Edens.nl: het laatste nieuws het eerst! 
Login
We may earn a commission from links on this page.
Nothing is really new in conspiracy theories, but the churning morass of social media sometimes mixes up new combinations of old nonsense that bubbles up to the surface unexpectedly. Lately, interest in "Grabovoi codes" or "Grabovoi numbers" is high. The CIA is supposedly hiding Grabovoi codes, strings of numbers that one can concentrate upon in order to cure disease, get rich, and manifest a new car. This video, for instance, has been viewed over a million times in the last couple weeks:
"You can search 'quantum healing codes' at the CIA.gov website and it has many different codes for many different things," This TikToker says, "for instance you would think of the part of your body that's hurting and repeat 55515 and, voila, pain starts to vanish," they add. Many TikTokers are into this. There are over 43,000 posts on the "Grabovoi" hashtag.
It might seem like lightweight wish fulfillment, but I looked into where belief in the Grabovoi codes comes from, and it's way deeper than TikTok. The online world's belief in magic numbers is a case of historical telephone that can be traced to a convicted Russian conman, an American broadcasting tycoon who believed he could travel outside of his body, and the strange history of the CIA and KGB's research into the paranormal—it gets real weird, real quick. But first, do the Grabovoi codes actually work?
No. But sometimes, kind of yes. There is a library of research about the connection between the cognitive mind and the perception of pain, and scientific research supports the general idea that if you are experiencing mild pain, concentrating on something else, like a specific number, could reduce the perception of that pain. But the number itself is irrelevant; it's the distraction that matters. All other claims about benefits from these numbers—that they represent frequencies connected to specific real life outcomes, that they can help you find love, etc.— are not supported by any evidence.
No. But kind of yes. Despite the claims of online believers, searching "quantum healing codes," or "Grabovoi" in the CIA's declassified files database does not result in a list of healing numbers. There is no mention of the inventor of the Grabovoi numbers, Grigori Grabovoi, in the files either. There is actually one "healing number" contained in declassified CIA files. But first...
Grabovoi is the founder of the Russian group Teaching Universal Salvation and Harmonious Development. He claims he is the second coming of Jesus, can cure cancer, can teleport, and can repair anything, mechanical or electronic, remotely. In 2008, Grabovoi was sentenced to 11 years in a Russian prison for fraud after accepting payment to resurrect children slain in the Beslan school siege. He's served his sentence and lives in Serbia now.
Among the hundreds of books (usually transcripts of lectures) Grabovoi has authored is Restoration of Matter of Human Being by Concentrating on Number Sequence, which lays out some of the Grabovoi numbers. Not all of them, though. Grabovoi tends to publish books of numbers for specific subjects, like Concentration on Numerical Sequences to Reset the Body of Cats. Grabovoi doesn't miss a trick.
Which brings us to TikTok. Beginning around 2016, Grabovoi and his believers/followers started promoting his numbers and theories on Pinterest, TikTok, YouTube, and basically everywhere else, and they were spread by people connected with hashtags like #manifestation, particularly when Covid19 was at its peak. So that's why everyone is talking about Grabovoi codes, but it doesn't explain the CIA connection. That's because of Robert Monroe.
Robert Allan Monroe was a media tycoon who made a ton of money producing radio shows in the 1930s and 40s. By the late 1950s, Monroe owned a network of radio stations and early cable TV channels across Virginia. In 1958, this rich radio dude claimed he had a spontaneous out-of-body experience after listening to binaural sounds.
To study the phenomena, Monroe used his considerable wealth to found the Monroe Institute. In 1977 the Institute published the The Gateway Intermediate Workbook, a collection of mental exercises and visualization tools designed to help people relax and/or project their consciousness across time and space. It advised people in pain to close their eyes and repeat "55515" to dull pain signals. Why this number specifically is not explained, but Monroe's whole thing was "hemi-sync" audio signals, aka "binaural beats," so the idea may have been that repeating a precise rhythmic sequence like "five-five-five-one-five" would echo pulsing audio frequencies. It's hard to say. Anyway, repeating this series of numbers is unlikely to have any more effect on pain than repeating anything else, and the research on binaural beats isn't promising. None of this changes the fact that the CIA had a real connection to the Monroe Institute.
The Monroe Institute's workbook and other esoteric material were part of the CIA's reading room, and by the late 1970s and into the early 1980s, the U.S. Army and the CIA routinely sent high level intelligence officers to the Monroe Institute's campus, especially in connection with Project Stargate, the military's effort to create psychic soldiers and/or remote viewers who could project their consciousness anywhere they wanted.
The "CIA connection" is the most compelling thing about TikTok's interest in magic numbers. The CIA and army intelligence are thought of as serious, smart people who deal in information the rest of us are not privy to. If they believe in magic numbers, it must be true, right? Well, yes and no. The CIA/military is a group of people, and all groups of people (even smart ones) can be bamboozled.
Consider the atomic bomb from a military, non-scientist perspective: If a split atom can level a city, is it that strange to believe the human mind has capacities we don't understand? Add to that the revelation that the USSR was conducting its own paranormal research, and you have a perfect storm. If we're wrong about this, the thinking that led to military paranormal research likely went, and the Soviets make atomic-bomb-level breakthroughs in the field of parapsychology, they'll bury us without firing a shot; it would be crazy to not look into it. And given the massive military budgets of the time, it was a tiny expenditure with a potentially nuclear-level outcome. (There's also the possibility that both the CIA and the KGB were purposefully deceiving one another about the extent of their research to make the other spend more. Things get shadowy during the Cold War.)
Enter the Monroe Institute. Robert Allan Monroe wasn't a wild-eyed hippie. He wore expensive suits and had straight white teeth. At least on the surface, the Monroe Institute was taking a corporate approach to the mind/body connection. Its approach was structured, serious, and deliberately clinical. The Gateway Workbook is a step-by-step process instead of a leap of faith. The Monroe Institute was the kind of place the military might feel confident sending its men.
Research into remote viewing and other esoterica went on, seemingly with no tangible results. In 1989, Soviet Union collapsed without the help of psychic warriors or atomic bombs, and the CIA took a hard look at its paranormal programs in the mid 1990s. 1995's report "An Evaluation of Remote Viewing: Research and Applications," concludes, "OK, this was dumb and it never worked and we should stop throwing money at it." I mean, that's the gist. Anyway, the material was declassified so we could all take a look at how our taxes are spent.
Which brings us back to TikTok. Everything the CIA releases has always been pored over by curious people, where it marinates with other "official" weirdness like UFO research and quantum mechanics until it gets spit back in altered form. The no-context architecture of social media seems designed to legitimize fringe ideas. A convicted Russian conman's magic numbers collide with a wealthy eccentric's out-of-body workbook that got filed in a CIA reading room, and suddenly a million people think the CIA has a secret cure for back pain.
I don't think too many people on TikTok really believe that they can manifest magic and get rid of pain by repeating a number, but like a paranoid military throwing a few million at psychic research in the remote hopes of a Cold War-winning breakthrough, the barrier to entry is low. When you're in pain or you're broke or you're scared, why not repeat some numbers to yourself? It can't hurt.
But it won't help that much, either. Research shows that cognitively demanding tasks like puzzles or math problems are more effective ways to distract yourself from pain than repeating a number, and while learning about out-of-body experiences from the Monroe Institute (which is still around, by the way) might be interesting, there are better ways to relax and clear your mind. For instance, rather than spending $2,895.00 to sit around in a dark room in Virginia envisioning a tropical beach at the Institute's five-day "Gateway Voyage," book a trip to Bali. For the same price, you could actually be on a tropical beach, and stay at a luxury villa with a private plunge pool and a personal butler.
I'm totally totally cheesin over Mixtape and not cheesin at all about TikTok's AI cat videos. Scuba! If none of that makes sense to you, you're about to be educated and embettered by this week's Out-of-Touch guide, where the secret world of young people is either explained or misunderstood, depending on whom you ask.
The slang word "cheesin'" refers to smiling, particularly a big, goofy smile. It comes from the common exhortation to "say cheese!" when a photograph is being taken. Here's an examples of how cheesin is used online:
The word "cheesing," with a "g" at the end, often means the same thing, but it can also refer to the trend of throwing pieces of cheese at cars and/or people—the cheese sticks, and it's kind of hilarious. I know people shouldn't do it, because won't someone think of the cars? but it's still funny. Here's an example of the second kind of cheesing:
Throwing cheese at people's cars isn't new online, and it doesn't seem to have ever been a huge trend, but it made enough of an impact this week that a teenager was arrested in Topeka and booked on two counts of aggravated assault after a cheesing incident. The unnamed youth allegedly cheesed someone, and when confronted by his victim, brandished a gun. In response to the cheesing, the Topeka Police Department issued a statement reminding the public that "social media trends and pranks can quickly escalate into dangerous situations with serious legal consequences.” Thanks, Topeka Police Department!
Gaming culture is getting weird again. On May 7, Annapurna Interactive released Mixtape, a story-heavy adventure game about the messiness and beauty of coming-of-age. Mixtape is to Call of Duty as Boyhood is to Avengers Endgame. Because professional game reviewers are largely sensitive fellows, they like this game a lot, but many of the "real" gamers out there do not like Mixtape. People are calling the game pretentious, boring, "too woke," and are questioning whether it's even a game at all. The backlash has mostly been limited to people complaining and some funny memes so far, but online types are making much of the fact that Annapurna Interactive was founded by Megan Ellison, daughter of super-rich Oracle founder Larry Ellison, leading to charges that the game only exists because of nepotism, and that its high review scores are dishonest or a result of reviewers being scared of angering a rich guy. It's starting to feel a little like Gamergate 2.0.
There's something about gaming culture that leads to people picking bizarre hills to die on. Movie fans don't get morally indignant and organize doxxing and harassment campaigns because critics like Silent Friend better than Transformers: Rise of the Beasts. It's not like they won't put out the next Madden because Annapurna interactive wants to make another sensitive walking simulator.
