TELEVISION & FILM

How Miss Piggy Went From Minor Muppet to TV’s Top Hog (The New York Times)

It Took Screenwriter David Koepp 42 Tries to Get Steven Spielberg’s New Movie Right (Vanity Fair)

What the Hell Was Bartmania? (Vulture)

Why Lisa Simpson Matters (Vanity Fair)

“Just a Concoction of Nonsense”: The Oral History of ‘A Fish Called Wanda’ (Vanity Fair)

The Science (And Scientists) Behind ‘Ant-Man’ (The New York Times)

The Man Behind Winnie the Pooh Speaks Up, Gently (The Wall Street Journal)

Mike Flanagan Explores His Private Horrors in ‘Midnight Mass’ (The New York Times)

In ‘Toy Story 4,’ the Animators Pulling the Strings Reveal Woody’s Inner Life (The New York Times)

The Young Man and the Sea Sponge (Longreads)

‘Hey Arnold!’ at 30 (Los Angeles Times)

The Post-Suite Life Life of Dylan Sprouse (Vulture)

Being Leo: DiCaprio’s Body Double Shares Stories from the Titanic Set (Vanity Fair)

Inside the Making of ​Home Alone​’s Fake Gangster Movie (Vanity Fair)

The Unsung Hero of the Alien Franchise: The Guy Inside the Xenomorph Suit (Vanity Fair)

Andrew Niccol Lives In His Own Truman Show (And So Do You) (WIRED)

Rocko’s Modern Life: Inside the Barely Contained Chaos of a Nickelodeon Classic (Vanity Fair)

Oh Much More Than Bother: This Winnie the Pooh Is Terrifying (The New York Times)

The Chilling Adventures of Salem, Sabrina the Teenage Witch’s Cat (Vanity Fair)

Monty Python Were the Beatles of Comedy and Vice Versa (Medium)

MUSIC

Building David Byrne’s ‘Utopia,’ One Gray Suit At A Time (The New York Times)

The Never-Ending Life of Smash Mouth’s “All Star” (The Ringer)

The EGOT Winner Behind Sondheim’s Signature Sound (The New York Times)

How Hans Zimmer Conjured the Other-Worldly Sounds of ‘Dune’ (The New York Times)

How ‘Rhapsody in Blue’ Perfectly Channels New York (The Wall Street Journal)

Why ‘Jesus Christ Superstar’ the Album Has Always Rocked (The New York Times)

Poppy is Dead; Long Live Poppy (Vanity Fair)

John Williams Always Settles the Score (Vanity Fair)

John Williams on ‘Indiana Jones’ and His Favorite Scores (The New York Times)

The Orchestral World of George Martin Gets Its Due (Paste)

The Man Behind the Legendary Donkey Kong Country Soundtracks (The New York Times)

Music for Robots: Being a Firefly on the Wall In the Studio with the Maybe Happy Ending Band (Broadway.com)

The Australian Chamber Orchestra’s Richard Tognetti maintains his daredevilry (The Saturday Paper)

Why ‘What a Wonderful World’ Took 20 Years to Become a Hit (History.com)

THEATER

The EGOT Winner Behind Sondheim’s Signature Sound (The New York Times)

From a Wedding to a School in 90 Seconds: Backstage Magic at the Met (The New York Times)

No Broadway Shows? No Problem. Walking Tours Fill a Void. (The New York Times)

With a Mess of Fabrics, Broadway’s Costume Shops Return to Work (The New York Times)

How ‘Some Like It Hot’ Tunes In to the Jazz Age (The New York Times)

Performing Off Broadway, While Driving Off Broadway (The New Yorker)

Music for Robots: Being a Firefly on the Wall In the Studio with the Maybe Happy Ending Band (Broadway.com)

Tony-Nominated Lighting Designer Isabella Byrd Is Not Afraid of the Dark (Broadway.com)

Ivo van Hove: It’s Only Theatre (The Monthly)

ART

Performance artist Marina Abramović’s unusual methods (The Saturday Paper)

The Other Side of Cindy Sherman (The Australian)

Shocking Art (The Monthly)

A Profile of Street Artist Shepard Fairey (The Sydney Morning Herald)

LITERATURE & LANGUAGE

R.L. Stine on the Importance of Scaring the Hell Out of Children (Medium)

Word wranglers (The Monthly)

Rose’s Turn of Phrase: A Linguistic Exploration of ‘Coming Up Roses,’ from Gypsy (Broadway.com)

Tolkien’s Hobbit born of humble words (The Sydney Morning Herald)

Charlie Brown Never Found His Little Red Haired Girl, But We Did (Vanity Fair)

THE INTERNET & POP CULTURE

Ermahgerddon: The Untold Story of the Ehrmagerd Girl (Vanity Fair)

The Story of the DuckTales Theme (Vanity Fair)

Charlie Brown Never Found His Little Red Haired Girl, But We Did (Vanity Fair)

Night of a Thousand Paul Giamattis (Vulture)

Poppy is Dead; Long Live Poppy (Vanity Fair)

ARCHITECTURE AND THE ENVIRONMENT

Keeping Broadway’s Golden Age Alive with Restoration Architect Francesca Russo (Broadway.com)

Central Park During the Pandemic (Hazlitt)

As the Tonys Head Uptown, Step Inside the United Palace ‘Dream World’ (The New York Times)

This is Not an Opera House (The Monthly)

TRAVEL

Holidaying in War Zones: Intrepid or Irresponsible? (Good Weekend)

GAMING

Jonathan Blow Made 500 Hours of Puzzles to Explode Your Mind (The New York Times)

The Man Behind the Legendary Donkey Kong Country Soundtracks (The New York Times)

The Role-Playing Game That Predicted The Future (The Atlantic)

‘The Last of Us Part II’ and its Crisis-Strewn Path to Release (WIRED)

Game Over, Uwe Boll (Vanity Fair)

The Unbearable Lightness of ‘Animal Crossing’ (WIRED)

How ‘Immortality’ Developer Sam Barlow Designs Stories to Haunt Players (The Washington Post)

The Legacy of Zelda: How Nintendo Told Gamers to Get Lost The Economist

Felikz Zemdegs, Rubik’s Champion (The Monthly)

Inside the Making of ‘Mass Effect Andromeda’ (Rolling Stone)

Super Mario Turns 30 (The Economist)

TECHNOLOGY

Spotify Builds a Music Experience for Children (The Wall Street Journal)

Hearing Loss? A New Device Lets You Feel Sound (The Wall Street Journal)

How ‘Avatar: The Way of Water’ Solved the Problem of Computer-Generated H2O (The New York Times)

The Game-Changing Tech Behind Gemini Man’s ‘Young’ Will Smith (WIRED)

MISCELLANEOUS

The Moon Landing Hoax Theory Started As A Joke (Medium)

Why Mysterious Green Fireballs Worried the US Government in 1948 (History.com)