The Atlantic

Sarah Silverman Gets Introspective With <i>A Speck of Dust</i>

With her days of shocking punchlines behind her, the stand-up comedian has come out with an assured new Netflix special.
Source: Netflix

In her heyday, Sarah Silverman was one of the edgiest stand-up comics in America. When her first special, , came out in 2005, focused on how scandalous and transgressive it was; the writers seemed stunned to witness a comedian (a female one, at that!) kidding about the Holocaust, rape, AIDS, and disabilities on stage. That hype, of course, almost immediately built into a backlash that never fully faded away: Silverman has always been

You’re reading a preview, subscribe to read more.

More from The Atlantic

The Atlantic4 min read
Hayao Miyazaki’s Anti-war Fantasia
Once, in a windowless conference room, I got into an argument with a minor Japanese-government official about Hayao Miyazaki. This was in 2017, three years after the director had announced his latest retirement from filmmaking. His final project was
The Atlantic7 min readAmerican Government
The Americans Who Need Chaos
This is Work in Progress, a newsletter about work, technology, and how to solve some of America’s biggest problems. Sign up here. Several years ago, the political scientist Michael Bang Petersen, who is based in Denmark, wanted to understand why peop
The Atlantic4 min read
KitchenAid Did It Right 87 Years Ago
My KitchenAid stand mixer is older than I am. My dad bought the white-enameled machine 35 years ago, during a brief first marriage. The bits of batter crusted into its cracks could be from the pasta I made yesterday or from the bread he made then. I

Related Books & Audiobooks