Killing the Buddha

John Darnielle of the Mountain Goats helps bring the Age of Irony to a close.

For the winter solstice, the gods go betting.

The sounds of the soul stretch from 16th-century Spain to David Lynch’s LA.

Nicholas Sarkozy takes her burqa-ed consort for a walk in Paris.

Photographing spaces of enforced meditation at Philadelphia’s Eastern State Penitentiary.

After ditching the tour group, he’s got twenty-four hours and seven very important Turkish towns to see.

Can a man be better than his rap sheet?

Bet you can’t guess what Pastor Timothy Keller thinks Manhattan needs more of.

Grappling with James Agee’s punctuation, one hundred years after his birth.

Suffering through 2012, Roland Emmerich’s take on a Mayan prophecy.

Talking down to prophecy nuts is a delicate art.

A drive through Manhattan with a jazzman in the world of ideas crammed in the back seat.

Hollywood flies to Jackson Hole to hash out the apocalypse.

Lars von Trier’s Antichrist takes this reviewer through her soul’s own dark nights.

The running father, the starving son, the fatted calf, the husks, and the unbearable question.