Music

She plays the VMAs this Sunday for the first time in 23 years. Before she does, we rank her four big performances there, from the sari to the skirt to the kiss, and name the one she cannot beat.

Games

Remedy says you can start fresh on Thursday, and one line in IGN's review argues otherwise. Plus where Alan Wake fits and the order we would play the whole Remedy shelf.

Television

Netflix's A Different World sequel reopens Hillman this Thursday with eleven originals back and three famous names missing. We traced the whole class, from Baltimore City Hall to Aunt May, and picked four episodes to rewatch before it starts.

Books

Two young actors, a fictional Andy Warhol biopic and millions of strangers watching: John Green's first adult novel arrives this Tuesday. Inside: our answer, every Green book ranked for a first read, and his four screen adaptations lined up for the weekend.

Television

Their Apple TV comedy starts this Wednesday and rests on a paternity question the two men have been arguing about for real since 2023. Inside: who keeps refusing the DNA test, the 1999 flop where they already played brothers, and the one shared project to watch first.

Books

Annie Dillard died last week at 81, and every obituary sent new readers to the same book. We would start them on a hill in Washington under a total eclipse instead, and we know exactly where the Pulitzer winner belongs.

Music

Her new double album runs 24 songs and 85 minutes, and three big-name critics want it trimmed. Inside: our answer, a ten-song route through both discs, and where to go next in her catalog.

Games

Konami's fog-bound Scottish entry arrives Thursday, built to stand alone. Inside: the game from the same Glasgow studio that explains its strangest gadget, the Silent Hill to start with anyway, and the classic to hold back.

Cross-media

Florence Pugh's Cathy Ames arrives on Netflix in ten days, and the 1955 James Dean film barely lets you meet her. Which half to read, the word fans of the book wait for, and a plan for film people who will not read at all.

Movies

Gerrit Graham, who died last week at 77, is the reason to put on Phantom of the Paradise before Rocky Horror this October. Inside: the role he was actually hired to play, the Canadian city that kept the film alive, and a ranked starter pack.

Books

The Hobbit was published 89 years ago this Monday, and it is still the right first book. After it comes our full Middle-earth order, including why the appendices beat every adaptation and the one novel that turns the First Age from a wall of names into a story.

Music

The "Barely Breathing" singer died last week at 56. Why the label never fit, the album that secretly started Spring Awakening, and the order to hear him in.

Cross-media

Guillermo del Toro's vampire plague show jumped 69 places on our sci-fi and fantasy chart in two weeks. The season where most viewers quit, the novels behind it, and the Korean outbreak film climbing right behind it.