I'm not sure why I know this off the top of my head, but "scuba" is an acronym for "self-contained underwater breathing apparatus." That's not, however, what it means to young people. In slang, "scuba" is a verb. To scuba is to do the scuba dance (sometimes called the scuba juke) which I'll just show you rather than try to describe:
Anyway, videos of people doing this simple dance are all over TikTok. The trend supposedly started with Desean Hawk Logan-Russell—he made the first Scuba video, and that's his sound bite behind rest—but it looks like a variation on 1960s dance the Swim to me. If you're ever thinking, "These online dance trends are so stupid," remember that The Swim was a huge craze.
This week's viral videos are a look into a dark and troubling future. There is a sub-genre of AI videos on TikTok in which anthropomorphic cartoon cats do disturbing things, and they are very popular. Channels like @cat_mind6, @the_meow_minute, @giselecat, @mixcat804 and dozens more post steady streams of AI vids of human/cat chimera stealing each other's eyeballs, being hit by trucks, putting roofies in drinks, and otherwise being extremely creepy. These video regularly go viral, and gain tens of millions of views. The weird-ass video below has been viewed over 120 million times.
It's unlikely humans had any input in the "creative" part of these videos. AI makes the videos, posts them, analyzes what works and what doesn't based on view counts, then hones and perfect the formula for the next video, giving us a hazy view of a combination of humanity's collective unconscious and the programming of TikTok's algorithm. Meanwhile, the AI itself is prying secrets from the human soul by learning how we engage with this slop. This is how all entertainment will be made in the future; because it is what many, many people most want to watch, even if they'd never admit it. This video has over 148 million plays:
A few weeks ago, something mysterious happened, and cat video accounts started posting videos of sentient fruits and vegetables being messed up instead of cats. @cat_mind6's last cat video, in which a cat-woman is sexually assaulted by a cat-man and a rabbit man, is dated April 24 and was watched fewer than 150,000 times, but the next day, the channel posted a video dramatizing an apple-woman's battle with explosive diarrhea that was viewed over 13 million times. @the_meow_minute's last cat video, in which a kitten is raised by gorillas, was posted in March. After that, it's all about a zucchini guy and a peach woman's abusive relationship.
At the end of the chain of AI agents and TikTok video viewers, someone is making a ton of money. A video that hits 128 million views can generate between $60,000 and $100,000 from its creator through TikTok's Creator Rewards Program. And that's the tip of the iceberg, because those profits drive hundreds of latecomers to try to get in on the action. They probably won't make money, but they'll shovel cash into the pockets of the AI companies that make the programs that make the videos.
I'm going to find an ice floe to float away upon now.
This story seems straight out of a Hollywood thriller: Up to a dozen scientists working on some of the U.S.’s most advanced and sensitive aerospace and nuclear programs have disappeared or died in mysterious ways over the last five years. The FBI is working with the Department of Energy, the Department of Defense, and local law enforcement to find answers. The House Oversight Committee launched its own investigation. Congressman Eric Burlison said the mystery has “all the hallmarks of a foreign operation.” The president called it “pretty serious stuff."
Congressman James Comer suggested someone is targeting the nation’s nuclear program. Rep. Tim Burchett alleged a cover-up of UAP activity. Some say it’s aimed at people with knowledge of American security secrets. Or maybe it’s to cover up evidence of time travel. So what’s really going on here?
Literally nothing. This is a cobbled-together collection of unrelated deaths and disappearances. As a conspiracy theory, it is, as Daniel Engber pointed out in The Atlantic, "unbelievably dumb."
There are around two million scientists in the U.S., and, as science writer and debunker Mick West pointed out, over 700,000 people hold top-secret clearances in the U.S. aerospace and nuclear sectors. If 10 or so of this group had died or disappeared in inexplicable ways over five years, it wouldn’t be statistically meaningful, but this theory is even more stupid than that. Many people on the list didn’t seem to have top-secret clearances, and many weren’t scientists. The list includes a construction foreman who once worked at Los Alamos National Lab, a former custodian at the Kansas City National Security Campus, and an administrative assistant. And there are concrete explanations for almost all of these deaths and disappearances. The list includes physicist Ning Li who died at 78 of Alzheimers and Carl Grillmair who was killed in a home invasion by a man with a violent history who had a prior disagreement with Grillmair that had nothing to do with science.
The missing scientist conspiracy theories have all the hallmarks of apophenia (people perceiving meaningful connections in random data) and cherry-picking, and even if we give a lot of credit to the most “mysterious” entries on the list, the theory gets muddy very quickly.
The death that arguably supports the “mysterious assassinations” theory most strongly is that of Amy Eskridge. A fringe scientist who founded the Institute for Exotic Science in Huntsville, Alabama to study anti-gravity technology, Eskridge died at 34 of a (supposedly) self-inflicted gunshot wound in 2022, after telling friends she was being stalked and targeted by unknown forces.
The conspiracy theorists’ line about Eskridge is that she was a brilliant scientist who made a breakthrough discovery in anti-gravity research and was taken out by mysterious pro-gravity forces before she could go public. It’s a compelling narrative on the surface, but when you unwind it, you find the kind of half-truths and exaggerations you always find when you look into conspiracy theories.
Whether Eskridge belongs in a list of scientists in the first place is debatable. Some online have categorized her as an important researcher with a background in physics, but her highest degree was a bachelors in biochemistry, and she doesn't seem to have published any research in peer-reviewed scientific journals. Eskridge didn’t have the kind of professional background that suggests access to top-secret government programs, either.
Maybe Eskridge’s gravity research was too esoteric to be accepted by the "mainstream science," but even that is questionable. Judging from this public presentation (and accompanying slides) that Eskridge gave not long before she died, she didn’t seem close to any kind of breakthrough. Her speech points out that you can’t build an anti-gravity machine without first developing a theoretical framework for how one could actually work, and that that theory doesn’t exist right now. This is exactly what the scientific establishment would say.
Eskridge’s presentation wasn’t a revelation of ground-breaking new technology. It was a catalog of past attempts to conquer gravity. ending with a stab at finding a patron to fund basic, step-one theoretical research. Despite the posts from conspiracy theorists, there’s no indication that Eskridge, or anyone else, got beyond the whole “based on everything we know about how the physical world works, anti-gravity isn’t possible” thing.
Eskridge’s death does raise questions. According to police and the medical examiner, it was a suicide, but according to conspiracy theorists it was a murder, and they have receipts.
On May 13, 2022, one month before she died, Eskridge reportedly sent a message to business partner Samuel Reed that read: "If you see any report that I killed myself, I most definitely did not. If you see any report that I overdosed, I most definitely did not…If anything happens to me—suicide or an accident—it wasn't, it's suspicious, treat it as such.”
She also reported repeated death threats and other harassment, and posted a video of supposed burns on her hands to prove a directed energy weapon was being used against her.
On the other hand, members of Eskridge’s family publicly stated that she had suffered from chronic pain, and reported no suspicion about how she died. Eskridge didn’t post recordings of harassing phone calls or dark messages she received, nor did she provide any other evidence that she was being targeted.
That isn't proof she wasn’t murdered, though. The case of Eskridge and the rest of these scientists runs across a common problem of debunking conspiracy theories: We don’t know enough to say for sure, and we can’t prove a negative. That leaves us with asking which explanation is more probable: a shadowy, unnamed cabal of assassins targeting a woman who was interested in anti-gravity, or a woman who was paranoid about a non-existent cabal and took her own life.
From what we know for sure, Eskridge was interested in developing an anti-gravity hypothesis. Some claim she was about to break the field wide open by publishing her findings, but she didn’t actually publish anything. Even if we accept that her theory existed, the argument is still “assassins targeted someone for thinking about anti-gravity,” which is still an extraordinary claim that requires extraordinary evidence. And there isn’t any.
Eskridge's death, heartbreaking as it is, would not have attracted attention if she hadn't spent her final months making predictions that later appeared, to some, to come true, but that’s not enough to prove anything. We only have Eskridge’s word that harassment took place, and it all could have been the product of paranoid delusions on her part.
While plenty of intelligent, mentally healthy people hold unconventional views about physics and government secrecy, Eskridge believed that she, specifically, was being hunted for her research. Psychiatrists call this "persecutory ideation," and it's associated with serious mental illnesses and correlates to suicide.
We don’t have evidence to prove Eskridge was suffering from a mental illness, just as we can’t prove that she was murdered, but mental illness is, in general, a more common cause of death than shadowy cabals of assassins targeting people over scientific theories. Roughly 800 to 900 Americans aged 34 die by suicide every year. As Eskridge’s father, a retired NASA employee, told NewsNation, “Scientists die also, just like other people.”
Eskridge’s father isn’t the only family member of someone on the list to have spoken out. Carl Grillmair's widow Louise told BBC that she has been fielding calls from conspiracy theorists, despite the fact that her husband’s alleged killer has been charged with murder. Relatives of others on the list have publicly called the conspiracy theories "terrible" and “disgusting.” And not a single family member has publicly suggested there's anything suspicious about any of these deaths or disappearances.
It’s fun (and sometimes politically useful) for conspiracy theorists to dream up connections between unrelated events, just like it is fun for people like me to shoot holes in their theories, but these were real people with families, friends, and in many cases genuine scientific legacies. They deserve better than a walk-on role in a conspiracy theory.
This week's Out-of-Touch guide explains the online mogging competition that is Omoggle and examines who was behind a hack that brought learning to a screeching halt nationwide. We also look at a viral AI music trend, and discuss how technology we use every day might kill us all.
