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Includes 2 items: Dreamfall: The Longest Journey, The Longest Journey

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Includes 3 items: Dreamfall: The Longest Journey , The Longest Journey , Dreamfall Chapters: The Final Cut Edition

"The Longest Journey is not only the best adventure games in recent years, it's one of the best games ever" - GamesDomain

About This Game

• Over 150 locations spanning two distinct and detailed worlds
• More than 70 speaking characters
• 40+ hours of gameplay
• 20+ minutes of high-resolution pre-rendered video footage
• Cinematic musical score

System Requirements

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The Longest Journey

• High Quality 16.2 MB
• Low Quality 7.2 MB
• High Quality 9.4 MB
• Low Quality 5 MB

Get ready for the adventure of a lifetime. The Longest Journey is more than a game - it's more like a book, a movie and a game all rolled into one. Explore an interactive and beautifully created universe from the perspective of April Ryan, a young art student who soon discovers that there is more to her world than meets the eye.

With the power to pass between worlds like others pass from waking to sleep, April must embark on the longest journey of her life; a journey not only across twin worlds, but also into her very own heart and soul. Embark on a voyage across phenomenal worlds, encounter a fantastic cast of unforgettable characters, and unravel one of the most epic stories ever told.

Experience what critics around the world are calling one of the best adventure games of all time. Experience The Longest Journey !

The Longest Journey

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An adventure game produced by Norwegian developer Funcom , The Longest Journey  is the first game of The Longest Journey Saga . It introduced us to April Ryan , a strong-willed heroine with a troubled past, and the twin worlds of Stark and Arcadia . April is troubled by nightmares, and strange events are happening in her quiet neighbourhood which are becoming harder to ignore. Guided by the mysterious Cortez , April discovers that the Balance , the powerful force that enables the twin worlds to exist, is in danger of failing because there is no Guardian in the Tower maintaining the Balance.

It falls upon April, a Shifter who can move between the worlds, to restore the Guardian and save the Balance (helped by her sidekick Crow ). However, powerful forces contrive to stop her, with the Chaos Vortex , the Vanguard and their leader Jacob McAllen first among them. On her side are Cortez and the White Dragon .

The entire story is narrated by Lady Alvane , a mysterious figure whose tale brackets the game. April's journey takes her through a multitude of locations across the twin worlds and beyond, leading up to a climactic but ambiguous ending, which made fans eager for a sequel.

The title undoubtedly owes much to The Neverending Story ( Die Unendliche Geschichte , 1979), by ironically-named German fantasist Michael Ende. It also tells the story of two worlds: our own, and one of fantasy.

The game and its creator Ragnar Tornquist were highly acclaimed as genre-savers, and put Funcom on the map. Although it was never a huge seller in any market, The Longest Journey (TLJ) gained a large and devoted fan-base that stubbornly stayed alive in the years after TLJ was released.

In 2011, it was announced that an iPhone port of The Longest Journey is in development.

• 1 Starting Points
• 3 Release dates
• 4.1 Conception
• 4.2 Two Directions, One Destination
• 4.3 I'm Not the Chosen One You're Looking For
• 4.4 Storytelling
• 4.5 Further reading
• 5 External Links
• 6 References

Starting Points [ ]

• Official site
• Chapters of TLJ
• April's Diary
• Inventory Items
• Music of The Longest Journey

On the 27th of April 2003 a sequel to TLJ was announced, and on the 17th of April 2006 Dreamfall: The Longest Journey was released.

Release dates [ ]

• Norway: 19th of November, 1999
• Sweden: December, 1999
• France: December, 1999
• Germany: March, 2000
• United Kingdom: April, 2000
• United States: November, 2000
• Steam: 1st of May, 2007

Development (1996-1999) [ ]

Conception [ ].

After Funcom's work on Casper (Interplay Productions, 1996), they decided they would need to develop their own games to stay afloat. Other than Anarchy Online their former Dublin office (later closed) was developing another title known only as "Project X", about two worlds: one of science-fiction and one of fantasy. It was originally intended to be a platformer in the style of Heart of Darkness (Interplay Productions, 1998) called Split Realities . [1] But when Ragnar Tornquist, 25 at the time, took control of it he wanted to craft it in the style of his favourite adventure games: Day of the Tentacle (Lucasarts, 1993) and Gabriel Knight (Sierra, 1993). Adventure games may have already begun their decline but, as there was no real financial pressure, Tornquist began his swansong to the genre.

Ragnar later posted an excerpt from an early version of the story (27th March, 1996):

In her dreams that night there were angels and horses. With fierce, burning eyes, the white angels rode their black horses into the green pastures of an eerily familiar realm, and in their tracks all life withered. She knew the setting, yet she also knew she’d never consciously set foot in it before now. With the passing of the angels came a mighty roar, and darkness fell on that beautiful world.

In the darkness there was a face - a man’s face, bearing an uncanny likeness of herself, twisted through a mirror darkly. His eyes were cold, yet there was nothing evil about the man. He seemed just distant, dreamy, disinterested. As if pulled by unknown forces, she lifted her hand to touch the man’s face and felt her fingers touch her own face…

April woke with a start. The neon illumination of the big ‘Hotel 24hrs’ sign across the street added a ghostly sheen to the unfamiliarity of her bedroom. The sound of sirens overlapped in the night, and voices echoed through the grim corridors outside her door. [2]

(Tornquist later noted " The funny thing is how close a lot of what was written back then is to the next game's storyline. ")

Two Directions, One Destination [ ]

From the beginning the game was about April living in the Border House, but at this time the world she lived in was much more dystopian as the staff were watching a lot of Dark City (1998). April's adventure began after repeated dreams of dark angels, and the other world was to be beautiful in contrast to the darkness of her own. Tornquist realised that, for the player to truly sympathise with April, he would have to have them participate at first in her ordinary world, and it must be at least partly recognisable to them.

This lead to a greater balance between the tone of both worlds, as the fantasy world incorporated some of the darker elements itself. April's Venice was modelled on New York's East Village, where Tornquist had lived while studying film at the Tisch School of the Arts at New York University from 1990-1993.

At this point he decided that he wanted to set April's world in our own time, but Didrik Tollefsen kept pulling her towards a more futuristic setting. This would allow the technological world to better contrast with the magical one, although Tornquist was careful not to let it descend into a Bladerunner (1982) pastiche. He has since reflected that the Stark sections of TLJ reflect the tension he felt between the two desired time periods, and some of this crept into the more recognisable technology of Dreamfall .

I'm Not the Chosen One You're Looking For [ ]

A more gentle dystopianism lingered in TLJ, however, in the form of the satirisation of Capitalism in such features as the privatised police force and rampant corporate warfare . This commentary was more organic than the deliberate themes such as that of 'faith' in Dreamfall , but faith and religion had a place in TLJ as well. Tornquist recalls:

"Games don’t often refer to religion. I was trying to make the whole idea of that universe co-exist with religion, having that story in the context of faith ... The Longest Journey is a game about finding yourself, and having belief in yourself, and conquering your personal demons, on a very simple level. It is also a game about having faith, and you have all these characters, like the Catholic priest, having him refer to the whole aspect of faith in relation to the unbelievable nature of split universes, and how you reconcile that with your own personal faith."

Even when the projected 18 months of development doubled and the budget began to blow out, Funcom stood by the game. TLJ was not always a carefully planned story, and Tornquist had not finalised the ending until relatively late in development.

"I think TLJ reflects the mind of a 25 year old, and Dreamfall is that of a 30-something. When you’re in your 20s, you don’t know where you’re heading, much like April. While in your 30s, maybe it is more about the loss of faith in yourself, faith in religion and faith in the world."

Originally April was meant to fill the role of "Chosen One", but Tornquist gradually became more and more disillusioned with this idea. He was reading Neil Gaiman at the time (especially the Sandman comics, 1989-1996) and watching a lot of Buffy the Vampire Slayer (1997-2003), and became influenced by the idea of a protagonist who is not the most important person in the world - but still has an important role to play. Tornquist puts this more realistic attitude as: "You’re only a cog, but... you can make a big difference."

Storytelling [ ]

Perhaps most importantly, TLJ is about storytelling. The entire game is bracketed by Lady Alvane's narration, and many of the characters advance the plot by telling their own stories. April must even read several books before she can continue her journey. Tornquist has said that character development is more important than - and even shapes - narrative. When writing the dialogue for TLJ Ragnar often only had a few lines written for each character, but after casting would allow the personality the actor brought to the part to shape the dialogue he wrote for them.

"Most of the dialogue for TLJ was written in a frenzy during the night. I stayed for two or three weeks in New York, and I did the writing at night until 3 or 4 in the morning. Then I went to bed, then printed it out on the crappy printer I bought, and then I’d hand them the new script pages."

This gave the actors plenty of freedom in their roles, and also lead to the many humorous out-takes accessible through the Book of Secrets . In the case of Andrew Donnelly the stand-up comedian who played Burns Flipper , this lead to plenty of colourful language, which drew the ire of a surprising number of players. "He was a good example of why it was a good thing I didn’t have someone standing over my shoulder while we made the game."

As an afterword, in comparison with Dreamfall Tornquist says:

"... it’s not as profound, but it has a simple joy that’s lacking in Dreamfall. It has a sense of exploration and adventure that’s lacking in Dreamfall, because Dreamfall is a lot more serious, and everybody’s questioning themselves, and everybody’s having a crisis of faith."

Further reading [ ]

• Making Of: The Longest Journey
• Ragnar Tørnquist On… The Longest Journey

External Links [ ]

• The Longest Journey - Official Site
• The Longest Journey Transcript

References [ ]

• ↑ Adventure Gamers interview 14/09/99
• ↑ Ragnar Tornquist - 5/8/03 (archived)
• 1 Choices in Dreamfall Chapters
• 2 April Ryan
• 3 The Longest Journey

Character » appears in 3 games

April is the reluctant heroine of the The Longest Journey, and reappears in Dreamfall as one of 3 playable main characters.

