Illustration by Golden Cosmos

To get in character for a new Broadway show, in which he plays a fact checker, Daniel Radcliffe got trained by The New Yorker’s crackerjack checking department. His first assignment: a review of a Mexican restaurant that serves some dishes he can’t pronounce. David Remnick sits down with Janelle Monáe to talk about how she stopped playing a character in her songs and began to write directly about what she and our country are facing right now. And the reporter Eliza Griswold follows the route of a controversial gas pipeline to see how it’s shaking up Pennsylvania’s politics.

Janelle Monáe, from the Future to the Present

The pop star has been writing music since elementary school, but her career didn’t take off until she was fired from a job at Office Depot.

In Pennsylvania, a Pipeline Shakes up the Political Map

The Mariner East pipeline project carries fracking by-products through the back yards of some unhappy voters who think both parties are to blame.

Daniel Radcliffe Gets His Facts Straight

The actor, now playing a fact checker in a play on Broadway, gets properly trained by checkers at The New Yorker.

The Secrets of a Hyper-Polyglot

The staff writer Judith Thurman hits the streets of multiethnic Queens with a linguist who speaks so many languages that he’s lost count.