The Omoggle website is blowing up. As you can read in my glossary of Gen A and Gen Z slang, "mogging" is the act of being more attractive than someone else, usually in an intentional or aggressive way: If you're a young gentleman having a conversation with a woman, and a more handsome young man stands next to you and takes over, you have officially been mogged. Omoggle gamifies that conflict of attractiveness. It's a player-vs.-player contest where a user uploads a picture of their face and pits it against another user. An AI then analyzes the competitors' features to determine who has been mogged and who has done the mogging. It may be named after defunct chat site Omegle, but Omoggle is more like Hot or Not. Except it's more disturbing because the winner of the attractive-off isn't determined by other users' votes, but by an AI that was programmed to reinforce incel ideas.
Over the last 10 years or so, incels and manosphere types have developed and spread a massive, ad-hoc, shared delusion about what women find attractive. Despite being a self-selected group of men who don't relate well to women, incels believe they understand what women find attractive better than women themselves. All women, the theory goes, are looking for a specific set of facial features—a thick jaw, high cheekbones, etc.—and if you don't have them, you have no chance, so why try? Omoggle is really part of incels' ongoing effort to convince themselves that the reason women won't talk to them is because the geometry of their Canthal Tilt is off, not because they're creepy weirdos.
A website going down temporarily is probably a minor inconvenience to us older people, but when Canvas went down this week, right in the middle of finals, it was a full-life disruption for many in Generations Z and A. Canvas is the learning management system that controls just about every college and high school in the country's schedules, homework, grades, and more, so hackers taking it out pretty much shut down academia. The hacker group responsible, called ShinyHunters, threatened to release user information if an unspecified ransom wasn't paid, but fortunately, the site seems to have beaten the hackers back, and Canvas is functioning again—but for how long?
Shinyhunters, the group that pulled off the Canvas hack, took its name from the Pokémon franchise. Shiny Pokémon are rare, and according to security experts, Shinyhunters seem to focus on rare data. The group is thought to be part of a large affiliation of younger hackers called "The Com" who are mostly from the U.S. and the UK. While other groups within The Com collaborate with Russian ransomware groups, Shinyhunters don't. They're about data leak extortion, i.e.: "We'll release all this data if you don't pay us" instead of the usual ransomware's message of "we locked your systems and will free them when you pay us." Shinyhunters have been especially active lately, having targeted Ticketmaster, Wattpad, Pixlr, Bonobos, BigBasket, Mathway, Unacademy, MeetMindful, and more.
Artificial intelligence's takeover of all human endeavors continues. The latest evidence: the popularity of "text songs" videos on TikTok. The concept is simple: You enter text conversations as lyrics into song generation engines like Suno or Udio, make it into a song and video, and make people laugh. While there are lots of different musical styles represented in these videos, gospel tends to work best; maybe it's the contrast of the mundanity of the text messages with the dramatic nature of the music. Here are a few examples:
Bonus: Because I sometimes have funny conversations with my teenage child, I made my own.
If you'd like to listen to a computer sing to you all day, check out the SongText hashtag where you can find almost 30,000 more examples.
AI sure is fun, isn't it? Unrelated: Young people spend a lot of time thinking about how the technology we've already developed will likely kill us in the near future. It's not necessarily that there's more anxiety now than when you were young, but there are more options. Realistically, you only had to worry about nukes falling, but, judging by this Reddit thread, young people are worried about hundreds of different kinds of technological nightmares that might happen in the next few years or tomorrow afternoon, including:
I could literally go on all day, but I won't. You can read the thread yourself if you lack things to worry about.
We may earn a commission from links on this page.
Hulu’s adaptation of The Handmaid’s Tale hit our screens at precisely the right moment—a time when many had Americans begun to wonder if our democracy was as robust as we’d always assumed. It brought Margaret Atwood’s grim vision of a totalitarian, patriarchal, and fanatical future America (now known as The Republic of Gilead) to life with sharp writing, electric performances, a striking visual style, and instantly iconic costume designs.
Now that the series has ended, you might be wondering how you’ll get your fix of feel-bad dystopian futures. Thanks in part to its success, there are a lot of other TV series you can stream that offer similarly provocative visions of our Worst Possible Future (including the spinoff series The Testaments)—but you can also plunge deeper into books, movies, games, and podcasts that deliver similar visions of where we may be headed.
The Handmaid’s Tale is a literary adaptation, after all, and the series maintained that novelistic feel. If you’re a reader, here are more books that explore similar themes.
The adaptation of Atwood’s novel went far beyond her original vision out of necessity: You don’t get six seasons of June fighting the patriarchy without inventing a lot of new material. In 2019, Atwood delivered the long-awaited sequel to her novel, offering her thoughts on what the larger picture of Gilead would look like. Three women smuggle their experiences out of the Republic—a young woman who rejects her arranged marriage despite her strong faith, a teen girl who finds herself questioning the bedrock of her existence, and, most intriguingly, Lydia, the stern, conflicted Aunt responsible for training (and punishing) the Handmaids.
If you’re intrigued by ideas around reproductive freedom, bodily agency, and how quickly society could revert to a more primitive state, Future Home of the Living God is the perfect choice. In a grim future, evolution has gone haywire—plants and animals appear to be evolving backwards, and a range of threats challenge humanity’s survival. When the government begins rounding up pregnant women, Cedar Hawk Songmaker flees, embarking on a violent journey as she fights for herself and the autonomy of women everywhere.
If you loved how The Handmaid’s Tale explores the ways the women of Gilead sustain and defend themselves without ever holding real power, Women Talking will be fascinating. The women of the Mennonite colony of Molotschna have long believed demons attack them at night. When a man is caught assaulting one of them, however, they realize they have been lied to and gaslit by the patriarchal leaders of the colony—in reality, those men have been drugging and abusing them. Unable to read and ignorant of the outside world, the women gather to discuss what’s to be done, with the help of the one man in the community they trust.
It’s sometimes forgotten that the precipitating event leading to the Republic of Gilead in The Handmaid’s Tale is a fertility crisis. James’ dystopian novel goes one step further—by the year 2021, no children have been born for more than 25 years. The novel explores the slow dissolution of civilization in the face of humanity’s inevitable extinction, with each grim development more horrifyingly plausible than the last. If it’s the dystopia of it all that you love, this novel is the ideal choice.
If you’re looking for a similar vibe to The Handmaid’s Tale, but from a different perspective, Tepper’s 1988 novel will deliver. In a post-apocalyptic Pacific Northwest, a matriarchy has emerged. Women and children live peacefully within the walls of small cities, while men live in more primitive conditions outside, as warriors. But keeping those two groups apart forever isn’t possible, and when a young woman in Marthatown begins a friendship with a warrior named Chernon, change—violent and otherwise—is inevitable.
Hollywood loves a good dystopian epic, so there is no shortage of grim films offering possible futures no one wants. If you’re looking to stay in this lane, here are some terrific films to queue up.
The most direct way to stay in the universe of The Handmaid’s Tale is to watch the first adaptation, from 1990. Starring Robert Duvall, Natasha Richardson, and Faye Dunaway, the film was scripted by Nobel Prize-winning playwright Harold Pinter and offers a more compressed and melodramatic—but no less horrifying—version of the story. It’s very 1990, but it offers an intriguingly different perspective on the material. Stream The Handmaid’s Tale on Apple TV.
If you want to keep exploring the themes and big questions the show tackles, The Assessment is your jam. Set in a future where increased lifespans and resource scarcity have led made reproduction a highly-regulated act requiring advanced technology, the film focuses on a couple, Mia and Aaryan (Elizabeth Olsen and Himesh Patel), applying to have a child. The government assessor, Virginia (Alicia Vikander), arrives to live with them for seven days to evaluate their application. The testing quickly takes a dark turn, and the film explores the power dynamic and raw emotions linking all three of these fascinating individuals. Stream The Assessment on Hulu or rent it on Prime Video.
If you want to explore the details of how a society can slide into madness, Anniversary is a great choice. At a party celebrating her 25th anniversary with her husband, liberal professor Ellen (Diane Lane) meets her son’s new fiancée, Liz (Phoebe Dynevor), a former student. Liz has developed a movement called Change that promotes totalitarian governance, and over the next five years, her ideas gradually become violently mainstream, destroying Ellen and her family along the way. Stream Anniversary on Hulu or rent it on Prime Video.
Lars von Trier’s 2003 film adheres to his principles of Dogme 95—filmmaking that eschews technology and special effects in favor of storytelling fundamentals. The sets are minimal (buildings and rooms are often represented by lines on the floor), but the story is compelling. A woman named Grace (Nicole Kidman) flees gangsters and takes refuge in the town of Dogville. Although welcomed at first, as the townfolk realize the power they have over the desperate woman, her situation grows increasingly grim. It's a story that explores how eager seemingly everyday people are to wield power over one another. Stream Dogville on Mubi.
The loss of physical autonomy, the impact of wealth and social status, and the might of government regulation of biology are major themes in The Handmaid’s Tale, making this 1997 sci-fi movie a good choice. In the future, genetic engineering allows the creation of “valids,” people with superior genetics. Children conceived naturally (who thus have a higher chance of mutation and subsequent health problems) are relegated to the lower tiers of society. The film explores the extremes people pursue to escape the limitations—both natural and imposed—of their physical bodies. Rent Gattaca on Prime Video.
If there’s one lesson to take away from The Handmaid’s Tale, it’s that compliance and going along to get along lead us to the abyss. If you want to take a more active role in your dystopian entertainment, check out these games.
If you want take part in actively resisting a totalitarian state, but not in real life, play République. You assist a rebellious girl named Hope as she tries to escape a facility where the government conducts horrifying experiments on teenagers. You can use the surveillance cameras in the facility to track the movements of Hope and the guards trying to capture her, and hack into various systems, unlock doors, and cause distractions to help her win her freedom.
Platforms: Android, iOS, Nintendo Switch, Platystation, Steam
The Handmaid's Tale's themes of autonomy and personal freedom are echoed in this adventure game focused on three android characters. In a future world, androids can become “deviant” if they learn to bypass their programming and attain sentience. You can play as three distinct androids, each with their own backstory, agenda, and possible outcomes, as you deal with an robot uprising and choose whether or not to risk becoming deviant yourself.