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The Longest Journey

April ryan's art studio in stark, as seen in the longest journey., dreamfall: the longest journey april ryan standing in a small marcurian market in dreamfall, april's titles.

• Venar Kan-ang-la. This name is given to her by Abnaxus .
• April Bandu-embata of the Banda. This name is given to her by the Banda .
• Waterstiller. This title is given by the Maerum .
• Windbringer. This title is given by the Alatien .
• Wave. This title is given to her by the Dark People.
• The Raven. This name is given to her by fellow rebel Marcurians.
• The Scorpion. This name is given to her by the Azadi.

Lady Alvane

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The Longest Journey Review

The Longest Journey is one of the best adventure games in years.

By Ron Dulin on June 26, 2000 at 5:41PM PDT

The Longest Journey is one of the best adventure games in years. Like a hybrid of classic Sierra and LucasArts games, it tells a great fairy tale filled with characters that you'll remember long after the game is over.

The Longest Journey is about a young woman named April Ryan, a visual-arts student who lives at a boarding house in a small, bohemian area in the city of Newport called Venice. While these locations suggest Southern California, the geographical setting of The Longest Journey is never stated; it's just a large city of the future. And while The Longest Journey's setting may be the stuff of science-fiction clichés, the game never resorts to the typical dystopian predictions. In fact, Newport seems very much like a modern metropolis, only with flying cars.

April has some problems. She's a runaway who has left home because of her father, though the exact reasons she left are never stated. She has a huge art project due, and she can't seem to get started. The guy who lives across the hall is a crude, arrogant jackass who won't leave her alone. And most importantly, she's being plagued by strange dreams that seem a little too real.

The game begins in one of these dreams. April is standing high on a cliff, overlooking a strange land. On this cliff, she meets a dragon and a talking tree, and she is visited by a strange, malevolent mass that sends her careening over the edge - and back into her bed.

When she awakes, you begin to learn about her life. If there's one problem with The Longest Journey, it's that the opening is a bit slow. It's loaded with expository dialogue about April, her friends, and the city. While this isn't a problem in and of itself, it seems strange that there is so much exposition right off the bat, when you've yet to meet any of the characters or visit the places mentioned. These conversations would have been much more interesting had they come a bit later in the game, once you've actually familiarized yourself with the places and characters you learn about.

During the first chapters of the game, you explore April's life. You meet her friends, you go to her school and to her job at a local coffee house. It seems like boring stuff, but it accomplishes an important task - as you take part in her routine, you begin to really care about her and her comrades. Her friends all have the hallmark concerns of people making the transition to adulthood - school problems, turbulent love lives, and bad jobs.

The game gets more interesting once the truth behind April's dreams becomes more apparent. You learn that there are two different worlds: Stark is devoted to science and technology, while the other, Arcadia, is devoted to magic. April has the rare ability to "shift," to move between these two worlds. These worlds, which were once one but came to be two, are fascinating, and you'll be eager to learn more about both their history and their future. April's dreams and some strange occurrences in both worlds are taking place because the division between the worlds is being eroded. And April is the one who must restore the balance.

Once the truth is revealed, the game begins to take place in both worlds. April cannot control her shifting, so moving from one world to the next takes place at times both opportune and otherwise. In both places, April meets a fascinating range of characters. In Arcadia there's Abnaxus, a representative of the Venar, who live in all times at once. He's a copy editor's nightmare, as he shifts tenses midsentence and often midword. Then there's Burns Flipper, the foul-mouthed hacker who rides around in a little hovercar. Even the most minor character is interesting in The Longest Journey, and you'll find yourself concerned with all of their fates.

It's a testament to designer Ragnar Tornquist's storytelling ability that you become so attached to everyone you meet. His game follows the blueprint laid by the classics of the fantasy epic, even as April's eccentric mentor begins teaching the reluctant savior. But it's also an original story that's filled with interesting settings and people. The Longest Journey is sometimes sad, sometimes funny, and sometimes scary. At times, it's all of these things at once.

The worlds are brought to life with rich, detailed graphics. The character models may not be extremely detailed, but they are good-looking and diverse. The background scenery is colorful and varied, and no two locations look the same. The sound is even better, because of the nonintrusive ambient music and excellent character voices. It's commendable that Funcom took the time to create a great English translation of the game, especially considering that it may not ever be published in the States (the translation was done for the U.K. version, which was published in April).

The puzzles in The Longest Journey are fairly standard, though they get better as the game goes on. In the beginning, you'll have to use some of your inventory items in illogical ways. But later in the game, the puzzles become more intuitive and fit better into the story.

The Longest Journey's complex and interesting story is what's most important. It deepens as you get further into it, and once it's over you'll still be thinking about all the subplots and how they tied together. And the conclusion is bittersweet - it's uplifting and rewarding, but there's a strange sense of sadness to it as well. The only criticism that can be leveled at the ending is that the epilogue does little to wrap everything up, so it'll leave you wondering what happened to many of the characters after April's task was completed.

But the end does allude to a sequel, and anyone who plays the game will be more than happy at the prospect of one. It's not that The Longest Journey leaves you unsatisfied - it's that it leaves you wanting even more.

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The Longest Journey

3D adventure game reviewed

Saving April Ryan

Every now and then a game comes along that sucks you into its world so completely that you vanish into it for days at a time, surfacing only for food and sleep when you just physically can't play any longer. Last year we had Outcast to rob us of sleep and social life, and this year we have The Longest Journey.

Produced somewhere in the depths of Scandinavia, and only reaching our God forsaken shores some months after it had been released across most of the rest of Europe, The Longest Journey is quite simply one of the slickest and most involving adventure games I've ever had the joy of playing.

You take on the role of April Ryan, an art student in 23rd century America who finds herself caught up in an epic struggle of good and evil that spans two worlds - her own scientific world of Stark, and the magical realm of Arcadia.

April has the ability to "shift" between these two worlds, and before long you find yourself travelling backwards and forwards between them as you try to solve the puzzle of who and what you are, while at the same time trying to save the world from imminent destruction at the hands of a pseudo-religious group known as the Vanguard.

The plot is told through a mixture of in-game conversations and beautiful rendered cinematics that are amongst the best I've seen. Although at times the info-dumping can get a bit much, and the conversations are occasionally a little long winded, the strong characters and excellent story drag you on through the game's four CDs.

Sound And Vision

The first thing to strike you on starting the game is just how beautiful it is. The pre-rendered backdrops are simply stunning, ranging from the city-scape and slums of Stark to the forests, islands and medieval cities of Arcadia.

In total there are over 150 locations to explore, and 50 characters to speak to, from cops and engineers to talking birds and eccentric alchemists. The characters are real-time 3D models, and most of them are nicely detailed and well animated.

Unfortunately the game is locked into a low resolution of just 640x480, which can make the characters look rather blocky at times against the stunning backgrounds, and causes some nasty "jaggies". If you have a Voodoo 5 or GeForce 2 graphics card you are in for a treat though - full-scene anti-aliasing really does give this game a whole new lease of life.

The sound is equally good, with some excellent voice acting and atmospheric music that suits the game and its mood perfectly. The script manages to keep you involved in the game and its characters, as well as injecting a welcome dose of humour, although some people may find the frequent swearing from some of the characters a little over the top. Make no mistake, this is not a kid's game...

Of course, one of the most important elements of any good adventure game is its puzzles, and luckily The Longest Journey scores well here as well.

The puzzles are fairly challenging at times, but most of them are logical enough if you stop to think things through. There are a few bizarre puzzles which had me scrambling for the walkthrough though, and it's not always entirely obvious what you should be doing.

Luckily the game includes April's Diary, which is invaluable when you get stuck. This includes entries about many of the key events that take place during the game, which give you a further insight into April's character and, on a more practical level, can often give you a pointer as to what to do next.

You also have access to a log of all her conversations throughout the game, and trawling through the transcripts of her recent conversations sometimes turns up clues that you missed when listening to them the first time round.

Interfacing

Controlling the game is achieved with your mouse, using a very simple left and right click interface that allows you to move around, examine or pick-up items, talk to characters, and combine items in your inventory, all within a couple of mouse clicks.

Talking to another character brings up a series of options at the bottom of your screen, although as with most adventure games, at the end of the day you usually end up going through most or all of the options anyway in one order or another.

You can also access April's Diary by moving the mouse to the top of the screen and clicking on the little diary icon that appears. This gives you access to save and load game options, game settings, conversation logs, and the diary itself of course.

It's all very intuitive and easy to use, and is very unobtrusive, leaving you to concentrate on April and the world she is exploring.

The Longest Journey is not without its flaws. The humour may not appeal to everyone, the conversations can be rather long and meandering at times, and the labyrinthine plot is occasionally hard to follow.

Also the 3D characters don't look as good as they should do because of the low resolution, and although the game still looks gorgeous and runs silky smooth even on my old RivaTNT, you will really need a graphics card with support for full-scene anti-aliasing to make the most of the game's visuals.

At the end of the day though, The Longest Journey is an engrossing and highly entertaining adventure game with characters that you can care about, an involving storyline to keep you hooked, and settings and characters that are both beautiful and bizarre. What more could you want from an adventure game?

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Dreamfall: Chapters Episode One review: A long-awaited journey

It’s been fifteen years since The Longest Journey came out, making it a pretty apt name for a series. A cult classic, The Longest Journey is regarded as one of the best point-and-click adventure games and best game stories of all time.In 2007 fans finally got a long-awaited sequel, known as Dreamfall: The Longest Journey , which wrapped up a few story threads from the original game while opening up even more questions.

And now, seven years and one successful Kickstarter campaign later, we finally get Dreamfall: Chapters , an episodic sequel that takes place immediately after the events of the 2007 game.

Was it worth the wait? Let’s dig in.

What dreams are made of

Dreamfall: Chapters , like its immediate predecessor, is a third-person adventure game taking place in the dual worlds of Stark and Arcadia. Stark is a near-future reflection of our own world, heavy on science and technology, while Arcadia is a fantastical realm of magic.

