Gun violence is now the leading cause of death of children in America. In the wake of the Nashville school shooting, how does this change the conversations you have with your kids? What safety measures or solutions would you like to see enacted after these tragic shootings?

Among the many difficulties imposed upon America by the pandemic, the scourge of anti-vaccine sentiment—and the preventable deaths caused as result—ranks among the most frustrating, especially for infectious-disease doctors like me.

People who are hospitalized with COVID-19 rarely refuse therapy, but acceptance of vaccines to help prevent infection has been considerably more limited. Seventy percent of Americans have received the initial complement of vaccine injections, and many fewer have received the boosters designed to address viral variants and confer additional protection. Why are so many people resistant to this potentially lifesaving treatment?  

Some explanations are unique to our era—the awful weaponization of science in a deeply partisan political environment during the age of social media, for instance. But the concept of vaccine hesitancy is not new. Such hesitancy is, in a larger sense, a rejection of science—a phenomenon that far predates the existence of vaccines.

One of the earliest documented controversies in science denialism comes from the field of astronomy. In the third century B.C., the Greek astronomer Aristarchus of Samos proposed a heliocentric model of the universe. The idea that the Earth and planets might revolve around the sun, rather than the other way around, was shocking at the time, and Aristarchus’s theory was quickly rejected in favor of models such as those put forth by Aristotle and Ptolemy, both of whom insisted that the Earth was the center of the universe. The fact that Aristotle and Ptolemy remain better known today than Aristarchus shows the force of the rejection. It would be some 2,000 years before the notion was seriously reconsidered.   

In the 1530s, the Polish astronomer Nicolaus Copernicus developed his own heliocentric model based on astronomical observations. Copernicus is remembered today primarily for this perspective-changing discovery. But it’s worth noting that he delayed publication of his findings until 1543, the year of his death, perhaps for fear of scorn or religious objections.  

In the early 17th century, Galileo Galilei, the Italian astronomer known as the “father of modern astronomy,” recognized that explaining the celestial changes in the position of stars and sun over time required that the Earth revolve around the sun. Galileo fully and publicly supported the Copernican theory of a heliocentric universe, and condemnation from the Vatican was swift and harsh. He was tried by the Inquisition and threatened with excommunication if he did not recant. Rather than incur the wrath of the pope, he finally agreed that he was wrong. He spent the remainder of his life under house arrest. It would be another 180 years before the Church admitted that Galileo was right.

Rejections of scientific advances are found throughout the history of medicine. There have been four great advances in medicine over the past 200 years: anesthesia, antisepsis, antibiotics, and immunization. Not every advance was met with resistance. When the benefits of the advance have been obvious, there has tended to be little hesitation. Anesthesia and its cousin, analgesia, for instance, were rapidly accepted; they relieved pain, and the advantages were readily appreciated.  

Antisepsis had a stormier path to public acceptance. In the 19th century, English and Irish physicians recognized that puerperal sepsis (a dangerous infection in a mother after delivery of a baby) was likely a contagious condition that was spread from patient to patient either by the medical staff or the local environment. They suggested that improving hygiene would reduce the high rates of mortality that puerperal sepsis caused. In 1843, Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr., a physician (and one of The Atlantic’s founders), presented a paper to the Boston Society for Medical Improvement titled “The Contagiousness of Puerperal Fever.” Holmes suggested that unwashed hands among the medical and nursing staff were responsible for transmitting puerperal fever. This did not sit well with the establishment. A prestigious Philadelphia obstetrician, Charles D. Meigs, declared Holmes’s findings to be nonsense and suggested that an increased number of cases among any physician was just bad luck.  

The physician who is most frequently recognized with establishing the contagious nature of this infection is a Hungarian obstetrician, Ignaz Semmelweis.  He noted that patients in the Vienna General Hospital who were cared for by physicians had a higher incidence of postpartum sepsis than those who were cared for by midwives. Semmelweis realized that physicians performed autopsies, whereas midwives did not, and that physicians did not wash their hands or clothing before moving from an autopsy to a delivery. (It was routine for them to attend deliveries in their bloodstained clothing, having come directly from the autopsy suite.) When he suggested simple hygiene measures such as handwashing, he was derided and eventually run out of town. The medical establishment was unwilling to accept that physicians—rather than bad air or host weaknesses—were responsible for spreading infections and harming patients.