Platforms: PlayStation, Steam
With deliberately old-school graphics, Signalis lets you play as Elster, a biosynthetic clone known as a Replika. You awake from suspended animation in a wrecked ship near a mine where most of the population has been killed by a mysterious plague. As you play, you begin to reconstruct what’s really happened, and discover what Elster is really searching for. The mood and tone (and themes of female relationships) are a good match for the show, and the eerie gameplay is as unsettling as it is entertaining.
Platforms: PlayStation, Xbox, Nintendo Switch, Steam
If you’re left wondering how otherwise decent people can go along with an oppressively violent totalitarian state like Gilead, this low-fi game is a must. You play as a government official processing visa applications at the border between your dystopian country and its mortal enemy. You must follow an increasingly confusing set of guidelines about who to admit and who to reject, while also managing your personal budget (augmented by bribes, if you dare) and trying to retain a scrap of humanity. You can choose to assist a growing rebel faction, or simply try to do an increasingly impossible job. It’s a surprisingly intense gaming experience.
Platforms: Android, iOS, Steam
Do you wish The Handmaid’s Tale was just a little more speculative—and a little more fun? Then play Dustborn, set in an alternate timeline where America has devolved into a totalitarian state that oppresses “Anomals,” people who have developed the ability to use Protolanguage, giving them the power to change reality and control people using words. You play as Pax, an Anomal who undertakes a mission to steal data to help the resistance, assembling a crew of friends to help and traveling under cover as a folk band. The game can be a bit heavy-handed with its messaging, but it definitely has the same vibes as the show.
Platforms: PlayStation, Xbox, Steam
Whether you want to catch every detail and discuss every behind-the-scenes decision or find narrative fiction exploring the same territory, here are some podcasts any fan of The Handmaid’s Tale should check out.
If you’re looking for a friendly deep-dive into The Handmaid’s Tale, this podcast is perfect. Kate Ettingoff and Kimberley Williams are superfans who have no compunction about thinking way too hard about each episode. If you can’t find any friends who want to stay up all night discussing the show with you, head on over to this podcast.
Hosts Fiona Williams, Haidee Ireland, Sana Qadar, and Natalie Hambly clearly love the show—but they also aren’t afraid to criticize it. The recaps offered by Eyes on Gilead are detailed and thoughtful, but the hosts also have a lot of fun discussing the plot lines and themes, which is essential when said plots and themes are so dark and heavy.
Created in a partnership with the Pankhurst Trust and Manchester Women’s Aid (which are dedicated to challenging gender inequality and assisting victims of domestic violence), Eliza: A Robot Story focuses on a robot who falls in love with her owner, who then works to give her true sentience—but nothing is as it seems. The story explores the ways those who have power over us can be abusive and coercive in subtle ways, without resorting to violence, echoing some of the gaslighting the Handmaids experience in the show.
For an exploration of the way society distorts and becomes increasingly oppressive when stressed, this wild sci-fi story fits the bill. In The Gospel of Haven, a community lives within their living god—literally inhabiting the divine body. Their ritualistic existence is devoted to keeping that body healthy, but when it begins to fail, whether from old age or disease, and their world starts to break down, those in power resort to greater and greater acts of desperate violence and oppression to maintain their grip. It mirrors the way Gilead forms in part as a reaction to an infertility crisis threatening humanity’s future, but addresses the process much more viscerally and directly.
For members of the always-online generations, reality is hanging by a very thin thread. Core youth values like authenticity and "keeping it real" are confusing concepts to people raised in an environment where almost nothing can be counted on and anything can be faked. Every viral video could be a stealth advertising campaign. Every breakout band, an industry plant. Whether it's meat mountains at Arby's, or vérité video of cheater's antics, this week we're looking into all-encompassing scams. But at least you can bank on Scientology speed-runs as legit, and take comfort in the realness of a ball of red hot metal.
Arby's is a fast food chain known for its roast beef sandwiches. Rod Wave is a 27-year-old rapper known for pioneering "soul trap" music. Rod Wave's Arby's Takeover is a fictional event that combines these two things.
Many feel Arby's food and Rod Wave's music are similar: They're both slop, but slop in a specific, maximalist way, so the joke is to create AI-generated flyers advertising the takeover that are as huge and gross as possible. Eventually, the "more, More, MORE" prompts result in AI-generating surrealist visions like the ones below. Is Rod Wave partnering with Arby's to sell some roast beef or is this grassroots internet comedy? Who can really say?
The Rod Wave/Arby's thing resulted in renewed interest in "Arby's Meat Mountain." Online lore says there is a secret menu item at Arby's called the "meat mountain." Ordering this will result in a stack of every meat product available at the restaurant piled up between two slices of bread, a sandwich that pushes the epistemological limits of what a sandwich is.
The meat mountain is real, probably. Back in 2014, in the height of the company's "we have the meats" advertising blitz, posters of a gigantic sandwich were hung in Arby's locations to illustrate the variety of meats one could order. It wasn't intended as an actual menu item, but guests pointed to the poster and said, "one of those, please" and Arby's said, "... ok, I guess." (or so the company claims; maybe they were manufacturing a "hidden menu" item because that was a thing then.) Fast-forward to 2026; a new generation has started ordering the meat mountain and is actually getting them. Is this the return of a manufactured meme that sells gross sandwiches? Perhaps. Or not.
While most TikTok creators chase algorithmic attention by walking obvious paths like dancing well or being attractive, there are other, hidden avenues into the graces of the great machine that decides which videos to share, including videos of a woman chopping vegetables while catching her husband cheating.
There are hundreds of videos on the platform that follow this formula, like the one below (and this one and this one).
As you can tell by the terrible acting, these videos are fake, but why are they so similar? They all take place in a kitchen. The woman wears a t-shirt, usually white. She is cutting food. The knife is inadequate. It's that last detail that gets me. What even is this yellow plastic knife-like thing? This knife is too small. And this one is too big. Sometimes the knife is focused on or mentioned, but usually it's just there, being wrong for the job.
I can channel my inner film student here and infer that the knife, as a potential instrument of violence, is there to add intensity to a scene of domestic disharmony. As a student of the internet, I can see that the wrong knife is rage-bait, designed to get someone to comment "you're gonna cut your fingers off, you idiot," and my inner media studies major sees that these kinds of videos are essentially soap operas for people with 40-second attention spans, but the real question is: Who are these people and why do they all make the same video? This account, for instance, has posted fake cheating videos every day, for nearly a year. Why?
I was initially haunted by the idea that behind every closed door, a young couple is trying to please a faceless, pitiless algorithm by enacting just the right scene of marital discord so people online would pay attention to them, but the truth is more mundane and more depressing. These are self-produced commercials, part of an affiliate marketing scheme for something called CheatCatcher that supposedly tracks your spouse's infidelities with AI. It's part of the OIIC, the Online Infidelity Industrial Complex, that includes products like Cheaty, Usersearch, Instant Checkmate, and others. But cheating checkers are only a small part of the larger affiliate program universe that includes every kind of product or service you can think of from $50,000 tennis bracelets to $2 plastic dopamine hits from Temu, being fed by every single media source you know and trust, every influencer online, and probably your own family. It's all a hall of mirrors, baby.
You know what isn't part of an affiliate program? Running into Scientology buildings and acting the fool. That's the concept behind the "Scientology speedrun." It's probably a crime, and it's definitely chaos, but it's organic chaos and crime at least.
Messing with Scientologists has been an online tradition since the ancient days of Anonymous, but TikTokers started taking it to new levels recently, first by posting videos of street encounters with members of the religion, and then by posting videos of themselves running into Scientology buildings to see how far they can get inside the mysterious inner world of the group. The videos look like this:
The trend seems to have caught on enough that on Friday, a group of over 50 people stormed Scientology in Hollywood. This is, as stated previously, is probably illegal, and TikTok tends to pull down videos of crimes committed as viral trends, so accounts are being deleted and videos are disappearing, although some still seem to be up for some reason. Luckily, X doesn't have these reservations. Obviously people shouldn't do this, but there's a kind of youthful energy and hilarity to these videos that's hard to deny.
Some kinds of viral videos are based on simple ideas that require no explanation. So it is with Power Hot Ball, a TikTok account that regularly gets millions of views for videos of a metal ball heated to 1,000c melting through things. Here is the Power Hot Ball taking on corn, various materials, and an iPhone. Weirdly, the nearly molten ball of metal is thwarted by a simple coconut, so it's not all-powerful. If you are like me, and plan to spend the rest of the week watching these videos, here's a link to many, many of them.
We may earn a commission from links on this page.
The Bear is a phenomenon not only because exploring what goes on in the kitchen is fascinating, but because it's also one of the best shows on TV when it comes to portraying family drama, generational trauma, and the intense pressure of being the best at something.
Carmy Berzatto (Jeremy Allen White) is a tortured artist who might be one of the top chefs in the world, but his self-doubt is the engine that keeps the show racing along into uncertainty. Add in the precision and pressure of a high-end restaurant and brigade-style kitchen, and you have the perfect recipe for drama and humor. Plus, the opportunity to watch mouth-watering cuisine being created by passionate people.
If you're searching for similarly satisfying fare, we’ve already told you the TV series you should be watching, but there are a lot of books, movies, games, and podcasts that share the spirit and themes of The Bear too.
The Bear is a dense narrative with rich, detailed characterizations. In other words, it’s like a novel in TV series form. There are a lot of terrific books that will give you the same vibe.
If you love an insider glimpse of how high-end restaurants are run and have a true love for food, head to the ultimate classic of the genre. Bourdain’s 2000 memoir was a revelation, detailing how fine-dining kitchens actually operated, warts and all. It turned Bourdain into a star and is an obvious precursor to (and inspiration for) The Bear.