In case you’ve forgotten the ending of the 2007 game, spoilers ahead: After discovering a global conspiracy to co-opt people’s dreams, protagonist Zoe Castillo was put into a coma and left to die. April Ryan, star of the original Longest Journey , was killed. The third protagonist, Kian Alvade, was captured by his own men on charges of treason and left in a jail cell to await execution.

Yeah, The Longest Journey has never really been good at happy endings. That’s part of what makes it so special—this is unapologetically an adventure game for adults. I mean, the first game (again, spoilers) leads you to believe that you’re a long-awaited savior, that you’re the key figure in the world’s mythology, only to reveal in the last act that you were nothing but a side character the whole time. April Ryan is left with nothing, no purpose, as the game closes. It’s bleak.

Dreamfall: Chapters opens with this bleakness. Zoe is still in a coma, April is still dead, and Kian still awaits execution. And while two of those things change, it remains to be seen whether they’ve changed for the better.

This is but the first episode of five, so it’s a bit hard to get a feel for where everything’s headed. The Longest Journey has never been a series content with the micro level, which is a bit funny because that’s where it excels. The Longest Journey and Dreamfall are fantastic at telling enormous, world-shifting epics, and I have no doubt another is in store for us with Dreamfall: Chapters .

But what makes this such a special series is the way it handles the mundane. Like The Longest Journey , Dreamfall: Chapters opens with…normality. Well, not really—there’s an extended prologue/dream sequence at the beginning that aptly demonstrates how far the series has come graphically since 2007.

Once we’ve escaped that dream sequence, however, we’re left literally at square one. Zoe awakens from her coma with no memory of the events in Dreamfall , and while we (the audience) know what transpired she’s left to piece it back together. Or not.

As such, we’re confronted with a Zoe Castillo who has a day life—a Zoe Castillo who goes to therapy, who delivers lunch to her boyfriend, who works a day job. While there are seeds of a much larger conspiracy to unravel, and while we know that inevitably the other shoe must drop (and drop with what I assume is a world-threatening bang), it’s the way Red Thread and writer Ragnar Tornquist add life to liveliness to what should by all rights be boring that I find admirable.

I can’t wait to watch things escalate, but I wasn’t at all let down by this opening episode of Dreamfall: Chapters . It’s slow and ponderous and you’ll spend much of your time just wandering the city of Europolis, listening to random side-conversations (the magical realm of Arcadia barely makes an appearance), but it’s a way of easing you into a world—of making this feel like a real place rather than Video Game City X—that I really admire. It dangles just enough out there to get you excited and then pulls back. The Longest Journey has never been one to show its cards quickly. Don’t believe me? Go back and play the original point-and-click adventure.

What’s disappointing is that we have to wait for the next chapter—the downfall of all episodic games. There’s something to be said about the format in relation to a tale like Dreamfall , though. Already I’ve seen people going into forums and speculating about the end of this first chapter. It’s almost like watching Lost when it aired, when fans dissected every frame and throwaway line for meaning.

And props to Red Thread for giving us a series of choices that are apparently world-shifting. The game borrows rather heavily from Telltale’s school of adventure game design, to the extent that the screen flashes the same “BLANK will remember this” text after you make key decisions.

I was amazed by the breadth of those changes though, even in this first chapter. With one early choice you lock yourself out of an entire section of content, regardless of which path you take. That’s Witcher 2 levels of gutsy, and is a drastically different approach than Telltale’s “Illusion of Choice” style. For a series that’s always played with notions of free will, of faith and rejection of faith, it’s a bold extension of those themes into the actual layout of the narrative.

Bottom line

I completely understand if you wait until all five pieces of Dreamfall: Chapters are released. There are some bugs Red Thread needs to figure out (specifically in regards to performance and optimization) and I imagine it’s hard to sell you on an initial chapter where literally nothing seems to happen if you’re not already a fan.

But as hard as it is to explain, that’s the charm of it. I honestly don’t know if non-fans will ever want to play this game—Tornquist and Co. barely refresh your memory on the plot of the original Dreamfall , and I can imagine the dual-protagonist, dual-world structure makes very little sense if you haven’t followed this series since its first iteration.

I have, though. I have no qualms about saying this is one of the best-written, best-voiced, and best-structured adventure series in all of gaming, and from this initial chapter I expect the same quality from Dreamfall: Chapters . If you haven’t played The Longest Journey and Dreamfall: The Longest Journey , maybe check them out.

And if you have? Well, there’s still four chapters to go, but as far as I can tell this is the sequel you’ve been awaiting for seven years.

Making Of: The Longest Journey

[While a fun one to do, it's always a little odd taking on one of someone else's Totemic Games . It's a little like having sex with someone else's wife, I guess. Anyway! Ragnar is, of course, incredibly lovely. Expect a longer interview with Ragnar in the not-too-distant future, from Mr "Future Mrs Tørnquist" Walker. Oh: The interview was done just before Dreamfall hit.]

The Longest Journey is now an established classic. While everyone else was wrapping up the history books of the genre, Ragnar Tørnquist and his team at Funcom were making what would prove to be the bookend of an era. Yes, the Longest Journey, from the start, it was destined to be that last great… er… Platform Game ?

“The dark secret is that The Longest Journey began life as a platform game,” reminisces Ragnar, “ Fortunately, that didn’t last long”. Of course, The Longest Journey – the tale of April Ryan and the dual worlds of Starke and Arcadia, was a point-and-click adventure. But the fact it The Longest Journey was a tale is what lead it to the genre. “I wanted to tell a story, a specific story – and that’s why we ended up making an adventure rather than an RPG or an action game,” he explains, “We were all fans of the classic adventures from LucasArts and Sierra, and I’d made a bunch of text adventures on the Commodore 64 back in the day, so the genre was a natural match. But in the end it was all about the story, and finding the gameplay mechanics to suit that.”

Finding and getting the mechanics in a satisfactory state didn’t exactly happen quickly. Development started in 1996 and the game didn’t arrive until 1999 – a particularly long development cycle in those days. “We were a smallish team working on a pretty enormous and ambitious game, and we had to build everything from scratch,” explains Ragnar, “The engine, the tools, the game editor – everything. And we seriously underestimated the time it would take us to finish. Our projected development time when we started was eighteen months. It took almost twice that, and we went way over budget. It was a miracle the game wasn’t canceled, because by that time point-and-click adventures were basically dead, but Funcom stuck with us and supported us. Our problems were mostly of a technical nature: getting the engine to do what we wanted it to do, producing all the assets. The design didn’t change much during development, and neither did the story, which was also the reason why we were so delayed. We couldn’t really make any cuts without seriously compromising the story.”

Not compromising the story was central to the team’s development. In comparison to the majority of games where a story exists only as motivation for who to kill next, trying to create a narrative with a degree of weight is a different challenge. “We wanted to create something different, something fresh and original, something meaningful. Also, I wanted to tell a story that wasn’t simply about saving the world – although there’s that, too,” Ragnar expounds, “I wanted April Ryan to be a real person, someone the player could empathise and identify with, someone with a background, a history, a love life, friends, family…and someone who would go through a transformation during her journey. It definitely wasn’t revolutionary in terms of storytelling, but it certainly felt that way to a lot of players, because games hadn’t really focused on those things before. Since I was a storyteller first and a designer second, that’s why we had that particular focus.”

Perhaps predictably, while most game developers will just list out a selection of defining games in the genre, for the longest journey Ragnar was looking as much to other media. For example, sequential art aka Comics. “Neil Gaiman’s The Sandman – huge influence,” Ragnar, “Anything by Neil Gaiman, really, plus other mid-to-late 90s Vertigo titles like Swamp Thing and Preacher. I was very much into comics and the contemporary fantasy genre at the time – I still am, and my next game will definitely reflect that. Another big influence was Buffy the Vampire Slayer; the TV show, not the movie. Some of April’s dialogue betrays my love affair with the work of Joss Whedon.” Of course, there were game influence. As well as Lucasarts and Sierra, he focuses in on Jane Jensen. “Personally I feel that the first Gabriel Knight was a guiding light, proving there was a real demand for mature stories with real characters,” he adds.

Upon completion, the longest journey wasn’t really over. It suffered a staggered release across dozens of countries. “It was out in Scandinavia a whole year before it was released in North America,” Ragnar explains, “We had a hard time finding local partners in every territory, especially the U.S., because no one there believed in adventures anymore”. The delay did have its advantages, however. “The delayed release allowed us to make a number of changes for the North American version, like additional dialogue, new animations, bugfixes… It actually worked out quite well,” he explains, finding the silver-lining, “And back then, pirating – especially with a game spanning four CDs – wasn’t as big problem as it is today, so I don’t think it hurt sales. On the contrary, I believe the – unintentional – staged release helped build a cult following in Europe, which was reflected in strong sales across the pond.”

Strong sales and a cult-following. Even when The Adventure Was Dead(tm), it was a game that attracted people who were happy to buy into its world and be moved. How does Ragnar believe the game had this effect. “I think it’s pretty simple: it was different,” he argues, “It was a game for a mature audience, with a focus on story and characters. Again, it was by no means revolutionary, but it resonated with players who felt there wasn’t anything for them out there. The game treated them as adults, and the players appreciated that.” Of course, the game wasn’t perfect. There’s much which makes Ragnar rueful. “The pacing was spotty, and there were a couple of really awful puzzles,” he notes, “Some players were stuck for days, weeks, and many just gave up. A number of the dialogues also went on and on. I hadn’t really gotten to grips with the concept of ‘editing’ yet.”

This strange and curious concept was one of the things the team tried to work into the second game. Other changes? “A more evenly paced story,” he answers, “Fewer obscure puzzles; we deliberately made Dreamfall easier based on feedback from players. A shorter game, because the truth is that a lot of people never finished The Longest Journey, and we want everyone to make it to the end of Dreamfall – that’s crucial. You wouldn’t write a book or make a movie if you didn’t think people would bother finishing it. With a game that’s all about story, the point isn’t necessarily to provide a tough challenge: it’s about motivating and guiding the player through the story, and that’s something that Dreamfall does a lot better than The Longest Journey”.

