The Sunday Read: ‘What Alice Munro Knew’
12 January 2025 - 1 hour 1 min“My life has gone rosy, again,” Alice Munro told a friend in a buoyant letter of March 1975. For Munro, who was then emerging as one of her generation’s leading writers, the previous few years had been blighted by heartbreak and upheaval: a painful separation from her husband of two decades; a retreat from British Columbia back to her native Ontario; a series of brief but bruising love affairs, in which, it seems, Munro could never quite make out the writing on the wall. “This time it’s real,” she wrote, speaking of a new romantic partner, Gerald Fremlin, the emphasis acknowledging that her friend had heard these words before. “He’s 50, free, a good man if I ever saw one, tough and gentle li...
Series Episodes
War in Iran Triggers Chaos in Global Oil Market
As Iran has tightened its chokehold on one of the world’s most vital shipping routes and the Trump administration sent mixed signals about how long the war would last, oil prices have swung wildly. Rebecca F. Elliott, who covers energy for The New York Times, explains just how much the world depends on that route — the Strait of Hormuz — and how quickly shutting it down can throw global energy markets into chaos.
29 mins
11 March Finished
What We’ve Learned From 10 Days of War
What began as a relentless U.S.-Israeli military assault on Iran has turned into a wider crisis as the disruption of the world’s oil markets spreads beyond the Middle East. Eric Schmitt, a national security correspondent for The New York Times, discusses what we know about the players involved in the fighting.
38 mins
10 March Finished
Anthropic vs. the Pentagon: Inside the Battle Over A.I. Warfare
In recent weeks, the Defense Department has tussled with Anthropic over how its artificial intelligence could be used on classified systems. That fight became bitter and negotiations fell apart. And war in the Middle East has made it increasingly clear how much the U.S. military has been relying on A.I. Sheera Frenkel, who covers technology for The New York Times, explains the standoff and what it reveals about the future of warfare.
28 mins
9 March Finished
Oscars 2026: Who Will Win, and Who Should Win?
explicitToday on “The Sunday Daily,” The Times’s chief movie critic, Manohla Dargis, talks with the “Daily” host Michael Barbaro about this year’s batch of Oscar nominees, which — according to her — are uncommonly good. They discuss the performances that Dargis believes deserve to win, the dark horses that might pull off upsets, and the ambitious films that give her hope for Hollywood’s future.
35 mins
8 March Finished
'The Interview': Rebecca Solnit Says the Left's Next Hero Is Already Here
The writer and activist on how political change happens and taking the long view.
38 mins
7 March Finished
The Firing of Kristi Noem
On Thursday, President Trump fired Kristi Noem, his secretary of homeland security, whose agency is at the center of his second-term agenda. Hamed Aleaziz, who covers the department, explains how Ms. Noem ended up losing the president’s trust.
30 mins
6 March Finished
