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 Amy Weiss-Meyer, an Atlantic senior editor and frequent contributor. Most recently, Amy profiled the legendary children’s author Judy Blume for the April issue of the magazine and, in November, co-authored an article on the teenage Holocaust victim Marion Ehrlich, whose name is depicted in a plaque on the cover of the December 2022 issue. She is looking forward to watching Season 4 of Succession, enjoyed two recent museum exhibitions of artists named Alex, and was taken aback by last year’s stunning memoir by the writer Hua Hsu.

First, here are three Sunday reads from The Atlantic:

Life is worse for older people now. The Trump AI deepfakes had an unintended side effect. Marriage isn’t hard work; it’s serious play. The Culture Survey: Amy Weiss-Meyer

The upcoming event I’m most looking forward to: I didn’t love Season 3 of Succession as much as I loved 1 and 2, but I will absolutely be watching the premiere of the fourth and final season today. After that crazy Season 3 finale, I’d be lying if I said I’m not excited to see what happens! Plus, it’s been long enough since last winter that I’m once again ready for a weekly dose of Roy family drama. [Related: A perfect—and cyclical—Succession finale]

An author I will read anything by: Lauren Groff is the only author who could get me to read a book about medieval nuns; her writing is so beautiful, so human, so surprising and moving no matter the subject. She can also be wickedly funny. Her Atlantic essay from last year skewering luxury beach resorts—complete with a loving roast of her in-laws’ vacationing style—is simply delicious. [Related: Beware the luxury beach resort.]

The last thing that made me cry: Hua Hsu’s memoir, Stay True, was such a poignant portrayal of college friendship and loss. 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. [Related: Six memoirs that go beyond memories]

The last museum or gallery show that I loved: It’s hard to pick just one! I loved the Alex Katz exhibition at the Guggenheim Museum when I saw it last fall. The scale of the individual paintings—many of them portraits—and of the show itself (which spans an eight-decade career) was breathtaking but somehow not overwhelming. I left feeling much better acquainted with an artist whose work I only vaguely knew before.

Another incredibly immersive solo show that I loved last year, by an artist also named Alex, was an Alex Da Corte exhibition at the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, outside Copenhagen. All the rooms were completely transformed into a kind of neon-lit fantasyland that served as the backdrop for his playful yet serious work. The museum’s promo materials described the vibe as “like stepping into a parallel reality” and “pop-art on acid.” I’m still not convinced that Da Corte’s video of himself dressed up as Mister Rogers wasn’t a dream.

Something I recently rewatched, reread, or otherwise revisited: When I interviewed Judy Blume in Key West late last year, we discussed our mutual love for Maud Hart Lovelace’s Betsy-Tacy books. They first came out in the ’40s and ’50s, when Blume was young, and were reissued again in 2000, when I was in grade school. In the airport on the way home, I downloaded the third book in the series, Betsy and Tacy Go Over the Big Hill, on my iPad (I chose that one in part because Blume had written an introduction to the newer edition). It was so charming and fun and honest about the experience of being a kid (one of the major plot points is Betsy’s ambivalence about turning 10), and featured a secondary story line I had completely forgotten, about the perils of xenophobia and the importance of showing kindness to immigrants—even (or especially) if you don’t understand their language or customs. [Related: Judy Blume goes all the way.]

A piece of journalism that recently changed my perspective on a topic: Elizabeth Weil’s recent profile of the computational linguist Emily M. Bender, in New York magazine, helped me understand the possibilities and pitfalls of artificial intelligence (specifically large language models) in a way that no other piece of journalism has. If you, like me, are kind of avoiding the whole AI thing, if you know this is something you should care about but aren’t quite sure where to start, I can’t recommend this article enough.

My favorite way of wasting time on my phone: I spend far too much time on Instagram, sometimes to keep up with friends and family and restaurants I like, and sometimes (more shamefully) going down extremely weird algorithm-generated rabbit holes or following links from freakishly well-targeted ads. I’m not especially crafty, but lately, for whatever reason, the algorithm has been serving me very crafty content—how to mend a hole in a garment in a cute way that looks like a ladybug, or pretty ceramics, or stop-motion wool animations, which are quite soothing to watch. [Related: The strange brands in your Instagram feed (from 2018)]

I’m also in two active word-game group chats with extended family members: one for Spelling Bee and one for Wordle. I don’t play either consistently at this point, but I like getting pings on my phone from people I wouldn’t otherwise be in touch with on a daily basis, and seeing how others are scoring. My mom and my uncle have become real Spelling Bee snobs—they both get to Queen Bee almost every day now, which is annoying. [Related: I figured out Wordle’s secret.]

