This is an edition of The Atlantic Daily, a newsletter that guides you through the biggest stories of the day, helps you discover new ideas, and recommends the best in culture. Sign up for it here.

Good morning, and welcome back to The Daily’s Sunday culture edition, in which one Atlantic writer reveals what’s keeping them entertained.

But first, here are three Sunday reads from The Atlantic:

Scientists tried to break cuddling. Instead, they broke 30 years of research. The weight-loss-drug revolution is a miracle—and a menace. What to read when you’re expecting The Culture Survey: Clint Smith

The television show I’m most enjoying right now: I’m very late to it, but I’ve been really enjoying Ramy. It’s a thoughtful, funny, and oftentimes incredibly sincere exploration of what coming-of-age as a Muslim American Millennial looks like. [Related: Ramy isn’t a travel show, but it could be]

An actor I would watch in anything: Mahershala Ali. The man is a genius. [Related: Green Book: A flimsy tale elevated by two great performances]

Best novel I’ve recently read, and the best work of nonfiction: The best novel I’ve read recently is When We Were Sisters, by Fatimah Asghar. I’ve known Fatimah for years now. We came up together in the slam-poetry scene in our early 20s, but they have always been someone who worked across genres and disciplines. Their debut novel is a gorgeous, lyrical meditation on the relationship among three sisters who lose their parents and are forced to raise one another in a world rife with uncertainty. It’s a beautiful novel that you can read in just a few sittings. [Related: All the brown girls on TV]

The best book of nonfiction I’ve read recently is Life on Delay, by my colleague here at The Atlantic John Hendrickson. I can’t remember the last time I read a book so human. Life on Delay brims with empathy and honesty. It is a book about family, complicated relationships, and how we come to understand who we are in the world. It moved me in ways that I haven’t experienced before. It’s fantastic. [Related: Why I dread saying my own name]

An author I will read anything by: Living today, Jhumpa Lahiri. From the past, Frederick Douglass.

A song I’ll always dance to: “If It Isn’t Love,” by New Edition

My go-to karaoke song: “Candy Rain,” by Soul for Real

My favorite sad song: “Pass You By,” by Boyz II Men

"[My favorite sad song is] 'Pass You By,' by Boyz II Men," says Clint. Above: The group perform at the 62nd annual Grammy Awards on January 26, 2020 (Kevin Winter / Getty)

An album that means a lot to me: Lupe Fiasco’s 2007 album, The Cool, was so formative for me during my college years because it expanded my understanding of the relationship between music and literature. It is an incredible literary document.

A visual artist that I cherish: Growing up, we had prints of the painter Jacob Lawrence’s work on our walls. I’m filled with nostalgia anytime I see his work.

Something I treasured as a teenager: My VHS tape of every goal in the 2002 World Cup. I watched it every night.

Something I recently revisited: Not a reread or a rewatch but a re-eat. I was obsessed with Lunchables when I was a kid. I recently had one for the first time in a long time and, man … it did not taste the same at all. Not sure what was going on with my elementary-school taste buds. [Related: The 30-year reign of Lunchables]

A piece of journalism that recently changed my perspective on a topic: I don’t know that it changed my perspective so much as expanded it, but I recently read Nadja Drost’s 2021 Pulitzer Prize– and Michael Kelly Award–winning story “When Can We Really Rest?” about migrants from all over the world crossing the Colombia-Panama border to try and make it to the U.S. It blew me away.

A favorite story I’ve read in The Atlantic: Gotta be Ta-Nehisi’s “The Case for Reparations.”

Something delightful introduced to me by kids in my life: I have a 5-year-old and a 3-year-old, and one of our favorite things to do on weekends is watch nature documentaries when we wake up. Shout out to David Attenborough. [Related: Blue Planet II is the greatest nature series of all time]

Read past editions of the Culture Survey with John Hendrickson, Gal Beckerman, Kate Lindsay, Xochitl Gonzalez, Spencer Kornhaber, Jenisha Watts, David French, Shirley Li, David Sims, Lenika Cruz, Jordan Calhoun, Hannah Giorgis, and Sophie Gilbert.

The Week Ahead Cobalt Red: How the Blood of the Congo Powers Our Lives, a frank portrait of cobalt-mining abuses by the modern-slavery scholar Siddharth Kara (on shelves Tuesday)   Lowndes County and the Road to Black Power, a documentary inspired by the work of the Atlantic senior editor Vann R. Newkirk II (begins streaming on Peacock on Thursday) 80 for Brady, a comedy that joins the screen legends Jane Fonda, Lily Tomlin, Rita Moreno, and Sally Field with the NFL star Tom Brady (in theaters Friday) Essay (Derek White / Getty)

Sam Smith’s Radical Centrism

By Spencer Kornhaber

Sam Smith’s music defines the word inoffensive—so why does the singer inspire so many arguments? For more than a decade, Smith’s distinctive voice has soaked through the collective consciousness like the syrup in a rum cake. But that success has also triggered annoyance from across the cultural spectrum. As a nonbinary person, Smith has been treated as a punch line by right-wing media. Earlier in their career, they also ticked off the queer commentariat by misstating gay history and tsk-tsking about Grindr. All along, critics have made sport of Smith for formulaic songwriting, mannered vocals, and a tendency to hire church choirs as if they’re available on Taskrabbit to install soul on demand.