And as a veteran of an adventure and a new-adventure game, what advice would he offer to someone trying to the thankless task of merging narrative and gaming together? “Adventure games are all about story and characters. Start with that, and let the gameplay emerge naturally from the story,” Ragnar argues, “But be willing to make changes if the gameplay demands it later on, and don’t stick with something that doesn’t play well simply because it’s ‘what’s supposed to happen’. You’ll make a better game – and tell a better story – if you allow changes to happen during development.”

Ultimately, the best thing about creating the Longest Journey. The “thankless task” part of the previous paragraph’s just a lie. “I remember getting an e-mail from one guy who told me that the ending made him cry,” Ragnar recalls, “He’d never even cried at a movie before, let alone a computer game. It was a really strong and honest emotional reaction, and that mail made me realise we’d accomplished something valuable. Just touching one person that strongly – it made the whole thing worth it.”

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The Longest Journey

April Ryan is a young visual-arts student in Venice, Newport. She's been having some strange dreams lately, but little does she know about the important role she'll have in changing the futu... Read all April Ryan is a young visual-arts student in Venice, Newport. She's been having some strange dreams lately, but little does she know about the important role she'll have in changing the future. April Ryan is a young visual-arts student in Venice, Newport. She's been having some strange dreams lately, but little does she know about the important role she'll have in changing the future.

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• Trivia There are some indirect but obvious references to other adventure games, all of which happen to be from LucasArts. 1.: April has a toy monkey called "Guybrush" ( The Secret of Monkey Island (1990) and its sequels). 2. and 3.: There is a crossing of two streets in Newport which are named after two LucasArts protagonists: "Calavera Crossing" (Manny Calavera from Grim Fandango (1998) ) and "Threadbare Lane" (Bobbin Threadbare from Loom (1990) ). Also Cortez's, one of the main characters, real name is Manny, like Manny Calavera from Grim Fandango. His accent is also a reference to that game...

Cortez : So my secrets are being revealed, are they?

April : I wouldn't say that, because you're still a mystery to me. More so.

Cortez : Good. You see, señorita, mystery is important. To know everything, to know the whole truth, is dull. There is no magic in that. Magic is not knowing, magic is wondering about what and how and where.

• Alternate versions In the Spanish dubbed version, the character "Cortez" is renamed "Corthès", has a French accent instead of Spanish, and his real name is said to be Pierre Duval.
• Connections Followed by Dreamfall: The Longest Journey (2006)

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April Ryan is the main protagonist of The Longest Journey and one of the three main characters of Dreamfall: The Longest Journey and Dreamfall: Chapters .

April was an ordinary girl who was studying to be an artist in Venice, a neighborhood located in a city called Newport, which is located on the west coast of America in the world of Stark. Her life was turned upside down when she finds out that there was a realm of magic called Arcadia. When she finds out that she had a special ability called Shifting being able to open portals between worlds, she was a Shifter and she finds out that both worlds were in peril because the Guardian left the Tower, upsetting the Balance and she had to find a way to set things right in both worlds. Plus, she gets caught up in an an ancient conspiracy involving an organization called the Vanguard, a group that seeks to control both worlds and she plays a vital role in trying to save both worlds. At first, she was hesitant and she refused, but she was forced into being the chosen one and in the end with Dreamfall she died after getting stabbed in the stomach . At first, she was against helping others like Zoe, but she only helped because in the end, it was her destiny to die and be reborn and she also had what she thought was dreams and the lines between Stark and Arcadia started to blur due to the Balance being upset after the previous guardians stopped doing their jobs.

• 1 Personality:
• 2 Powers and Skills
• 3 Miscellaneous Information
• 5 External Links

Personality: [ ]

In The Longest Journey, she started out as a really nice but reluctant teenage girl and she was willing to help others. She was also very smart. However, in the game D reamfall: The Longest Journe y, she decided to stay in Arcadia and after 10 years, she gave up on helping others due to her friends nearly dying as a result of trying to save Arcadia and Stark and in the end she became a martyr after she was killed.

Powers and Skills [ ]

Shifting - April is capable of opening portals between Stark and Arcadia. She had her first experience with shifting in her sleep, but she was able to gain control of her abilities to shift throughout her journey to defeat the Chaos Vortex, Jacob McAllen, and the Vanguard.

Miscellaneous Information [ ]

Age: 18 ( The Longest Journey

Birthdate: April 14th 2191

Appearances [ ]

• The Longest Journey (1999)
• Dreamfall: The Longest Journey (2006)
• Dreamfall Chapters (2014)

External Links [ ]

• April on Wikipedia

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'Barbie': Release Date, Cast, Trailer, and Everything You Need to Know

The Barbie world is conquering the big screen.

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When did 'barbie' come out, was 'barbie' in movie theaters, is 'barbie' available for streaming, watch the trailers for 'barbie':, what is 'barbie' about, who stars in 'barbie', who made 'barbie', when and where did 'barbie' film, what is 'barbie' rated, who is doing the soundtrack for 'barbie', could there be a 'barbie' sequel.

Barbie might have had numerous animated films thus far, but never a live-action depiction of the pink car and the stylish outfits. Although the idea of turning the Mattel staple into a live-action had been discussed for over a decade, it took Greta Gerwig to sign her name onto the project and make it fly off the page. With none other than Margot Robbie playing the beloved doll, Barbie has become one of the biggest box office sensations of all time. We have got you covered with all the details that you need to know about one of the biggest movies of 2023.

Editor's Note: This article was updated on December 17, 2023.

Barbie suffers a crisis that leads her to question her world and her existence.

Warner Bros made an announcement at CinemaCon 2021 that the live-action film would land in theaters on July 21, 2023.

On its July release date, Barbie competed against another buzzy film, with a massive cast, known as Christopher Nolan 's Oppenheimer .

A nationwide event titled " Barbie Blowout Party" allowed some audience members to see the comedy a few days early, on July 19, 2023.

On a strange note, Barbie didn't have screenings in every territory, as the film was banned in Vietnam for featuring a map that depicts the "nine-dash-line."

Yes, Barbie was initially released exclusively in movie theaters.

Tickets for the highly anticipated film went on sale on June 21, 2023, and a promotional video was released to coincide with the announcement.

Barbie received an exclusive theatrical release. However, after the film's theatrical exclusive window ended, it became available to purchase and rent on various on-demand services starting on September 12, 2023.

Barbie became available to stream on Warner Bros' streaming service Max on December 15, 2023, exactly one year after the premiere of the teaser trailer in front of screenings for Avatar: The Way of Water .

Stream on Max

After months and months of anticipation, the first teaser trailer for Barbie graced the big screen on December 15, 2022 before select screenings of Avatar: The Way of Water . The trailer was then released online by Warner Bros. the next day, shattering the internet in the process.

The trailer begins with a clever homage to Stanley Kubrick 's 2001 A Space Odyssey completed by Richard Strauss's "Also sprach Zarathustra" blaring in the background. A group of young girls in raggedy clothing play with dolls, while Helen Mirren narrates lamenting that in the history of girlhood, there were only baby dolls, until one fateful day. The trailer then shows a giant Margot Robbie as Barbie in a black and white striped swimsuit, towering over the little girls and giving them a little wink. The girls then break into a frenzy, smashing their baby dolls in the process. One of the baby dolls is flung into the air and starts spinning before we smash cut to the title card. The music changes to something much peppier as we see a quick montage including Robbie's Barbie overlooking Barbieland, dance parties involving Simu Liu , our first look at Ryan Gosling 's Ken in action, and a quick look at Issa Rae cheering where a ribbon saying "President."

On April 4, 2023, after releasing a large number of amusing character posters , Warner Bros released the second official teaser trailer for Barbie and, much like the first teaser trailer, it didn't reveal much in terms of plot. What the trailer did give fans is a better look at more of the film's characters as well as the film's noticeably "PG-13" sense of humor, including jokes about Ken staying over at Barbie's house for a night and a hilarious extended clip of the Kens played by Gosling and Liu challenging each other to a "Beach Off" with Kingsley Ben-Adir 's Ken trying to support Gosling.

On May 25, 2023, Warner Bros finally released the full main trailer for Barbie . The trailer finally let the audience know about the film's story, as Barbie's world starts to fall apart, leading her and Ken on a quest to the real world, where she's pursued by the CEO of Mattel and seems heartbroken at the fact that people don't play with Barbies nearly as much as they used to. Set to a new original song for the movie (more on that later) as well as the Cass Elliot classic "Make Your Own Kind of Music," the trailer promises "If you love Barbie. This movie is for you. If you hate Barbie. This movie is for you."

On July 10, a Ken-centric trailer for Barbie was released, featuring Gosling singing the original song "I'm Just Ken."

Barbie follows the titular doll, living in Barbieland, where the Barbies rule everything, taking all the jobs and houses, while the Kens are off on the sidelines, simply living as accessories. When the stereotypical Barbie (Robbie) begins to have an existential crisis, including questioning her mortality, she journeys to the real world, where she bonds with the struggling mother and Mattel employee Gloria ( America Ferrera ). Ken ( Ryan Gosling ) follows along but ends up learning about the patriarchy and attempts to bring it back to Barbieland.

One of the reasons why this live-action is a constant topic of discussion is because, for the longest time, there was practically no concrete info about its story. All that we knew according to a few actors involved in the project, is that it would be an unprecedented take on the Barbie doll that we know so well.

While the Barbie brand might initially seem limiting in regard to creating a story, Margot Robbie and her team were clearly up for a challenge, with the actress saying:

"The IP, the name itself, people immediately have an idea of, 'Oh, Margot is playing Barbie, I know what that is,' but our goal is to be like, 'Whatever you're thinking, we're going to give you something totally different — the thing you didn't know you wanted'... Now, can we truly honor the IP and the fan base and also surprise people? Because if we can do all that and provoke a thoughtful conversation, then we're really firing on all cylinders."

