{"id":72072,"date":"2025-12-16T11:20:16","date_gmt":"2025-12-16T11:20:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/72072\/"},"modified":"2025-12-16T11:20:16","modified_gmt":"2025-12-16T11:20:16","slug":"new-york-magazines-20-most-read-stories-of-2025","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/72072\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018New York\u2019 Magazine\u2019s 20 Most-Read Stories of 2025"},"content":{"rendered":"

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\n Photo-Illustration: Intelligencer; Photos from left: Guerin Black\/August; Isabella County Sheriff Office; Courtesy of the subjects; Joan Wong; Rebecca Tiger; Maurizio Catalan and Pierpaolo Ferrari\n <\/p>\n

AI cheaters, crypto maniacs, MAGA cool kids, and furious Canadians.<\/p>\n

As we near the end of 2025, we like to reflect on the stories that most captivated our readers\u2019 attention, and as always, certain themes tend to emerge. Readers turned to us to make sense of new cultural trends, as when Brock Colyar defined the West Village Girl and helped articulate the young new conservative crowd ascendant in Washington, D.C., or when Bridget Read helped us understand the new facelift we now seem to see on every red carpet.<\/p>\n

Our readers also loved when our stories exposed the secret lives of powerful famous men, as with Lila Shapiro\u2019s shocking feature on writer Neil Gaiman<\/a> and Ben Terris\u2019s equally penetrating look at Senator John Fetterman. And as always, readers gravitated toward twisty yarns of regular people behaving badly: college students cheating, fake philanthropists, a mother cyberbullying her own child. And yet, underneath it all,\u00a0it turns out you all are big softies, as two epic love stories also made the list \u2014 along with one encounter with Axl Rose, for good measure. If you missed any of these, there are worse ways to spend the waning days of this very long year than catching up on our top 20 stories of 2025, ranked by total minutes of audience engagement. And to never miss a must-read next year, sign up for One Great Story<\/a>, our daily recommendation newsletter, and, of course, subscribe<\/a> to New York Magazine. Enjoy.<\/p>\n

By Chantal Fernandez<\/p>\n

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Photo-Illustration: Pedro Nekoi\n <\/p>\n

How Quince, the one-stop shop for everything from cashmere sweaters to caviar seduced a generation of jaded shoppers. Read the story \u2026<\/a><\/p>\n

By\u00a0Zosia Mamet<\/p>\n

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Photo: Courtesy of the author\n <\/p>\n

My wayward years as a New York club kid. Read the story \u2026<\/a><\/p>\n

By\u00a0James D. Walsh<\/p>\n

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Photo: machpi3\/Instagram\n <\/p>\n

Before his mysterious death, Matthew Christopher Pietras donated millions to the Met and the Frick. It was stolen. Read the story \u2026<\/a><\/p>\n

By\u00a0Angelina Chapin<\/p>\n

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\"Mindfulness <\/p>\n

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Photo: Suzanne Cordeiro\/Shutterstock\n <\/p>\n

Selena Gomez and her mother, Mandy Teefey, flipped their mental-health journeys into a buzzy start-up. It all fell apart. Read the story \u2026<\/a><\/p>\n

By\u00a0Brock Colyar<\/p>\n

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Photo: Mark Peterson\/Redux for New York Magazine\n <\/p>\n

Among the young, confident, and casually cruel Trumpers who, after conquering Washington, have their sights set on America. Read the story \u2026<\/a><\/p>\n

By\u00a0Simon van Zuylen-Wood<\/p>\n

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Trump accomplished what was once considered impossible: Our northern neighbors have united against us. Read the story \u2026<\/a><\/p>\n

By\u00a0Ezra Marcus\u00a0and\u00a0Jen Wieczner<\/p>\n

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Photo-Illustration: New York Magazine; Photos: TMZ\/Backgrid, David \u2018Dee\u2019 Delgado\/Reuters\n <\/p>\n

How two men charged with an outrageous kidnapping scheme introduced a new kind of crime to the city. Read the story \u2026<\/a><\/p>\n

