This year’s 50 Best came together a little differently than before. Just five years ago we could address a fledgling podcastsphere with the 50 best episodes of the year—not shows. Now, something like 1.5 million podcasts exist. Even if only half of those were active in 2020 we still couldn’t possibly hear them all, no matter how pathological our dedication to listening.

BTS has spent enough time in the pop-music stratosphere that it can be easy to forget, or surprising to learn, about the years they spent at the basement level. Back in 2014, for the first anniversary of their debut, the group’s seven members celebrated by cleaning the tiny dorm they shared and cooking a nice meal. They recorded a video of themselves for fans, soaking seaweed for a traditional Korean birthday soup, blowing up balloons, vacuuming the living room, and decorating a cake.

After 10 months of witnessing the coronavirus’s destructive capacity, on December 16 I joined thousands of health-care workers across the country and received my initial dose of a COVID-19 vaccine. I felt hope for the first time since March, when COVID-19 patients started streaming into my emergency room. My colleagues and I would now have one more layer of protection in our fight against the virus.My relief was short-lived.

Jonathan TwingleyIf 2020 were a person, what sort of punishment would they deserve? And given the sensible prohibitions against torture in human-rights law, what would be the next best option?The conceit of personifying a year dates back to at least the ancient Greeks and, in American newspaper culture, to the early 20th century, when the cartoonist J. C. Leyendecker established a tradition of drawing New Year’s babies on the cover of The Saturday Evening Post.

Every weekday evening, our editors guide you through the biggest stories of the day, help you discover new ideas, and surprise you with moments of delight. Subscribe to get this delivered to your inbox.In a slog of a year, new releases brought structure to the calendar. (Remember the Tiger King phase of quarantine? Or the Folklore one?)But what projects stood out the most? The critics on our Culture team are busy recapping 2020’s best works.