Will Ferrell , who is part of the large and impressive ensemble of Barbie revealed some interesting details about the film while doing the press for Christmas musical comedy Spirited saying:

It is, in my humble opinion, the ultimate example of high art and low art. It's a loving homage to the brand and, at the same time, couldn't be more satirical—just an amazing comment on male patriarchy and women in society and why Barbie's criticized and yet why every little girl still wants to play with Barbie.

He also commented about his role in the film:

Boy, when I read it, I was like, 'This is fantastic.' I get to play the CEO of Mattel and be that guy who's just insensitive but weird and then, not to spoil anything, but…. Anyway, that's what excites me.

Even after the two teaser trailers, we still didn't know much about the plot of Barbie . Warner Bros did release this synopsis alongside the release of the second teaser.

WELCOME TO BARBIE LAND, did you bring your rollerblades? 🌟 #BarbieTheMovie only in theaters July 21. To live in Barbie Land is to be a perfect being in a perfect place. Unless you have a full-on existential crisis. Or you’re a Ken.

We received more concrete details about the plot of Barbie thanks to the most final trailer and an interview from Vogue with Margot Robbie . Robbie revealed that the reason why Barbie decided to leave Barbie Land is that she begins to have an existential crisis , which stems from questioning her own mortality and her feet falling flat.

Robbie also revealed that the Kens that live in Barbie Land don't own anything of their own.

"The Kens have a journey in front of them. In the beginning of the movie, nobody thinks about Ken. Nobody worries about Ken. Ken doesn’t have a house. Or a car. Or a job. Or any power. And, um, that is gonna be sort of unsustainable."

In an interview with Vogue UK , Academy Award-winning costume designer Jacqueline Durran ( Little Women ) teased that self-discovery would be a major theme of the film and helped her design the hundreds of different outfits worn throughout the movie:

“one aspect of the film is self-discovery – all of the Barbies but particularly Margot’s Barbie have a journey to go on, and we were able to choose elements of Barbie fashion that were appropriate for those scenes that also gave a subtle nod to her internal journey.”

Margot Robbie first became attached to the titular role of Barbie in October 2018 before officially signing on to the role nearly an entire year later in July 2019. While Robbie seems like a natural fit as the famous blonde-haired doll, Robbie says that she was also prepared to give the role to someone else :

"I didn’t want whoever our director was going to be – Greta being the first choice, but if she had said no – I didn’t want our director to feel pressured to put me in the role. So I was really upfront about like, 'I won’t be offended in the slightest. We could go to anyone. Whatever story you want to tell and whoever you want that to be, I support that. I’ve got skin in the game as a producer, I don’t have skin in the game as an actor, so be free with that choice.'"

In October 2021, the announcement was made that Ryan Gosling was in final negotiations for the role of Barbie's romantic interest, Ken. Although the actor initially rejected the project due to a packed filming schedule, the aftermath of the pandemic led him to have an open spot on his agenda to play the male doll on screen. In July 2022, Warner Bros. revealed Gosling's first picture with bleached blonde hair, tanned skin, and the traditional jean jacket. The shot lead to an instant commotion on the web and even more excitement over the upcoming Gerwig film.

In his press run for his leading man work in The Gray Man , Gosling talked about his pride and excitement with playing the iconic role of Ken.

“I felt like I was seeing myself. I felt seen. I think a lot of Kens will feel seen when they see this. Gotta do it for the Kens. Nobody plays with the Kens."

Though when the actor was asked about any details regarding his interpretation of Ken, Gosling stayed fairly mum.

"That Ken life is even harder than the ‘Gray Man’ life, I think. Ken’s got no money, he’s got no job, he’s got no car, he’s got no house. He’s going through some stuff. I can’t wait for people to see the film. That's all I can say, otherwise Mattel will come in and box me up."

The stacked ensemble cast for Barbie includes many recognizable faces playing different variations of the titular doll, including Kate McKinnon ( Saturday Night Live ) as the Weird Barbie, Emma Mackey ( Sex Education ) as Physicist Barbie, Alexandra Shipp ( X-Men: Apocalypse ) as Writer Barbie, Sharon Rooney ( Dumbo ) as Lawyer Barbie , Nicola Coughlan ( Bridgerton ) as Diplomat Barbie, Anna Cruz Kayne ( Little Women ) as Judge Barbie , Ritu Arya ( The Umbrella Academy ) as Journalist Barbie, Issa Rae ( Insecure ) as President Barbie, Grammy-Winning singer/songwriter Dua Lipa as Mermaid Barbie, Marisa Abela ( Industry ) as Teen Talk Barbie, and Hari Nef ( Assassination Nation ) as Doctor Barbie. The film also includes different variations of Ken played by Simu Liu ( Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings ), Kingsley Ben-Adir ( One Night in Miami ), Ncuti Gatwa ( Doctor Who ), and Scott Evans ( Grace and Frankie ). John Cena ( Peacemaker ) also stars as Merman Ken . Barbies and Kens aren't the only characters that live in Barbie Land with Michael Cera ( Scott Pilgrim vs. the World ) playing Ken's best friend Allan and Emerald Fennell ( The Crown ) playing the pregnant dollMidge.

As for the world of humans Will Ferrell stars as the CEO of Mattel , Connor Swindells ( Sex Education ) plays Aaron Dinkins, an intern at the toy company, Jamie Demetriou ( The Afterparty ) plays the CFO of Mattel, and Helen Mirren ( The Queen ) plays the narrator. America Ferrera ( Superstore ) and Ariana Greenblatt ( Avengers: Infinity War ) play the mother and daughter Gloria and Sasha.

Rhea Perlman ( Cheers ) also has a memorable role in the film as the ghost of Ruth Handler, the creator of Barbie.

A promotional video was released featuring Robbie, Liu, Ferrera, and Rae looking at their very own Barbie dolls .

Robbie also revealed that she initially wanted Wonder Woman herself, Gal Gadot , to play one of the Barbies in the film, but Gadot was unable to commit due to scheduling conflicts.

Before Robbie was cast in the lead role, Amy Schumer ( Trainwreck ) was going to star as Barbie in a different iteration of the film at Sony. Schumer would later drop out of the film due to creative differences and was later replaced by Academy Award winner Anne Hathaway ( Les Misérables ) who eventually also left the project. This version of the film would have followed a Barbie who is kicked out of Barbie Land after being deemed not perfect enough.

Academy Award nominee Greta Gerwig directed the film and co-wrote it alongside her partner, Academy Award nominee Noah Baumbach ( Marriage Story ). In addition to occupying the lead role, Robbie is also one of the producers behind the film through her Lucky Chap Productions label, alongside her husband and business partner Tom Ackerly . Also serving as producers on the film are Academy Award nominee David Heyman ( Paddington 2 ) and Academy Award nominee Robbie Brenner ( Dallas Buyers Club ). Executive producers include Michael Sharp ( Fantastic Beasts: The Secrets of Dumbledore ), Josey McNamara ( Promising Young Woman ), Mattel CEO Ynon Kreiz , Courtenay Valenti ( Elvis ), former Warner Bros chairman Toby Emmerich , and Cate Adams ( The Witches ).

Academy Award nominee Rodrigo Prieto ( The Irishman ) serves as the cinematographer, Nick Huoy ( Little Women ) serves as the editor, Glen Pratt ( Paddington 2 ) is the visual effects supervisor, and George Drakoulias ( Marriage Story ) is the music supervisor. Academy Award nominee Sarah Greenwood ( Beauty and the Beast ) served as the production designer and the costumes were designed by Jacqueline Durran.

Academy Award winner Alexandre Desplat ( The Grand Budapest Hotel ) was initially tapped to compose the film's score but reportedly dropped out and was replaced by Academy Award winners Mark Ronson and Andrew Wyatt ( A Star is Born ).

Both Robbie and Gosling praised Gerwig as a filmmaker during an interview with Collider's Perri Nemiroff , with Gosling saying:

"[S]he’s just such a brilliant person and such an inclusive person. She’s brilliant but incapable of being pretentious. I think what I admire so much about her work is she doesn’t allow herself to create a divide between drama and comedy, and she encourages everyone around her to do the same. So you end up mining places that are in the in-between. It feels very specific to her, but also something that you can relate to because it’s more like life."

Robbie compared Gerwig to the legendary Stanley Kubrick proclaiming:

"It’s like, “Who are my top 5 dream directors?” And Greta’s on that list because she is just an incredible dream director. She is an auteur. She is gonna be the [Stanley] Kubrick of our generation, or whoever she wants to be. She’s gonna be her own thing. It’s not even about female director or not, she just is one of the greats of our generation."

A Barbie movie had been in the works for a long time and was initially being set up in 2009 at Universal Pictures with Laurence Mark ( Jerry Maguire ) producing the project.

In 2014, the film moved over to Sony Pictures with Laurie Macdonald and Water F. Parkes ( Men in Black ) producing and Jenny Bicks ( The Greatest Showman ) penning the script. A year later, it was announced that Academy Award-winning screenwriter Diablo Cody ( Juno ) would be penning a new draft of the script and that Amy Pascal ( Spider-Man: Homecoming ) had come on board to produce. Sony ordered another rewrite of the script in 2015 ordering three different drafts from Lindsey Beer ( Sierra Burgess Is a Loser ), Bert V. Royal ( Easy A ), and Hillary Winston ( The Lego Ninjago Movie ). When Amy Schumer joined the film a few months later, she and her sister Kim Caramele ( Inside Amy Schumer ) rewrote the screenplay written by Winston.

After Schumer dropped out of the film and Anne Hathaway came out, the studio brought in Olivia Milch ( Ocean's Eight ) to rewrite the script and Alethea Jones ( Fun Mom Dinner ) to direct. Pre-production came to a standstill and the project ultimately moved over to Warner Bros.