By\u00a0Bindu Bansinath<\/p>\n

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Photo-Illustration: The Cut; Photos: Getty\n <\/p>\n

A couple thought they\u2019d found Mary Poppins. Until she refused to leave. Read the story \u2026<\/a><\/p>\n

By\u00a0Katie Arnold-Ratliff<\/p>\n

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Photo-Illustration: Maurizio Cattelan and Pierpaolo Ferrari\n <\/p>\n

Low-interest loans, pieds-\u00e0-terre, and other strategies that stretch the gift tax limit. Read the story \u2026<\/a><\/p>\n

By\u00a0Elizabeth Gilbert<\/p>\n

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Photo: Courtesy of Elizabeth Gilbert\n <\/p>\n

When my best friend was diagnosed with cancer, I promised to be there until the end. Then all hell broke loose. Read the story \u2026<\/a><\/p>\n

By\u00a0Bridget Read<\/p>\n

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Photo: Ben Hassett for The Cut\n <\/p>\n

The facelift is better than ever, and everybody wants one. Deep inside the uncanny world of the surgically ageless. Read the story \u2026<\/a><\/p>\n

By\u00a0Brock Colyar<\/p>\n

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Photo: Dina Litovsky\n <\/p>\n

A new generation has transformed the neighborhood \u2014 and reshaped the fantasy of New York City living. Read the story \u2026<\/a><\/p>\n

By\u00a0Reeves Wiedeman<\/p>\n

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Photo: Kennedy Family Collection\/John F. Kennedy Library and Museum\n <\/p>\n

Only one cousin is in a position of power \u2014 and his family can only watch helplessly as he destroys much that they stood for. Read the story \u2026<\/a><\/p>\n

By\u00a0James D. Walsh<\/p>\n

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Illustration: New York Magazine\n <\/p>\n

ChatGPT has unraveled the entire academic project. Read the story \u2026<\/a><\/p>\n

As told to Paula Aceves and Julia Edelstein<\/p>\n

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Photo-Illustration: Maurizio Cattelan and Pierpaolo Ferrari\n <\/p>\n

Fourteen adults come clean about the down payments, allowances, and tuition payments that make their New York lives feasible. Read the story \u2026<\/a><\/p>\n

By\u00a0Ben Terris<\/p>\n

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Photo: Rebecca Kiger\n <\/p>\n

John Fetterman insists he is in good health. But staffers past and present say they no longer recognize the man they once knew. Read the story \u2026<\/a><\/p>\n

By\u00a0Rachel Corbett<\/p>\n

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Illustration: Joan Wong; Source Photo Getty Images\n <\/p>\n

Internal Family Systems is a widely popular trauma treatment. Some patients say it\u2019s destroyed their lives. Read the story \u2026<\/a><\/p>\n

By\u00a0Barry Diller<\/p>\n

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Photo: Courtesy of the subjects\n <\/p>\n

The truth about us, after all these years. Read the story \u2026<\/a><\/p>\n

By\u00a0Lauren Smiley<\/p>\n

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Photo-Illustration: Source Photograph: Isabella County Sheriff Office\n <\/p>\n

Parents and school officials were stumped. The culprit was under their noses all along. Read the story \u2026<\/a><\/p>\n

By Lila Shapiro<\/p>\n

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Photo: Guerin Blask\/August\n <\/p>\n

How the best-selling fantasy author Neil Gaiman hid the darkest parts of himself for decades. Read the story \u2026<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Photo-Illustration: Intelligencer; Photos from left: Guerin Black\/August; Isabella County Sheriff Office; Courtesy of the subjects; Joan Wong; Rebecca…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":72073,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[9,11,10,7165,36721,36722],"class_list":{"0":"post-72072","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-new-york","8":"tag-new-york","9":"tag-new-york-headlines","10":"tag-new-york-news","11":"tag-remove-interruptions","12":"tag-year-in-review","13":"tag-year-in-review-2024"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/72072","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=72072"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/72072\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/72073"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=72072"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=72072"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=72072"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}