Read the full article.

More in Culture The Oscar nominations are in, and a few big trends are out. A courtroom drama with an indecipherable culprit Poker Face has a sting in its tail. The meme that defined a decade Catch Up on The Atlantic The cognitive dissonance of the Monterey Park shooting An Asian American grief The NHL is gutless. Photo Album (Yannick Gouguenheim / Ocean Art)

Dip into the majestic depths of selected snapshots from the 2022 Ocean Art Underwater Photo Contest, whose winners were announced earlier this month.

Kelli María Korducki contributed to this newsletter.

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This is an edition of The Atlantic Daily, a newsletter that guides you through the biggest stories of the day, helps you discover new ideas, and recommends the best in culture. Sign up for it here.

Good morning, and welcome back to The Daily’s Sunday culture edition, in which one Atlantic writer reveals what’s keeping them entertained.

Today’s special guest is staff writer John Hendrickson, who has just published a new book, Life on Delay: Making Peace With a Stutter, which you can read an excerpt of here. John has written for The Atlantic about, among other topics, President Joe Biden’s stutter and, most recently, I Didn’t See You There, an experimental documentary about living with a disability that he calls “kinetic and compelling.” John will read anything by Richard Price, bought tickets for all five of The Walkmen’s upcoming NYC reunion shows, and has probably watched The Fugitive 50 times.

But first, here are three Sunday reads from The Atlantic:

What the longest study on human happiness found is the key to a good life How Noma made fine dining far worse Stop trying to ask “smart questions.”

The Culture Survey: John Hendrickson

The upcoming event I’m most looking forward to: I spent nearly a decade waiting and praying for The Walkmen to maybe someday reunite, doubting that it would ever happen. To me, they are the unsung heroes of the turn-of-the-millennium New York rock renaissance (think: The Strokes, Yeah Yeah Yeahs, TV on the Radio, Interpol—all the Meet Me in the Bathroom bands). Recently, when The Walkmen announced a five-night run in Manhattan in April, I impulsively bought tickets for all five shows. I will be screaming every word to every song.

The television show I’m most enjoying right now: After cycling through The Office, The Larry Sanders Show, Parks and Recreation, a slew of Ken Burns documentaries, and several seasons of Alone, my wife and I have started watching NewsRadio at night before we fall asleep. Again: Unsung! Every line Phil Hartman delivers is masterful. Stephen Root, of Barry and Office Space fame, does deadpan humor like no one else. And it’s a bit surreal to watch Joe Rogan in one of his early roles, playing a meathead named Joe.

An actor I would watch in anything: Bill Hader

My favorite blockbuster: The Fugitive is as close as you can get to a perfect—for lack of a better phrase—popcorn movie. Brisk pacing! Snappy dialogue! A few huge action sequences counterbalanced with grisled guys in frumpy suits working the phones! I’ve probably seen it 50 times. [Related: Hollywood doesn’t make movies like The Fugitive anymore.]

Best novel I’ve recently read: I’m currently reading Laura Zigman’s Small World, about two middle-aged sisters who move in together, bringing decades of family baggage into the house. I don’t want to give too much of it away, but I’m in awe of Zigman’s ability to weave biting humor and tenderness so closely together.

An author I will read anything by: Richard Price [Related: Two good old-fashioned young novelists]

A song I’ll always dance to: Le Tigre, “Deceptacon.” Hit play and try to keep your body still. It’s impossible!

“When the Walkmen announced a five-night run in Manhattan in April, I impulsively bought tickets for all five shows,” John says. Above: The band performing in Washington, D.C., in 2013 (Leigh Vogel / Getty for Thread)

My go-to karaoke song: Patti Smith, “Because the Night.” I’m a horrible singer, but singing is salvation for me. I like to belt this one out on a Friday or Saturday night at Montero’s, an old fisherman’s dive bar near the East River in Brooklyn. I usually throw in a kick when the pre-chorus starts. I write about this a little bit in my book, Life on Delay, but singing relies on a different part of the brain than we use for speaking, and I never stutter when I sing. It’s freeing. Scores of current or former stutterers have turned to music at some point in their lives: Elvis Presley, Kendrick Lamar, Carly Simon, Ed Sheeran, Bill Withers, Noel Gallagher—to name just a few.