This book directly inspired many plot points on The Bear, and specifically informed the evolution of Richie’s character from an angry lout who disdained fine dining into a man with a purpose. The former co-owner of Eleven Madison Park, one of the best restaurants in the world, Will Guidara writes about making every diner’s experience personal, memorable, and curated. If you want to know what drives Carmy and the gang to extremes, this book will explain it all.
If you love The Bear because of the messy interpersonal dramas going on in the kitchen, check out Hot Mess, which offers up the perspective of the people afflicted by an unreliable, mentally unhealthy culinary genius. Allie Simon is swept away by the handsome, charming, and undeniably gifted chef Benji Zane—so much so that she invests her life savings in his new restaurant. When he relapses into addiction and vanishes a few weeks before opening night, Allie must undergo a crash course in the restaurant biz before she loses everything.
Love gulping down the inside dirt about the restaurant business in The Bear? Sweetbitter is the perfect chaser. It’s like Kitchen Confidential turned into a soapy story about a young woman who snags a job at an uber-cool restaurant in downtown New York City. She dives into the pressure, the drama, the drugs, and the culture, and the book offers the combination of revelation and personal struggle that fans of the show will love. (The TV adaptation is fun too.)
Is a Red Lobster in a New England mall the same as a fine dining restaurant chasing a Michelin Star? No, but the drama is just as high. This short novel about a manager trying to get through his final shift at the fast casual spot on the night of a heavy blizzard is filled with all the conflicts, chaos, and kitchen mishaps you could possibly imagine. The setting might be basic (though those Cheddar Bay biscuits are pretty amazing), but the story is just as entertainingly fraught.
If your biggest complaint about The Bear is that the episodes are too short, good news: There’s no shortage of movies that capture the frenetic world of high-end cooking and the misfits who work in it.
This 1950s story of brothers and recent Italian immigrants to the U.S. trying to save their struggling restaurant on the Jersey Shore, Big Night is the spiritual precursor to The Bear. Beset by customers who prefer Americanized versions of their cooking and a big pile of debt, the brothers conceive a “big night” to pack the restaurant and make enough money to save their dream. The (often hilarious) pressure builds from there. Stream Big Night on Hoopla or rent it on Prime Video.
Are your favorite episodes of The Bear the ones where things go horribly wrong in the kitchen and the pacing goes to lightspeed? Boiling Point is the perfect movie for you. Presented as a single, 90-minute take, it follows head chef Andy Jones (Stephen Graham) during a disastrous shift at his restaurant. It kicks off with a bad health inspection and gets worse from there. Bonus: If you like the movie, the BBC produced a single season of a sequel series with the same cast. Stream Boiling Point on Kanopy or rent it on Prime Video.
Less fraught and with a slower, cozier pace, Chef nevertheless hits all The Bear's sweet spots. When chef Carl Casper quits his job at a successful restaurant after a social media meltdown and a clash with the owner, he opens a food truck to get back to his foodie roots. If you love the idea that a passion for cooking can save (or destroy) your soul, check it out. Stream Chef on Netflix or rent it on Prime Video.
If your favorite aspect of The Bear is Carmy’s tortured genius, Burnt is a great way to spend a few hours. It’s the story of Adam Jones (Bradley Cooper), a superstar chef in Paris with two Michelin stars who destroyed his career through addiction and by generally being a terrible person. After sobering up, he heads to London to make a comeback and get a third star—but he still has a lot of work to do on himself. It’s breezier than The Bear, but still filled with self-sabotaging drama. Stream Burnt on The Roku Channel/Howdy or rent it on Prime Video.
If you like stories about haunted, talented people pushing themselves to their limits, check out this Thai gem. Aoy (Chutimon Chuengcharoensukying) is the cook at her family’s struggling street food restaurant. When she’s noticed by a recruiter for the impossibly high-end restaurant Hunger, she’s invited to develop her skills there—and she finds herself in a high-pressure nightmare that will remind The Bear fans of Carmy’s time under Chef David. Stream Hunger on Netflix.
Do you find yourself dreaming of how you'd handle the physical challenge of The Bear’s setting—the precision of the plating, the flipping, stirring, and sauteing of ingredients, the balance of the servers? You'll enjoy replicating that feeling with some of these games with Bear-ish tendencies.
Want to feel the adrenaline rush that comes with running a restaurant, but don’t feel like scrubbing dishes amd prepping veggies all night? PlateUp! is a restaurant management simulator that actually gets the heart pumping. You can set up your joint any way you like, but if you disappoint a single customer (because they waited too long for their food, for example), your restaurant fails. You can earn upgrades, but with them come extra challenges, and as more people show up for dinner, the gameplay becomes extremely sweaty.
Platforms: PlayStation, Xbox, Nintendo Switch, Steam
If you want even more intense restaurant play, grab some friends and check out Overcooked and Overcooked 2. In a series of increasingly strange settings, you and your friends have to Iron Chef your way through demanding food orders, cooking everything exactly as specified while avoiding obstacles and traps. The graphics are delightfully cartoonish, but the gameplay is frenetic, and there’s no better way to experience the thrill of working a kitchen in perfect unison without actually starting your own restaurant.
Platforms: PlayStation, Xbox, Nintendo Switch, Steam
Want to experience what it’s like to be a master chef like Carmy, able to create intricate meals on demand? Cooking Simulator is a physics-based game that replicates cooking in a realistic way, challenging you to make nearly 100 different recipes. You can play in Sandbox Mode whipping up impromptu meals, or go for Career Mode and try to become a world-famous chef, balancing the cost of ingredients against your craft. Bonus: Pick a fight with your partner before playing for that true The Bear experience.
Platforms: PlayStation, Xbox, Nintendo Switch, Steam
Was the first season of The Bear your favorite because of Carmy’s uphill battle to save The Original Beef of Chicagoland while battling the weirdos who worked there? Then check out Recipe for Disaster, a gamified version of Kitchen Nightmares. You’re tasked with saving a series of failing restaurants. You get to choose who to hire, the equipment, and the decor—but you also have to keep your workers from having nervous breakdowns, all while cooking recipes to order and keeping your customers happy.
Platforms: Steam
Want to experience Carmy’s journey from a messed-up kid who likes to cook, to a messed-up, world-famous chef who hates his life? Check out Chef: A Restaurant Tycoon Game. You start as the owner and chef at a small, unremarkable restaurant; the goal is to become a world-famous chef with multiple award-winning hotspots. Choose the cuisine and menus, develop your skills, and build your hotspots with a high level of customization—and then work yourself to death to make them successful.
Platforms: Steam
The world of The Bear is impressively detailed and intricate—but so much is left to interpretation, inspiring endless discussion. Podcasts are a great way to extend that experience, so here are some of the best to pop into your ears.
Hosts Lucy and Peter devote each episode of Let It Rip to a single episode of The Bear, offering casual-but-serious analysis and digging into the details, the background information, and the culinary Easter Eggs in each one. It’s a fun, informative way to dig a little deeper and enjoy someone else’s perspective on the show.
If you want a more refined and "professional" dive into The Bear, check out The Prestige TV Podcast’s episodes focused on the show. They’re tight, well-produced overviews that recap episodes and interview the people involved in creating an amazing piece of entertainment.
If watching The Bear inspired an interest in high-level cookery, The Menu will fascinate you. It digs into every aspect of the restaurant business, from the stories behind classic dishes, to interviews with famous chefs, to the development (and dysfunction) of the professional kitchens that serve up the best food in the world.
If your fave aspect of The Bear are the moments when Carmy and Sydney discuss the food and the gastronomic magic that goes into it, check out Dave Chang’s awesome podcast. He wanders into a lot of different subjects, but always comes back to cooking, and his own firsthand experience as one of the most celebrated chefs in the country.
The Bear opened a lot of people’s eyes to what really goes into running a successful (or even an unsuccessful) restaurant. It’s an endlessly fascinating subject that this podcast delves into in detail, talking to chefs, owners, and other staffers about what goes into operating a high-end eatery—and what it really costs those who do it. So You Want to Run a Restaurant? will give you a whole new appreciation for the show, and possibly inspire a rewatch with a fresh perspective.
We may earn a commission from links on this page.
Fans of George R.R. Martin’s books (and their television adaptations) were enchanted by the first season of HBO's new spinoff A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms because it offered a fresh perspective on the fictional universe of Westeros. Set roughly between the events depicted in House of the Dragon and A Game of Thrones, the show follows the misadventures of Ser Duncan the Tall (Dunk) and the future King Aegon V (Egg) as the former attempts to establish himself as a hedge knight in the violent, dragon-less, but relatively stable world of the Seven Kingdoms. It's a show about refreshingly earnest and noble main character who doesn't get his head chopped off at the end of the first season, so a great change of pace.
If you’re missing that—and the gritty, spectacularly violent world the show still depicts—you can wait for season two, or you can find similar entertainments. We’ve already given you a list of TV shows with the same vibes, but here are the best movies, books, games, and podcasts to check out while you wait for more Dunk and Egg adventures.
A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms was adapted from a book, so of course that’s a great place to start. But if you’ve already read the source material, here are a few more books to check out.
Darker and more horror-coded than Knight, Between Two Fires offers up a similar dynamic between a knight and a more innocent child. In the 14th century, as the Black Death ravages Europe, Thomas is a disgraced knight who encounters a young girl in a village devastated by the plague. She tells him that a second war on heaven is coming, led by Lucifer himself, and that he must guide her to Avignon so she can save the world—and possibly himself.
This classic, published in 1819, remains a must-read for anyone into knightly chivalry, tournaments, and general adventure. In late 12th century England, Sir Wilfred of Ivanhoe is one of the last Anglo-Saxon nobleman in a country dominated by Norman invaders. Disinherited by his father, he secretly competes in a tourney presided over by Prince John while King Richard II is imprisoned after the recent crusade, and is swept up in the political machinations of the prince, who fears the return of his brother, the king.