A poem, or line of poetry, that I return to: Nikki Giovanni’s “Just a New York Poem” is a gorgeous celebration of the city and of a certain kind of love. [Related: Nikki Giovanni on Martin Luther King Jr. (from 2018)]

Read past editions of the Culture Survey with Jerusalem Demsas, Kaitlyn Tiffany, Bhumi Tharoor, Amanda Mull, Megan Garber, Helen Lewis, Jane Yong Kim, Clint Smith, 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 Succession, the aforementioned HBO drama about the diabolical Roy clan, launches its fourth and final season (premieres tonight at 9 p.m. ET on HBO) Above Ground, the second poetry collection, and third book, by the author and Atlantic staff writer Clint Smith (on sale Tuesday) Rye Lane, the buzzy British rom-com that charmed audiences at this year’s Sundance Film Festival (begins streaming in the U.S. on Friday on Hulu) Essay Illustration by The Atlantic. Sources: Girl With a Pearl Earring, Johannes Vermeer / Mauritshuis; Girl With a Red Hat, Johannes Vermeer / National Gallery of Art.

Vermeer’s Daughter

By Lawrence Weschler

Fifteen years ago, a distinguished academic publisher brought out a densely argued, lavishly illustrated, wildly erudite monograph that seemed to completely reconceive the study of Johannes Vermeer. The author, an art historian named Benjamin Binstock, said that he had discerned the existence of an entirely new artist—Vermeer’s daughter Maria, the young woman Binstock had also identified as the likely model for Girl With a Pearl Earring—to whom he attributed seven of the 35 or so paintings then conventionally ascribed to Vermeer. To hear Binstock tell it, Maria’s paintings include one of the most popular: Girl With a Red Hat, at the National Gallery of Art, in Washington, D.C. He believes that painting and another at the National Gallery are self-portraits by Maria, and that she is also the artist behind two out of the three Vermeers at the Frick, in New York; two out of the five at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, also in New York; and one in the private Leiden Collection.

I happened upon Binstock’s book, Vermeer’s Family Secrets, not long after it was published, in 2008; at the time, I was picking up pretty much anything about Vermeer (and writing about Vermeer myself). I found the author’s argument by turns absorbing, perplexing, and confounding, but also curiously plausible and certainly worth entertaining. I was struck by how Binstock’s account helped explain the smattering of “misfit paintings”—those strangely uncharacteristic efforts, especially toward the end of Vermeer’s career, whose attributions were regularly being contested (or defended) by experts. So I was eager to see how the wider community of scholars and curators was going to respond.

The establishment did not respond at all. There was not a single academic review—not then and not ever.

Read the full article.

More in Culture My friend Jules Feiffer Tetris doesn’t stack up. Why kids aren’t falling in love with reading Procrastinating ourselves to death Eight books that will take you somewhere new This novelist is pushing all the buttons at the same time. Learn your family’s history. Catch Up on The Atlantic Donald Trump is on the wrong side of the religious right. Nobody likes Mike Pence. Click here if you want to be sad. Photo Album A volunteer prepares iftar food for Muslim devotees breaking their fast at the Data Darbar shrine on the first day of the holy month of Ramadan, in Lahore, Pakistan, on March 23, 2023. (Arif Ali / AFP / Getty)

Cherry blossoms bloom, a reveler greets the vernal equinox, and Muslims around the world observe Ramadan in our editor’s photo selections of the week.

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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 the staff writer Jerusalem Demsas, whose work examines inefficiencies and oversights in policy, housing, and infrastructure. She recently wrote about how environmental laws are being used by birders, an anti-immigration group, and an oil and gas company, not to protect the environment but to defend the status quo, and reported on what she called the “obvious” answer to homelessness for the January/February issue of the magazine. She’s also a winner of the American Society of Magazine Editors’ ASME NEXT Award for Journalists Under 30.

These days, Jerusalem spends her leisure time falling down Reddit rabbit holes, reading the poetry of W. H. Auden, and rocking out to Vampire Weekend. You’ll find her culture and entertainment recommendations below.