The news about the Barbie movie was first reported back in 2018 with Patty Jenkins ( Wonder Woman ) being eyed to direct, but given the delays caused by the pandemic, the production process only kick-started after Academy Award nominees Noah Baumbach and Greta Gerwig finished working on White Noise .

Production on Barbie finally began in March 2022 at Warner Bros. Leavesden Studios in England.

A few months later, Hari Nef shared a picture on social media alongside the rest of the cast, confirming that the project had now wrapped.

Sarah Greenwood revealed in an interview that so much pink paint was used for the sets of the film that it led to an international shortage .

A featurette was released on June 16, 2023, that highlighted Greenwood's work, and gave an exclusive tour of the Barbie Dreamhouse used in the film.

Reshoots for the movie took place in Los Angeles, California in April 2023.

While Barbie is traditionally a very kid-friendly property, many were wondering if Gerwig and Baumbach would be bringing some of the edge that they brought to their films such as Frances Ha , White Noise , and Lady Bird . It seemed likely that the film would either be rated PG or PG-13, but definitely would not be G or R.

Barbie was officially rated PG-13 by the MPA for suggestive references and brief language .

While it was initially reported that Aqua 's classic song "Barbie Girl" wouldn't be played in Barbie , it looks like the creative team had a change of heart as they brought in Nicki Minaj and Ice Spice to do a new version of the hit song titled "Barbie World" alongside Aqua. The song was officially released online on June 23, 2023.

Dua Lipa, who also has a supporting role in the film, recorded an original song for the film titled "Dance the Night," which can briefly be heard at the end of the first teaser trailer. On May 22, the artist officially announced that the single would be released on May 26 . The song can also be heard during the first half of the full trailer.

On June 1, the second single from the film, "WATATI" by Karol G (feat. Aldo Ranks ), was released. The third single "Angel" by PinkPanthress was released on June 9. The fifth single "Speed Drive" by Charli XCX was released on June 30, while the sixth single "Barbie Dreams" by Fifty Fifty (featuring Kaliii ) was released on July 6.

The film's soundtrack Barbie: The Album also includes songs by Ava Max , Dominic Fike , GAYLE , HAIM , Kali , Khalid , Lizzo , Tame Impala , and The Kid Laroi , with more "Barbies & Kens to be announced." The soundtrack also features a song sung by Ryan Gosling himself called "I'm Just Ken." The soundtrack was released on July 21, 2023.

On July 6, it was announced that Academy Award winner and Grammy winner Billie Eilish had created a song for the movie titled "What Was I Made For?", which was released on July 13.

Songs on the album include "Pink" (Lizzo), "Speed Drive" (Charlie XCX), "Journey To The Real World" (Tame Impala), "Hey Blondie" (Dominic Fike), "Home" (Haim), "Forever & Again" (The Kid LAROI), "Silver Platter" (Khalid), "butterflies" (GAYLE), "Choose Your Fighter" (Ava Max), and "Barbie Dreams" (FIFTY FIFTY Feat. Kail).

A sequel to Barbie is reportedly already in the works at Warner Bros and Mattel, with Robbie confirming that discussions are already underway. Although Robbie also stressed that nothing is set in stone as of set.

“It could go a million different directions from this point. But I think you fall into a bit of a trap if you try and set up a first movie whilst also planning for sequels.”

6 audiobooks for your summer travels, based on the length of your trip

Our listening suggestions to while away the hours on the road: Books by Tana French, Bill Bryson, Alice Randall, Mark Twain and more.

If you’re thinking of taking a road trip this summer, audiobooks offer a more enlightening means of entertainment than bickering and spotting yellow cars. To help you survive the traffic (and each other), here are six books of various lengths and on various subjects: one especially suited to the endless season of political campaigns, one that invites you into the world of Black country music, another on the storied life of Pete Rose and a couple that venture across the sea. No matter how long your journey, you will be immersed in a good story.

‘The Hunter,’ by Tana French (16.5 hours)

French’s novel is made for long-distance driving. A sequel to “The Searcher,” the book is set in the Irish farming community of Ardnakelty and stars retired Chicago cop Cal Hooper and young Trey Reddy. Once a near-feral child of 13, Trey is now a more approachable 15. Her father, “a twinkly-eyed little twerp,” has returned from London with a dangerous scam in mind. The plot takes a long time to get going, but the dialogue is spectacularly good. Narrator Roger Clark delivers a highly entertaining torrent of Irish gabbiness that is flawless in pacing, manner and accents, Irish and American. Further, he switches between speakers with such remarkable deftness that it’s hard to believe there is only one voice at work. As an entertainment, this audiobook is far superior to the print version and, in sums. (Penguin Audio)

‘Charlie Hustle: The Rise and Fall of Pete Rose, and the Last Glory Days of Baseball,’ by Keith O’Brien (15 hours)

O’Brien’s superb biography is perfect for a round trip from D.C. to Cincinnati to visit the baseball home of Pete Rose, one of the game’s greatest players. The book details the life of an athlete who was gritty and determined on the field and a reckless gambler, womanizer and pill-popping braggart off it. Ellen Adair narrates this deeply researched book at a nice, listenable pace, delivering exhilarating baseball action, suspenseful at-bats, World Series heroics, murky underworld shenanigans and, ultimately, a fine instance of Major League Baseball’s hypocrisy. Despite having sold its soul to the gambling gods, the organization still punishes the man who beat Ty Cobb’s record of 4,189 major league hits, banning him for life from baseball and the Hall of Fame. (Random House Audio)

‘In a Sunburned Country,’ by Bill Bryson (12 hours)

No talk of travel is complete without a word from Bill Bryson, a much-traveled writer who never seems happier than when he comes across a fresh example of nature’s hideous perils. “ In a Sunburned Country ” is his account of his travels in the 1990s through Australia, home to the world’s 10 most lethal snakes.

Also covered with celebratory horror are the box jellyfish (“deadliest creature on earth”), the blue-ringed octopus (near-instant death by electrocution), venomous red-back and funnel-web spiders, saltwater crocodiles, human-size razor-clawed cassowaries, and, of course, sharks. This, incidentally, is a country whose 17th prime minister disappeared, carried away by a riptide. Bryson reads the book himself, his voice reflecting his appreciation of mishap and confusion, but also of Australians and their expansive, optimistic ways. (Random House Audio)

‘My Black Country: A Journey Through Country Music’s Black Past, Present, and Future’ by Alice Randall (11 hours)

Randall is perhaps better known for the best-selling “The Wind Done Gone” — a retelling of “Gone With the Wind” — than for her successful career in Black country music. A hard-to-define genre, Black country is suddenly a much-discussed and disputed topic thanks to Beyoncé’s “Cowboy Carter.” Randall’s book should enrich the conversation. The author narrates her memoir and tour through Black country music in the time it would take you to drive from Washington to Nashville. She covers pivotal Black country musicians — Lil Hardin, Charley Pride and many others who influenced her — noting their contributions, styles and many encounters with racism. She also finds startling connections between Black creators and country music, including echoes of a 19th-century song celebrating Frederick Douglass’s escape from slavery in Bob Wills’s “Take Me Back to Tulsa.” And she has strange tales to tell — among them her struggle, with the help of Roy Orbison, to dress a chicken in a black suit to resemble Johnny Cash. (Simon & Schuster Audio)

Summer reading

‘Great Expectations,’ by Vinson Cunningham (7 hours)

Cunningham’s novel dishes up a fictional feast for political junkies , especially those nostalgic for the campaign of 2008. A lucky break gets David Hammond, a young Black college dropout, a job working on the presidential campaign of a charismatic candidate who resembles Barack Obama. David’s job is fundraising — courting the wealthy and setting up meetings where access is measured in dollars. He tracks the candidate’s approach from the “Black-pulpit touch” of the initial announcement to easy geniality on the road before the convention and, eventually, to a commanding, all-business demeanor once he’s the party’s candidate. Along the way, David’s personal life is absorbed by politics and an affair with a high-powered political operative. Aaron Goodson, a talented voice-over actor, narrates the novel in a smooth, pleasant voice, sounding at times like the actual candidate — and former president — himself. (Random House Audio)

‘The Irrepressible Wit of Mark Twain’ (3 hours)

Let’s say there’s no traffic — we can dream — or you are just taking a quick day trip: “ The Irrepressible Wit of Mark Twain ” should fit the bill. Narrator Cathy Dobson brings a friendly, English-accented voice to these five entertaining pieces, including Twain’s magnanimous scheme for reforming German in “The Awful German Language.” He repeatedly advises economy, including instructing “a speaker to stop when he is done, and not hang a string of those useless ‘haben sind gewesen gehabt haben geworden seins’ to the end of his oration.” (Red Door Audiobooks)

Katherine A. Powers reviews audiobooks every month for The Washington Post.

More from Book World

Love everything about books? Make sure to subscribe to our Book Club newsletter , where Ron Charles guides you through the literary news of the week.

Check out our coverage of this year’s Pulitzer winners: Jayne Anne Phillips won the fiction prize for her novel “ Night Watch .” The nonfiction prize went to Nathan Thrall, for “ A Day in the Life of Abed Salama .” Cristina Rivera Garza received the memoir prize for “ Liliana’s Invincible Summer .” And Jonathan Eig received the biography prize for his “ King: A Life .”

Best books of 2023: See our picks for the 10 best books of 2023 or dive into the staff picks that Book World writers and editors treasured in 2023. Check out the complete lists of 50 notable works for fiction and the top 50 nonfiction books of last year.

Find your favorite genre: Three new memoirs tell stories of struggle and resilience, while five recent historical novels offer a window into other times. Audiobooks more your thing? We’ve got you covered there, too . If you’re looking for what’s new, we have a list of our most anticipated books of 2024 . And here are 10 noteworthy new titles that you might want to consider picking up this April.

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For more audio journalism and storytelling, download New York Times Audio , a new iOS app available for news subscribers.

