This Week’s Issue: The Women Who Want to Be Priests

Plus: a Profile of Senator Joe Manchin; pet adoption in the time of COVID; and Doreen St. Félix on "Ziwe."  View in browser | Update your preferences     Annals of Religion The Women Who Want to Be Priests They feel drawn by God to the calling—and won't let the Vatican stop them. By Margaret Talbot Listen to this story Have a world-class narrator read this to you.     American Chronicles What Will Become of the Pandemic Pets? In a time of stress and isolation, we turned to them for comfort. Now it's time to think about what owning animals really means. By Nick Paumgarten     Profiles The Man Who Controls the Senate Will Joe Manchin's search for common ground wreck the Democrats' agenda? By Evan Osnos     Family Life The Promise and Peril of a High-Priced Sleep Trainer Open Instagram and behold the perfect, zonked-out babies, lulled to sleep by methods designed by expensive coaches. By Sam Knight     Comment Biden, Putin, and the Weight of History At last week's summit, on the centenary of the Russian dissident Andrei Sakharov's birth, the U.S. President tried to reassert democratic values. By David Remnick     Books The Mad, Bad Business of Railroad Tycoons In the nineteenth century, a crucial railway project was fuelled by a ferocious rivalry. Are there lessons for our own infrastructure plans? By Adam Gopnik     On Television "Ziwe" Is Trapped in an Interminable Dance with Whiteness The variety series on Showtime struggles to release itself from the grip of its muse. By Doreen St. Félix     Musical Events Stravinsky's Plague Opera "Oedipus Rex" makes a mighty noise at the reopening of L.A. Opera. By Alex Ross     The Art World My Struggle with Cézanne Some of us don't like the inarguably great artist as much as we know we should. By Peter Schjeldahl   Humor from The New Yorker     Shouts & Murmurs Attention, People of Earth! Is the most powerful Thought Leader in your nation a human known as Tucker Swanson McNear Carlson? Really? By Will Stephen     Cartoons from the Issue Cartoons from the Issue Drawings and drollery from this week's magazine.   You're receiving this e-mail because you signed up for This Week's Issue from The New Yorker. Was this e-mail forwarded to you? Sign up.   Unsubscribe | Manage your e-mail preferences | Send newsletter feedback | View our privacy policy    Copyright © Condé Nast 2021. One World Trade Center, New York, NY 10007. All rights reserved.