Katie Baker

Once a total outsider, Shiv Roy’s husband endured episode after episode of ridicule, gradually culminating in a season finale that may have shaken the fundamental premise of ‘Succession’

As Venus and Serena Williams’s mother Oracene in the Oscar-nominated tennis biopic, Ellis shines with righteous restraint

For decades, Colorado had been trying to get over the hump in the postseason, much like the pre-2020 Lightning. And now, after a tight 2-1 win in Game 6 Sunday night, they’ve finally done it.

The Thunder’s lanky center continues to show off new dimensions in Las Vegas. Plus, my thoughts on James Wiseman’s long-awaited return, whether the Pacers should trade for Deandre Ayton, and more.

Hey, you may have heard, but Succession is ending this week. (And so are Barry and The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel, by the way.) To mark the occasion, we’re looking at the very idea of TV finales themselves this week: how to get them right, how to pick the perfect song for them, and why they may matter less in the streaming era. And naturally, we’re ranking them. Check back all week to help us celebrate—we like to think of it more like an Irish wake than a funeral. Just about every episode of Six Feet…

The first year of Denver’s Russell Wilson experiment … didn’t go as planned. But this season—with a new, experienced head coach at the helm—the Broncos are trying to frame things differently. Will it work?

Rodgers’s injury Monday night sent local and national media into a tailspin and forced some broadcasters to go through the stages of sports grief on the air: shock, sadness, trade talks, more sadness … and maybe even a little acceptance

Growing up is hard to do. There are so many moments of opportunity and wonder; so many raw indignities and sticky situations. I mean, the sheer audacity of one’s menarche, just showing up unannounced! The cresting intensities of shame over one’s size and shape and place in the world! To become a promising young adult, you need both vigilance and flexibility: One minute you’re warding off peer/parental pressure that threatens the soft fontanelle of the self; the next you’re caught in the logistic…

United States v. Bankman-Fried, starting this week, will be as high-tech as it is high-profile. But even with all the celebrity, crypto jargon, and nu-money, the major themes are tales as old as time.

If you don’t want to be the traffic, you have to beat the traffic, which is why last Tuesday, I hopped in a taxi at the truly zesty time of 4:40 a.m. and headed to the Daniel Patrick Moynihan United States Courthouse in Lower Manhattan. My top basic objective? Snagging one of about 21 first come, first served seats allotted to the press and general public in the trial of crypto founder-hustler Sam Bankman-Fried, who was charged in December with misappropriating billions of dollars in customer fu…

“Members of the jury, here comes your intermission,” Judge Lewis Kaplan announced last Thursday, right before the case of United States v. Samuel Bankman-Fried went on a weeklong hiatus. “Enjoy!” Since early October, members of the jury and the public, myself among them, have sat in the top floor of a Manhattan courthouse and watched the trial of Sam Bankman-Fried—the 31-year-old cryptopreneur who’s been charged with seven counts of fraud and conspiracy related to the collapse of his crypto exch…

Of all the deliciously tedious courtroom conversations that have happened between federal prosecutors and failed crypto founder Sam Bankman-Fried—who is standing trial on seven counts of fraud, conspiracy, and money laundering related to the loss of $8 billion of customer funds at his crypto exchange, FTX—one on Tuesday really had it all. Pedantic dissembling! Experienced persistence! The Bahamas! FPOTUS Bill Clinton! It began when assistant U.S. attorney Danielle Sassoon asked Bankman-Fried wha…

About a quarter past 4 p.m. on Thursday, roughly an hour after jurors in United States v. Samuel Bankman-Fried had been sent off to deliberate the seven counts of fraud and conspiracy charged to cryptocurrency faux-impresario Sam Bankman-Fried, the court read aloud a note from the jury. “We want cars,” it said. Earlier that day, Judge Lewis Kaplan had offered jurors free dinner and rides home—care of the American taxpayer, he pointed out—if they wanted to stay at the courthouse as late as 8 p.m.…

“The thing people forget about human babies,” mused Sam Altman, the entrepreneur whisperer turned artificial intelligence diviner, to The New Yorker’s Tad Friend in 2016, “is that they take years to learn anything interesting.” Tough but fair, although any babies reading this oughtn’t feel too embarrassed: Altman pointed out elsewhere in the piece, which was titled “Sam Altman’s Manifest Destiny,” that we grown-ups aren’t too quick on the uptake ourselves. “There are certain advantages to being…

The lobby of the Daniel Patrick Moynihan United States Courthouse in downtown Manhattan could double as a museum of malfeasance. Hanging on its white marble walls are dozens of infamous courtroom sketches, a curated gallery of some of America’s worst hits and weirdest trials. As I wandered the hallways in October, I beheld the renderings, stylized in various oil pastels and watercolors, of Martha Stewart and Imelda Marcos. I saw murderous mafia kingpins and litigious tree-shaped car air freshene…

A few weeks after Matt Rogers and Bowen Yang first started a pop culture podcast—or honestly, “maybe even a few months,” Rogers tells me—“I looked on the website where you can see how many people were listening. And it was like, 65 people. And I was like, oh my God! I was like, wow!” Sixty-five people listening—that used to mean something. In this case, it meant that more than just Rogers’s and Yang’s immediate friends were paying attention. The year was 2016, and the two then-20-something enter…

“I am Team Tundra, just in case you’re wondering,” Jodie Foster declares over Zoom in December. We are speaking about her latest project, True Detective: Night Country, which premieres January 14 on HBO. But while the show is indeed an ice-cold murder mystery set in the northernmost reaches of Alaska—a land of frozen caves and shadowy mining concerns and vast white windblown expanses—Foster is referring to the name of her fantasy football team. “We all love each other,” she says about her league…

In the San Francisco 49ers’ locker room on Sunday night, red and gold confetti littered the floor and cigar smoke lingered in the air. The Niners and their jubilant moms, bewildered kiddos, and backslapping buddies filled the space, drinking champagne and tossing footballs and discussing Super Bowl travel plans in the wake of their 34-31 NFC championship game victory over the Detroit Lions. Wide receiver Brandon Aiyuk celebrated with his mother by his locker. Running back Elijah Mitchell noticed…

In the opening episode of the 12th and allegedly-for-realsies-this-time final season of Curb Your Enthusiasm, which returns Sunday night on HBO, a lady at a party gives Larry David a taste of his own medicine. Which, when I put it that way, sounds like an evergreen Curb episode synopsis. But in this case, the woman isn’t vindictive—she’s just being friendly. Attempting to make small talk with the man, the myth, the misanthrope, she mentions to Larry that she has an annoyance in her life, one hav…

In the end, the bickering actually felt soothing, like falling asleep to a white-noise machine or the ambient sounds of a nature show. There they sat in the final-final scene of Curb Your Enthusiasm on Sunday night, snakes on a plane: the freshly uncaged Larry David, and all the friends he somehow didn’t lose along the way. There were Susie and Jeff; Cheryl and Ted; Richard and Leon—some of them basking in the sunlight through a wide-open window shade, others recoiling from the intrusive glare,…