Like a lot of immigrants lately—like a lot of Americans lately—Trevor Noah is mulling life after the United States. Early in this year’s Grammys, during an interlude between speeches and performances, the ceremony’s host asked Bad Bunny a question: “If things keep getting worse in America, can I come live with you in Puerto Rico?”
Bad Bunny grimaced and stated the obvious: Puerto Rico is in America. Noah tried to shush him, saying, “Don’t tell them that.

Ashley Padilla’s gradual star turn on Saturday Night Live has been thrilling to watch. Since she joined the show as a featured player in 2024, on the cusp of its big 50th anniversary season, Padilla has reliably transformed innocuous-seeming characters—notably, moms—into character studies that pluck at eccentricities lurking just below the surface.

On the Saturday night that the storm hit Mississippi, we had dripped our faucets for the temperature drop and stockpiled flashlights, groceries, extra blankets. By 11:30 p.m., my husband was pulling on his rain boots and heading outside to tarp our heating unit: “A branch has already fallen onto a power line in our backyard,” he told me. Three hours later, I was shaken awake. “Mom, I think a tree just fell on our house,” my 13-year-old son said.

Photographs by OK McCausland
One of the pleasures of watching Ilia Malinin, apart from his indifference to gravity, is to witness him becoming. Becoming a world champion, as opposed to a juvenile with a skate-park mentality and a face like a Disney prince. Becoming a master of quadruple jumps that no one else can land, rising with all the ease of a young Michael Jordan—before landing on a pair of butcher knives, on ice.

When Justin Harrison got the call in 2022 telling him that his mother would likely die within the day, he didn’t panic. He got on a plane to Singapore, where he was scheduled to present at a conference about his start-up, You, Only Virtual, a platform on which users can chat with AI versions of their dead loved ones, and which Justin believes can ultimately eliminate grief as a human experience. He learned about his mother’s death while flying over the Pacific.