My favorite sad song: Charles Bradley’s cover of Black Sabbath’s “Changes” absolutely slays me. It transcends what you think of as recorded music—it’s as if Bradley’s soul is imprinted on the track. The full backstory about Bradley and his mother around the time of the recording makes it all the more poignant.

My favorite angry song: Thee Oh Sees, “I Come From The Mountain.” Whenever I’m stressed or anxious, I crank this as loud as I possibly can and head-bang at my desk. Colson Whitehead told 60 Minutes that they’re on his writing playlist!

A favorite story I’ve read in The Atlantic: Annie Lowrey’s deeply vivid, personal account of her experience with pregnancy was the most memorable piece of journalism I read last year, full stop. It’ll stay with me forever.

A good recommendation I recently received: David Sims recently recommended to me the Apple series For All Mankind, sort of like Mad Men crossed with Apollo 13. [Related: How the space fantasy became banal]

The last thing that made me snort with laughter: Watch this clip from “The PriceMaster.” It’s one minute of your life. Trust me.

Read past editions of the Culture Survey with Gal Beckerman, Kate Lindsay, Xochitl Gonzalez, Spencer Kornhaber, Jenisha Watts, David French, Shirley Li, David Sims, Lenika Cruz, Jordan Calhoun, Hannah Giorgis, and Sophie Gilbert.

The Week Ahead

Maybe I Do, a romantic comedy starring Diane Keaton, Richard Gere, Susan Sarandon, Luke Bracey, William H. Macy, and Emma Roberts (in theaters Friday) Pirate Enlightenment, or the Real Libertalia, a posthumous book by David Graeber (Tuesday) The docuseries The 1619 Project, an expansion of the book by Nikole Hannah-Jones (first two episodes premiere Thursday on Hulu)

More in Culture

The film that accurately captures teen grief When good pain turns into bad pain This is the band that’s supposedly saving rock and roll? The calamitous lies of adulthood A slick mystery that takes place entirely on screens Skinamarink is a delightful nightmare. The line that Velma crossed

Catch Up on The Atlantic

The Supreme Court justices do not seem to be getting along. Despite everything you think you know, America is on the right track. How Joe Biden wins again

Photo Album

A snow leopard against a backdrop of the mountains of Ladakh in northern India (© Sascha Fonseca / Wildlife Photographer of the Year)

Check out some entries in this year’s Wildlife Photographer of the Year contest (and vote for your favorite).

Isabel Fattal contributed to this newsletter.

This is an edition of The Atlantic Daily, a newsletter that guides you through the biggest stories of the day, helps you discover new ideas, and recommends the best in culture. Sign up for it here.

Good morning, and welcome back to The Daily’s Sunday culture edition, in which one Atlantic writer reveals what’s keeping them entertained.

Today’s special guest is Gal Beckerman, our senior books editor and the author, most recently, of The Quiet Before: On the Unexpected Origins of Radical Ideas. Gal recently wrote about a 1933 novel that depicts the arrival of fascism in Germany, and the combative 50-year relationship between the biographer Robert Caro and his editor, Robert Gottlieb. He is enjoying Wednesday with his daughters but shielding them from the sight of M3GAN, and, on Rumaan Alam’s recommendation, he finally gave in to the French writer Patrick Modiano.

But first, here are three Sunday reads from The Atlantic:

You don’t know how bad the pizza box is. How it feels to lose a utopia The meaning of Dry January The Culture Survey: Gal Beckerman

What my friends are talking about most right now: We’re talking about how terrified all of our children are of M3GAN! I took my kids to see a movie the other day, and the trailer came on—and I knew, as soon as I saw that creepy face and that creepy body dancing, where this was all headed. I leapt over the seats to cover their eyes before she invaded their nightmares. Too late. [Related: M3GAN’s killer-robot doll is just what 2023 needs.]

The upcoming event I’m most looking forward to: I recently moved back to New York City after a few years in the cultural wasteland of Los Angeles (yes, I said it). And I’ve got a long list of theater I’m dying to experience—in particular, some revivals of shows I’ve never seen performed, such as August Wilson’s The Piano Lesson, Suzan-Lori Parks’s Topdog/Underdog, and Funny Girl. And as long as we’re talking about anticipated cultural happenings, I’m very much looking forward to visiting the Alex Katz retrospective at the Guggenheim. [Related: The unconscious rebellion of August Wilson]

An actor I would watch in anything: Michelle Williams. She blew me away in The Fablemans. I’d always loved her work in Kelly Reichardt’s films, but this role demanded such a careful and difficult balance: a mother who loves her family fiercely but is not willing to sacrifice her own personal happiness. [Related: The Fabelmans is Steven Spielberg’s most honest movie yet.]