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

The strongest evidence yet that an animal started the pandemic What have humans just unleashed? How please stopped being polite The Culture Survey: Jerusalem Demsas

The television show I’m most enjoying right now: Abbott Elementary. I’m someone who can usually only watch TV while doing at least one or two other things at the same time, and this show grabs my full attention. Unbelievably funny. [Related: Abbott Elementary, Minx, and the end of the girlboss myth]

An actor I would watch in anything: Amy Adams. I fell in love with her while watching Arrival, and every time she comes on-screen, anyone near me gets a five- to 10-minute monologue about how the Academy is biased against science fiction. [Related: Is Arrival the best “first contact” film ever made?]

Best novel I’ve recently read, and the best work of nonfiction: Children of Time, by Adrian Tchaikovsky, is a fantastic science-fiction novel that I recently read. The best thing about science fiction is when someone is able to construct a world that is both familiar—or at least logically consistent with how we see the world—and adds a new depth or dimension to our understanding of it. Tchaikovsky does that brilliantly.

For a nonfiction work, I’d choose Strangers to Ourselves, by Rachel Aviv. Aviv is probably the best example of a nonfiction writer who has a clear perspective and shows it through the stories she tells. Many nonfiction writers fall too far in one direction: Either it’s sort of unclear what they’re getting at and we’re bogged down in characters or narrative that don’t advance our understanding, or there’s too much preaching and in-your-face explanations that leave us wanting a more human dimension. [Related: The diagnosis trap]

An author I will read anything by: Ted Chiang. Kazuo Ishiguro. Jeffrey Eugenides. Melissa Caruso. Gabrielle Zevin. (Okay, sorry, that’s five, but my editors are letting me keep them all in!)

A quiet song that I love, and a loud song that I love: Hozier recently released some new songs that prompted me to go back to one of my favorites off his first EP: “Cherry Wine.” It’s probably my favorite of his. And my go-to karaoke song is “Gloria,” by Laura Branigan, so I have to pick that for my loud song!

A musical artist who means a lot to me: Vampire Weekend is a band that I’ve listened to through many formative moments of my life. Their self-titled album was released as I was finishing middle school, Modern Vampires of the City was released as I was graduating high school, and Father of the Bride was what I listened to as I was struggling to make a career change. Some of my favorites are “Big Blue”; “Jerusalem, New York, Berlin”; “Ya Hey”; “Don’t Lie”; and “Walcott.”

The last museum or gallery show that I loved: I went to Berlin for the first time last year and visited the Berlin-Hohenschönhausen Memorial, where a man who had been imprisoned by the Stasi—the state security service of East Germany—as a youth gave us a tour of the former prison. He explained that in 1968, when the Soviets invaded Czechoslovakia following the Prague Spring, he and his friends papered his community with the following message:

“Citizens - Comrades. Alien tanks in Czechoslovakia only serve the class enemy. Think about the reputation of Socialism in the world. Demand truthful information. Nobody is too stupid to think for himself.”

As a result of this political activity, he was arrested and held in the prison. He walked us through it, weaving his own story with what history has uncovered about the experiences of other prisoners, as we stepped carefully through narrow hallways and cold cells, and peered into a replica of the transport van that brought him to the prison. He recounted a winding journey that took several times longer than a direct route would have, in order to confuse the detainees as to where they actually were (sometimes just minutes from home). Our guide also described the experience of living as neighbors with some of the very people responsible for his unjust incarceration and mistreatment: Many of the implicated officials were never fully held accountable, and some may have continued to live in East Berlin.

Despite what he had been through, the guide ended the tour by saying, “It has not been such a hard life. It has been a good life.” He exhorted us to see democracy as a constant project, lest we end up with any of its alternatives. [Related: The lingering trauma of Stasi surveillance]

A favorite story I’ve read in The Atlantic: I doubt there’s a more important story written in recent memory than Caitlin Dickerson’s “An American Catastrophe.” I spend a lot of time writing about how to reduce roadblocks to government progress. It’s easy to make the case for efficiency in our government when what we’re talking about is building housing, clean-energy infrastructure, and mass transit, or other policies I agree with. It’s more challenging (but probably even more important) to contend with what to do when democracies vote for people willing to pursue extreme and horrific policy agendas. A big part of that is accountability through the press, which is what makes Caitlin’s piece so great. [Related: “We need to take away children.”]