Science denialism can work in the other direction too. When antibiotics, especially penicillin, were first introduced, they were rightly appreciated as miracle drugs. In the pre-antibiotic era, the leading cause of death among children was infectious diseases. The use of antibiotics was astoundingly successful against many, but not all, childhood diseases. The downside for this enthusiasm for treatment came when patients demanded antibiotics for conditions—such as viruses—that didn’t actually necessitate them. Fifty years ago, telling a patient that they had a virus and that penicillin was therefore of no use led to disappointment, disbelief, and even arguments from patients requesting antibiotics for simple colds. Many doctors gave in because it was simpler than spending time fighting with a patient. A consequence of the more indiscriminate use of antibiotics—which represents its own mini-genre of science denialism—has been increased bacterial resistance.

But of the four great advances, none has so broadly helped humanity, or suffered more from science denialism, than immunization. Most, but not all, of the vaccines that scientists have developed since the first immunizations in the 18th century have been developed against viruses. Of all viral infections, the most feared may well have been smallpox. Over the course of the 20th century alone, an estimated 300 million people died of smallpox. Smallpox is highly contagious and spares no age group or class. Its common form has an estimated overall mortality of roughly 30 percent, but the mortality of hemorrhagic smallpox—a more severe form of the disease—approaches 100 percent. Smallpox is also wildly contagious, a characteristic that is most evident when a previously unexposed population is exposed. Smallpox was unknown in the Americas before European explorers brought cases to the New World. The disease decimated the Indigenous populations of North America and South America as a result.

The early concept of immunization to prevent smallpox may have begun more than 1,000 years ago, in China. The history is contested, but some documents show that children would be made to inhale material from a ground-up, mature smallpox lesion scraped off of the body of the infected—a level of exposure that could trigger a person’s immune response to smallpox without causing a full-blown infection. A later technique, which involved scratching the skin of an uninfected individual with material from another person’s lesion, was observed by the wife of the English ambassador to Istanbul, who then brought this procedure to Europe. She was so impressed that she had her children immunized. Subsequently, an experiment was done in which six prisoners in London were immunized. Despite exposure to smallpox, none of them became ill.

Like many advances in medicine, smallpox immunization was met with some resistance, including worry that immunization might inadvertently spread the disease to others. This was an understandable reaction; the live smallpox virus was used, and a small percentage of inoculated individuals did develop full-blown disease and die. In 1721, there was an outbreak of smallpox in Boston. The writer and clergyman Cotton Mather urged widespread immunization but had only moderate success because of resistance from the local population.  (History complicates even the views of those who embrace science: Mather was also an ardent defender of the Salem witch trials.) Years later, a well-known case of immunization resistance occurred in Philadelphia. During an outbreak of smallpox in 1736, Benjamin Franklin’s 4-year-old son, Francis, became infected and died. Francis had not been immunized despite an opportunity to do so, and Franklin said he regretted the decision for the rest of his life.   

In the generations that followed, scientists built off of these earlier methods and eventually developed a stable and widely available smallpox vaccine. The global eradication of smallpox as a result remains one of the greatest accomplishments in the history of medicine. The last case of naturally occurring smallpox was reported more than 40 years ago.

Even so, vaccine hesitancy has persisted. In America, new vaccines for other diseases have continued to prompt their own waves of skepticism and hostility. And although science denialism is not pervasive in the way it once was centuries ago, it still rears its ugly head. The arrival of the COVID-19 vaccines brought pernicious vaccine sentiments into the spotlight. The reasons for this vehemence are many. For instance, some people who might accept the efficacy of a vaccine have such a fear of injections that they simply avoid seeking medical care until absolutely necessary. But this represents a minority of those who reject the vaccines.

A more common—and more insidious—force that pushes people away from lifesaving vaccines appears to be swelling distrust in expertise, which is both a political and cultural phenomenon. Vaccine resistance can be peddled by influential people in both liberal and conservative circles, but throughout the pandemic, right-wing anti-government organizations and television personalities in particular have promoted a stew of outrageous conspiracy theories about vaccines. Run-of-the-mill misinformation remains a problem too. Some people continue to believe that the COVID-19 vaccine will infect you and make you sick—this is not the case. Finally, of course, there are concerns about known and unknown side effects from the vaccination. Like many vaccines, the COVID shots are linked to serious health effects in extremely rare circumstances; for instance, Moderna’s and Pfizer’s mRNA shots are associated with a very small risk of heart inflammation. It is virtually impossible to prove that some side effect will not ever occur. But hundreds of millions of people have safely received the COVID vaccine in the United States alone.  