My favorite blockbuster and favorite art movie: I grew up in the 1980s, and nothing will ever match for me the blockbuster thrill of the Indiana Jones movies. Just hearing the John Williams score reminds me of being 8 years old and completely rapt. As for my favorite art film, the most recent one that comes to mind is Paweł Pawlikowski’s gorgeous, moving 2018 movie, Cold War. [Related: Cold War meditates on exile, nationalism, and love.]

Best novel I’ve recently read, and the best work of nonfiction: This might be unfair, because both of these books were ones I read as galleys and aren’t coming out for a few months (and yes, this is what we in the books biz call “galley bragging”).

The novel is Catherine Lacey’s Biography of X, which is a fictional biography by the widow of an elusive artist whose career has been defined by shape-shifting (think a mashup of David Bowie and Cindy Sherman). The whole story also takes place in an alternate United States that has been divided into three separate territories, with the entire South existing as a fascist theocracy. If it sounds weird, it is. But in the best way.

In a very different register is my nonfiction pick, Jonathan Rosen’s The Best Minds, which explores Rosen’s relationship with his childhood friend whose brilliance was interrupted by his schizophrenia. After years of amassing achievements, including graduating from Yale Law School, this friend ends up killing his pregnant fian​cée. It’s a beautifully written meditation on society’s inability to cope with the problem of mental illness. [Related: Catherine Lacey on Gwendoline Riley’s haunted heroines]

“I wouldn’t say haute couture is exactly my thing... but I was totally dazzled by [the designer Thierry Mugler’s] creations.” (Angela Weiss / AFP / Getty)

An author I will read anything by: I’ll limit myself to two European writers whom I love. One is Emmanuel Carrère, the French author, who writes these strange genre-bending autofictional books—if you’re new to him, I’d start with Lives Other Than My Own. And the other is the German novelist Jenny Erpenbeck, whose Go, Went, Gone is among my favorite books of all time. [Related: You can read any of these short novels in a weekend.]

A song I’ll always dance to: “Hava Nagila”

The last museum show that I loved: I took my daughters to see the Brooklyn Museum’s Thierry Mugler retrospective. I wouldn’t say haute couture is exactly my thing, and I’m often skeptical of museum shows that lean on spectacle to pull in the masses (as much as I understand this impulse). But I was totally dazzled by Mugler’s creations—just the array of materials, from rubber tires to chrome; the crazy extravagance of it. I loved the operatic ambition, and most important, my daughters’ mouths were agape almost the whole time.

Something I recently revisited: Throughout college, I had five Tom Waits albums pretty much on regular rotation, and I recently went back and listened to them again after a long hiatus. Franks Wild Years stood out as the one that captured what Waits does so well: Underneath the raspiness is that smack of nostalgia. I’m a sucker for the crackly sound of a vinyl record and church bells pealing in the distance. He’s timeless.

My favorite way of wasting time on my phone: Twitter, but I just deleted it (again).

Something delightful introduced to me by kids: This is very recent, but my daughters sat me down and made me watch Wednesday, the new Netflix show about the Addams Family character, now a teenager. They were so taken with Wednesday’s sangfroid, her monochrome fashion, and, of course, that dance. “I love dark humor!” my 10-year-old exclaimed.

The last debate I had about culture: Not so much a debate as a quandary: how to understand the wild sales figures for Prince Harry’s memoir, Spare. The book sold more than 1.4 million copies on its first day. With all of its major revelations already pretty well aired, why were so many people interested in buying Spare? Because they actually wanted to read it? [Related: Prince Harry’s book undermines the very idea of monarchy.]

A good recommendation I recently received: The novelist Rumaan Alam has long pushed the French writer Patrick Modiano on me, and I finally gave in and read one of his many slim, twisty, noirish books, So You Don’t Get Lost in the Neighborhood. It totally grabbed me.

The last thing that made me cry: The last episode of the series Fleishman Is in Trouble, based on Taffy Brodesser-Akner’s novel and adapted by her, had me completely verklempt for an hour. I don’t want to ruin anything, but there is such an emotional payoff when you’ve seen these characters who have reckoned with feelings of ennui and emptiness finally grasp enough meaning and purpose to go forward. It’s enough to make a middle-aged man cry. [Related: ‘What is Jesse Eisenberg doing here, saying these things I wrote?’]

Read past editions of the Culture Survey with Kate Lindsay, Xochitl Gonzalez, Spencer Kornhaber, Jenisha Watts, David French, Shirley Li, David Sims, Lenika Cruz, Jordan Calhoun, Hannah Giorgis, and Sophie Gilbert.