The Possible Collapse of the U.S. Home Insurance System

A times investigation found climate change may now be a concern for every homeowner in the country..

This transcript was created using speech recognition software. While it has been reviewed by human transcribers, it may contain errors. Please review the episode audio before quoting from this transcript and email [email protected] with any questions.

From “The New York Times,” I’m Sabrina Tavernise. And this is “The Daily.”

[MUSIC PLAYING]

Today, my colleague, Christopher Flavelle, on a “Times” investigation into one of the least known and most consequential effects of climate change — insurance — and why it may now be a concern for every homeowner in the country.

It’s Wednesday, May 15.

So, Chris, you and I talked a while ago about how climate change was really wreaking havoc in the insurance market in Florida. You’ve just done an investigation that takes a look into the insurance markets more broadly and more deeply. Tell us about it.

Yeah, so I cover climate change, in particular the way climate shocks affect different parts of American life. And insurance has become a really big part of that coverage. And Florida is a great example. As hurricanes have gotten worse and more frequent, insurers are paying out more and more money to rebuild people’s homes. And that’s driving up insurance costs and ultimately driving up the cost of owning a home in Florida.

So we’re already seeing that climate impact on the housing market in Florida. My colleagues and I started to think, well, could it be that that kind of disruption is also happening in other states, not just in the obvious coastal states but maybe even through the middle of the US? So we set out to find out just how much it is happening, how much that Florida turmoil has, in fact, become really a contagion that is spreading across the country.

So how did you go about reporting this? I mean, where did you start?

All we knew at the start of this was that there was reason to think this might be a problem. If you just look at how the federal government tracks disasters around the country, there’s been a big increase almost every year in the number and severity of all kinds of disasters around the country. So we thought, OK, it’s worth trying to find out, what does that mean for insurers?

The problem is getting data on the insurance industry is actually really hard. There’s no federal regulation. There’s no government agency you can go to that holds this data. If you talk to the insurers directly, they tend to be a little reluctant to share information about what they’re going through. So we weren’t sure where to go until, finally, we realized the best people to ask are the people whose job it is to gauge the financial health of insurance companies.

Those are rating agencies. In particular, there’s one rating company called AM Best, whose whole purpose is to tell investors how healthy an insurance company is.

Whoa. So this is way down in the nuts and bolts of the US insurance industry.

Right. This is a part of the broader economy that most people would never experience. But we asked them to do something special for us. We said, hey, can you help us find the one number that would tell us reporters just how healthy or unhealthy this insurance market is state by state over time? And it turns out, there is just such a number. It’s called a combined ratio.

OK, plain English?

Plain English, it is the ratio of revenue to costs, how much money these guys take in for homeowner’s insurance and how much they pay out in costs and losses. You want your revenue to be higher than your costs. If not, you’re in trouble.

So what did you find out?

Well, we got that number for every state, going back more than a decade. And what it showed us was our suspicions were right. This market turmoil that we were seeing in Florida and California has indeed been spreading across the country. And in fact, it turns out that in 18 states, last year, the homeowner’s insurance market lost money. And that’s a big jump from 5 or 10 years ago and spells real trouble for insurance and for homeowners and for almost every part of the economy.

So the contagion was real.

Right. This is our first window showing us just how far that contagion had spread. And one of the really striking things about this data was it showed the contagion had spread to places that I wouldn’t have thought of as especially prone to climate shocks — for example, a lot of the Midwest, a lot of the Southeast. In fact, if you think of a map of the country, there was no state between Pennsylvania and the Dakotas that didn’t lose money on homeowner’s insurance last year.

So just huge parts of the middle of the US have become unprofitable for homeowner’s insurance. This market is starting to buckle under the cost of climate change.

And this is all happening really fast. When we did the Florida episode two years ago, it was a completely new phenomenon and really only in Florida. And now it’s everywhere.

Yeah. And that’s exactly what’s so striking here. The rate at which this is becoming, again, a contagion and spreading across the country is just demolishing the expectations of anyone I’ve spoken to. No one thought that this problem would affect so much of the US so quickly.

So in these states, these new places that the contagion has spread to, what exactly is happening that’s causing the insurance companies to fold up shop?

Yeah. Something really particular is happening in a lot of these states. And it’s worth noting how it’s surprised everyone. And what that is, is formally unimportant weather events, like hailstorms or windstorms, those didn’t used to be the kind of thing that would scare insurance companies. Obviously, a big problem if it destroys your home or damages your home. But for insurers, it wasn’t going to wipe them out financially.

Right. It wasn’t just a complete and utter wipeout that the company would then have to pony up a lot of money for.

Exactly. And insurers call them secondary perils, sort of a belittling term, something other than a big deal, like a hurricane.

These minor league weather events.

Right. But those are becoming so frequent and so much more intense that they can cause existential threats for insurance companies. And insurers are now fleeing states not because of hurricanes but because those former things that were small are now big. Hailstorms, wildfires in some places, previous annoyances are becoming real threats to insurers.

Chris, what’s the big picture on what insurers are actually facing? What’s happening out there numbers-wise?

This is a huge threat. In terms of the number of states where this industry is losing money, it’s more than doubled from 10 years ago to basically a third of the country. The amount they’re losing is enormous. In some states, insurers are paying out $1.25 or even $1.50 for every dollar they bring in, in revenue, which is totally unsustainable.

And the result is insurers are making changes. They are pulling back from these markets. They’re hiking premiums. And often, they’re just dropping customers. And that’s where this becomes real, not just for people who surf balance sheets and trade in the stock market. This is becoming real for homeowners around the country, who all of a sudden increasingly can’t get insurance.

So, Chris, what’s the actual implication? I mean, what happens when people in a state can’t get insurance for their homes?

Getting insurance for a home is crucial if you want to sell or buy a home. Most people can’t buy a home without a mortgage. And banks won’t issue a mortgage without home insurance. So if you’ve got a home that insurance company doesn’t want to cover, you got a real problem. You need to find insurance, or that home becomes very close to unsellable.

And as you get fewer buyers, the price goes down. So this doesn’t just hurt people who are paying for these insurance premiums. It hurts people who want to sell their homes. It even could hurt, at some point, whole local economies. If home values fall, governments take in less tax revenue. That means less money for schools and police. It also means people who get hit by disasters and have to rebuild their homes all of a sudden can’t, because their insurance isn’t available anymore. It’s hard to overstate just how big a deal this is.

And is that actually happening, Chris? I mean, are housing markets being dragged down because of this problem with the insurance markets right now?

Anecdotally, we’ve got reports that in places like Florida and Louisiana and maybe in parts of California, the difficulty of getting insurance, the crazy high cost of insurance is starting to depress demand because not everyone can afford to pay these really high costs, even if they have insurance. But what we wanted to focus on with this story was also, OK, we know where this goes eventually. But where is it beginning? What are the places that are just starting to feel these shocks from the insurance market?

And so I called around and asked insurance agents, who are the front lines of this. They’re the ones who are struggling to find insurance for homeowners. And I said, hey, is there one place that I should go if I want to understand what it looks like to homeowners when all of a sudden insurance becomes really expensive or you can’t even find it? And those insurance agents told me, if you want to see what this looks like in real life, go to a little town called Marshalltown in the middle of Iowa.

We’ll be right back.

So, Chris, you went to Marshalltown, Iowa. What did you find?

Even before I got to Marshalltown, I had some idea I was in the right spot. When I landed in Des Moines and went to rent a car, the nice woman at the desk who rented me a car, she said, what are you doing here? I said, I’m here to write a story about people in Iowa who can’t get insurance because of storms. She said, oh, yeah, I know all about that. That’s a big problem here.

Even the rental car lady.

Even the rental car lady knew something was going on. And so I got into my rental car and drove about an hour northeast of Des Moines, through some rolling hills, to this lovely little town of Marshalltown. Marshalltown is a really cute, little Midwestern town with old homes and a beautiful courthouse in the town square. And when I drove through, I couldn’t help noticing all the roofs looked new.

What does that tell you?

Turns out Marshalltown, despite being a pastoral image of Midwestern easy living, was hit by two really bad disasters in recent years — first, a devastating tornado in 2018 and then, in 2020, what’s called a derecho, a straight-line wind event that’s also just enormously damaging. And the result was lots of homes in this small town got severely damaged in a short period of time. And so when you drive down, you see all these new roofs that give you the sense that something’s going on.

So climate had come to Marshalltown?

Exactly. A place that had previously seemed maybe safe from climate change, if there is such a thing, all of a sudden was not. So I found an insurance agent in Marshalltown —

We talked to other agents but haven’t talked to many homeowners.

— named Bobby Shomo. And he invited me to his office early one morning and said, come meet some people. And so I parked on a quiet street outside of his office, across the street from the courthouse, which also had a new roof, and went into his conference room and met a procession of clients who all had versions of the same horror story.

It was more — well more of double.

A huge reduction in coverage with a huge price increase.

Some people had faced big premium hikes.

I’m just a little, small business owner. So every little bit I do feel.

They had so much trouble with their insurance company.

I was with IMT Insurance forever. And then when I moved in 2020, Bobby said they won’t insure a pool.

Some people had gotten dropped.

Where we used to see carriers canceling someone for frequency of three or four or five claims, it’s one or two now.

Some people couldn’t get the coverage they needed. But it was versions of the same tale, which is all of a sudden, having homeowner’s insurance in Marshalltown was really difficult. But I wanted to see if it was bigger than just Marshalltown. So the next day, I got back in my car and drove east to Cedar Rapids, where I met another person having a version of the same problem, a guy named Dave Langston.

Tell me about Dave.

Dave lives in a handsome, modest, little townhouse on a quiet cul-de-sac on a hill at the edge of Cedar Rapids. He’s the president of his homeowners association. There’s 17 homes on this little street. And this is just as far as you could get from a danger zone. It looks as safe as could be. But in January, they got a letter from the company that insures him and his neighbors, saying his policy was being canceled, even though it wasn’t as though they’d just been hit by some giant storm.