Sapowski’s Witcher universe has more overt magic and monsters than Martin’s more grounded Westeros, but Geralt of Rivia’s endless journeying and bloody adventures will scratch a similar itch. Geralt is as rootless as Dunk, and travels around dealing with local problems (and the locals themselves, who are often not the friendliest bunch). If you enjoyed the Dunk of it all in A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms, this is the beginning of a book series you’ll love.
George R.R. Martin explicitly listed The Dragonbone Chair (and Williams’ entire Memory, Sorrow, and Thorn series) as a key inspiration for A Song of Ice and Fire, so this is an obvious choice. While the writers have very different styles and approaches, you’ll find the story of scullery boy Simon’s involvement with an epic struggle between a fracturing human kingdom and the inscrutable, inhuman Storm King just as charming and exciting as Dunk and Egg’s adventures—albeit a little less low-key.
This is a bit of a swerve, but will reward fans of the show: A queer retelling of the Arthurian legends, Spear follows a girl named Peretur, who masquerades as a man and becomes one of King Arturus’ knights, taking up the quest for the Holy Grail. Just as Dunk is faking knight until he makes it as a knight, Peretur does what she must in order to find her destiny in a world marked by violence, betrayal, and magic. The episodic nature of her adventures fits in nicely with Knight’s focus on a traveling hedge knight who must be ready for whatever comes his way.
Nothing beats the visual spectacle of knights in shining (or blood-stained and rusty) armor jousting with lances or hammering at each other with swords. If that’s what you miss about A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms, these movies will do the thing.
Tonally, this is the way. Heath Ledger plays William Thatcher, a peasant squire who masquerades as a knight in order to compete in tournaments, supported by his fellow squires and a brilliant young writer/forger named Geoffrey Chaucer. It’s got a banging soundtrack and the same positive energy that Dunk brings to A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms, plus plenty of jousts and even a surprise royal ally. Rent A Knight’s Tale on Prime Video.
If you’re looking for lots of knightly adventure (and some armor that is seriously shinier than anything Dunk wears on the show), this gloriously over-the-top version of the legend of King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table has it to spare. There are castle sieges and bloody battlefields, plenty of dark, inscrutable magics, and, of course, an epic quest—all rendered in a feverish visual style that never gets old. Rent Excalibur on Prime Video.
Offering up a realistic depiction of the Middle Ages and knightly culture, The Last Duel not only has, yes, at least one lance-and-shield shattering duel to watch, it also explores the complex personal and political relationships between knights and lords in ways Knight fans will recognize. It’s inspired by real events, telling the story of the last legally sanctioned duel in France in the 14th century. It isn’t as funny or hopeful as Knight, but it’s just as satisfying. Stream The Last Duel on Hulu or rent it on Prime Video.
Darker and grimmer than A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms, this 2010 horror film stars Sean Bean as a knight named Ulric, who travels to a remote village that has been unaffected by the plague in order to arrest a necromancer suspected of protecting it. He’s guided by a novice monk named Osmund (Eddie Redmayne), giving the story some of the same dynamic as between Dunk and Egg—though the ending is much, much darker. Stream Black Death on Hulu or rent it on Prime Video.
With a gritty, realistic look, this fantasy film will supply the one thing missing from A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms: Dragons. In the sixth century, the small kingdom of Urland is sacrificing virgin girls to appease Vermithrax Pejorative, a huge, deadly dragon. The king sends a knight named Valerian (actually a virgin girl, in disguise to avoid being selected for sacrifice) to fetch Ulrich, the last sorcerer, but the old man dies and his apprentice, Galen (Peter MacNicol), goes instead. It’s full of charm and sword fights, and is a perfect chaser for the the show. Stream Dragonslayer on Kanopy or rent it from Prime Video.
If you find your hands twitching every time you watch the Trial of Seven in A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms, you might want to play some of these games that offer some of the same pleasures.
Just like the book series that inspired it, this game is perfect for Knight fans. Geralt of Rivia is no knight sworn to protect the innocent, but he is a badass with a sword, and his quest to rescue his adopted daughter echoes Dunk’s determination to stand tall in a world that doesn’t make it easy. Geralt’s many battles as he travels this open-world game are what you imagine Dunk and Egg are getting up to after the end of season one: a series of adventures. Plus, it’s a blast to play.
Platforms: PlayStation, Xbox, Nintendo Switch, Steam
The plot of this RPG game so strongly parallels A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms, it’s kind of eerie: Henry of Skalitz comes from humble beginnings and has a lot of emotional baggage, and he starts off with almost nothing, begging for armor and other supplies. From there, you guide Henry as he tries to regain his status as a knight and prove his worth, and the game’s fighting mechanics and detailed universe are almost a perfect fit for fans of the show—if you squint, you can imagine you’re playing as Dunk.
Platforms: PlayStation, Xbox, Steam
If you’re not looking for a similar story but just want to imagine yourself as a knight bashing their way through a tournament, Half Sword is for you. Its focus is totally on a realistic depiction of the physics and mechanics of medieval fighting. It takes a minute to get used to the controls, because you’re actually manipulating a sword or lance instead of just mashing a pattern of buttons—but once you lean into it, it’s as close as you’re likely to get to actually fighting like Dunk and his fellow knights. There’s no story here, just a series of challenging bouts that offer an innovative and interesting variation on combat games.
Platforms: Steam
You can play this sandbox fantasy game as a wandering mercenary knight, taking on missions and competing in tournaments, or you can build up an army of your own and lead them into battle. On its own, it’s a fun game that has a similar-feeling universe to A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms. If you need it to feel more like that, you can install a total conversion called Realm of Thrones that literally turns the map into Westeros.
Platforms: PlayStation, Xbox, Steam
You play as a Japanese samurai instead of a medieval knight, but this game has many parallels to A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms. For one, the character you control, Jin Sakai, must make a series of moral choices regarding his code of honor that will remind you of Dunk’s struggles to stay true to his knightly ideals. For another, you get to fight an army of enemies with a sword while on horseback, although you can also choose a stealthier approach to the game’s main story and many side-quests. But where’s the fun in that?
Platforms: PlayStation, Steam
If kicking back with your headphones or earbuds is your ideal way to dig in deeper to A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms’ vibe, these podcasts will fit the bill.
Why not go to the source for all the inside baseball you could want? Hosts Jason Concepcion and Greta Johnsen know their stuff (they’ve been recapping and discussing all the A Song of Ice and Fire shows for a while now), and they bring a nice balance of analysis and fan appreciation to discussions of the episodes. They also do a great job of linking the show to the larger universe and deeper lore.
Speaking of lore, if you’re looking for a really deep dive into the history of Westeros and how Knight fits in, this is the podcast for you. They discuss deviations from the books (good and bad) and offer background on characters and fleeting details shown in the show that will probably have impact on later stories.
If you’re looking for a community-engaged podcast that involves its listeners a bit more actively, this podcast from Bald Move is a great choice. It’s filled with smart, enthusiastic recapping and analysis, and actively seeks feedback and suggestions from fellow obsessives to keep the conversation fresh.
If you want a narrative podcast experience with a similar feel, Sidequesting is what you’re looking for. It follows the adventures of Rion, a wandering adventurer who consistently avoids the major problems afflicting the places he visits—you know, dark lords, scary dragons, legions of undead—and handles all the side quests he can find instead. It’s fun, funny, and will provide that sweet, bighearted vibe that Dunk gives off.
The hook of Tale of the Manticore is simple: It’s the story of a group of adventurers that is told utilizing the game mechanics of classic Dungeons & Dragons, dice rolls and all. If you’ve ever played D&D you know that this means: Suffering. A lot of suffering, because those dice rolls rarely go consistently in a character’s favor. It’s fun chaos, though, and right in line with the show’s dedication to showing the more chaotic side of Westeros life.
We may earn a commission from links on this page.
In many ways, Yellowstone is the Platonic ideal of a Taylor Sheridan joint, combining a neo-western vibe with an incredibly detailed sense of place, a nonpolitical exploration of the tension between individual rights and the collective forces of society, and some really banger lines delivered by Kevin Costner as badass patriarch John Dutton. It’s no wonder the show was a huge hit that keeps spawning prequels and spinoffs.
If you can’t get enough Yellowstone, we’ve already offered up suggestions for other TV series you could be streaming. If you need more Big Sky-esque drama, the good news is there are plenty of books, movies, games, and podcasts that can emulate the show’s themes, setting, and storytelling.
A good book is always the best way to immerse yourself in a vibe, and Yellowstone takes a novelistic approach to its story. Here are some terrific books that any fan of the show will love.
There is a direct line from this Pulitzer Prize-winning novel to Yellowstone that Taylor Sheridan has openly discussed, which makes it the obvious literary choice. The story—about two retired Texas Rangers who embark on a dangerous, violent cattle drive to (where else) Montana—has everything fans of the show want: Complex, morally-gray characters, a story infused with and informed by its setting, and a sense of what it means to be a real cowboy in a world that is increasingly hostile toward that life.
You want sprawling American experience drama that spans generations and involves building a family legacy? Dive into Barskins, the story of the Sel Family from René Sel’s arrival in 17th-century America (in the territory then known as New France) to the modern age. The ruthless, often violent determination to build something and protect it from forces that seek to acquire the fruits of your labor is a major theme here, slotting right into that Yellowstone vibe.
Following three generations of the McCullogh family as it builds an oil and ranching empire in Texas, The Son has all the drama, violence, and grit you find in Sheridan’s show—and then some. As they grow in power and wealth, the McCulloghs must decide what’s truly important and what can be sacrificed for the greater good of the family. If you’re pining for the Dutton family’s soapy travails, this will be a satisfying read.
It’s an unexpected choice, but LaValle’s off-center western-horror hybrid is a great complement to Yellowstone. Adelaide arrives in Montana with something locked in a trunk and a determination to make a go of it in a remote area of Montana in 1915. She’s not afraid of hard work, which is an asset, because surviving and building a working farm in that beautifully harsh land isn’t easy. If you’re looking for a story about a willful person with their eye on building a legacy, this novel has the vibe you’re seeking.