The Week Ahead The Last of Us, the HBO adaptation of the popular zombie-apocalypse video game (debuts Sunday) Women Talking, the director Sarah Polley’s new film (in theaters nationwide Friday) Rikers: An Oral History, a book by the journalists Graham Rayman and Reuven Blau (Tuesday) Essay (Tyler Comrie / The Atlantic; Getty)

The Writer’s Most Sacred Relationship

By Lauren LeBlanc

Making a living as a writer has always been an elusive pursuit. The competition is fierce. The measures of success are subjective. Even many people at the top of the profession can’t wholeheartedly recommend it. The critic Elizabeth Hardwick, Darryl Pinckney recalls in his evocative new memoir, “told us that there were really only two reasons to write: desperation or revenge. She told us that if we couldn’t take rejection, if we couldn’t be told no, then we could not be writers.”

In spite of these red flags, countless people set out on this path. One lifeline, if you’re lucky enough to find it, is mentorship. Literary mentors offer the conventional benefits: perspective, direction, connections. But the partnerships that result are less transactional and more messy and serendipitous than those that tend to exist in other industries. While many people might think of such arrangements as altruistic or at least utilitarian, Pinckney’s book, which chronicles his tutelage under Hardwick, shows that artistic mentorships, especially literary ones, are far more fraught. Together, he and Hardwick weathered two intersecting careers, each with fallow periods and moments of success. This can be a challenge for creative, fragile egos—leading to a fair amount of projection, blame, and tension. And yet, the mentorships that endure allow for unpredictability and evolution.

Read the full article.

More in Culture A society that can’t get enough of work The Last of Us makes the apocalypse feel new again A disability film unlike any other Seven books about how homes shape our life Catch Up on The Atlantic Cities really can be both denser and greener. The gas stove debate exemplifies the silliest tendencies of American politics. Suddenly, California has too much water. Photo Album (Matias Delacroix / AP / Getty)

A nighttime parade at the Santiago a Mil arts festival, in Santiago, Chile, on January 10. See the rest of the week’s notable snapshots here.

Kelli María Korducki contributed to this newsletter.

Explore all of our newsletters.

This is an edition of The Atlantic Daily, a newsletter that guides you through the biggest stories of the day, helps you discover new ideas, and recommends the best in culture. Sign up for it here.

Good morning, and welcome back to The Daily’s Sunday culture edition, in which one Atlantic writer reveals what’s keeping them entertained.

Today’s special guest is Kate Lindsay, who has written viral Atlantic articles about the Instagram “ick” and the “Millennial pause.” (Translation: Instagram is over, and Millennials are aging out of the internet, respectively.) She also talked about the Millennial pause in a viral TikTok and writes a newsletter, Embedded, about internet culture. Kate is savoring The Thursday Murder Club and fighting with her friends about The 1975, and she would follow Sabrina the Teenage Witch anywhere, even Paramount Plus.

But first, here are three Sunday reads from The Atlantic.

Electric vehicles are bringing out the worst in us. The hidden cost of cheap TVs The Ice Age has nothing on “snowball Earth.” The Culture Survey: Kate Lindsay

The upcoming event I’m most looking forward to: My friends and I need to get tickets to see Jodie Comer in the play Prima Facie when it comes to New York City this April. Comer is obviously best known for playing opposite Sandra Oh on Killing Eve, but real heads know her from My Mad Fat Diary. It was her monologue in Snatches that first made me need to see her live. [Related: Killing Eve and the riddle of why women kill]

The television show I’m most enjoying right now: I have an annoying tendency to get something recommended to me over and over and, when I finally make my way to it, be like, “Why did no one tell me about this earlier???” Sharon Horgan’s Bad Sisters is one of those things. Based on the Belgian series Clan, this Apple TV+ show is about five sisters, four of whom (maybe) conspired to kill the fifth’s terrible husband. I don’t know yet! I got a few episodes deep during a plane ride and am parceling the rest out like little treats so it lasts longer. As will shortly become apparent, I’m a sucker for a mystery based in the U.K. or Ireland. [Related: The wrath of a woman without any options]

Best novel I’ve recently read: The Thursday Murder Club is the first book in a U.K.-based mystery series of the same name by Richard Osman. I can promise you that no other book about murder will make you feel this warm and fuzzy. Set in a retirement community near Kent, the series follows a group of senior citizens who meet weekly in an attempt to crack unsolved cases, often running into a few present-day mysteries of their own. The characters are loveable, the writing quick and hilarious, and the plot genuinely gripping. And there’s good news for those of you hearing about The Thursday Murder Club for the first time: It’s already three books deep.

An author I will read anything by: Tana French, who, if you can believe this, writes Ireland-based mystery novels. Six belong to the incredible Dublin Murder Squad series, and her two additional stand-alone novels—The Witch Elm and The Searcher—are just as good. I read all eight in the summer of 2021 and have been waiting patiently for any scrap of news about her next book ever since. In fact, two of my friends have emailed French herself to see if she is working on anything new. I’ll let you know if we ever hear back. [Related: Women are writing the best crime novels.]

