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    ‘Believing’ and Belonging

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    We look at how people are searching for belonging.Last week, Dwight from “The Office” called me to talk about God.Almost. It was the actor who played Dwight, Rainn Wilson. He’d read my essay that launched “Believing,” a project on how people find meaning in their lives — in religion, spirituality or anywhere. He’d written a best-selling book on the topic, one that was so self-aware and funny I actually laughed out loud. He just wanted to connect.That seems to be a theme.Since I published “Believing,” I’ve heard from thousands of Morning readers. Everyone has a story to share about belief, no matter how they come at the topic. My inbox is now a microcosm of the internet: MAGA bros, professors, wellness influencers, theologians, climate activists, pop psychologists, grandmothers and a source who sent me an unpublished letter from Pope Francis. I heard from people across America and around the world, including Brazil, New Zealand and Saudi Arabia. In the messages, a clear trend emerged that unites this very disparate group: People crave meaningful connection.In “Believing,” I explained that religion offers people three B’s: beliefs about the world, behaviors to follow and belonging in a community or culture. Readers seized on the last one. They said they wanted to belong — in rich, profound and sustained ways.It makes sense. A major, global study recently released by Harvard and Baylor universities affirmed what so much other data has shown: People flourish — they live happier, healthier and better lives — if they have strong social connections. It also found that religions, for all their reputational baggage, can provide people with robust communities.The power of belongingIn “Believing,” I shared that I once belonged to a strong community — that I was raised Mormon in Arkansas but that I have since left the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. It was vulnerable and weird and hard for me to talk about. Still, it seemed to be a catalyst for connection.Soon, my inbox was filled with personal stories.“She began with a personal testament of her own loss of faith, so forgive me if I too bare my soul,” Richard Dawkins, the famous advocate for atheism, replied in a letter to my article.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      How Art Stars Are Made

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      We explain how a few big players wield enormous influence in the art world.Museums provide the first draft of art history. They decide which artists get to share wall space with masters like Michelangelo, Rembrandt and Picasso.Choosing which artists to exhibit requires museums to consider ultrasubjective questions about, say, the artistic merit of a painting or the historical relevance of a sculpture. The task has traditionally fallen to curators, who maintain their scholarly independence and grapple with the complexities of mounting shows.But in recent years, museums have increasingly turned to another source for logistical and, at times, financial support for their shows: major commercial art galleries.The scale of these partnerships was largely unexamined until now. This morning, The Times published an analysis by my colleague Julia Halperin and me of more than 350 solo exhibitions by contemporary artists in New York’s biggest art museums over the last six years.We found that nearly a quarter of those exhibitions featured artists who were represented by just 11 major galleries. These were no ordinary mom-and-pop dealerships but “mega-galleries,” as professionals call them — an elite slice of the art world that accounts for a sizable chunk of the $57.5 billion art market.In today’s newsletter, I’ll explain how the increasingly close relationship between museums and commercial galleries is shaping whose work is shown to the public.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      The Pope’s Funeral

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      We are live from the Vatican.VATICAN CITY — A patchwork of clergy in red, white, purple and black vestments. World leaders including President Trump seated on the stairs of St. Peter’s Basilica for an outdoor ceremony. A simple cypress casket. Haunting chants and some 200,000 faithful embraced by Bernini’s colonnade.In a solemn and majestic funeral that ended moments ago, the Roman Catholic Church laid to rest Pope Francis, the first South American pope, whose humble style and pastoral vision both reinvigorated and divided the institution that he led for a dozen years. He was 88.It’s warm and clear here in Rome. A group of refugees and homeless people, like those Francis advocated for around the world, joined presidents, prime ministers and the church’s cardinals — one of whom will be the next pope — to bid the Holy Father farewell.During the funeral.Eric Lee/The New York Times“He was a Pope among the people, with an open heart towards everyone,” Cardinal Giovanni Battista Re said in the homily. “The guiding thread of his mission was also the conviction that the church is a home for all, a home with its doors always open.”He spoke in Italian. Texts were also read in English, Spanish, French, Arabic and Portuguese.Before the service, priests from Myanmar talked about how Francis had energized their small church when he visited and elevated their bishop to a cardinal. Pilgrims from Ecuador said he had made them feel seen. Conservative clerics from the Czech Republic said they still weren’t sure what to make of him.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      America Wants a God