My favorite way of wasting time on my phone: As an avid r/AmITheAsshole reader, I discovered r/BestofRedditorUpdates last year and refuse to disclose how much time I’ve spent on that subreddit chasing down threads and updates to stories people tell (or make up) on Reddit. The best tales are the ones where there is significant ambiguity over what the right thing to do actually is. I find it endlessly fascinating to watch people debate morality in real time, and to force my friends to read the posts and tell me what they think. [Related: Inside r/Relationships, the unbearably human corner of Reddit]

A poem, or line of poetry, that I return to: “Musée des Beaux Arts,” by W. H. Auden. The author is reacting in part to the painting Landscape With the Fall of Icarus, by Pieter Bruegel the Elder, in which Icarus (from the Greek myth) is drowning. The only part of him you see is his legs flailing above the water right before he dies. The majority of the painting is made up of an indifferent world—ships sailing, workers continuing about their day. The sun shines brightly, and no one knows about the boy’s death.

“Musée des Beaux Arts,” by W. H. Auden

About suffering they were never wrong,
The old Masters: how well they understood
Its human position: how it takes place
While someone else is eating or opening a window or just walking dully along;
How, when the aged are reverently, passionately waiting
For the miraculous birth, there always must be
Children who did not specially want it to happen, skating
On a pond at the edge of the wood:
They never forgot
That even the dreadful martyrdom must run its course
Anyhow in a corner, some untidy spot
Where the dogs go on with their doggy life and the torturer's horse
Scratches its innocent behind on a tree.

In Breughel's Icarus, for instance: how everything turns away
Quite leisurely from the disaster; the ploughman may
Have heard the splash, the forsaken cry,
But for him it was not an important failure; the sun shone
As it had to on the white legs disappearing into the green
Water, and the expensive delicate ship that must have seen
Something amazing, a boy falling out of the sky,
Had somewhere to get to and sailed calmly on.

Read past editions of the Culture Survey with Kaitlyn Tiffany, Bhumi Tharoor, Amanda Mull, Megan Garber, Helen Lewis, Jane Yong Kim, Clint Smith, 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

1. Marie Antoinette, a new period drama about the teenage Marie Antoinette (premieres tonight at 10 EST on PBS)

2. Poverty, by America, a new book by the sociologist and Pulitzer Prize–winning author Matthew Desmond about the persistence of poverty in the U.S. (on sale Tuesday)

3. John Wick: Chapter 4, in which Keanu Reeves’s stoic assassin faces his scariest foe yet: his own weariness (in theaters Friday)

Essay Illustration by Adam Maida

America’s Most Insidious Myth

By Emi Nietfeld

When I was 17, I won $20,000 from the Horatio Alger Association of Distinguished Americans. Named after the prolific 19th-century novelist whose rags-to-riches tales have come to represent the idea of “pulling yourself up by your bootstraps,” the scholarship honors youth who have overcome adversity, which, for me, included my parents’ mental illnesses, time in foster care, and stints of homelessness.

In April 2010, the Distinguished Americans flew me and the other 103 winners to Washington, D.C., for a mandatory convention. We stayed at a nice hotel and spent an entire day learning table manners. We met Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, who I remember shook hands with the boys and hugged the girls. Before the event’s big gala, we posed in rented finery, former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice at the center of our group photo. The political commentator Lou Dobbs praised the awardees’ perseverance in his opening speech. In the words of the Horatio Alger Association, we were “deserving scholars” who illustrated “the limitless possibilities available through the American free-enterprise system.” We were proof that anyone could make it.

Read the full article.

More in Culture What made Taylor Swift’s concert unbelievable Nora Ephron’s revenge Ted Lasso is no longer trying to feel good. The failed promise of having it all The strange intimacy of New York City Ten poetry collections to read again and again The gift of rereading John Wick and the tragedy of the aimless assassin Catch Up on The Atlantic Trump did it again What people still don’t get about bailouts You should be outraged about Silicon Valley Bank. The defenders of classical education are destroying it. The January 6 deniers are going to lose, Photo Album 'Slam on the Brakes,'the motion category winner of the 2023 Sony World Photography Awards (Steven Zhou / 2023 Sony World Photography Awards)

Browse the top snapshots from the 2023 Sony World Photography Awards; our editor rounded up 22 winners and finalists from across the contest’s 10 categories.

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 staffer reveals what’s keeping them entertained.

Today’s special guest is the Atlantic managing editor Bhumika Tharoor. When she’s not rewatching Golden Girls, Bhumi is dancing to bachata music, reading obituaries that range from heartbreaking to hilarious, and getting a very nontraditional refresher in AP Lit.