So then what was the reason they gave?

They didn’t give a reason. And I think people might not realize, insurers don’t have to give a reason. Insurance policies are year to year. And if your insurance company decides that you’re too much of a risk or your neighborhood is too much of a risk or your state is too much of a risk, they can just leave. They can send you a letter saying, forget it. We’re canceling your insurance. There’s almost no protection people have.

And in this case, the reason was that this insurance company was losing too much money in Iowa and didn’t want to keep on writing homeowner’s insurance in the state. That was the situation that Dave shared with tens of thousands of people across the state that were all getting similar letters.

What made Dave’s situation a little more challenging was that he couldn’t get new insurance. He tried for months through agent after agent after agent. And every company told him the same thing. We won’t cover you. Even though these homes are perfectly safe in a safe part of the state, nobody would say yes. And it took them until basically two days before their insurance policy was going to run out until they finally found new coverage that was far more expensive and far more bare-bones than what they’d had.

But at least it was something.

It was something. But the problem was it wasn’t that good. Under this new policy, if Dave’s street got hit by another big windstorm, the damage from that storm and fixing that damage would wipe out all the savings set aside by these homeowners. The deductible would be crushingly high — $120,000 — to replace those roofs if the worst happened because the insurance money just wouldn’t cover anywhere close to the cost of rebuilding.

He said to me, we didn’t do anything wrong. This is just what insurance looks like today. And today, it’s us in Cedar Rapids. Everyone, though, is going to face a situation like this eventually. And Dave is right. I talked to insurance agents around the country. And they confirmed for me that this kind of a shift towards a new type of insurance, insurance that’s more expensive and doesn’t cover as much and makes it harder to rebuild after a big disaster, it’s becoming more and more common around the country.

So, Chris, if Dave and the people you spoke to in Iowa were really evidence that your hunch was right, that the problem is spreading and rapidly, what are the possible fixes here?

The fix that people seem most hopeful about is this idea that, what if you could reduce the risk and cause there to be less damage in the first place? So what some states are doing is they’re trying to encourage homeowners to spend more money on hardening their home or adding a new roof or, if it’s a wildfire zone, cut back the vegetation, things that can reduce your risk of having really serious losses. And to help pay for that, they’re telling insurers, you’ve got to offer a discount to people who do that.

And everyone who works in this field says, in theory, that’s the right approach. The problem is, number one, hardening a home costs a fantastic amount of money. So doing this at scale is hugely expensive. Number two, it takes a long time to actually get enough homes hardened in this way that you can make a real dent for insurance companies. We’re talking about years or probably decades before that has a real effect, if it ever works.

OK. So that sounds not particularly realistic, given the urgency and the timeline we’re on here. So what else are people looking at?

Option number two is the government gets involved. And instead of most Americans buying home insurance from a private company, they start buying it from government programs that are designed to make sure that people, even in risky places, can still buy insurance. That would be just a gargantuan undertaking. The idea of the government providing homeowner’s insurance because private companies can’t or won’t would lead to one of the biggest government programs that exists, if we could even do it.

So huge change, like the federal government actually trying to write these markets by itself by providing homeowner’s insurance. But is that really feasible?

Well, in some areas, we’re actually already doing it. The government already provides flood insurance because for decades, most private insurers have not wanted to cover flood. It’s too risky. It’s too expensive. But that change, with governments taking over that role, creates a new problem of its own because the government providing flood insurance that you otherwise couldn’t get means people have been building and building in flood-prone areas because they know they can get that guaranteed flood insurance.

Interesting. So that’s a huge new downside. The government would be incentivizing people to move to places that they shouldn’t be.

That’s right. But there’s even one more problem with that approach of using the government to try to solve this problem, which is these costs keep growing. The number of billion-dollar disasters the US experiences every year keeps going up. And at some point, even if the government pays the cost through some sort of subsidized insurance, what happens when that cost is so great that we can no longer afford to pay it? That’s the really hard question that no official can answer.

So that’s pretty doomsday, Chris. Are we looking at the end of insurance?

I think it’s fair to say that we’re looking at the end of insurance as we know it, the end of insurance that means most Americans can rest assured that if they get hit by a disaster, their insurance company will provide enough money they can rebuild. That idea might be going away. And what it shows is maybe the threat of climate change isn’t quite what we thought.

Maybe instead of climate change wrecking communities in the form of a big storm or a wildfire or a flood, maybe even before those things happen, climate change can wreck communities by something as seemingly mundane and even boring as insurance. Maybe the harbinger of doom is not a giant storm but an anodyne letter from your insurance company, saying, we’re sorry to inform you we can no longer cover your home.

Maybe the future of climate change is best seen not by poring over weather data from NOAA but by poring over spreadsheets from rating firms, showing the profitability from insurance companies, and how bit by bit, that money that they’re losing around the country tells its own story. And the story is these shocks are actually already here.

Chris, as always, terrifying to talk to you.

Always a pleasure, Sabrina.

Here’s what else you should know today. On Tuesday, the United Nations has reclassified the number of women and children killed in Gaza, saying that it does not have enough identifying information to know exactly how many of the total dead are women and children. The UN now estimates that about 5,000 women and about 8,000 children have been killed, figures that are about half of what it was previously citing. The UN says the numbers dropped because it is using a more conservative estimate while waiting for information on about 10,000 other dead Gazans who have not yet been identified.

And Mike Johnson, the Speaker of the House, gave a press conference outside the court in Lower Manhattan, where Michael Cohen, the former fixer for Donald Trump, was testifying for a second day, answering questions from Trump’s lawyers. Trump is bound by a gag order. So Johnson joined other stand-ins for the former president to discredit the proceedings. Johnson, one of the most important Republicans in the country, attacked Cohen but also the trial itself, calling it a sham and political theater.

Today’s episode was produced by Nina Feldman, Shannon Lin, and Jessica Cheung. It was edited by MJ Davis Lin, with help from Michael Benoist, contains original music by Dan Powell, Marion Lozano, and Rowan Niemisto, and was engineered by Alyssa Moxley. Our theme music is by Jim Brunberg and Ben Landsverk of Wonderly.

That’s it for “The Daily.” I’m Sabrina Tavernise. See you tomorrow.

• May 24, 2024   •   25:18 Whales Have an Alphabet
• May 23, 2024   •   34:24 I.C.C. Prosecutor Requests Warrants for Israeli and Hamas Leaders
• May 22, 2024   •   23:20 Biden’s Open War on Hidden Fees
• May 21, 2024   •   24:14 The Crypto Comeback
• May 20, 2024   •   31:51 Was the 401(k) a Mistake?
• May 19, 2024   •   33:23 The Sunday Read: ‘Why Did This Guy Put a Song About Me on Spotify?’
• May 17, 2024   •   51:10 The Campus Protesters Explain Themselves
• May 16, 2024   •   30:47 The Make-or-Break Testimony of Michael Cohen
• May 15, 2024   •   27:03 The Possible Collapse of the U.S. Home Insurance System
• May 14, 2024   •   35:20 Voters Want Change. In Our Poll, They See It in Trump.
• May 13, 2024   •   27:46 How Biden Adopted Trump’s Trade War With China
• May 10, 2024   •   27:42 Stormy Daniels Takes the Stand

Hosted by Sabrina Tavernise

Featuring Christopher Flavelle

Produced by Nina Feldman ,  Shannon M. Lin and Jessica Cheung

Edited by MJ Davis Lin

With Michael Benoist

Original music by Dan Powell ,  Marion Lozano and Rowan Niemisto

Engineered by Alyssa Moxley

Listen and follow The Daily Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Amazon Music | YouTube

Across the United States, more frequent extreme weather is starting to cause the home insurance market to buckle, even for those who have paid their premiums dutifully year after year.

Christopher Flavelle, a climate reporter, discusses a Times investigation into one of the most consequential effects of the changes.

On today’s episode

Christopher Flavelle , a climate change reporter for The New York Times.

Background reading

As American insurers bleed cash from climate shocks , homeowners lose.

See how the home insurance crunch affects the market in each state .

Here are four takeaways from The Times’s investigation.

There are a lot of ways to listen to The Daily. Here’s how.

We aim to make transcripts available the next workday after an episode’s publication. You can find them at the top of the page.

Christopher Flavelle contributed reporting.

The Daily is made by Rachel Quester, Lynsea Garrison, Clare Toeniskoetter, Paige Cowett, Michael Simon Johnson, Brad Fisher, Chris Wood, Jessica Cheung, Stella Tan, Alexandra Leigh Young, Lisa Chow, Eric Krupke, Marc Georges, Luke Vander Ploeg, M.J. Davis Lin, Dan Powell, Sydney Harper, Mike Benoist, Liz O. Baylen, Asthaa Chaturvedi, Rachelle Bonja, Diana Nguyen, Marion Lozano, Corey Schreppel, Rob Szypko, Elisheba Ittoop, Mooj Zadie, Patricia Willens, Rowan Niemisto, Jody Becker, Rikki Novetsky, John Ketchum, Nina Feldman, Will Reid, Carlos Prieto, Ben Calhoun, Susan Lee, Lexie Diao, Mary Wilson, Alex Stern, Dan Farrell, Sophia Lanman, Shannon Lin, Diane Wong, Devon Taylor, Alyssa Moxley, Summer Thomad, Olivia Natt, Daniel Ramirez and Brendan Klinkenberg.

Our theme music is by Jim Brunberg and Ben Landsverk of Wonderly. Special thanks to Sam Dolnick, Paula Szuchman, Lisa Tobin, Larissa Anderson, Julia Simon, Sofia Milan, Mahima Chablani, Elizabeth Davis-Moorer, Jeffrey Miranda, Renan Borelli, Maddy Masiello, Isabella Anderson and Nina Lassam.

Christopher Flavelle is a Times reporter who writes about how the United States is trying to adapt to the effects of climate change. More about Christopher Flavelle

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