Category: The New Normal

$4,785. That’s How Much It Costs to Be a Sports Fan Now.

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Illustration by Andrew Rae | The New York Times

It’s no secret that affordability is a big concern in the United States. The prices of eggs, coffee, and even candy bars have been going up, up, up—and the same is true of seats and even hot dogs at a baseball game. According to Joon Lee, the price of being a sports fan now is—brace yourself—$4,785. Lee is a sports journalist whose work has appeared on ESPN, Bleacher Report, and YouTube, as well as in the Boston Globe and the New York Times, where this piece was first published in 2025. He says his goal is “to make sports media feel alive again.” Read on to see what he has to say about the price of being a sports fan; fair warning: it’s no longer as simple as “Buy me some peanuts and Cracker Jack.”

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Ghosts

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Illustration by Jesse Zhang | The Believer

Do you remember a crucial moment or event in your life that you really wanted to write about—maybe to help you understand it more fully? Yet no matter how hard you tried, you just couldn’t find the words? That’s what happened to Vauhini Vara, whose sister was diagnosed with cancer when they were both in high school. Her death four years later left Vara feeling like a ghost, one who was unable to write about her sister’s death. That’s when she, a reporter and editor, turned to a relatively new kid on the technology block: Chat GPT. Read on to see what happened when Vara asked AI to take over and write about her sister’s death for her. Be prepared for more than a few surprises! Vara’s essay was first published in 2021 in The Believer, a quarterly arts and literature magazine.

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The Food Scientists Working to Change the Colors You Eat

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Illustration credit: Nicholas Konrad | The New Yorker

Do you notice or pay attention to the color of the foods you eat? If not, it may be high time to think again, as changing or dropping such colors can apparently make once-relished foods seem “repulsive.” That’s one of the findings reported by Shayla Love in her August 2025 synthesis in The New Yorker of current food science research into viable substitutes for non-natural dyes, some of which may pose health hazards for consumers. Read Love’s report—and see if you feel differently about those oh-so-blue M&M’s. 

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The “Great Resignation” Is Finally Getting Companies to Take Burnout Seriously. Is It Enough?

An illustration of a man sitting at a desk looking at a computer monitor surrounded by tally marks.
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They’re calling it the Great Resignation, and it’s all over the news these days. So many people quitting their jobs! What’s going on?! Pundits and analysts are looking from every angle, trying to get a handle on what may (or may not) be a huge trend here in the US at the end of 2021. In this October 2021 article, Time Magazine’s health correspondent Jamie Ducharme analyzes the situation, focusing on worker burnout, and offers suggestions for workers and their employers.

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Why Are So Many Americans Quitting Their Jobs?

An illustration of a man with his back to us facing an open door marked "Exit."
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Has the pandemic changed you? What a silly question! Of course it has. Ahhh, but how deeply? In what ways? That question can’t be answered yet, and we may not be able to know for a very long time. In this October 2021 report, writer and journalist Greg Rosalsky, who covers a variety of financial topics for NPR’s Planet Money, investigates some of the reasons for the long arc of pandemic consequences, including the current phenomenon known as the Great Resignation.

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How Covid-19 Gave Me Back My Southern Accent

A drawing of a set of dentures wearing a cowboy hat and cowboy boots.
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We already know all about how the world around us changed in 2020, how we had to modify, adjust, and adapt along with it. We’ve read and discussed all the effects, all the angles; we know all about it. One major aspect of life, though, may have gone unexamined: language habits. Journalist and culture critic Tracy Moore is surprised to notice a change in her own speech, and she relates her experience with it in this March 2021 Washington Post essay.

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Would Honey the Duck Come Back This Spring?

Two ducks floating in a body of water.
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In addition to the human dramas that play out daily in our towns and cities, the wildlife that live among us have their own dramas, too. And sometimes those dramas intertwine. A university biologist in Chicago, whose office looks out on the school’s Botany Pond, has watched and looked after a particular migratory duck who has returned to the pond for each of the last five years. Mary Schmich, Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist for the Chicago Tribune, has documented this intertwined drama of the duck and the professor several times; this March 2021 column is the latest chapter of the ongoing tale.

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