“Culinary Class Wars” season two (Netflix)
Lee Eunseo: It’s happened again: Korea can’t stop talking about cooking. “Culinary Class Wars” is back for a second taste-obsessed season, pitting established culinary “White Spoon” legends, ranging from a master of Chinese cuisine with 57 years under his belt to a Michelin two-star restaurant chef, against “Black Spoon” chefs vying for the title of the nation’s ultimate culinary champion. What’s got people talking this season are all the intriguing twists that set it apart from last time. Season-one White Spoon chefs Kim Do-yun and Choi Kang-rok are back for another shot, this time as Hidden White Spoons. Unlike the Black Spoons, these contestants have to win over both judges from the very first round. In one exciting mission, called Endless Cooking Hell, the chefs have to complete a new dish every 30 minutes using just one main ingredient until only one contestant remains. But they also get to tackle the Endless Cooking Paradise where they’re given access to the Endless Pantry and 180 minutes with no limit on how many dishes they can whip up in an attempt to win over the judges. By putting fresh twists on the show’s winning formula, season two of “Culinary Class Wars” gives viewers a whole new flavor to savor.

But the show still stays true to what made it such a success in the first place, with each chef’s genuine passion for food as clear as ever. Take the Black Spoon chef known as Dweji-Gomtang in NY, who goes head-to-head against Venerable Sunjae, Korea’s first Master of Temple Cuisine. Though mainly skilled in pork dishes, Dweji-Gomtang decides to take the Buddhist monk on on equal footing, preparing his vegetable japchae in Temple Cuisine style by cooking without the “five pungent vegetables” known as osinchae. Then there’s Brewmaster Yun, who sees life writ large in the way she prepares dried pollack hangover soup, inspired by the repeated freezing and thawing process the dried fish undergoes during the winter. And, as Chef Park Hyo-nam says, being eliminated doesn’t make someone a failure—whether they win or lose, their journey as a chef continues. While “Culinary Class Wars” is full of fierce competition, what sticks with you isn’t the cold calculation behind picking out a single top chef, but rather the fiery passion that all 100 of the chefs have as they express themselves through their dishes. It’s through this move beyond the flavor of competition we’re used to that the series is able to expand the horizons of the culinary experience.

“braindead2” (Sion)
Na Wonyoung (Music Critic): Recently coined terms like plugg, rage, digicore, electroclash, complextro, and hyperpop tend to be used less to denote music based on actual conventions of genre and more as a way to loosely group sonic characteristics based on preferences (much like how techno was indiscriminately applied a quarter-century ago). The “inflated electronic sound, twisting electropop into something heavier,” is perfectly in step with the way today’s songwriters aim to integrate all styles, provided that can be realized within a digital environment. Looking back at 2025, Korean hip hop albums and their “over-the-top electronic sound” have put the trend to good use—whether through carefully and strategically curating samples (“K-FLIP+”), playing on the aesthetics of early 2010s nostalgia (“LUXURY TAPE”), keeping things authentic even with viral short-form content (“TIKTOKSTA”), exposing the fractured interplay between reality and virtual reality (“Invasion (Deluxe)”), or unabashedly indulging in exaggerated psychoactive pleasures (“YAHO”).

It’s against this backdrop that R&B artist Sion dove headfirst into 2010s-style electronic music in a bold attempt to completely reinvent himself. The self-crafted result was “eigensinn,” arguably one of the most sonically sophisticated releases of 2025. Now he’s taking that EP’s core theme of having the courage to be honest with yourself even further with his latest single, “braindead2.” The song doesn’t just sample his breakout 2022 hit “braindead,” which has defined him ever since—it fully recontextualizes it within a fresh sonic framework. Drawing from techniques where he dabbled in an electronic sound on his previous EP with the track “avoid!,” “braindead2” alters Sion’s smooth but absolutely solid vocals by pitching them up to sound like he’s singing in a sharp falsetto, then takes great pleasure in breaking away from the shackles of the original song by slicing, dicing, and distorting it. While several tracks off “eigensinn” borrowed touches of electric guitar and other elements of rock music, this time, Sion takes a dazzling, euphorically rising riff and pairs it with a frantic, sparkling drop—the kind of sensory overload of synthetic textures that EDM excels at. The shift almost feels like the idea of being braindead from selfish love in the original has evolved to reflect the brainrot zeitgeist instead. But there’s an inwardly directed courage in the line, “I can be a different person as long as you like me”—a determination, above all else, to change. The culmination of this stubborn determination is right there with “braindead2,” a sequel that truly surpasses the original.

Postcards From a Stranger (Imogen Clark) 
Kim Boksung (Writer): Cara’s found professional success and a trustworthy best friend in her adult life, but she had a rough upbringing. Her mother died when she was very young, and her father fostered an unpleasant environment for Cara and her brother. “Postcards From a Stranger” by Imogen Clark jumps between Cara today and a much more distant narrative in the past. It’s where these two storylines converge that the book’s main mystery unfolds and its protagonist is in for a rude awakening to the truth. The postcards in the title are a Pandora’s box of pain for Cara in this emotional novel and truly test the human capacity for forgiveness in the face of generations of deception and abuse. The beginning of the book can feel a bit disorienting and reflects the resistance Cara encounters while looking for answers, but just like Cara, it’s best to stick with the mystery to the very end, where closure awaits.