Lifestyle
'Come and Get It': This fictional account of college has plenty of truth baked in
So few people, so much press: Only a teeny tiny fraction of the U.S. population has a degree from an Ivy League institution … and yet we hear about those schools an awful lot. Above, an entrance gate to Harvard Yard.
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So few people, so much press: Only a teeny tiny fraction of the U.S. population has a degree from an Ivy League institution … and yet we hear about those schools an awful lot. Above, an entrance gate to Harvard Yard.
Scott Eisen/Getty Images
“There are few things in which the media and the sorts of people who spend a lot of time focused on the media show more attention than the machinations of Ivy League universities.”
That’s Philip Bump of The Washington Post, writing in December 2023 about why he decided to try to come up with a rough estimate of how the Ivy League fits into the higher education picture in the United States. His conclusion: Roughly — roughly — “0.21 percent of the U.S. population has an Ivy League degree.” And yet, if you were to read higher education coverage in larger outlets like The New York Times, you might think not only that a lot of people had Ivy League degrees, but that of the people with college degrees, a lot of them come from the Ivy League. In fact, the Ivy League educates a tiny, tiny fraction of college students, who are themselves only a segment of the population.
You might also think, from reading only headlines of stories about college life, that it is mostly about affirmative action, “free speech” debates, protest, interprofessorial intrigue, and football. These things are all important — or, in a couple of cases, they can be important, depending on context. (Some incidents involving intrigue are more significant than others. Likewise football.) But they are not the whole of college life.
To say “there is more to college” is not to substitute sunny anecdotal tributes to frolf and a cappella singing and drinking until you throw up extravagantly on the lawn of a shared off-campus house. It is not to say there is more and it is better; it is simply to say there is more.
Kiley Reid made a huge splash with her 2019 novel Such a Fun Age, about a young Black woman who becomes a babysitter for a wealthy white family and ends up tangled in a complex tale involving them and her (also white) boyfriend. The book was a bestseller, and it was longlisted for the Booker Prize — a good example of critical and commercial success going hand in hand.
Reid’s new book, which arrives to great anticipation on January 30, is Come and Get It, and it’s a campus novel. (No spoilers of any significance, I promise.) It’s about Millie, a young Black woman working as an RA at the University of Arkansas, who meets and becomes fond of a visiting white professor named Agatha, who’s come to the university to interview students for a book about weddings. Millie arranges the initial interviews for Agatha, and the story unfolds from there: Millie’s story, Agatha’s story, and the messy lives of three young women who share a corner suite in Millie’s dorm.
In this story, you find some of the non-headline-making elements of college. At first, in fact, it seems like a fly-on-the-wall slice of life. Reid nails the anxiety about the future (and the present) for some students and the unperturbed overconfidence for others, depending largely on who has needed to develop defenses and who has not. That, of course, means taking into account the contexts of race and class and sexuality, as well as social skills and trauma history. She nails the heightened interpersonal conflicts that grow in cramped shared rooms like mildew on the walls. She burrows deeply into one young woman’s pain and the lessons she learns about what it means to have other people invited into that pain to be spectators.
And, of course, this all does not take place at an Ivy League school. It takes place at the University of Arkansas, which had more than 27,000 undergraduates in the fall of 2023. (Princeton says they have 5,590. Of course, Ohio State has something like 50,000.)
It seems for a while like nothing much is happening other than a forensic examination of these characters, but by the end, the small unkindnesses and transactional relationships and power differentials have brought the story to a pinpoint focus on the transformative power of this very crucial time in the lives of young people, and the responsibility others have to treat them with care.
It is not an upbeat view of higher education, but despite the fact that the story is fictional, the way it looks at more mundane parts of day-to-day life at the kind of school so many people actually attend but rarely read about makes it feel true — true in a way a thousand reported stories about inviting and uninviting campus speakers to the same tiny handful of places strangely can’t.
This piece also appeared in NPR’s Pop Culture Happy Hour newsletter. Sign up for the newsletter so you don’t miss the next one, plus get weekly recommendations about what’s making us happy.
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Ariana Grande arrives at the 83rd Golden Globes on Sunday, Jan. 11, 2026, at the Beverly Hilton in Beverly Hills, Calif.
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The brightest stars in TV and film kicked off the 83rd annual Golden Globes tonight in Beverly Hills, Calif. with Ariana Grande, Noah Wyle, Teyana Taylor and George Clooney are just some the names who walked the red carpet. This year’s ceremony was hosted by comedian Nikki Glaser.
Here’s a glimpse of what some of the attendees are wearing tonight.
