After a string of mass shootings, including those in Buffalo, New York, and Uvalde, Texas, last year, I wrote a story with this headline: Why the president, Congress and the Supreme Court can't -- or won't -- stop mass shootings.

Every visit I’ve ever made to Israel has included a screaming match with my relatives there. I know: They’re Israelis. It’s to be expected. It’s how they show love. But the fights always resulted from the gentlest of prodding on my part—about the occupation, about the expanding role of religious authorities, about why Israeli taxi drivers can seem so obnoxious. They would respond with disproportionate defensiveness, even when I knew that my family of Tel Aviv centrists basically agreed with me. The questioning itself, especially from someone who didn’t live there, was the problem. I would be reminded that only two paths were open to me—pro-Israel or anti-Israel—and that simply by opening my mouth I had made a choice, the wrong one. There are a hundred reasons not to criticize the embattled Jewish state, I was told, and that was doubly true for me, an outsider, an American.

This has made my extended family’s WhatsApp group a confusing place for me recently. Until a couple of weeks ago, I had never seen my relatives at any protest (except maybe that one about the high price of cottage cheese). But every day, for weeks now, one of my uncles, Zvika or Doron, and my many young cousins have been posting photos and videos from the swelling demonstrations against the government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu over a bill that, if passed, would drastically curtail the power of the country’s Supreme Court—calling into question, critics say, whether Israel could even be called a democracy anymore.

[David Grossman: Israeli democracy faces a mortal threat]

After Netanyahu fired on Sunday the one minister in his government who dared to question the speed with which the bill was proceeding through Israel’s Parliament, those protests turned into a full-blown domestic crisis. By Monday, a huge bonfire could be seen burning wildly in the middle of Tel Aviv; strikes had shut down the airports, schools, and garbage collection. And there were my relatives, in the streets in the middle of the night, fire blazing behind them, chants filling the air, at the center of it all.

The success of this protest movement, which yesterday finally forced Netanyahu to postpone a vote on the bill, has to do, it seems to me, with the flags. They were everywhere, flung around shoulders, fluttering on long sticks, painted on young cheeks, stretched over the heads of crowds. There seemed to be no square foot without the blue Star of David. The protesters wrapped themselves in the flags: If there were indeed only two possible choices, this demonstration was unabashedly pro-Israel.

Those who came to resist Netanyahu and the moves of his extreme-right coalition partners avoided the framing of their actions as the expected leftist response—as a form of reaction, that is. They were the ones, they said, who were being true to the values of Israel. They were the ones who represented the Jewish and democratic state that Israel was founded to be. They were the authentic Israelis—even, one might say, conservative in the truest sense of hewing to tradition—while those looking to enact what they called “judicial reforms” were the dangerous radicals, the ones trying to bypass the rule of law and impose an alien authoritarianism akin to Hungary’s.

[Yair Rosenberg: Netanyahu flinched]

This was a dramatic reversal of roles for a liberal sector of Israel society that has often been derided over the years as “elite” and out of touch, dismissed as caring more for the Palestinians than they do for their fellow Jews. The blatant, overwhelming patriotism on display at these protests made that characterization moot. If any opponents tried those insults, they were drowned out by boisterous, emotional singing of the Hatikvah, Israel’s national anthem.

The patriotism allowed my relatives to take part. It helped release the cascade of support that the protesters have enjoyed in the past few days. “There comes a time in the history of a people or a person or an organization when you have to stand up and be counted,” Daniel Chamovitz​​, the president of Ben-Gurion University, told The New York Times, explaining his decision to shut down the university in protest. Labor unions throughout the country followed suit. And, most crucially, large numbers of reservists in the Israeli army declared their refusal to serve when called up. To the attempt by right-wing government ministers such as Itamar Ben-Gvir to depict the protesters as “anarchists,” the movement responded: We are just Israelis.

The bill has not gone away, and Netanyahu and his allies are determined to see it passed without compromise. But for a cohort of politicians loath to show weakness, the decision to delay was a sign that the protests are effective.

[Sasha Banks: The problem with patriotism]

The American left has not turned to Israel as a role model for anything for a long time. And normally, wrapping oneself in the national flag would be about the last thing any self-respecting U.S. liberal would be inspired to do—least of all by Israeli example. But nothing lately feels normal, and liberal values and democratic standards are in no great shape here, either. It might be time for American defenders of liberal democracy to consider waving our own flag with the same abandon as my Israeli relatives.

The left’s allergy to exhibitions of patriotism has always granted the right an extraordinary rhetorical weapon: the chance to claim that the other side is not really American, does not really care about our country. It would be foolish to suggest that waving more flags would deny the right that weapon, but what’s happened in Israel shows the tactical benefits of flipping this script, of loudly claiming authenticity and all that’s positive about belonging to a nation.

