit-up is called a storytime. A group of exhausted mothers covered in spit-up is also called a storytime. A cluster of teens rea...
It’s 1:17 a.m., and I’m sitting on the floor of my kitchen drinking Dr Pepper Blackberry out of the can like it’s medicine for a heartbreak I haven’t earned yet. I haven’t cried today, but I can feel it coming, crouched behind my molars. This beverage might be the gateway. T...
It was beautiful witnessing our children’s blossoming friendship when they were in Miss Penny’s first-grade class—and by extension, our friendship too. That said, seeing as next year your kid will be in Mrs. Lang’s Second Grade Class, and mine in Mr. Dodd’s, I’m afraid it’s ...
Let’s get this out of the way: Immigration and Customs Enforcement is nothing like the Sturmabteilung, aka Hitler’s Brownshirts. Your main clue is right there in the name. The Brownshirts wore brown shirts. And pants, coats, hats, insignia, etc. They had an actual uniform th...
“And I saw Sisyphus in agonizing torment, drafting a reply to Kayleigh’s ten urgent UX questions. He hit ‘send,’ and immediately received an autoresponder: ‘I no longer work here! For questions, contact Caleb, Chief Joy Officer.’” — Homer, Odyssey - - -
“Sisyphus thinks he c...
They say women disappear with age, but if that’s true, why do their necklaces keep getting bigger? Society shuns women with crow’s feet and crepey underarms. And honestly, I get it. Aging is grotesque. That’s where I come in. I give voice to the voiceless. When a middle-aged...
Want to get drinks next week? I know everything’s kind of crazy right now, so no pressure. There’s a cool new bar I read about—fine, saw a TikTok for—that just opened downtown. The Gilded Beak, have you heard of it? “Urban aviary meets al fresco pretension,” the website says...
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Some people think this map looks gerrymandered, but we don’t see it. We also don’t see the innovation, economic growth, and kick-ass food scene that exists in this country, largely thanks to immigrants. Everyone, get your guns: Let’s kick out all the foreigners and s...
Early in President Trump’s first term, McSweeney’s editors began to catalog the head-spinning number of misdeeds coming from his administration. We called this list a collection of Trump’s cruelties, collusions, corruptions, and crimes, and it felt urgent to track them, to e...
I am the Overtourist. I’m here to overtour your picturesque town or world-class city. Shooting water pistols at me only hydrates and emboldens me. I have no idea how anything works here. I will pause in the middle of crowded sidewalks, amble in rushing zones, and fail to pos...
The rumors are true: I’m overjoyed and not at all ashamed to share that I’ll be joining the HBO Max Harry Potter family as Stickles the Gender-Policing Elf, a character created exclusively for this series to, in author J. K. Rowling’s words, “address the crumbling morals of ...
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I’m flanked by them in most pictures. Perched atop a yellow parking curb in swimsuits and sneakers, we squint and smile for the camera, a mix of frizzy curls and stray hairs haloing our faces. It’s Memorial Day Weekend 1986, and we’re minutes away from learning that H...
Don’t judge my book by its cover. For the cover art of my debut novel, I envisioned a mysterious, foggy background with two shadowy figures grasping for each other but remaining barely out of reach. Instead, the publisher insisted on a pink background with an illustration o...
“President Donald Trump said on Monday he was deploying 800 National Guard troops to Washington and temporarily taking over the city’s police department, an extraordinary assertion of presidential power in the nation’s capital.” – Reuters - - -
A tourist standing to the left...
“President Trump announced that he’s placing the DC Metropolitan Police Department under federal control and deploying National Guard troops to the nation’s capital.” – CNN - - -
The family and I visited Colonial Williamsburg just last summer. We had a great time. My wife an...
Are you looking for sweet, melty chocolate that makes you feel comforted—or are you a fucking adult? Are you grown up enough to appreciate that everything that once brought you joy is only really worthwhile if it punishes you? Then strap in, because it’s time to invest in RE...
Q: You were laid off from the National Weather Service amidst all the DOGE cuts, correct? A: Yes. And they haven’t hired anyone new to do my job. Q: Which was? A: The National Weather Service’s Director of “Feels Like.” You know how when there’s a heatwave, you hear that the...
“Texas Gov. Greg Abbott on Monday ordered the civil arrest of Democratic lawmakers who fled the state to block a vote on a Republican-backed congressional redistricting plan, escalating a standoff that has stalled the legislative session.” — CBS News - - -
President Trump ha...
Dear Marge, You might have forgotten about the time your husband jeered at you on stage, as you spoke through a miniature wooden version of yourself. It happened in 1996, almost thirty years ago. Let me remind you of the circumstances. Your son, Bart, started working at a lo...
“In this human-made paradise, entertainment reigned supreme, and all forms of leisure had their whispered, rum-breathed price.” - - -
A semi-regular guest column about regularly ignored places - - -
Each year, as many as twenty-five million people visit the sacrificial land...
Many don’t realize that The Gilded Age, the very grand and expensive HBO/Max/HBOMaxAgain show, was actually devised for a very specific audience: quirky early millennial women who studied theater in college and briefly tried their hand at acting before ultimately becoming wr...
I’m going to keep this brief. Tomorrow I will shed my nymphal skin and exoskeleton and burst forth in all of my winged adult mayfly glory. I’ll have a tiny, vulnerable body and no functioning mouth parts, so if a fish doesn’t eat me within a few minutes, I’ll starve to death...
Remember Ecto Cooler? IT remembers you. IT remembers every dark day you spent hiding in your room. All the hours listening to NSYNC while you carved the names of dead gods into your Trapper Keeper. IT knows your flesh, your sins, your AOL user ID. No, not that one. The one y...
Dear Marge, You might have forgotten about the time your husband jeered at you on stage, as you spoke through a miniature wooden version of yourself. It happened in 1996, almost thirty years ago. Let me remind you of the circumstances. Your son, Bart, started working at a lo...
After the tragic 2023 passing of Gabe Hudon, a longtime McSweeney’s writer, editor, and friend, Hudson’s mother, Sanchia Semere, endowed a new award in his honor. Annually, McSweeney’s convenes a panel of jurors to select a writer’s second book-length work of fiction that em...
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