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      Today, we’re introducing “Believing,” a yearlong exploration from The Times on how we experience religion and spirituality now.Americans believe.Most people are wary of the government, the future and even each other, but they still believe in astonishing possibilities. Almost all Americans — 92 percent of adults — say they have a spiritual belief, in a god, human souls or spirits, an afterlife or something “beyond the natural world,” as we reported earlier this year.The country seems to be acknowledging this widespread spiritual hunger. America’s secularization is on pause, people have stopped leaving churches, and religion is taking a more prominent role in public life — in the White House, Silicon Valley, Hollywood and even at Harvard. It’s a major, generational shift. But what does this actually look like in people’s lives?I have spent the past year reporting “Believing,” a new project for The Times. This project is personal to me. I was raised a devout Mormon in Arkansas. I’ve left the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, and I understand how wrestling with belief can define a life. I hoped to capture what that journey looked like for others, too — both inside and outside of religion. I interviewed hundreds of people, visited dozens of houses of worship and asked Times readers for their stories. More than 4,000 responded.In my reporting, I found that there are many reasons for this shift in American life. Researchers say the pandemic and the country’s limited social safety nets have inclined people to stick with (or even turn to) religion for support. But there is another reason, too: Many Americans are dissatisfied with the alternatives to religion. They feel an existential malaise, and they’re looking for help. People want stronger communities, more meaningful rituals and spaces to express their spirituality. They’re also longing to have richer, more nuanced conversations about belief.Unsatisfying alternativesIris LegendreOver the past few decades, around 40 million Americans left churches, and the number of people who say they have no religion grew to about 30 percent of the country.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Are Easter Baskets Getting Out of Hand?

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      Social media feeds are awash in images of lavish baskets overflowing with expensive gifts. Some parents are giving their children bikes. Others are pushing back.“Is it even Easter if you don’t get a new bike?”So asks Judy Newton, a mother of three in Philadelphia, in a recent video on TikTok.In the weeks before Easter this Sunday, social media feeds have been full of videos of parents filling baskets with more than just the usual marshmallow Peeps. Instead, they are packing blankets, stuffed animals, shoes and knickknacks into large wicker baskets, tote bags or plastic buckets. And, yes, they are also giving bikes.“When you see some people post their videos on social media, it looks like Christmas morning,” Ms. Newton said. “Now these kids are getting that for Easter.”Baskets have, of course, long been associated with Easter. But in the age of influencer-driven consumption, Easter has been joined by Halloween (“boo baskets”), Christmas (“brr baskets”), Valentine’s Day and virtually every other holiday (“Leprechaun baskets” for St. Patrick’s Day) as social media encourages people to celebrate by spending lavishly.The Easter Bunny can hardly keep up.

      @kendra.crabtree Easter basket for girls!!! 🫶🏼💕 #easter #easterbasket #easterbasketideas #easter2025 #resurection #jesusisthereason #girlmom #fostermom #girls #spoiled ♬ original sound – KENDRA CRABTREE “Every holiday now, we make baskets,” said Talia Stenson, a mother and social media content creator in Sacramento. “And I think as the years have gone on, people just go above and beyond with these baskets, and now they’re almost a little too overboard.”

      @haileyjoor #easterbasket #easter2025 #boymom #basket #toddlermom #sahm ♬ original sound – mw🎧🧡 We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Understanding A.D.H.D.

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      What’s behind the surge in cases in the U.S.?This morning, my colleagues at The Times Magazine published a remarkable cover story by Paul Tough about a surge of A.D.H.D. cases in the United States — and the way we treat them. Today, 23 percent of 17-year-old boys have received a diagnosis of attention deficit hyperactivity disorder. The number of prescriptions rose nearly 60 percent in a decade. You almost certainly know people who take these stimulants.Why is this happening? One thing I love about Paul’s story is that it’s partly a tale about how science is made and changed. Researchers in the 1930s saw immediate benefits when they treated jumpy kids with amphetamines. Eventually, doctors crafted a diagnosis that could explain distracted and excitable personalities, and a consensus formed about how to treat them. Paul’s story describes how a few scientists have come to challenge that consensus — and some of the fundamental ideas behind A.D.H.D.For today’s newsletter, I spoke to Paul about his reporting.What got you interested in this story?I’ve been writing for decades about education and children, and I now have two boys of my own. A few years ago, I began to notice how many families I met were struggling with their kids’ attention issues. Attention was something I worried about in my own children — and in myself, too. But I didn’t know much about the science behind attention. So I started talking to scientists. When I did, I discovered they had a lot of big unresolved questions.What is A.D.H.D., and why is it so tricky to define?There is no biological test for A.D.H.D. So it has to be diagnosed by its symptoms, and those symptoms are sometimes hard to pin down. One patient’s behavior can look quite different from another’s, and certain A.D.H.D. symptoms can also be signs of other things — depression or childhood trauma or autism. Take a child who is constantly distracted by her anxiety. Does she have A.D.H.D., an anxiety disorder or both?So A.D.H.D. may not be a clear, distinct medical disorder with defined boundaries — something you either have or don’t have?Increasingly, the science shows that the condition exists on a continuum, and there is no clear dividing line between people who have A.D.H.D. and people who don’t. For many kids, A.D.H.D. symptoms fluctuate over time — worse one year, better the next — and those fluctuations may depend on their external environment as much as their internal wiring.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      The Future of Baseball