Perhaps the greatest disservice to vaccination has been the fraudulent claim that childhood vaccines cause autism. This claim was originally published in an otherwise respected medical journal in the 1990s, and has since been fully retracted. (The author lost his medical license.) Nevertheless, many people still believe this and have put their children at risk for serious illness as a result.

Our advances in science over the past two centuries have truly been extraordinary, but our society still suffers from the forces that reject reason and prevent our ability to take full advantage of discoveries that protect us all. And we need to push back against those who endanger others because they see opportunities for fame or profit in spreading dangerous disinformation. Until that happens, our species will continue to understand the world around us in fits and starts—with too many people dying, even when we know how to save them.

Critics aren’t always aligned in their judgments; part of the job description, in fact, is to be ready for disagreement. I’ve had many private disputes about books with colleagues. Many whom I respect hate some titles that I adore. The opposite has also been true—sometimes we come to the near-identical conclusion.

But then there are those moments when a critical mass gathers behind a negative assessment of a book, and the title can wind up losing not just a readership but also the chance at a longer life. Things don’t always work out that way—we’ve all read the stories about contemporary pans of now-classic books, such as Herman Melville’s Moby-Dick (“wantonly eccentric; outrageously bombastic”), F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby (“no more than a glorified anecdote” with characters like “marionettes”), and Toni Morrison’s Jazz (one reviewer called the author “bedazzled by her own virtuosity,” as incorrect as anyone has ever been). But although criticism does depend on individual sensibility and taste, very good books can still get unfair shakes, even from the most conscientious writers.

What follows is a highly personal selection of books I believe deserved a warmer reception from the get-go. Some of their reputations have changed over time; others remain in critical limbo. But each is fascinating, complicated, and worth a read.

Dominion, by Calvin Baker

Back in 2006, Kirkus Reviews said Baker’s third novel was “a choppy narrative,” and Publishers Weekly found it “ambitious but slack.” However, those of us who loved its combination of historical context and mystical elements might argue otherwise. The plot follows Jasper Merian, who is freed by his Virginia enslaver but forced to leave his wife and son behind. After he arrives in South Carolina, Merian again and again becomes entangled with otherworldly forces that both endanger and protect him. Baker is doing something different with magical realism in his work than, say, Jorge Luis Borges was in his: In Dominion, the appearance of terrifying beasts and weapons mimics the dangers that await the period’s Black Americans, enslaved and free. And his use of fantasy to emphasize the horrors of slavery preceded similar works, such as Jabari Asim’s Yonder and Colson Whitehead’s The Underground Railroad, both of which employ alternate history and the supernatural in this manner; perhaps he was ahead of his time. Regardless, Dominion merits a much more appreciative audience, especially as we continue to challenge our nation’s received narratives.

Simon and Schuster

Lisey’s Story, by Stephen King

King’s huge, surprisingly feminist Lisey’s Story is one of his attempts at a truly literary work. Though critics recognized the effort, some felt that his bad habits from decades of pumping out horror fiction prevented him from pulling it off. Lisey Debusher Landon is 50 when her husband, Scott, begins speaking to her from beyond the grave, luring her to a strange, imaginary place connected to his troubled father. Crammed with ideas and tricks and characters, the book is too long; as Laura Miller wrote in Salon, the author has an unfortunate “suspicion of tasteful restraint.” But it’s also a tour de force in which King mines his favorite material—the workings of the artistic mind—and considers what it means to work creatively alongside someone else. In many ways, Lisey’s Story compares sustaining a long marriage to writing a complicated book. If you can suspend your disbelief and get lost in the narrative, you’ll follow a plot that details the power of love: It grounds us, the book argues, and on occasion, it helps us accomplish strange feats—such as the shocking, frightening ones Lisey manages toward the end. The trust between Lisey and Scott, sustained from ’til-death-do-us-part until life after death, might be King’s strongest manifesto on how imagination is discovered and nurtured.