My go-to karaoke song: I’m a recovering a cappella group member, and karaoke is my shameless two minutes in the spotlight. Do not sing along with me; I am performing. And in most cases, it’s Tom Petty’s “Free Fallin’,” because it’s a crowd-pleaser and, most important, comfortably within my vocal range.

"[Shari Elf’s World Famous Crochet Museum] is small, but the collection is significant." (Courtesy of Kate Lindsay)

The last museum show that I loved: Try as I might, I’m not a huge museum person, but as a knitter, I had to stop by Shari Elf’s World Famous Crochet Museum when I was in Joshua Tree over New Year’s. The space is small, but the collection is significant. [Related: Getting through a pandemic with old-fashioned crafts]

Something I recently rewatched: I don’t know if there’s ever a time I’m not actively revisiting the late-’90s/early-’00s sitcom Sabrina the Teenage Witch. I used to come home from school every day to watch it, and it’s the first thing I put on as an adult whenever I need some comfort. The series will have just left Hulu (my most recent binge was in anticipation of this). But I’ll follow that kooky witch, played by Melissa Joan Hart, and her talking cat, voiced by Nick Bakay, anywhere—even Paramount Plus. [Related: How Chilling Adventures of Sabrina thinks about female power]

Online creators that I’m a fan of: YouTube and TikTok are my primary forms of entertainment, and I’ve followed so many creators for so long that this is a hard answer to narrow down. But now that content creators are somewhat mainstream, I’ll recommend the YouTuber Rachel Nguyen as one who is doing something totally different and refreshing. We recently had a great conversation about creating authentic art in an algorithm-driven world, and her quarantine vlog is proof that online content can be just that: art.

The last debate I had about culture: Thanks to TikTok, I recently became obsessed with The 1975, and no one in my life is being supportive. I’ve been listening to their new album, Being Funny in a Foreign Language, pretty much nonstop for the past two months, but every time I try to play it among friends—in cars or at dinner parties—I’m soundly overruled. These people insist the music is bad, which is incorrect. It was a tense Friendsgiving.

A poem, or line of poetry, that I return to: I had completely forgotten about this poem until my friend Jehan resurfaced it when we were talking about how much we love the actor Aya Cash. Cash’s mom is the poet Kim Addonizio, who wrote “To the Woman Crying Uncontrollably in the Next Stall”:

“listen I love you joy is coming”

Read past editions of the Culture Survey with Xochitl Gonzalez, Spencer Kornhaber, Jenisha Watts, David French, Shirley Li, David Sims, Lenika Cruz, Jordan Calhoun, Hannah Giorgis, and Sophie Gilbert.

The Week Ahead House Party, a comedy directed by Calmatic and produced by Maverick Carter and LeBron James, who also stars as himself (in theaters Friday) Plane, a thriller starring Gerard Butler and Mike Colter (in theaters Friday) Still Pictures: On Photography and Memory, Janet Malcolm’s posthumous memoir (Tuesday) Essay (Joanne Imperio / The Atlantic; Claudia Raschke / Sony Pictures Classics; Martha Kaplan / Sony Pictures Classics; Thomas Victor / Sony Pictures Classics)

A Civil War Over Semicolons

By Gal Beckerman

The partnership of Robert Caro and Robert Gottlieb is beautifully anachronistic. As writer and editor, respectively, they have together produced 4,888 pages over the course of 50 years, including the multivolume, still unfinished saga that is Caro’s biography of Lyndon B. Johnson. A lasting collaboration of this sort is impossible to imagine in today’s publishing world of constant churn. Then there’s their method: Caro puts on a dark suit every day, writes his drafts out in longhand, and copies them onto carbon paper using his Smith Corona typewriter, after which Gottlieb marks them up with a pencil—like a couple of cobblers still making shoes with an awl. Whatever deal Caro got from Gottlieb and Knopf in the 1970s, it has allowed him to work monastically on this biography project seemingly without any other source of income. As Caro’s longtime agent, Lynn Nesbit, says of the arrangement in Turn Every Page, a new documentary about Caro and Gottlieb, “I doubt that it could ever happen again.”

But there’s something else about the relationship that gives a glimpse into another era: The two don’t seem to like each other all that much.

They bicker all the time, about every comma, period, and semicolon. Actually, don’t even get them started on semicolons.

Read the full article.

More in Culture Eight self-help books that actually help 13 feel-good TV shows to watch this winter Women Talking: When a single conversation can mean life or death Catch Up on The Atlantic Nancy Pelosi’s career is a case for gerontocracy. No tears for Kevin McCarthy COVID vaccines aren’t routinely killing athletes. Photo Album (Patrick Hertzog / AFP / Getty)

Check out snapshots from a photographer’s visit to the French Southern and Antarctic Lands, home of many penguins, seals, and seabirds.