First, here are three Sunday reads from The Atlantic:

Judy Blume goes all the way. What losing my two children taught me about grief The aftermath of a mass slaughter at the zoo

The Culture Survey: Bhumika Tharoor

The upcoming entertainment event I’m most looking forward to: Watching the final season of Succession while looking out for any additional Atlantic references! And then reading Megan Garber’s essays on the show. [Related: The bodily horrors of Succession]

A quiet song that I love, and a loud song that I love: “Vente Negra” by Habana con Kola is a quiet song that mesmerized me when I first heard it during a night out dancing. It is coziness in sound form: a salsa song that is smooth at the intro and then expands, engulfing you into the melody. It is both compelling and reassuring. I’ve fallen in love with this song and you must listen to it. You’re welcome.

I use music to shake me out of occasional inertia, so I have a huge selection of loud songs to get me going. Currently, it’s “Boom Padi” by Shreya Ghoshal (and performed by Bollywood icon Madhuri Dixit Nene!). It’s a garba song, which is a type of music and dance from my family’s home state of Gujarat in India. The song features an intense dhol (a percussion instrument) that creates a relentless, rhythmic electricity. Running is not in my constitution, but if I ran, it would be to this.

A painting, sculpture, or other piece of visual art that I cherish: It’s called Rabbit in a Snowstorm: a painting on a giant canvas with textured gradations of white, offering a sense of both immensity and depth. You’re supposed to behold it and contemplate your solitude in a bleak, unsentimental universe. And you’re supposed to be contemplating these things in the penthouse of a skyscraper that looms above your sprawling gangland empire.

I should mention at this point that Rabbit in a Snowstorm is a fictional piece of art found within the masterful piece of art that is Marvel’s Daredevil TV series. And its beholder—the bald, brooding, brutish Kingpin, played by Vincent D’Onofrio—is one of the best portrayals of a comic-book villain that I have seen (aside from Heath Ledger’s Joker, of course). You can currently stream the first three seasons on Disney+, and a new Daredevil series is expected in spring 2024. [Related: Daredevil: A long-form approach to comic-book television]

Something I recently rewatched, reread, or otherwise revisited: I am besotted with journalistic profiles, and think often about the skilled observations and deftness of touch required to write good ones. This fascination leads me to perhaps a peculiar fondness for reading obituaries, which could be considered mini-profiles. Here are a couple I’ve loved and keep revisiting:

Three sisters from the Mirabal family are widely credited with igniting the movement that eventually toppled the Dominican Republic’s vicious dictator Rafael Trujillo. The sisters spent their lives as members of the resistance movement against Trujillo—until he ordered their assassinations as a consequence of their activism and, potentially,  spurned lust. The fourth and only surviving sister, Dedé, carried forward her sisters’ legacy and raised her and her sisters’ children, some of whom are now politicians in the DR. This is her obituary. This obituary for a glorious woman named Renay Mandel Corren, however, had me giggling loudly when I first read it, and every subsequent time I’ve read it, too. It is terrifically hilarious and I wish I knew this incredible lady, as well as her son, who wrote it.

A song I’ll always dance to: I will instantly dance to bachata music. I love it all but am partial to traditional bachata, especially the classics. Some favorites, if you’re looking for a good time: The guitar in “Loco de Amor” by Luis Vargas is guaranteed to set your feet loose; “Si Tú Me Dices Ven” and “Esa Novia Mía” sung by Zacarías Ferreira are best danced to while belting the lyrics until your voice turns raspy like his.

An album I fired up again recently: Jagged Little Thrill, by Jagged Edge. And Jasmine Sandlas’s What’s in a Name? So good!

A favorite story I’ve read in The Atlantic: It’s impossible to select just one story. Here are a few, but please visit TheAtlantic.com for much more.

“30 Years Ago, Romania Deprived Thousands of Babies of Human Contact,” by Melissa Fay Greene, took me down a tragic, haunting rabbit hole I didn’t know I needed to go down.  

Adam Harris’s heartbreaking story of the scholar Thea Hunter exposed the core of the exploitation that women of color experience in academia.

Sam Quinones’s deeply reported story of those suffering in America’s catastrophic meth epidemic: “Crystal meth is in some ways a metaphor for our times—times of anomie and isolation, of paranoia and delusion, of communities coming apart.”

Frederick Douglass on impartial suffrage, a timeless and relevant piece from our rich archives that is worth revisiting regularly.

A YouTuber, TikToker, Twitch streamer, or other online creator that I’m a fan of: I love following funny people and reading funny things (like this newsletter, Famous People, by Kaitlyn Tiffany and Lizzie Plaugic). Jahkara Smith (who goes by SailorJ on YouTube and SlaylerJ on Twitter) creates hilarious drunk book reviews that mock the best-of-AP-English list, lighting up The Odyssey, The Taming of the Shrew, Pride and Prejudice, and other fixtures of the canon. There’s hilarity, there’s razor-sharp social commentary, and it’s all casually brilliant.