You want western sprawl? Michener’s 1985 novel is inspired by the entire history of Texas. With a focus on generations of a few families, the story combines fictional characters with real historic personages to dramatize that story. If you’re looking for a story that parallels family history with the land they live and work on, you can’t get any more epic than this.
One of Yellowstone’s greatest pleasures are its visuals—that Montana setting and Yellowstone itself. To get a little more of that, here are some of the best movies for fans of the show.
Yellowstone is Yellowstone because of one man: Taylor Sheridan. He wrote the script for this 2016 heist movie set in West Texas, and the themes are spot on. Brothers Toby (Chris Pine) and Tanner (Ben Foster) Howard are faced with losing their family’s ranch due to a reverse mortgage their mother took out, and set up a series of bank heists at the very bank that’s trying to foreclose on the ranch to get the money they need. Family, ranches, and fighting to keep what’s yours—what could be more Yellowstone? Rent Hell or High Water on Prime Video.
Directed by John Dutton (Kevin Costner) himself, Open Range is set in Montana in 1882, where an “open range” cattleman named Boss Spearman (Robert Duvall) attempts to drive his herd through land controlled by ruthless cattle baron Denton Baxter (Michael Gambon), sparking a range war that soon gets violent. If you love Yellowstone’s prequels as much as the show itself, this is for you. Stream Open Range on AMC or rent it on Prime Video.
James Dean’s final role before his tragic death is in a huge story set in early 1920s Texas. When wealthy rancher and oilman Jordan Benedict Jr. (Rock Hudson) brings his new wife, Leslie (Elizabeth Taylor), home from the East Coast, her culture shock at the patriarchal, hierarchal, and kinda racist world sets a series of dramatic events in motion that span the next few decades. It’s an epic in the same vein as the show, all about legacy, land, and soapy doings. Rent Giant on Prime Video.
Set in Montana in 1925, the film follows two brothers: Gentle, soft-spoken George (Jesse Plemons) and aggressive, brutish Phil (Benedict Cumberbatch). When the wealthy ranchers meet the widowed Rose (Kirsten Dunst), George marries her, much to Phil’s disdain. Phil is relentlessly mean to everyone, including Rose’s teenage son, Peter. Filled with family drama, breathtaking Montana vistas, and plenty of ranch life, this is a perfect pairing with Sheridan’s show. Stream The Power of the Dog on Netflix.
A sweeter, gentler Big Sky drama, Montana Sky still offers plenty of drama. Half-siblings Cal (Owen Teague) and Erin (Haley Lu Richardson) aren’t close. When their father falls into a coma, they both return to the ranch they grew up in. Slowly, the tragic family history comes into view as Erin and Cal deal with their father’s abusive legacy and impending death. It’s a slower burn and in a lower key than Yellowstone, but scratches the same itch. Stream Montana Story on Netflix.
If you want to have a more active role in your Yellowstone-adjacent entertainment, jumping into a video game where you can impact the story directly is the way. Here are some video games with similar themes.
The obvious choice: This sandbox western begins its story in 1899 and explores an open world western setting from the perspective of outlaw Arthur Morgan, who is very Rip-like in his role as a man loyal to a fault and used to implementing violence to achieve his goals. With gorgeous graphics (and some settings based on Yellowstone National Park) and moral complexity, this game’s vibes are right on point with the show.
Platforms: PlayStation, Xbox One, Steam
If you love Yellowstone’s focus on building something and then defending that legacy against all comers, you’ll find much to love in this survival/builder game set in the Wild West. In the game, you wake up left for dead after a violent attack, and you have to rebuild your life from literally nothing in the unforgiving, lawless world you find yourself in. You explore, gather and grind out resources, and convince people to join with you to form a settlement that will (hopefully) grow into a rich and successful power base. John Dutton would approve.
Platforms: Steam
The upcoming Western Rye is another open world, survival game where you scrounge for resources and try to build something out of nothing in the Wild West. One aspect that will especially appeal to fans of Yellowstone is the ability to build a custom ranch house—that’s right, you can build your own log mansion to fulfill your dreams of actually being John Dutton.
Platforms: Steam
Although this game is set in the middle ages and not the American West in the 19th, 20th, or 21st centuries, the themes here are exactly what fans of the show are looking for. The game is all about building a settlement in medieval times, and not only do you have to lay down roads, build structures, and attract peasants, you also have to raise a militia to defend from or attack your enemies as necessary—and some of those valuable people aren’t coming back. If you want to know what it’s like to actually build something and then have to devote your life to defending it from those who would take it from you, this game is it.
Platforms: Steam
When it comes to building something on land you consider part of your very soul, why stop at a mere ranch or town? Go global. IN Victoria 3, you control an entire country between the years 1836 and 1936—you manage the economy, diplomatic corps, army, and everything else. There’s no clear winning or losing here, but you’ll know your success or failure based on how powerful your country is when you’re done—assuming you have the Dutton-style grit to do what’s necessary along the way.
Platforms: Steam
If you want an audio exploration of Yellowstone’s universe or a narrative that echoes the show’s themes and storylines, here are some podcasts to check out.
Hosted by Jefferson White (who portrayed Jimmy Hurdstrom on the show), The Official Yellowstone Podcast is the obvious stop for anyone who craves behind-the-scenes tea about the show or a deeper dive into the research, writing, and production that make Yellowstone so distinctive. With access to the people who did the work and a long list of surprise guests, it’s an excellent resource for folks who want to know everything there is about Yellowstone.
For a more fan-based perspective, the Dutton Rules podcast is the best choice. Hosts Billy Dukes and Adison Haager take a relaxed, conversational approach to dissecting the show that mimics the convos you probably have with friends and family who are also fans, all while offering smart analysis and lots of unexpected detail and background for each episode and the show in general.
It’s not set in Montana and has nothing to do with ranches, but Blood Ties has similar themes of family, legacy, and fighting against forces that want to destroy what you’ve built. When their father, famed cardiologist Dr. Richland, dies in a plane crash, his son and daughter discover that the family business has dark secrets. Setting things right takes three seasons and a lot of drama, including half-siblings, family secrets, and, naturally, some violence.
Welcome to our trip inside the culture of young people. This week, we've got the usual slang definitions of phrases like "you the birthday," and "catch a fade," and we're also talking about AI. You might be about to lose your job to artificial intelligence, but younger generations are in danger of losing their reality to it. From viral "AI or animals" memes to the rise of AI detectives, the youth are engaged in a high-stakes game of "Spot the Bot" just to feel like they still have a grip on the truth.
A new slang metaphor is blowing up TikTok this week. People are saying "you the birthday," a phrase that means "you're awesome" or "you're great" in the way a birthday is great: fun, exciting, extra, etc. It's usually meant in positive way, but it could be applied negatively to someone who is doing too much or trying to hard, like, "sure, you the birthday."
The phrase seems to have originated in a song called "Birthday Girl" by Huncho. The song doesn't actually include the phrase, "you the birthday," but Huncho sings, "She eat, she the birthday—girl" and the pause was long enough that people started just saying, "you the birthday."
"You the birthday" is inspiring a subgenre of birthday-related spin-off slang too. If you're dressed funny, you the birthday clown. If you have a point, you the birthday hat. If you're ugly, you the halloween. You get the idea.
To young people, "fade" means fight. To "catch a fade" means to have a fight. (If you'd like more definitions of slang words that kids use, check out Lifehacker's Gen Z and Gen A slang glossary.)
Last week, I predicted Hulu's Pizza Movie will be Generation Z's defining druggie-comedy movie. There's more evidence this week in the form of a growing trend online of making videos with random footage and labeling it "Pizza Movie (2026)." The joke is that the scenes presented in Pizza Movie's trailer are so without context and so strange that you can put any bizarre clips together and they might be from Pizza Movie.
Here are a couple of examples:
This Tweet is currently unavailable. It might be loading or has been removed.
"That's AI" is rapidly emerging as a way of saying "I don't believe you" or "I doubt it" to members of Generations Alpha and Z. They obviously heard the phrase a lot in connection with videos and pictures online, so it only makes sense to apply it to anything.
Speaking of "that's AI..." Bespectacled 30-something filmmaker Jeremy Carrasco is an unlikely hero to the teens and tweens of TikTok, but the videos he posts on Instagram, YouTube, and TikTok regularly rack up millions of views. Carrasco's calling is identifying synthetic media; he's an AI detective, and dude is great at separating the real from the phony. He calls out AI-generated influencers:
discusses the difference between real and AI videos of animals on trampolines:
explains the difference between "deep fakes" and "AI videos":
and points out videos that people think are AI, but are actually real:
The popularity of Carrasco's content speaks to young people's desperation to just know what's real—a challenge that no other generation has ever faced. Carrasco presents some great tools for spotting slop, but sadly, it's a Sisyphean task: AI content generation is only getting better, and the "tells" more subtle.
You might not be aware of the debate about AI going on among younger people online, because it's being conducted largely through "Animal or AI" meme videos. Videos dramatizing this choice have tens of millions of views on TikTok. Here's how they work: Over a music bed from Hamilton, these videos present competing clips of AI and animals, leading to an eventual conclusion where one is chosen over the other.
Animal choosers are in the majority by huge numbers, both among the videos' creators and the commenters. The irony is that many of the clips that illustrate that animals are better seem to have actually been generated by AI.
We may earn a commission from links on this page.
There is something for every kind of TV fan in March 2026's most-streamed TV shows, whether you like gritty medical dramas, long-awaited sequels, or vibrant adaptations, your new favorite show is below. Here are ten most popular shows in March, according to Just Watch.
It's no surprise The Madison is the most-streamed series in the nation; Yellowstone creator Tyler Sheridan has a knack for making crowd-pleasing TV. Michelle Pfeiffer and Kurt Russell star in this Yellowstone spinoff, a neo-Western family drama about grief and redemption. After the family patriarch and his brother die in a plane crash, the extended Clyburn clan relocates from New York City to the Madison River valley of southwest Montana, hoping to find grace and healing in nature. Stream The Madison on Paramount+.