[Read: A defense of Stephen King, master of the decisive moment]

Ecco

Bellefleur, by Joyce Carol Oates
“When a plot grossly outweighs the main story, as it does here, the form is inefficient or else the novel is satirical. Bellefleur is definitely not satirical,” The Washington Post wrote. However, Oates’s use of Gothic conventions to explore modern life actually is satirical—and revelatory. Bellefleur is a realist work that nonetheless includes fantastic elements, insisting on their realism. The genre tropes and medieval allegories highlight how strange reality has become. The dangerously eccentric Bellefleur dynasty, led by the greedy paterfamilias Gideon Bellefleur, live in a looming, spooky castle in the Adirondacks. Their world is both full of contemporary flourishes (such as private airplanes and other gadgets) and still somehow predicated on blood ties. It reads like a typically maligned kind of potboiler—Kirkus claimed it was “a great pudding of a book lacking in shape, flavor, and substance,” and although The Christian Science Monitor liked it, the reviewer admitted that it occasionally “strains for effect”—but it exemplifies the lofty ambitions Oates has carried across her dozens of novels. Here, she’s constructed a book that’s downright fun to read.

Random House

Night Film, by Marisha Pessl

Pessl’s sophomore effort, Night Film, published seven years after her acclaimed coming-of-age tale Special Topics in Calamity Physics, is a long, shaggy-dog mystery. Night Film showcases the efforts of Scott McGrath, a writer accused of defamation, to find out what happened to the famed horror-film director Stanislas Cordova’s daughter, Ashley. The Guardian’s reviewer “was stunned, but not in a good way,” and even slightly more positive reviews had to admit that the postmodern elements are in your face. Even though Jennifer Egan’s text-based slideshow in A Visit From the Goon Squad was met with wonder, Night Film’s innovations, including photographs, newspaper articles, and screenshots, seem to have eluded our collective patience. When I first read it, Night Film delighted me, and it still does, because and not in spite of its dead-end rabbit holes and whimsical formatting (tons of dialogue receives italic emphasis). One has to understand very little about what’s going on to enjoy its pastiche of whodunit, suspense, and horror.

[Read: 15 books you won’t regret rereading]

Harper Perennial

A Suitable Boy, by Vikram Seth

A “cream-puff-wrapped-in-a-cinder-block” is how Kirkus described A Suitable Boy in 1993. That early reception was tempered by others’ excitement when it was published, and the story does have longevity; it was made into a BBC drama in 2020. But negative impressions of a doorstop-size book (nearly 1,500 pages) can linger, making skeptical readers even less inclined to pick it up. A few years after it came out, The Guardian even said it was “a love story with little love and no sex.” However, Seth wasn’t ignoring love and sex; he had a different target in mind with this epic account of 1950s Indian marriage mores. Read not as a romance but as an account of social class and its discontents, A Suitable Boy transcends its size. It becomes a fiery (although always compassionate) indictment of how the upper class transmits its often-wrong-minded ideas about romantic compatibility. Lata Mehra’s mother, always called, in full, Mrs. Rupa Mehra, wants to marry her daughter to the best Hindu husband possible. Unfortunately, Lata herself has fallen for a Muslim man. As four families—the Mehras, the Kapoors, the Chatterjis, and the Khans—go about their lives, Seth uses them to build a broad portrait of a modern nation struggling with its new independence. Don’t expect Rushdie. Think George Eliot crossed with Abraham Verghese, and sink into the controlled chaos.

Picador

I Am Charlotte Simmons, by Tom Wolfe

This might be the most controversial choice on this list. “Collegiate torture porn,” The Washington Post said in 2019, after Wolfe’s death. “Is this hellish vision of sex, drunks and gangsta rap the real life of American college students today?” asked The New York Times. The title character, Charlotte, comes to a Pennsylvania university closely resembling Duke in its devotion to high-profile athletics—and her conservative upbringing not only puts her at a distinct disadvantage in class and with peers but also pushes her to cling to a star basketball player instead of pursuing her own agenda. Because Wolfe is known for his attention to detail, a hallmark of his justly acclaimed nonfiction, the fact that he gets some details about college students’ partying and sex lives wrong irked some reviewers. But that same attention, a kind of relentless reportorial gaze inside dorm and locker rooms, keeps readers going, wondering what will become of Charlotte. When portraying drunken frat parties and aggressive basketball games, Wolfe remains interested in how humans, especially young ones, sort themselves into hierarchies and social groups. His insistence on the primacy of class in contemporary America echoes like a drumbeat through this fascinating novel.