[Ben Rhodes: This is no time for passive patriotism]

What if the left made its fights, whether over reproductive rights or gun control or any number of issues, in a more full-throated patriotic tone, as an expression of the country’s deepest commitments to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness? Speaking in this register might be uncomfortable at first—less comfortable, certainly, than the vocabulary of progress, of a flawed society evolving to become better. But it would establish the left’s causes as affirmations of a national identity, as true to tradition, making them much harder to brush away as un-American. If this came along with the outward symbols—the chants of “U.S.A.,” the flags around shoulders—the right would find it harder to resort to its usual reflexes. You can’t be called an out-of-touch elitist when you’re loudly singing the national anthem.

Israel and the U.S. are two different societies, with two very different histories. But their politics have each become entangled in almost matching culture wars that are, essentially, about questions of authenticity and belonging. If Israel’s streets today are any indication, the people usually on the defensive in these arguments have a lot to gain by simply exclaiming that they have as great a stake in the nation, that they are just as much the nation.

The Atlantic has named a new host for its flagship podcast, Radio Atlantic: Hanna Rosin, a former Atlantic writer who was a co-host of NPR’s Invisibilia and most recently the editorial director for audio at New York magazine. Hanna will bring her formidable talent and deep curiosity to Radio Atlantic, which will relaunch in the spring.

Radio Atlantic will resume a weekly cadence in late May. The show will have the same ambition as the magazine, which is to surface the most exciting and relevant ideas of the moment, whether through timely conversations or audio-rich reported stories. Like the magazine, it will feature a range of perspectives and journalism that makes you see the world differently.

“A good episode is one that gives you new insight, or a new way of thinking about a critical issue at exactly the moment when you, the listener, are looking for that guidance,” says Hanna.

As a writer at The Atlantic in the early 2010s, Hanna wrote a series of memorable, high-impact cover and feature stories probing how we exist in the world: about the end of men, overprotective parents, and fraying teen mental health. She has since the summer of 2020 been the editorial director for New York magazine’s audio unit, where she launched the shows Cover Story, Into It, and On With Kara Swisher, and oversaw the growth of Pivot. While at Slate, Hanna founded the section DoubleX and hosted the Waves podcast.

“Hanna is one of the most gifted journalists I’ve ever met,” says Jeffrey Goldberg, The Atlantic’s editor in chief. “She was an immensely successful feature writer for us, and so it was distressing when she left The Atlantic. But, of course, she succeeded wildly in podcasting, and it’s a great joy to welcome her back home to The Atlantic, where she will contribute greatly not only to our ambitious audio strategy, but to all of our journalism.”

The Atlantic is expanding its audio offerings in 2023 under the leadership of executive producer Claudine Ebeid, alongside Goldberg, executive editor Adrienne LaFrance, and managing editor Andrea Valdez. Earlier this month, The Atlantic launched the narrative podcast Holy Week about the uprisings that followed the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. in 1968 and how those seven days––one of the most fiery, disruptive, and contentious weeks in American history––diverted the course of a social revolution. All eight episodes of Holy Week are available now.

Other recent editorial hires include Stephanie McCrummen as a staff writer, who started at The Atlantic after nearly two decades at The Washington Post, and Laura Secor as a senior editor to direct coverage of global issues and foreign policy. Laura was a features editor for The Wall Street Journal’s Weekend Review, and previously a deputy editor at Foreign Affairs.

Sam Bankman-Fried, the disgraced former CEO of the cryptocurrency exchange FTX, has been charged with bribing Chinese officials with $40 million in cryptocurrency in a new superseding indictment in the Southern District of New York (SDNY).

Read more...

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.

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.

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.

First, here are four new stories from The Atlantic:

How did America’s weirdest, most freedom-obsessed state fall for an authoritarian governor?

Netanyahu flinched.

The catch-22 for working parents

Dear Therapist: We set a deadline to decide about marriage, and we still don’t know.

Every Day, Every Medium

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.

Explore all of our newsletters here.

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.

More From The Atlantic

Photos: Damage from the tornado outbreak in Mississippi In the age of Ozempic, what’s the point of working out? Rick Steves’ advice for vacationers in Europe this summer Culture Break Claudette Barius / HBO

Read. Hua Hsu’s memoir, Stay True.

“I knew exactly what was going to happen (it’s written on the book jacket) and still felt totally unprepared for the emotional force of it,” our senior editor Amy Weiss-Meyer says.

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!)

Play our daily crossword.

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.