Isabel Fattal contributed to this newsletter.

Explore all of our newsletters.

This is an edition of The Atlantic Daily, a newsletter that guides you through the biggest stories of the day, helps you discover new ideas, and recommends the best in culture. Sign up for it here.

Good morning, and welcome back to The Daily’s Sunday culture edition, in which one Atlantic writer reveals what’s keeping them entertained.

Today’s special guest is Xochitl Gonzalez, a best-selling novelist and newly minted Atlantic staff writer. You can find Xochitl’s incisive takes on culture, community, and class in her essay from our September 2022 issue, “Why Do Rich People Love Quiet?” and her Atlantic newsletter, Brooklyn, Everywhere. She’s gaga for Broadway, catching up on last winter’s Yellowjackets craze, and says there’s exactly one Marvel cinematic experience that’s stoked her sense of childlike wonder as an adult.

But first, here are three Sunday reads from The Atlantic:

Franklin Foer: The cynic’s dilemma Eight books to comfort you when you’re lonely The married-mom advantage Culture Survey: Xochitl Gonzalez

What my friends are talking about most right now: I wrote about this for my newsletter a bit, but my Latino friends—artists and not—are cautiously optimistic about what feels like a bit of a shift in cultural representation. Not a wave, but an evolution. It was an amazing year for Latino literature, with another one coming up; we’ve seen amazing Latino characters in Wednesday, Wakanda Forever, The Bear. Bad Bunny is one of the biggest stars in the world, but also, you have artists like iLe, Alynda Lee Segarra, Omar Apollo. I could go on and on, but it feels like a moment not just for Latino “presence” in culture, but for that presence to really reflect our diversity as a community. [Related: Black Panther: Wakanda Forever does the near impossible.]

The upcoming event I’m most looking forward to: I just finished a spree of amazing live events, which included seeing Mariah Carey’s Christmas special at Madison Square Garden, the actor Wendell Pierce in the Broadway revival of Death of a Salesman, and The Collaboration. But I’m really looking forward to seeing Between Riverside and Crazy; I love the actor Liza Colón-Zayas, who stars in it, and I’m loving the moment she’s having right now. I hope it goes on forever. I’m also excited about the Sweeney Todd revival on Broadway. We did it at my high school—ambitious, I know—and that made me a lifelong fan. I’ll see any and every production of it.

The television show I’m most enjoying right now: I came to Yellowjackets late, and I love it. And who doesn’t love Wednesday?  [Related: The TV show for the age of conspiracism]

An actor I would watch in anything: LaKeith Stanfield, Aubrey Plaza, and I’m buckling up to see whatever Hong Chau does next—she’s captivating. (More than one, I know.)

My favorite blockbuster and favorite art movie: The art movie is easy: Requiem for a Dream. It spoke to a side of Brooklyn that I’d never seen anywhere in art before it came out, and that I’ve never seen again. A fucked-up homage to home.

I remember having a sense of thrill the first time I saw Black Panther in a movie theater that I hadn’t felt since I was a kid—experiencing heroes and charismatic villains in the dark, with strangers, on a massive screen with a pumping sound system. That, to me, was what blockbusters were meant to do: make you feel so connected to the rest of the world and also deeply satisfied with their story and action. [Related: The provocation and power of Black Panther]

Best novel I’ve recently read, and the best work of nonfiction: I devoured Bunny, by Mona Awad, on a flight recently and can’t stop thinking about it, and I loved High-Risk Homosexual, by Edgar Gomez.

A song I’ll always dance to: “Show Me Love,” by Robin S

A go-to karaoke song: “Copacabana”; I also have a dance that goes with it.

A favorite sad song: “Summer Soft,” by Stevie Wonder

A favorite angry song: “Cell Block Tango” from the original Broadway cast of Chicago

“My friend Marcy Blum put me on to the show Sex Education, and I really enjoyed it.” (Netflix)

An album that means a lot to me: There are many, but I would have to say Hurray for the Riff Raff’s The Navigator, because the path of my life feels irrevocably linked to that album; that was what I was listening to when I conceived of the idea for my first book. The journey that the singer-songwriter Alynda Lee Segarra takes you on, lyrically, helped me find a path for the characters I made. So I worship that album a bit, and it never gets old, despite my listening to it so many times. I own it on vinyl, which, these days, is a true sign of love.

The last museum or gallery show that I loved: “No Existe un Mundo Poshuracán” at the Whitney, which was the first major exhibition of Puerto Rican art in the mainland U.S. since, I believe, a show at the Met in 1974. It focused on art created post–Hurricane Maria and was political and powerful. It was also moving for me to see a prestigious institution give so much space to art engaged in this conversation, and to see Puerto Rican art centered in an American context for a change.