Something delightful introduced to me by a kid in my life: The kid in my life is my 16-month-old daughter, Kahaani, and she has somehow failed to introduce me to any particularly sophisticated cultural delights, so I’ll have to have a conversation with her about that. However, she is a big fan of “La Vaca Lola,” a song about a cow that has a head and a tail and says “moo.” It is delightful, if only because it leads to her squealing with joy and doing her patented wiggle-dance. Kahaani means “story” in Hindi and a number of other Indian languages, and though she is not yet literate, the one she is currently writing is my favorite.

Things that are making me laugh: Comedians Hasan Minhaj, Nimesh Patel, Matt Rife, and Akaash Singh.

A good recommendation I recently received: I have a cousin who fostered my love of words and good writing. For decades we have regularly tossed each other links to stories, artful turns of phrase, quality repartee, and examples of lovely writing in the wild. He recently sent me this piercing story by Audrey Wollen called “Not to Be,” in The New York Review of Books, that shook me. I apologize for the sharp pivot to dark topics—death and euthanasia—but I’m always impressed by writers who force us to face the big, heavy, unknowable things with elegance and clarity.

The last piece of journalism/arts/culture/entertainment that made me cry: Caitlin Dickerson wrote the definitive investigation into the Trump administration’s family-separation policy, and I can’t recall having such a visceral reaction to any other piece of writing in quite some time. Any cruel act visited upon a baby or toddler is immensely enraging. [Related: “We need to take away children”]

A poem, or line of poetry, that I return to: “… That is why the bird sings its songs into the world as though it were singing into it inner self, that’s why we take a birdsong into our own inner selves so easily, it seems to us that we translate it fully, with no remainder, into our feelings; a birdsong can even, for a moment, make the whole world into a sky within us, because we feel that the bird does not distinguish between its heart and the world’s.”

— from Rainer Maria Rilke’s “Note on Birds”

Read past editions of the Culture Survey with Amanda Mull, Megan Garber, Helen Lewis, Jane Yong Kim, Clint Smith, 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

Old Babes in the Wood: Stories, the latest short-fiction collection by The Handmaid’s Tale author Margaret Atwood (on sale Tuesday) Saving Time: Discovering a Life Beyond the Clock, a meditation on time by the bestselling author of How to Do Nothing, Jenny Odell (on sale Tuesday) Luther: The Fallen Sun, in which Idris Elba stars as the London police detective John Luther, who breaks out of prison to hunt down a serial killer (begins streaming on Netflix Friday)

Essay

TaskmasterSuperMax+

The Game Show That Parodies Your To-Do List

By Chris Karnadi

Imagine you are sternly handed an assignment: Express appreciation for your boss in the most meaningful way possible. The boss will determine who, out of several people, did it best. How would you approach the task?

In one episode of Taskmaster, a British game show entering its 15th season this spring, contestants had 30 minutes to figure this out. In the show, the authoritarian Taskmaster (the actor Greg Davies) gives five contestants—mostly British comedians—open-ended objectives via his demure assistant, Alex Horne. Davies then awards points for how well competitors complete the goals. The tasks themselves—make a massive block of ice disappear the fastest, run the farthest while making a continuous noise—are intentionally absurd, which means the solutions are too. This simple premise has achieved immense popularity: Although a 2018 American spin-off was short-lived, the British version has a significant overseas audience via its YouTube channel, which has regularly amassed more than 10 million views a month in recent years, mostly from watchers in the U.S.

Read the full article.

More in Culture

The movie that helped Kazuo Ishiguro make sense of the world Jazz just lost one of its all-time greats. Creed III and the power of a worthy opponent What ballet taught me about my body Daisy Jones and the trap of the love triangle 20 biopics that are actually worth watching You should be reading Sebastian Barry.

Catch Up on The Atlantic

The FBI desperately wants to let Trump off the hook. The lab leak will haunt us forever. No one really knows how much COVID is silently spreading … again.

Photo Album

People watch the northern lights above central Stockholm, Sweden, on February 27, 2023. (Alo Lorestani / TT News Agency / Reuters)

Scroll through photos of the week, including the northern lights above Stockholm and a field of lava in San Juan Parangaricutiro, Mexico.

Kelli María Korducki contributed to this newsletter.

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