Michael B. Jordan
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Ryan Coogler and Zinzi Evans
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Jean Smart
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Teyana Taylor
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Jenna Ortega
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Owen Cooper
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Sara Wells and Noah Wyle
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Claire Danes
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Stellan Skarsgård and Megan Everett-Skarsgard
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Amy Poehler
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EJAE
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Amanda Anka and Jason Bateman
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Paul Mescal
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Adam Brody and Leighton Meester
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Laufey
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Kirsten Dunst and Jesse Plemons
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Chris Olsen
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Lisa Ann Walter
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Macaulay Culkin and Brenda Song
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Jacob Elordi
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Selena Gomez and Benny Blanco
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Ryan Destiny
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Jennifer Garner
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Rose Byrne
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Kate Hudson
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Snoop Dogg
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Timothée Chalamet
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Miley Cyrus
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George Clooney and Amal Clooney
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Leonardo DiCaprio
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Michel Martin
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Steve Inskeep
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Leila Fadel
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A Martinez
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Ben Falcone and Melissa McCarthy
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Amanda Seyfried
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William Stanford Davis
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Tessa Thompson
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Maya Rudolph and Paul Thomas Anderson
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Emma Stone
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Natasha Lyonne and Clea DuVall
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Vince Gilligan
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Chloé Zhao
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Mark Ruffalo and Sunrise Coigney
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Justin Sylvester
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Glen Powell
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Minnie Driver
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Orlando Bloom
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Hudson Williams
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Connor Storrie
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Wanda Sykes
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Nikki Glaser
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Julia Roberts
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Dakota Fanning
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Queen Latifah
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2026 Golden Globes
Nikki Glaser Shouts Out Rob Reiner …
Dons ‘Spinal Tap’ Hat at Close of Show
Published
Rob Reiner wasn’t forgotten at this year’s Golden Globe awards … because host Nikki Glaser paid tribute to him just weeks after his murder.
Here’s the deal … during the sign-off for the awards show, Nikki came onstage wearing a black and white “Spinal Tap” hat — the band which serves as the subject of Reiner’s iconic 1984 mockumentary of the same name.
Worth noting … the Golden Globes do not typically air an in memoriam — so this was the only time Reiner was mentioned at the show.
As you know … Rob and his wife Michele Singer Reiner were found dead in their Los Angeles home last month. Their son Nick Reiner has been arrested for murder in connection to the case.
TMZ.com
Nick’s arraignment was scheduled for last week … but, his lawyer Alan Jackson dropped out of the case — leaving Nick with a public defender and new arraignment date set for late February.
Jackson told a gaggle of reporters outside the courthouse that Nick’s not guilty … but, he simply can’t defend him. He did not provide a reason for his withdrawal.
Our new documentary “TMZ Investigates The Reiner Murders: What Really Happened” dives into Rob and Michele’s grisly deaths … as well as Nick’s history of mental health issues and even how his weight gain set him on a dangerous path.
“TMZ Investigates The Reiner Murders: What Really Happened” is now streaming on Hulu.
On-air challenge
Today’s puzzle is called “Pet Theory.” Every answer is a familiar two-word phrase or name in which the first word start starts PE- and the second word starts T-. (Ex. What walkways at intersections carry –> PEDESTRIAN TRAFFIC)
1. Chart that lists all the chemical elements
2. Place for a partridge in “The 12 Days of Christmas”
3. Male voyeur
4. What a coach gives a team during halftime in the locker room
5. Set of questions designed to reveal your traits
6. Something combatants sign to end a war
7. Someone who works with you one-on-one with physical exercises
8. Member of the Who
9. Incisors, canines, and premolars that grow in after you’re a baby
10. Nadia Comaneci was the first gymnast to score this at the Olympics
11. What holds the fuel in a British car
Last week’s challenge
Last week’s challenge was a numerical one from Ed Pegg Jr., who runs the website mathpuzzle.com. Take the nine digits — 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9. You can group some of them and add arithmetic operations to get 2011 like this: 1 + 23 ÷ 4 x 5 x 67 – 8 + 9. If you do these operations in order from left to right, you get 2011. Well, 2011 was 15 years ago. Can you group some of the digits and add arithmetic symbols in a different way to make 2026? The digits from 1 to 9 need to stay in that order. I know of two different solutions, but you need to find only one of them.
Challenge answer
12 × 34 × 5 – 6 – 7 + 8 – 9 [or] 1 + 2 + 345 × 6 – 7 × 8 + 9
Winner
Daniel Abramson of Albuquerque, N.M.
This week’s challenge
This week’s challenge comes from listener Ward Hartenstein. Think of a well-known couple whose names are often said in the order of _____ & _____. Seven letters in the names in total. Combine those two names, change an E to an S, and rearrange the result to name another famous duo who are widely known as _____ & _____.
If you know the answer to the challenge, submit it below by Thursday, January 15 at 3 p.m. ET. Listeners whose answers are selected win a chance to play the on-air puzzle.
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