[Read: The lexicon of Tom Wolfe]

Coffee House Press

I Hotel, by Karen Tei Yamashita

Although it was a National Book Award finalist, Yamashita’s I Hotel was still deemed “a glorious failure” by the Chicago Tribune in 2010. Another critic found it “hard work,” and even in a glowing review, Kirkus said it was “overstuffed.” Thirteen years later, Yamashita’s account of Asian American activism in the 1960s and ’70s, centered on San Francisco’s International Hotel on Kearny Street, astonishes; the book’s communal structure and perspective on a historic building that so many migrants called home is stunning, not exhausting. The author actually envisioned the 10 novellas inside as 10 different rooms of the hotel, each one holding a different story but connected to the others through the experiences of prejudice, hardship, activism, and survival. Today, there is increased appreciation for literature that’s challenging in style as well as in substance; the experimental syntax and structure might be more welcome. Sometimes, as in I Hotel, surprising an audience is the only way to highlight the injustices—unsafe working conditions, inadequate health and housing benefits—that are frequently overlooked in systems focused on rising productivity and profits. This book deserves not just reconsideration but also a wide readership.

A more heartrending and quintessentially American scene is hard to imagine.

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At his rally in Waco this weekend, Donald Trump stood at attention as a choir of jailed January 6 rioters sang an anthem of sedition, and media outlets barely blinked.

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Almost 30 years after a cult leader caused a disaster in Waco, Trump rallied his own political cult—and the location cannot be a coincidence—in that same Texas city. The Waco tent revival featured the usual Trumpian cast of grifters, carnies, and misfits, including the fan favorites Mike Lindell and Ted Nugent. Most of the former president’s speech was, of course, about himself and his many grievances, and the crowd reportedly began to thin out somewhat early.

And yet, in Waco—the first rally of Trump’s 2024 campaign—Trump proved he is still capable of doing shocking things that once would have been unthinkable. As the Associated Press reported:

With a hand over his heart, Trump stood at attention when his rally opened with a song called “Justice for All” performed by a choir of people imprisoned for their roles in the Jan. 6 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol. Some footage from the insurrection was shown on big screens displayed at the rally site as the choir sang the national anthem and a recording played of Trump reciting the Pledge of Allegiance.

In other words: A former president, a man once entrusted with the Constitution’s Article II powers as our chief magistrate and the commander in chief of the most powerful military in the world, an elected official who held our survival in his hands with the codes to our nuclear arsenal, considered it an honor to be serenaded by a group of violent insurrectionists who are sitting in jail for offenses against the government and people of the United States.

Trump’s voice was not only featured on this song; he actually volunteered to provide a recording for it. I know that many people, after years of this mad-king routine, simply do not want to process anything with the words Donald Trump in it. I don’t blame you. But let’s not look away: In Waco, Trump embraced a creepy mash-up of the national anthem, “USA” chants, and his own voice, and then proceeded for some 90 minutes to make clear that he is now irrevocably all in with the seditionists, the conspiracy theorists, the “Trump or death” fanatics, the Vladimir Putin fanboys—the whole appalling lot of them.

And yet, a day later, the story of Trump standing at attention for the January 6 choir has begun to fade from coverage. How, you might wonder, is this not still on every news site, every broadcast? To be fair, the AP called it “an extraordinary display.” The New York Times called the playing of the song “a new twist.” Perhaps ironically, one of the most candid reactions came from Fox’s Brian Kilmeade, who called Trump’s use of January 6 footage at the rally “insane.” Many media outlets used a picture of Trump with his hand over his heart, as I have done here. None of that is enough.

A thought experiment might help. Imagine if, say, Barack Obama held a rally and stood at attention as a group of anti-constitutional rioters—perhaps people who had called for attacking police officers and lynching top officials of the United States—used his voice as a motif while singing from prison to honor him. You know exactly what would happen: That one moment would dominate the news cycle until the last star in the galaxy burned out. It would define Obama for the rest of his life. (If you doubt this, remember that Obama was caught on a hot mic telling then–Russian President Dmitry Medvedev that he’d have more flexibility to negotiate after the 2012 election—a completely ordinary if somewhat unwise thing to say—and we had to hear about it for years.)

But we are worn out on Trump. We’ve simply packed all of his behavior into a barrel, labeled it as generic toxic waste, and pushed it to the side, hoping that someone will take it away and bury it far from civilization.

There’s another reason, however, we’re not ringing more alarm bells. Too many people are afraid of “amplifying” Trump, including media members who still insist on treating a violent insurrectionist movement as if it’s a normal political party. I have consistently argued for amplifying every traitorous and unhinged thing Trump says, but others have their doubts: Jay Rosen, a journalism professor at NYU, cited the disinformation expert Whitney Phillips to caution me that “sunlight disinfects,” but “it can also make things grow.”

