CORTIS official YouTube channel
Kim Rieun: Five days after CORTIS was introduced to the world, a video titled “Pack Up Bro” appeared on their YouTube channel. Filmed before the group had even settled on a name, the clip opens with the members musing whimsically that “March is tree season.” It then spirals into late-night chaos: MARTIN launches into an impromptu rap instead of packing for their trip to the U.S., while JAMES keeps repeating “Pack up bro,” and KEONHO and SEONGHYEON add their own offbeat beatboxing to finish the scene. Since then, CORTIS’s channel has continued to upload clips like “Laundry in LA” and “Yoga Challenge”—videos without hashtags, subheadings, or any consistent format. Sometimes they feel like casual vlogs, other times like original sketches. The messy editing and lack of structure, though, only highlight the charm of the five rookies who balance clumsiness with a sense of freedom.
From small tomfooleries—like building and then gleefully destroying an igloo together—to silly moments—like screaming while rehearsing a fan chant—their videos capture a playful ease. And it’s their natural ease and boisterous camaraderie—so unselfconscious that they seem to forget the camera—that give rise to the authenticity fans crave. This unfiltered quality often turns into humor as well: in one video, SEONGHYEON’s slipped pants are cheekily covered with a lyric from their debut single “GO!” (“Pull up to the studio with our pants low, here we go”), while another shows him lamenting over shrunken underwear fresh out of the wash, only to be scolded by leader MARTIN for doing so on camera. Elsewhere, a close-up of JAMES and KEONHO’s straining feet during a yoga challenge, with dinner out on the line, sets up a comically awkward vibe right from the start. Such comic editing is an intentional move rather than a coincidence. In a media landscape that constantly weighs authenticity against polish, CORTIS’s content embraces the vitality of five young men navigating both their debut and the most dynamic years of their youth. In an age where you can see everything and yet rarely see anything real, their rough-edged but carefully crafted lens feels like a record of youth in its truest form.
Spotify playlist: “crash out”
Seo Seongdeok (Music Critic): There are countless playlists curated for specific moods or vibes, but most of them rarely escape the broad categories of joy and sorrow, often ending up sounding much the same. However, “crash out” aims to be a soundtrack for a distinctly modern emotion that resists easy description. Originally, to crash out meant collapsing into sleep from sheer exhaustion. Today, the phrase has broadened to capture what happens when you’re pushed beyond your limits: emotional breakdown, burnout, even a mental shutdown. The causes vary—workplace stress, the strain of personal relationships, and, more than ever, the fatigue brought on by social media.
The playlist’s short description, “thinking about Conrad on the beach,” delivers this meaning vividly through pop culture. It references Conrad Fisher, a character from the popular novel and TV series “The Summer I Turned Pretty,” and the show’s iconic setting, Cousins Beach. Haunted by family turmoil, Conrad drifts in and out of his relationship with his longtime friend Belly Conklin, leaving Belly oscillating between the hope of first love and the pain of confusion, heartbreak, and despair. In the same way, the ambiguous cover art, the concise title, and the pared-down description all point to an effort to capture emotions more layered than any typical playlist.
That’s why the tracks on “crash out” aren’t bound by genre, era, or tempo. You might find yourself screaming along to Billie Eilish’s “Happier Than Ever,” crying to Olivia Rodrigo’s “drivers license,” or savoring the twisted rush of revenge in Chapel Roan’s “My Kink Is Karma.” The playlist connects rising artists like sombr and Lola Young—whose music seems to embody the crash out state of mind—with classics from Jeff Buckley and Fleetwood Mac. So think about which of your favorite artists might have a place here. Which Taylor Swift, Lana Del Rey, or SZA track best speaks for you when you’re buried under the covers, shutting the world out?
“Venomous Lumpsucker” (Ned Beauman)
Kim Boksung (Writer): Author Ned Beauman brings us to a future so immediate and so foreseeable that it’s fair to say “Venomous Lumpsucker” isn’t sci-fi at all. This speculative fiction is at once a philosophical downer and an amusing thriller that throws you into the adventure from page one, more or less.
We’re brought up to speed quickly: By the 2030s, extinction has been monetized, such that corporations and governments can kill off an entire species, legally and guilt-free, so long as they purchase enough credits. Satirizing the carbon credit system in place today, the problem with extinction credits is that market forces never made them expensive enough to disincentivize the practice, with tens of thousands of species being wiped out in the blink of an eye.
Where the story really begins is with the presumed extinction of the venomous lumpsucker and the adventures that Karin and Mark get into, as they traverse the world in search of any of these remaining intelligent fish. To be honest, the world they live in and what it says about our own is more important than the characters’ individual motivations, or even the search for the fish itself. Beauman delights in long explanations that cast a wide net to skewer failures of environmentalism, capitalism, technology, and more, showing greater empathy not for his fictional characters but for what’s at stake for all of us today. Read this novel for its warning wrapped in black comedy and the somewhat optimistic place it arrives at by the end.