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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 author and Atlantic staff writer Adam Harris. Adam covers education and politics; most recently, he wrote about the impending school-funding crisis faced by public-school students and educators across the United States. (He’s also a not-so-secret soccer buff whose byline you may have spotted in our coverage of the 2022 World Cup.) These days, Adam unwinds by watching—and cracking up at—the reliably hilarious A Black Lady Sketch Show, is revisiting the “propulsive and engaging” writing of the author Charles Johnson, and can’t resist the Creed movie franchise (nor, relatedly, the thrall of a training montage).
First, here are three Sunday reads from The Atlantic:
Did scientists accidentally invent an anti-addiction drug?
The only career advice you’ll ever need
‘Stealth wealth’ is a fake trend.
The Culture Survey: Adam Harris
A musical artist who means a lot to me: The Black country-music pioneer Charley Pride’s music has been with me for as long as I can remember. To my mind, he’s the most interesting musical artist who does not have a biopic (yet). He first rose to prominence as a standout baseball pitcher; he played for the Memphis Red Sox and the Birmingham Black Barons in the Negro Leagues and made it as far as a tryout for the California Angels. When his baseball career ended, he reinvented himself—or, to put it better, drew once more from his well of talents—and became one of the most popular country singers in the world.
My favorite blockbuster and favorite art movie: I’ve watched the movies in the Creed franchise—including the most recent—more times than any one person should. What can I say? There is nothing that quite compares to a training montage. Similarly, I often find myself putting on 5 to 7, the 2014 romance film starring Bérénice Marlohe and the late Anton Yelchin.
[Related: Creed III and the power of a worthy opponent;
Creed lands every punch. (2015)]
A quiet song that I love, and a loud song that I love: Hop in the car, roll the windows down, and put on “Texas Sun,” by Leon Bridges and Khruangbin. It’s almost guaranteed to improve your mood. And as several of my colleagues know, I’m embarrassingly fond of the band Yellowcard and will turn up “Southern Air,” from their 2012 album of the same name, at will.
This southern air is all I need
Breathe it in and I can see
Camera sets behind my eyes
All the colors of my life
The television show I’m most enjoying right now: The one show that I can rely on for a laugh week in and week out is A Black Lady Sketch Show. There’s not much more to say about it. It’s the perfect mix of random and hilarious.
Something I recently rewatched, reread, or otherwise revisited: About a month ago, I started thumbing through the first couple of pages of Charles Johnson’s Middle Passage, which tells the story of the illegal American slave trade and won the National Book Award for Fiction in 1990. The next thing I knew, it was several hours later, and I was nearly finished. I’d forgotten how propulsive and engaging Johnson is as a writer.
A favorite story I’ve read in The Atlantic: About six years ago, NASA’s Cassini, which orbited Saturn for 13 years, ran out of fuel and crash-landed onto the planet. It was a rather emotional event for followers of the project, and afterward, my colleague Marina Koren wrote about the ways in which we mourn space machines. Her writing is stirring, and the article has stuck with me since I first read it:
The spacecraft has no human or animal qualities, and it is not designed to give lifelike cues, like a tilt to signal curiosity or a shudder to suggest fear. But it can communicate in its own language, transmitting data back to Earth. It has ventured into dangerous territory, all alone, to seek answers about the unknown. And it appears, as NASA suggests in its closing narrative, that Cassini has accepted its mortality. Soon its work will be over, and it will no longer exist. That, perhaps, is the most human thing of all.
A poem, or line of poetry, that I return to: I’m actually going to pick two here: The first is “Yet I Do Marvel,” by Countee Cullen—particularly his examination of faith and understanding and wonder. These lines—“Yet I do marvel at this curious thing: / To make a poet black, and bid him sing!”—have been burned into my brain since my undergrad years.
The second is “where you are planted,” by Evie Shockley. It is a poignant ghazal that feels like home, and whose final couplet feels like it came from my own heart:
i’ve never forgotten the charred bitter fruit of holiday’s poplars, nor will i :
it’s part of what makes me evie : i grew up in the shadow of southern trees.
[Related:
The magazine that helped 1920s kids navigate racism (2021);
“On These I Stand” (1947) ]
Read past editions of the Culture Survey with Saahil Desai, Yasmin Tayag, Damon Beres, Julie Beck, Faith Hill, Derek Thompson, and Tom Nichols.
The Week Ahead
The Late Americans,
the author Brandon Taylor’s new novel about the coming-of-age—and artistic ambition—of a group of young adults in Iowa City (on sale Tuesday)
What Am I Eating? With Zooey Deschanel, in which the actor debunks popular myths about the food we eat (begins streaming Tuesday on Max)
The Little Mermaid, the long-awaited live-action remake of the Disney animated classic (in theaters Friday)
Essay
Illustration by Ben Kothe / The Atlantic. Source: YouTube.
TV Isn’t About to Get Worse. It Already Is
By Caroline Framke
The moment the Hollywood writer’s strike became a possibility, some TV fans and reporters worried that shows were about to take a turn for the worse. Some predicted an era reminiscent of the 100-day strike in 2007–08: a parade of reruns, reliance on reality shows, and hastily lowered standards on-screen. But it’s way too late to be anticipating TV’s decline now. As streaming services such as Netflix, Hulu, Amazon Prime Video, and Peacock have gone from representing the entertainment industry’s Wild West to its inevitable future, television at large has embraced quantity over quality—a fact that striking Writers Guild of America members know better than anyone. The painful truth is that TV isn’t about to get worse. It’s already worse—and the quality might slip even further.
How many times have you watched a new show only to realize that an entire season has passed but barely anything has happened? How many times have you checked an episode’s duration and wondered why it’s doubled since the show started? How many times have you forgotten the details of a show hardly a week after you binged it? I have spent a decade watching as much television as possible for a living—including as chief TV critic at Variety from 2018 to 2022—and I’m here to say: It’s not just you. There is so much TV now, and the impact on storytelling has become unavoidable. The early years of streaming, which introduced shows such as Orange Is the New Black, The Handmaid’s Tale, and BoJack Horseman, felt like an exciting tasting menu. Today, we have an all-you-can-eat buffet that won’t let us stop eating long enough to breathe.
Read the full article.
Culture Break
Suga of BTS’s world tour is pop subversion at its finest.
The provocative optimism of Master Gardener
My novel is a love letter my mother can’t read.
When a hapless villain somehow takes down a presidency
Fast & Furious and pretty stale
The billionaires who are threatening democracy
The defining emotion of modern life
Writing in the ruins
Jury Duty is terrific TV. It shouldn’t get another season.
More from
The Atlantic
The most dangerous Democrat in Iowa
Why outspoken women scare Trump
Something weird is going on with melatonin.
Photo Album
Fadel Senna / AFP / Getty
Browse snapshots of a break-dancing championship in Morocco, rally racing in Portugal, and more in our editor’s selection of the week’s best photos.
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