David A Graham’s latest book considers the vast far-right plan to change US politics – and why its architects are playing the long game

David A Graham doesn’t say he read Project 2025 so you don’t have to, but it might be inferred.

The Atlantic staff writer’s new book, The Project : How Project 2025 Is Reshaping America, is a swift but thorough overview of the vast far-right plan for a second Trump administration that achieved notoriety last year. Over just 138 pages, a passing dream next to the Heritage Foundation’s 922-page doorstop , Graham considers the origins of Project 2025, its aims and effects so far.

The Project is published in the US by Random House

It's long been the stuff of science fiction: humans achieving immortality by uploading their consciousness into a silicon virtual paradise, ruled over by a benevolent super-intelligent AI. Or maybe one dreams of leaving a dying Earth to colonize Mars or other distant planets. It's a tantalizing visionary future that has been embraced by tech billionaires in particular. But is that future truly the utopian ideal, or something potentially darker? And are those goals even scientifically feasible?

These are the kinds of questions astrophysicist and science journalist Adam Becker poses in his new book, More Everything Forever: AI Overlords, Space Empires, and Silicon Valley's Crusade to Control the Fate of Humanit y. Becker's widely praised first book, What Is Real? , focused on competing interpretations of quantum mechanics and questioned the long dominance of the so-called Copenhagen interpretation championed by Niels Bohr, among other luminaries. This time around, he's tackling Silicon Valley's far-reaching ideas about the future, which have moved out of online subcultures and into mainstream culture, including our political discourse.

"It seemed like it was only going to become more relevant and someone needed to speak out about it, and I didn't see enough people connecting the dots in a way that looked right to me," Becker told Ars. "One current critique of Silicon Valley is that they moved fast and broke democracy and institutional norms. That's true. Another is that they're contemptuous of government, and I think that's true, too. But there wasn't much critique of their visions of the future, maybe because not enough people realized they meant it. Even among Silicon Valley critics, there was this idea that at the very least, you could trust that the statements they made about science and technology were true because they were experts in science and technology. That's not the case."

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It's not every day you get a trailer for a new, live-action Predator movie, but today is one of those days. 20th Century Studios just released the first teaser for Predator: Badlands , a feature film that unconventionally makes the classic movie monster a protagonist.

The film follows Dek (Dimitrius Schuster-Koloamatangi), a young member of the predator species and society who has been banished. He'll work closely with a Weyland-Yutani Android named Thia (Elle Fanning) to take down "the ultimate adversary," which the trailer dubs a creature that "can't be killed." The adversary looks like a very large monster we haven't seen before, judging from a few shots in the trailer.

Some or all of the film is rumored to take place on the Predator home world, and the movie intends to greatly expand on the mythology around the Predators' culture, language, and customs. It's intended as a standalone movie in the Predator/Alien universe.

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It's been a long, long wait, but we're finally getting a second season of the Netflix supernatural horror comedy, Wednesday . The streaming giant dropped the first teaser and several first-look images to whet our appetites for what promises to be an excellent follow-up to the delightful first season.

(Spoilers for S1 below.)

As previously reported , director Tim Burton famously turned down the opportunity to direct the 1991 feature film The Addams Family , inspired by characters created by American cartoonist Charles Addams for The New Yorker in 1938. Wednesday showrunners Alfred Gough and Miles Millar—best known for Smallville —expected Burton to turn them down as well when they made their pitch. He signed up for the project instead.

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The Holdovers breakout and Oscar nominee will head the cast of Tony, which will follow the food world legend in 1976

The Holdovers breakout Dominic Sessa has signed on to play Anthony Bourdain in a new biopic.

The casting had been initially rumoured last year, but the 22-year-old has now made it official, with Oscar nominee Antonio Banderas also joining in a role that is being kept under wraps.

London singer-songwriter picks up three nominations, with her collaborator Conor Dickinson earning two alongside Ghetts and Raye

Singer-songwriter Lola Young tops the nominations for the 2025 Ivor Novello awards, which recognise the best in British and Irish songwriting and composition for the screen.

She receives three nominations in her first year of recognition by the Ivors Academy: best album for This Wasn’t Meant for You Anyway, best song musically and lyrically for Messy, and the rising star award.

Hampstead theatre, London
Bea, a hoarder, is visited by Veda, who carries a secret, to fix the rift between them in Chloë Lawrence-Taylor’s debut play, full of vivid dialogue and foreboding rumbles

Objects pile and tower as walls in Chloë Lawrence-Taylor’s debut play. Since their father’s funeral, when Bea scratched an obscene picture into Veda’s car bonnet, the two sisters have lost contact, and Bea has been isolated in an ever-growing haven of “stuff”. Old vinyl, books, crockery, bags for life and mountains of cutlery have turned her home into a graveyard of the past. To an outsider, it is the depths of hoarding; to Bea, every dusty item is a relic to be pored over and adored.

But, now Veda has stopped by unexpectedly to “fix” things. Lawrence-Taylor’s vivid dialogue paints the sisters both as strangers, with years missing between them, and familiars, bound by their shared youth. They remember intimate details about each other; Veda drinks camomile tea, Bea loves bonsai trees. The actors, Holly Atkins (Veda) and Rosie Cavaliero (Bea), bring remarkable emotional texture to their roles; their relationship feels lived-in and layered with complication. As they bicker, laugh and plead with one another to understand their side of things, their speech rolls over each other in a natural rhythm.

Royal Shakespeare theatre, Stratford-upon-Avon
Benedick is a midfielder for Serie A team FC Messina in a show with top-form performances and a clever visual metaphor, albeit some pacing problems in the final third

Suggesting that spectacular visual metaphor is the Royal Shakespeare Company’s new house style, a Hamlet set on a cruise liner is followed by a Much Ado About Nothing based in elite Italian football. After the National Theatre’s Gareth Southgate bio-drama Dear England , this must be the first season that both big subsidised companies have filled stages with young men in replica club shirts and jockstraps.

Before this Much of the Day starts, a TV sports feed tells us that FC Messina have beaten Madrid FC 3-2 in a European final, with a hat-trick from young winger Claudio. But cocky journeyman midfielder Benedick – jibed as “Signor Own-Goal”, replacing Shakespeare’s sexualised insult “Mountanto” – refuses to be interviewed by TV sportscaster Beatrice, due to some past bad match.

A pioneering alternative to the opt-out system proposed by the government is supported by publishers and writers and is set to be available for use this summer

UK licensing bodies have announced a “pioneering” collective licence that will allow authors to be paid for the use of their works to train generative AI models.

The Copyright Licensing Agency (CLA) – which is directed by the Publishers’ Licensing Services (PLS) and the Authors’ Licensing and Collecting Society (ALCS), representing publishers and authors – will develop the licence, set to be the first of its kind in the UK.