The Daily

In this episode of “The Sunday Daily,” the host Rachel Abrams is joined by her New York Times colleagues Motoko Rich, Shawna Richer and Juliet Macur, who are all covering this year’s Olympic Games. They discuss how the geopolitical climate may or may not be influencing the competition, and talk about some of the extraordinary athletes who are pushing the limits of physical achievements.

Gisèle Pelicot opens up about surviving years of secret abuse and her life today.

The U.S. government this weekend is expected to find itself in yet another shutdown. This time, it is only one agency shutting down: the Department of Homeland Security. Michael Gold, a congressional reporter for The New York Times, explains why Democrats are once again picking a fight over funding with President Trump.

The administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency is expected on Thursday to repeal a scientific finding that requires the federal government to fight global warming. The move is the latest push by the Trump administration to wipe out climate regulations in the United States. Lisa Friedman, a New York Times reporter who covers climate policy, has spent the past few weeks piecing together the inside story of how a small group of activists turned its goal of rolling back environmental protections into reality.

Last week, the Trump administration unveiled TrumpRx to try to counteract the high cost of prescription drugs. The president hailed the website as a “transformative” health care initiative. Margot Sanger-Katz, who covers health care policy, explains how the site works, and whether it will actually save Americans money.

The best-selling author grapples with big questions about A.I., consciousness and the distractions polluting our minds.

At the Grammy Awards tonight, the Puerto Rican pop sensation Bad Bunny is the first Spanish-language artist to be nominated for album, record and song of the year simultaneously. For most artists, this would be the high point of their year, if not their career. For Bad Bunny, this is just an appetizer for what’s in store for him next week. Next Sunday, he will headline the Super Bowl halftime show. His performance comes in the middle of a nationwide crackdown on immigration — an issue he’s been vocal about — and follows a backlash against the N.F.L. for booking him in the first place. Jon Caramanica and Joe Coscarelli, the hosts of The Times’s pop music show “Popcast,” discuss Bad Bunny’s rise to the heights of pop stardom, and explore what it means for a Puerto Rican artist to headline the world’s biggest stage.

Pop culture has not been kind to the Neanderthal. In books, movies and even TV commercials, the species is portrayed as rough and mindless, a brutish type that was rightly supplanted by our Homo sapiens ancestors. But even 40,000 years after the last Neanderthals walked the earth, we continue to make discoveries that challenge that portrayal. New research suggests Neanderthals might have been less primitive — and a lot more like modern humans — than we might have thought. The Times science reporters Carl Zimmer and Franz Lidz discuss recent discoveries about Neanderthals, and what those discoveries can tell us about the origins of humanity.

There’s a lot of anxiety about artificial intelligence invading Hollywood; the general mood there right now could be called “doom and gloom.” But speculation about a future where A.I. actors perform A.I. scripts in A.I.-generated movies often obscures the role A.I. is currently playing in the industry. In this episode, the host Michael Barbaro talks with the Hollywood reporter Brooks Barnes and the movie critic Alissa Wilkinson about the ways that A.I. is already showing up in our movies and television today, and how they see it contributing to — and complicating — the future.

As 2025 comes to an end, The Sunday Special is looking back on the year in culture. This week, on our final episode of the podcast, we’re talking about movies. The potential acquisition of Warner Brothers by Netflix has dominated entertainment news in recent weeks, but the year in movies has been about a lot more than corporate mergers. Alissa Wilkinson, a movie critic for The New York Times, and Nicole Sperling, a culture reporter based in Los Angeles, join Gilbert Cruz to talk about what really matters: the movies we loved this year. Movies discussed in this episode include: “One Battle After Another” “Sinners” “A Minecraft Movie” “Superman” “Weapons” “Wicked: For Good” “Zootopia 2” “Avatar: Fire and Ash” “Marty Supreme” “It Was Just an Accident” “The Testament of Ann Lee” “Come and See Me In the Good Light” “Mission: Impossible — The Final Reckoning”

In these final weeks of 2025, The Sunday Special is looking back at the year in culture. Today, we’re talking about the TV we watched this year — the best shows, the most popular ones and the ones that allowed us to just enjoyably veg out. Gilbert Cruz talks with the TV critic James Poniewozik and the culture reporter Alexis Soloski about the year in television. TV shows discussed in this episode: “Severance” “Common Side Effects” “Too Much” “Nobody Wants This” “Dying for Sex” “The Hunting Wives” “The White Lotus” “Dr. Odyssey” “Long Story Short” “Heated Rivalry” “Andor” “The Lowdown” “Platonic” “Pluribus” “The Pitt” “Adolescence”

