Todd Haynes’s Carol is simple, elegant, and devastating. It tells a story of pre-Stonewall gay love between two women, who become what they are using no specific societal blueprint (none existed for lesbians in the ‘50s), but through their love for each other. Carol (Cate Blanchett) is a mother going through a divorce who happens upon Therese (Rooney Mara), a younger shopgirl in her 20s, and is immediately enchanted. What ensues is a love story that is told with tenderness, pacing, and melodrama that evokes the era depicted in the film. Sometimes it shouldn’t even work—like when during an emotional peak between Carol and Therese, it starts snowing out of nowhere—but it always does, thanks to the tremendous directing, writing, and performances of everyone involved. Carol is, simply, one of the year’s finest movies and its final shot is among the most indelible I’ve ever seen. This movie imprints itself on you, and what’s more, you want it to.

Former Congressman Barney Frank visited the Gawker office last week to discuss Compared To What: The Improbable Journey of Barney Frank, the documentary about his life that’s now running on Showtime (and on demand). In front of a crowd, Frank and I discussed his doc, the closet on Capitol Hill, and his own coming out (which happened way back in 1987).

An Atlanta news radio host has been fired after he dusted off a years-old interview with Donald Trump and billed it as a new piece when it aired Tuesday.

Harvard professor and campaign finance reform crusader Lawrence Lessig is running for the Democratic nomination for president. He was not allowed in tonight’s debates. Luckily, he stopped by to explain his entire platform to us.

Last Friday, United States Labor Secretary Tom Perez visited Gawker Media’s headquarters to talk about jobs, inequality, unions, politics, the TPP, and much more. Watch him answer our questions, below.

Celebrities aren’t journalists—until they are! Recently, author and film person Miranda July interviewed Rihanna for T Magazine, providing us a unique opportunity to read about Miranda July.

Hedge fund managers tend to be secretive. Except for Anthony Scaramucci.

Joseph Stiglitz, a Nobel Prize-winning economist, is one of the world’s most influential thinkers in the battle against economic inequality. He’s trying hard to remain optimistic. But it ain’t easy.

In his chat with wizened television shaman Larry King Wednesday, professional sadster and glib racist Morrissey discussed his battle with depression and offered what King says “could be considered a controversial take on the act of suicide.” Hmm, yes: “It’s admirable” could be considered a controversial thing to say about suicide. Very astute observations all around, gentlemen.

Black women are in trouble. Or at least, that’s the narrative. Headlines warn that they’re less likely to attain a college degree than their peers; that they pose a higher risk to various health afflictions like cervical cancer and hypertension; that they “experience unintended pregnancies” at three times the rate of white women. Black women are also said to make less money than men in the same profession and will most likely never wed. Largely absent, however, are the counter-narratives: truths that grant ownership to the lives and futures of black women. A statistic rarely repeated is that black women comprise “42 percent of businesses owned by women of color” (the fastest growing segment in the women-owned business market), or that they are the most “reliable progressive voting block,” or that, in the last 60 years, high school graduation rates among black girls have increased 63 percent.

The United States of America has a Communist Party. John Bachtell is its national chairman. We spoke to him about American politics, the mistakes of the Soviets, and communism’s “branding problem.”

Ta-Nehisi Coates is running late. As a national correspondent for The Atlantic and author of the new book, Between the World and Me, everyone, it seems, wants a word with the 39-year-old Baltimore native these days. His book—which Toni Morrison christened “required reading” and which the New York Times hailed a “profoundly moving account”—is a deeply personal examination of the ways in which American violence and racism have wreaked havoc on its black citizenry. “[T]he question of how one should live within a black body, within a country lost in the Dream,” Coates writes in the beginning portion of the book, “is the question of my life.”

This month, New York advertising man and chronicler of the wealthy set Richard Kirshenbaum (pictured) published a new book, “Isn’t That Rich? Life Among the 1%.” We tried to interview him about it. It did not work out.

Nick Hanauer, a venture capitalist who was one of the first investors in Amazon, has the distinction of being one of America’s few progressive billionaires. We spoke to him about the class war—which he is busily fighting.

Do your charitable donations suck? Are you failing to save lives due to greed you don't even realize you have? Do poor people have the right to take all of our stuff? One of the world's most famous philosophers talked about these very topics with us.

What do police officers do when they witness their colleagues abusing citizens or otherwise behaving badly? To what degree is modern law enforcement driven by a focus on generating statistics? Why didn't the cops beat me up when I threw rocks at them as a teen? Do you consider yourself a hero?

Police officers turn up a lot in Gawker stories, but unless they’re a department commissioner giving a press conference or a union leader loudly berating a public official, it’s rare that they actually have a voice. What does the average beat cop think about Darren Wilson or Daniel Pantaleo? What is he looking for when he makes a stop for suspicious activity? Gawker’s anonymous cop is here to answer our readers’ most pressing questions.

Tony Robbins is a fabulously wealthy self-help guru who recently wrote a book containing bad financial advice. Andrew Ross Sorkin is a business reporter for America's most influential newspaper. What happens when you put them together?

As the mastermind behind the Wu-Tang Clan, RZA is one of the most famous natives of Staten Island. We spoke to him about the death of fellow Staten Islander Eric Garner, police brutality, and the path to a better tomorrow.

The girl of Ana Lily Amirpour's A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night is not like other girls. She is, for one thing, a vampire, but she's not like other vampires, either. She wears a hijab and prowls the fictional Iranian town called Bad City (actually Bakersfield, Calif.). Her inevitable feeding seems to come as much from personal needs as it does a sense of social justice: she feeds on the bad guys and spares the ones that she seems to regard as good or at least having potential. She is lonely and almost entirely silent. Her best friend is her record collection.