Something I treasured as a teenager: Holy Cow!, the record store that used to be in Park Slope, Brooklyn. They would have mystery bundles of CDs for like $1. Or maybe it was $5. I discovered so much awesome music that way.

A piece of journalism that recently changed my perspective on a topic: Alex Brook Lynn’s recent feature in Intelligencer, “I Lost My Brother Twice,” was extremely illuminating for me about how the mental-health crisis we are seeing in the U.S. is part of a trickle-down effect of health-care privatization and the defunding and closing of public hospitals. It connected a lot of dots for me.

A favorite story I’ve read in The Atlantic: It’s a bit of a tie between Sam Quinones’s meth story from 2021 and, frankly, the revelation that the Where the Crawdads Sing author, Delia Owens, is part of an ongoing investigation for murder that seems to then have been fictionalized in her novel.

The last debate I had about culture: I’ve been debating—both with myself and others—if we can or should separate art from the artist that made it. We are living in a time when, on a nearly daily basis, we find out that a lot of people who have made cool and pertinent art are also terrible or morally reprehensible people. This is true throughout the history of art, but unlike a painting in a museum from days gone by, or even an album or a DVD you might have purchased ages ago, now, in the era of streaming everything, what we listen to and watch is also a form of continued economic support of living artists.

There are a lot of downsides to everything going digital, but one of them, to me, is that it’s added a slightly exhaustive element to being entertained. You aren’t just watching a film by a man accused of pedophilia or listening to a song by someone you’ve discovered is an anti-Semite; you are now actively putting money in their pocket when you do so. What does that mean for us, the consumers of the culture? [Related: Tár has an answer to art’s toughest question.]

A good recommendation I recently received: My friend Marcy Blum put me on to the show Sex Education, and I really enjoyed it. She also made me purchase a lemon squeezer, and, honestly, it has changed my life. [Related: The thoughtful raunch of Sex Education]

The last thing that made me cry: I sobbed for the entire mile-and-a-half walk home after watching The Whale. I’m still not sure if I loved it or if it was an expert act of emotional manipulation, but Brendan Fraser was a marvel and the entire theater just sat in stunned silence when it was over. [Related: You can’t really make a feel-good body-horror movie.]

The last thing that made me snort with laughter: I rewatched How to Marry a Millionaire recently and was literally rolling. There is no one like Marilyn Monroe.

Read past editions of the Culture Survey with Jenisha Watts, David French, Shirley Li, David Sims, Lenika Cruz, Jordan Calhoun, Hannah Giorgis, and Sophie Gilbert.

The Week Ahead Abbott Elementary, one of our critics’ picks for the best shows of 2022 (returning from its Season 2 hiatus on Wednesday) M3GAN, the latest horror flick from Blumhouse Productions and Atomic Monster Productions (Friday) Iggy Pop’s new album, Every Loser (Friday) Essay (Rob Delaney; Joanne Imperio / The Atlantic; Alamy; Getty)

The TV Shows That Helped My Dying Son Communicate

By Rob Delaney

When you have a kid with a severe illness, whatever makes them happy during it becomes immeasurably valuable to you—no matter how small.

I learned this when my 1-year-old son, Henry, was diagnosed with a brain tumor. As part of his treatment, he had to get a tracheostomy—a breathing tube was inserted in the base of his neck and prevented him from talking. After he lost his voice, Henry communicated through Makaton, a language program that uses symbols, signs, and speech to enable communication for people who might otherwise have a tough time being understood. The program is similar to sign language, but it combines hand gestures with spoken words (for those who can speak) and sometimes references to images or objects as well. Many people with Down syndrome find it helpful, as do kids like Henry who can’t speak because of a tracheostomy and nerve damage.

You may have seen Makaton if you’ve ever watched the beloved Mr. Tumble on CBeebies, a BBC channel for little kids. Mr. Tumble is the alter ego of a guy named Justin Fletcher. Because he’s probably the most famous Makaton user in the United Kingdom, he’s helped countless families develop communication skills that foster substantively better and closer relationships. When we found his show, Henry and I didn’t have much longer left together, but Mr. Tumble helped us understand each other in what time we did have.

Read the full article.

More in Culture The dizzying debauchery of Babylon How the lessons of Game of Thrones were lost Will climate change make real animals into fairy tales? The Avatar sequel’s worst character actually does the film a service.

Read the latest culture essay by Jordan Calhoun in Humans Being.

Catch Up on The Atlantic How George Santos defrauded my old congressional district The great big Medicare rip-off Poverty is violent. Photo Album (Emilio Morenatti / AP0

Check out some of the best photos of 2022 through the lens of the photographer Emilio Morenatti.

Kate Lindsay contributed to this newsletter.