As 2025 comes to an end, The Sunday Special is looking back on the year in culture. This week, we’re listening to the songs and albums that defined the year, for better or worse. Gilbert Cruz is joined by Caryn Ganz and Lindsay Zoladz from The Times’s pop music desk to discuss some of the biggest and best releases of 2025.Albums and songs mentioned in this episode: Bad Bunny, “Debí Tirar Más Fotos” Lady Gaga, “Mayhem” Justin Bieber, “Daisies” Chappell Roan, “The Giver” and “The Subway” Sabrina Carpenter, “Manchild” Doechii, “Alligator Bites Never Heal” Taylor Swift, “The Life of a Showgirl” Morgan Wallen, “I’m the Problem” Ghost, “Skeletá” Dijon, “Baby” Geese, “Getting Killed” Water From Your Eyes, “It’s a Beautiful Place” PinkPantheress, “Fancy That” Lily Allen, “Tennis” Ella Langley, “Choosin’ Texas” Sleigh Bells, “Bunky Becky Birthday Boy” Hayley Williams, “Ego Death at a Bachelorette Party” Turnstile, “Never Enough”

The first week of December at The New York Times is known as “Cookie Week.” Every day, for seven days, our cooking team highlights a new holiday cookie recipe. This year’s batch features flavors that aren’t necessarily traditional holiday ones — or even, for that matter, flavors. Instead, they draw inspiration from family night at the movies, drinks like Vietnamese Coffee, and perhaps most surprisingly, an Italian deli meat. In this edition of the Sunday Special, Gilbert Cruz talks with Melissa Clark and Vaughn Vreeland from New York Times Cooking about this year’s cookies, and they answer questions from readers about how to navigate cooking and baking during the holidays.

The holiday season is here, which means it’s the time to think of great gifts for everyone on your list. While it can feel like a daunting task to choose thoughtful, personalized presents, we’ve got a fix for you: books. On this edition of The Sunday Special, Gilbert is joined by Joumana Khatib and Sadie Stein, editors at the Book Review, for a conversation about the best books to give your family and friends. Joumana and Sadie will share what excited them most this year and also provide recommendations for giftees in very specific categories. Books mentioned in this episode: “The Colony,” Annika Norlin“Perfection,” Vincenzo Latronico“Things: A Story of the 60s,” Georges Perec“The Bee Sting,” Paul Murray“The Loneliness of Sonia and Sunny,” Kiran Desai“The Director,” Daniel Kehlmann“Playworld: A Novel,” Adam Ross“A Marriage at Sea,” Sophie Elmhirst“Entertaining is Fun!,” Dorothy Draper“The Thursday Murder Club,” Richard Osman“The Mysterious Case of the Alperton Angels,” Janice Hallett“Roald Dahl’s Revolting Recipes,” Roald Dahl“Mrs. Manders’ Cook Book,” Sarah Manders, edited by Rumer Godden“Halleluja! The Welcome Table,” Maya Angelou“The Pat Conroy Cookbook: Recipes of My Life,” Pat Conroy“Les diners de Gala,” Salvador Dalí“Diaghilev’s Empire: How the Ballets Russes Enthralled the World,” Rupert Christiansen“Finishing the Hat and Look I Made a Hat,” Stephen Sondheim“Tonight in Jungleland: The Making of Born to Run,” Peter Ames Carlin“The Uncool: A Memoir,” Cameron Crowe“The Gales of November,” John U. Bacon“The Journals of Ralph Waldo Emerson,” Ralph Waldo Emerson“Cats in Color,” Stevie Smith“Archie and the Strict Baptists,” John Betjeman“Stories 1,2,3,4,” Eugène Ionesco“Trip: A Novel,” Amy Barrodale

“Wicked” was one of the biggest movies of 2024. It was culturally ubiquitous, a box office smash and an Oscar nominee for Best Picture. Now, a year later, “Wicked: For Good” arrives in theaters to finish the tale of the complicated friendship between Glinda the Good Witch and Elphaba, the Wicked Witch of the West. Can “Wicked: For Good” be the sensation that its predecessor was? Will it inject new life into a movie business that has suffered a historically bad business year? Will it satisfy the legions of “Wicked” fans who have been waiting to see their favorite musical brought to the big screen? Gilbert Cruz is joined by Kyle Buchanan, a pop culture reporter for The New York Times who profiled the stars of “Wicked,” and Madison Malone Kircher, a reporter for the Styles desk and affirmed “Wicked” fanatic, to discuss what “Wicked: For Good” means for the movies.