I think this was a more pressing concern in 2016, when Trump was the beneficiary of the so-called “earned media” that can result from outrageous statements and stunts. I still think focusing on Trump and holding him accountable for his statements was the right thing to do, but I agree that too often during the 2016 campaign, he got away with being ridiculous, because he was not taken seriously enough as a threat to democracy.

In 2023, however, Trump is no longer a novelty. The man is a former president and a top candidate for his old job. Merely fact-checking him or tut-tutting about his “extraordinary” behavior would, I agree, “normalize” him, so let’s not do that. Instead, both journalists and ordinary citizens should ensure that everyone knows exactly what Trump is doing and saying, in all of its fetid and vile detail.

Moments like the Waco rally should be all over the news, for three reasons.

First, Trump fatigue is real, but the personality cult around Trump avoids it by cherry-picking what Trump says and does. Putting Trump on blast isn’t going to convert new people; if anything, we learned from Trump’s COVID press conferences as president that he does a lot of damage to himself by talking too much. People in his own party tried to get him to stop doing those bizarre performances, and he finally listened to them.

Second, Trump and his minions, especially elected Republicans, are experts at pretending that things didn’t happen the way we saw them. Ask a GOP official about Trump’s offensive statements, and you’ll likely get “I didn’t see that,” “I don’t read his tweets,” “I’ll have to check into that,” and other squirts of verbal helium. Media and citizens alike should hold those elected representatives and other officeholders to account. Ask them point-blank if they support what Trump said and if they will support him as the nominee of their party.

Third, we need to confront the reality that Trump is now on track to win the nomination yet again. In 2016 and 2020, I thought we were facing the most important elections in modern American history, but that was before Trump incited an insurrection and invited every violent kook in the nation to ride to his defense. Fine, I stand corrected: 2024 is epochally important. Trump has left no doubt that he is a violent authoritarian who intends to reject any election that does not restore him to power, that he will pardon scores of criminals, and that he will never willingly leave office. This should be said every day, in every medium.

If we are to walk ourselves back into an authoritarian nightmare, let’s at least do it without any pretenses.

Related:

Trump begins a “retribution” tour. The most disturbing part of Trump’s latest rant Today’s News An armed woman shot and killed three children and three staff members at a Christian school in Nashville. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s plans to overhaul Israel’s judiciary were put on hold after widespread protests across the country. Humza Yousaf was named the new leader of the Scottish National Party and will almost certainly be chosen as Scotland’s next leader by the Parliament tomorrow. Dispatches Up for Debate: Conor Friedersdorf’s readers reflect on the dilemmas of urban life.

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Evening Read Jon Brenneis / Getty

Sick All the Time

By Elizabeth Bruenig

Winter is over, and what a wretched one it was. There came a point in the season when everyone in our house was sick. I stood at the top of the stairs one cold morning, gazing down blearily at the pile of mail and magazines that had accumulated by the door, knowing there were dishes dumped in the sink to match and laundry heaped in the hampers as well. I thought of Henry Knighton, a medieval cleric who witnessed the Black Death’s scouring of Europe. I once read his firsthand account of the sheep and cattle that went wandering over fields where the harvest had rotted on the vine, crops and livestock returning to wilderness amid the great diminishing of human life. I now reigned over my own plagued realm, having lost this latest confrontation with nature.

Read the full article.

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Watch. The Season 4 premiere of Succession.

The episode, which aired last night on HBO, offered familiar beats but also a hint of a new direction. (And keep reading this newsletter for another reason to watch!)

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P.S.

The final season of HBO’s hit series Succession got underway last night. I am a fan of the show, but I am especially interested in how the saga of the Roy family ends, because I’m in it.

Yes, your humble correspondent landed a (very) small part in the series, as a pundit at the Roy family’s fictional ATN network. The episodes I was in had some pretty intense plot developments, but of course, I cannot share with you what happens, not least because I don’t even know myself. My part is a scripted character, but as is often the case on such a show, there’s a lot of security around the plot, and I don’t know what happened before or after I left the set. It was all great fun, and it was an honor to be able to watch some of the main cast at work. (If you think acting is easy, just spend a few days watching professionals do it.) When the season is winding down, I will write more about this fascinating experience; in the meantime, tune in and join me—well, a character sort of like me—at ATN.

— Tom

Isabel Fattal contributed to this newsletter.