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      An interview with the M.L.B. commissioner. A new baseball season is underway, and the sport is enjoying a sort of renaissance.Baseball is making more money than it ever has. The addition of a pitch clock has made games quicker and created more action on the field. Attendance and ratings are on the rise.But the sport also faces a possible long-term problem: the widening gap between its haves and have-nots.Baseball’s future, both good and bad, is on display in California.It’s a glorious moment for the Los Angeles Dodgers, who won the World Series last year and have baseball’s biggest star, Shohei Ohtani. After winning the title, the Dodgers added even more talent to their roster — the team will spend well over $300 million this year on player salaries.A few hundred miles up Interstate 5, in Sacramento, that kind of money feels almost unfathomable. There the Athletics, who left Oakland after 57 years, are playing their home games at a minor-league ballpark as they prepare to move to Las Vegas in three years. The A’s entire payroll is only slightly more than what Ohtani alone is owed each year.Money doesn’t win games. It’s baseball, after all. And the A’s are scrappy. Even if they aren’t as well compensated, they can beat anyone on any given day. But the imbalance of resources, over time, tends to offer richer teams an advantage.For today’s newsletter, The Times spoke with the commissioner of Major League Baseball, Rob Manfred, about the state of the game.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Take Better Care of Your Skin

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      Here’s some advice. The beauty industry has always preyed upon our insecurities: Try this lotion or potion to look (and thus be!) happier, healthier, prettier, younger. Savvy marketers use that vanity to convince us that we need products uniquely formulated for cold weather, warm weather, crow’s feet, undereye areas, lips, necks, scalps — and yes, even derrières.As a result, there have never been more skin care products out there. My family’s crowded bathroom counter is evidence of this, and my 15-year-old daughter is its driving force. Like many of her peers, she has developed a seemingly limitless appetite for all manner of beauty products. In fact, thanks to Gens Z and Alpha, global beauty sales are expected to reach $590 billion in 2028 (up from $466 billion in 2023).But, it turns out, a basic routine still reigns supreme. In today’s newsletter, I’ll explain what Wirecutter’s beauty team learned about skin care from months of research, testing and interviews with dermatologists. And I’ll share a simple regimen for healthier skin that won’t break your budget.Easy does itThat focus on simplicity is something we heard repeatedly during our reporting and testing.“Simple is good,” Dr. Neelam Vashi, a dermatologist in Boston, told us. “You really just want to have products that moisturize, rejuvenate and feel comfortable on your skin. There is no magic cream. The magic is just finding the routine and sticking to it.”The more extraneous goops you layer on, the more you risk irritating your skin — and the trickier it becomes to discern exactly which ingredient might have triggered a reaction.In general, products with short ingredient lists are preferable. And scan ingredient lists to check that your products have components targeting specific skin care concerns — sometimes called active ingredients.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      The Price of a Show

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      Tickets for the hottest Broadway plays are now out of reach for many. There’s a starry production of “Othello” opening on Broadway tonight. And if you’re among the many people who really, really want to see Denzel Washington as a jealous general, opposite Jake Gyllenhaal as a scheming Iago, it’s going to cost you: Most of the center orchestra seats, as well as a few rows in the mezzanine, are being sold for $921 apiece.The high prices for this Shakespeare classic are setting records. During its second week of previews, “Othello” grossed more at the box office than any other nonmusical play had ever grossed on Broadway.Tickets for the hottest Broadway shows are now out of reach for many. And the same is true for other sought-after live events, such as pop concerts (which now cost hundreds, sometimes thousands, of dollars per ticket) and big sports games. (A few weeks before the Super Bowl, the cheapest available tickets were reselling for more than the average monthly mortgage payment.)In today’s newsletter, I’ll explain how Broadway seats became so eye-poppingly pricey.Trying to break evenProducing Broadway shows has become more expensive since the pandemic, and a vast majority of them lose money. So producers have been staging more short runs of plays with stars in lead roles — the stars attract ticket buyers, and the short runs allow those stars to more quickly return to filmmaking, which pays better than Broadway. Limited runs also seem to incentivize potential ticket buyers, because people find the now-or-never aspect motivating.There is, of course, a tension between profitability and accessibility. These prices are preventing some potential theatergoers from seeing high-profile productions of important work.Investors who spend money to bring shows to Broadway embrace high ticket prices because they want at least a shot at recouping their expenses. But many theater lovers, as they reminded me in a rollicking comments thread on the story I wrote about this subject last week, find these prices upsetting, because they want to see the shows they want to see at price points they consider reasonable.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More