There was once a time when documentaries could be found only on public television or in art-house cinemas. But today, documentaries are more popular and accessible than ever, with streaming services serving up true crime, celebrity documentaries, music documentaries and so much more. On today’s Sunday Special, Gilbert is joined by The New York Times’s chief television critic, James Poniewozik, and Alissa Wilkinson, a Times film critic, to talk about the documentaries that are worth your viewing time. Discussed on this episode: “The American Revolution,” 2025, directed by Ken Burns “The Alabama Solution,” 2025, directed by Andrew Jarecki and Charlotte Kaufman “The Jinx: The Life and Deaths of Robert Durst,” 2015, directed by Andrew Jarecki “Making a Murderer,” 2015, directed by Laura Ricciardi and Moira Demos “The Yogurt Shop Murders,” 2025, directed by Margaret Brown “The Perfect Neighbor,” 2025, directed by Geeta Gandbhir “The Last Dance,” 2020, directed by Jason Hehir “Copa 71,” 2023, directed by Rachel Ramsay and James Erkine “Cheer,” 2020, created by Greg Whiteley “Last Chance U,” 2016, directed by Greg Whiteley, Adam Ridley and Luke Lorentzen “Pee-wee as Himself,” 2025, directed by Matt Wolf “The Remarkable Life of Ibelin,” 2024, directed by Benjamin Ree “Ladies & Gentlemen … 50 Years of SNL Music,” 2025, directed by Questlove “Cameraperson,” 2016, directed by Kirsten Johnson “An American Family,” 1973, created by Craig Gilbert “Look Into My Eyes,” 2024, directed by Lana Wilson “When We Were Kings,” 1996, directed by Leon Gast

This year has been a banner year for video games, with an abundance of surprise releases and unexpected hits. On this week’s Sunday Special, Gilbert Cruz talks with two fellow gamers — Zachary Small, a culture reporter, and Jason Bailey, an editor on The Times’s culture desk — about the state of the industry, the biggest releases and the games they loved playing in 2025. They also share their predictions for Game of the Year.

The only thing Gilbert Cruz loves more than celebrating Halloween is watching scary movies. And between the classic horror franchises that span decades and the prestige original films of the current moment, he has seen hundreds of them. On today’s episode, Gilbert puts his knowledge to use in conversation with his fellow horror aficionados Jason Zinoman and Erik Piepenburg. They comb through a century of spooks, frights and screams to crown the Top 10 franchises in cinema history. Horror franchises discussed on this episode: “A Nightmare on Elm Street” “A Quiet Place” “Alien” “The Amityville Horror” “Candyman” “Child’s Play” “The Conjuring” “The Exorcist” “The Evil Dead” “Final Destination” “Friday the 13th” “Halloween” The Hannibal Lecter films “Hellraiser” “The Hills Have Eyes” “Insidious” “Jaws” “Night of the Living Dead” “The Omen” “Paranormal Activity” “Phantasm” “Poltergeist” “Psycho” “The Purge” “The Ring” “Saw” “Scream” “Terrifier” “The Texas Chainsaw Massacre” The Universal monster films “V/H/S”

On Friday, “Springsteen: Deliver Me From Nowhere” will be released in theaters. Rather than chronicling Bruce’s entire life, the film focuses on the making of his stripped-down 1982 album “Nebraska” and on his concurrent mental health struggles. This movie is the latest in a long history of musician biopics featuring stars like Bob Dylan, Loretta Lynn, Eminem and Elvis Presley. Hollywood clearly loves telling the stories of influential artists. In this episode, Gilbert Cruz chats with Lindsay Zoladz, a pop music critic for The Times, and Joe Coscarelli, a Times culture reporter, about the tropes of the genre and their favorite films that break the mold.

Broadway represents some of the best and most exciting of what American theater has to offer. But for many people, it’s inaccessible. Whether because of geography, cost or other considerations, most people will never sit in a Broadway theater and experience a play or a musical in person. For years, cast recordings have offered a way to experience Broadway shows at a remove. And now, in the streaming era, some Broadway shows are making themselves available to be watched remotely, in movie theaters and on television. Distance and expense aren’t the impediments they once were to culture lovers looking to experience world-class theater. In this episode, Gilbert Cruz talks with Jesse Green and Elisabeth Vincentelli, two of The New York Times’s culture writers, about new ways to experience some of the joys of theater from the comfort of your own home.