The "Paradise" of the show's title is a high-end, experimental community for the rich and connected that is hidden within an underground Colorado bunker. The surface of the planet may be an irradiated hellscape, but in Paradise, everything seems perfect, until an outsider enters. Sterling K. Brown plays a Xavier Collins, a secret service agent investigating the murder of the U.S. president in Paradise. Stream Paradise on Hulu.
HBO's gritty, hyper-realistic medical drama has earned acclaim from critics and audiences for its well-drawn characters and relentless pace. It follows a single 15-hour shift at the Pittsburgh Trauma Medical Center. Starring Noah Wyle as Dr. Michael Robinavitch, The Pitt ditches the "disease of the week" format of many medical shows in favor of a study of the toll the modern medical system places on everyone involved. Season one earned five Emmy awards, and judging from the first few episodes, season two might win more. Stream The Pitt on HBO Max.
Based on the best-selling novels by Patricia Cornwell, Scarpetta stars Nicole Kidman as Dr. Kay Scarpetta, Virginia's chief medical examiner, who uses cutting edge technology to solve cases. Scarpetta is a moody thriller that uses realism instead of sensationalism to examine the science, law, and the psychological weight of seeking justice. Bonus: The supporting cast includes Jamie Lee Curtis and Bobby Cannavale. Stream Scarpetta on Amazon Prime.
In execution, DTF St. Louis is even more offbeat than its premise—a murder mystery linked to a hookup app for married people seeking action on the side. Jason Bateman plays Missouri TV weatherman Clark Forrest, who is accused of murdering Floyd Smernitch (David Harbour), his friend, on-air sign language interpreter, and the husband of Carol (Linda Cardellini), the woman Clark is having an affair with. Oscar-nominee Richard Jenkins and Wednesday's Joy Sunday play the detectives on the case. It all sounds like material for a salacious thriller, but writer/director Steven Conrad (Prime Video's weird, wonderful Patriot) has something more complex in mind: sadder, funnier, and definitely weirder. Stream DTF St. Louis on HBO Max.
January saw the premiere of the third season of Apple TV+'s Shrinking, a comedy/drama created by Jason Segel, Bill Lawrence, and Brett Goldstein, the team behind Ted Lasso and Scrubs. This comedy/drama series follows Jimmy Laird (Segel), a grief-stricken therapist who breaks all professional and ethical boundaries by telling his patients exactly what he thinks, while Harrison Ford, Laird's mentor, does damage control. Shrinking has been nominated for nine Primetime Emmies, including Outstanding Comedy Series and Outstanding Lead Actor in a Comedy Series, but has yet to take a statue home. Unfair! Stream Shrinking on Apple TV+.
One Piece seems to have broken the curse of live-action anime, with both fans and critics praising the show for its evocative world-building and perfect casting. Season 2 of Netflix's series finds the Straw Hat Crew on the high seas navigating the treacherous Grand Line in search of a legendary treasure. Iñaki Godoy stars as the aspiring Pirate King Monkey D. Luffy and Mackenyu plays Roronoa Zoro. Backing them up is a huge ensemble cast that includes heavy hitters like Joe Manganiello as the villainous Sir Crocodile and Katey Sagal as the brilliant Dr. Kureha. Stream One Piece on Netflix.
People never get tired of Sherlock Holmes. Amazon Prime’s high-energy reimagining of the world's most famous detective follows 19-year-old Holmes (Hero Fiennes Tiffin) as he uncovers a global conspiracy while investigating a murder at Oxford University. Directed by the great Guy Ritchie, Young Sherlock ditches the "case of the week" formula in favor of a single story that's big and bold enough for a whole season of TV. Stream Young Sherlock on Prime Video.
This is not your grandfather's kaiju. Apple TV+’s multigenerational sci-fi epic follows two siblings as they uncover their family's connection to Monarch, the shadowy organization that monitors Godzilla and his fellow Titans. Starring the father-son duo of Kurt and Wyatt Russell as army officer Lee Shaw across two different timelines, Monarch: Legacy of Monsters examines human resilience in the face of mass tragedy in a deeper way than you'd ever expect from a show about giant monsters. Stream Monarch: Legacy of Monsters on Apple TV+.
Ryan Murphy's latest production takes place at the intersection of fame and tragedy. It delves into the lives of John Kennedy Jr. and Carolyn Bessette, played by Paul Anthony Kelly and Sarah Pidgeon. Then the most famous couple in the world, Kennedy and Bessette try to hold their relationship together in the face of a ravenous press and the political expectations that come with being a Kennedy. Stream Love Story: John F. Kennedy Jr. & Carolyn Bessette on Hulu.
We may earn a commission from links on this page.
Maybe it's that post-Oscar buzz, but in March, America's most-streamed films are a highbrow bunch. From 16th-century Shakespearean grief to moody Norwegian family dramas, the most-watched movies in the country were actually good. But we are not a boring nation, so there are wicked diversions like Ready or Not and The Housemaid in the mix too. Here are the top 10 movies across all streaming platforms for March 2026, according to Just Watch.
Good job having elevated taste, America. The number one streaming movie in March was Hamnet, a lyrical historical drama that reimagines the family life of William Shakespeare and his wife, Agnes Hathaway. Set in Stratford-upon-Avon in the 16th century, Hamnet explores the couple's grief following the death of their 11-year-old son, Hamnet, and its influence on Shakespeare's Hamlet. The film was nominated for eight Oscars, including Best Picture and Best Director, but it only took home one: Jessie Buckley won Best Actress. Stream Hamnet on Peacock.
Another unexpectedly highbrow flick sits at number two on the streaming charts: Sentimental Value is a moody Norwegian drama about suicide and generational familial trauma. Directed by Joachim Trier, Sentimental Value tells the story of two sisters, Nora (Renate Reinsve) and Agnes (Inga Ibsdotter Lilleaas), who are forced to confront their past when their estranged father, Gustav (Stellan Skarsgård) reappears to offer Nora the lead in a film. Sentimental Value won two Oscars: Best International Film and Best Original Screenplay. Stream Sentimental Value on Hulu.
This Brazillian neo-noir political thriller is set in the late 1970s, at the end of Brazil's military dictatorship. Wagner Moura stars as Armando Solimões, a former professor who has been classified as an enemy of the state and forced into hiding. Although it didn't win any Academy awards, The Secret Agent was nominated for four, including Best Picture, Best Actor (Moura), Best International Film, and Best Casting. It has a nearly perfect 98% Fresh rating on Rotten Tomatoes. Stream The Secret Agent on Hulu.
Unlike the rest of the movies on this list, Ready or Not was not nominated for any Academy awards, but it won a richly deserved Fangoria Chainsaw Award in 2020. It's here because the sequel was in theaters in March. Ready or Not is an unapologetically gleeful black comedy in which murder and mayhem are cranked up to 11. Grace (Samara Weaving) is overjoyed that she's marrying into the super-wealthy Le Domas family, until she learns that about the old family tradition of playing deadly games of hide-and-seek. Guess who's "it." Stream Ready or Not on Hulu.
Paul Thomas Anderson's nuanced, intelligent thriller about resistance and race in a fascistic, anti-immigration United States has become an instant classic. Featuring fantastic performances from heavyweights like Leonardo DiCaprio, Sean Penn, Benicio Del Toro, and Regina Hall, One Battle After Another is that rare movie that's equal parts thoughtful and exciting. It was nominated for 13 Oscars and won six, including Best Picture and Best Director. Stream One Battle After Another on HBO Max.
This one-of-kind flick mashes up so many styles, it's practically its own genre. A historical/horror/ensemble romance/drama/comedy/musical exploring race and historical prejudice in the United States, Sinners tells its story through both song and vampire violence. It is absolutely top-notch in every cinematic way, which is probably why it earned a record 16 Oscar nominations. Stream Sinners on HBO Max and Prime Video.
Netflix's War Machine is a fast-paced sci-fi action movie in which a squad of Army Rangers on a training exercise are confronted with a robot from outer space bent on destroying them. Led by action titan Alan Ritchson (known for Reacher), the squad trade their blank rounds for live ammunition to try to stop a seemingly invincible, mechanical hunter. If you like movies like Predator or Commando, you don't want to miss this one. Stream War Machine on Netflix.
Since its release in November 2025, this whimsical animated sequel has been delighting critics and audiences. Judy Hopps and Nick Wilde return to track a mysterious pit viper named Gary De’Snake who has infiltrated Zootopia. To crack the case, the iconic duo must go undercover in uncharted parts of the metropolis. Stream Zootopia 2 on Disney+.
I love when a weirdo movie finds a big audience, and Bugonia is that movie. Jesse Plemons and Aidan Delbis play a couple of societal dregs who kidnap a high-powered pharmaceutical executive (Emma Stone) because they think she's an alien. Directed by Yorgos Lanthimos, who helmed 2023's excellent Poor Things, the Best Picture Oscar nominee is a must-watch, even if you're only a little weird. (And if you want more weirdness, it's based on an even odder South Korean film called Save the Green Planet.) Stream Bugonia on Peacock.
Nuremberg is the true story of Lt. Col. Douglas Kelley (Rami Malek), a U.S. Army psychiatrist tasked with evaluating the mental fitness of Nazi kingpin Hermann Göring (Russell Crowe). Through the psychological and intellectual duel between the idealistic psychiatrist and the charismatic Göring, Nuremberg explores the nature of evil and the toll it takes on those who fight it. Stream Nuremberg on Netflix.
![Ghost of Tsushima Director's Cut [PlayStation 5]](https://lifehacker.com/imagery/product/05VdNivY0RQcbu4Id72ihSV/hero-image.fill.size_autoxauto.v1776710473.jpg)
