Terry Gross

Serial Productions, which is part of New York Times Audio, has just released a new documentary podcast series called "The Coldest Case In Laramie." It's hosted by Kim Barker, a Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter who's covered policing. Podcast critic Nick Quah has this review.

The podcasts that spoke to me the most this year tended to be small and scrappy. The best was Dead Eyes, Connor Ratliff's quixotic quest to reconcile himself with the frustrations of life in show biz.

Avatar: The Way of Water isn't one of the year's best movies, but it's undoubtedly one of the best movie-going experiences Justin Chang has had in a while.

White noise streams are a kind of sonic wallpaper. For many, they help keep some parts of the brain distracted so that other parts may better focus on things, like writing, studying or sleeping.

Mother Country Radicals explores the history of the militant left-wing group the Weather Underground. I Was Never There tells the story of a regional hippie folk hero who disappeared in the late '80s.

In his debut novel, Greenland, David Santos Donaldson takes this crucial but necessarily closeted relationship of E.M. Forster's and runs with it, all the way from a basement room in Brooklyn to the icy white expanses of the Greenland of the novel's title.

Though drenched in deep melancholy, Lamar's new album avoids superstar-level self-pity. Instead, the hip-hop artist summons up specific memories and works through his issues with uncommon grace.

PBS's documentary details how Sondheim's landmark 1970 musical was adapted to the current Broadway version — pivoting on a gender switch that rewrites the central role as a woman instead of a man.

British novelist Mick Herron's Slough House books are being adapted by Apple TV+ into a new six-part series. It starts with the first of the novels, Slow Horses.

In 2014, an anonymous whistleblower leaked a copy of a letter that allegedly revealed an Islamist plan to take over schools in one English city. A new podcast tells the story behind the fake document.