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Making small talk can be hard—especially when you’re not sure whether you’re doing it well. But conversations are a central part of relationship-building.

In this first episode of How to Talk to People, we explore the psychological barriers to making good small talk and unravel the complexities of the mutual discomfort that comes with talking to people we don’t know well.

The social scientist Ty Tashiro and the hairstylists Erin Derosa and Mimi Craft help us understand what it means to integrate awkwardness into our pursuit of relationships.

This episode is hosted by Julie Beck, produced by Rebecca Rashid, and edited by Jocelyn Frank and Claudine Ebeid. Fact-check by Ena Alvarado. Engineering by Rob Smierciak.

Music by Tellsonic (“The Whistle Funk”), Ryan James Carr (“Botanist Boogie Breakdown”), and Arthur Benson (“Organized Chaos,” “She Is Whimsical”).

Talk to How to Talk to People—by “talk,” we mean write to us—at howtopodcast@theatlantic.com. To support this podcast, and get unlimited access to all of The Atlantic’s journalism, become a subscriber.

Click here to listen to additional seasons of The Atlantic’s How To series.

Mimi Craft: Okay, so we’ll sit here; we’ll start like usual and talk about what you want to do with your hair … because you need a haircut. (Laughter.)

Julie Beck: Does this moment feel awkward to you?

Ty Tashiro: It doesn’t. So I don’t know if it should.

Beck: Great news, great news.

Erin Derosa: If I’m in a five-minute conversation, I’m like, What am I gonna say next? What’s the next thing that I should ... did I already talk about the weather? I get real panicked.

Beck: I feel like I can chat with anybody for, like, five minutes. Right? And then if I run out of things to say in the middle, that’s my fear—because we are trapped here for the duration of this haircut.

Craft: We could stop talking, and I will try to put out a comfortable, chill vibe.

Tashiro: It’s, you know, pretty common. Someone might say something like: “Oh, there’s a really good vibe here.” And to me that is totally bewildering, how they discern that vibe within a few seconds.

—

Beck: Hi. I’m Julie Beck, a senior editor at The Atlantic.

Rebecca Rashid: And I’m Rebecca Rashid, producer of the How To series.

Beck: This is How to Talk to People.

Beck: Here at The Atlantic, I oversee the family section, and I’ve also been reporting on friendship for many years now. So I think a lot about relationships and community.

And I do see often that people struggle to find and form the close relationships that they really want. And I think one of the barriers to that is the dreaded small talk.

Rashid: So I think in this first episode, we have to figure out: How does one even make small talk? And what explains that tendency so many of us have to look down at our phones and avoid conversation, or hide in the corner at a party and only talk to the people we know? So where better to do some research on this than to talk to the ultimate small-talk experts: at the hair salon.

Beck: I feel like, okay, the main thing that I need to ask you is: When I’m sitting in this chair, do you even want to talk to me?

Craft: Oh, yeah.

Beck: You can be honest. It wouldn’t hurt my feelings if you didn’t want to.

Craft: I have to be here all day, so I do need some entertainment.

Beck: I’ve also wondered: Would you actually be relieved if I was just on my phone the whole time, and then you could have a break from being “on” all the time?

Derosa: I feel like if you want to talk, that’s amazing. It is really entertaining and fun to have a conversation and to have good conversation. But if you don’t want to talk, don’t try to talk. [Julie laughs.] Because then it’s really hard to have a conversation, and then it’s even more work to, like, keep it going and try to, like, fill the silence or whatever.

—

Rashid: I’m curious; what is it about small talk that makes you so nervous?

Beck: Okay—to clarify, I don’t know that it makes me nervous all the time. I think what’s interesting about it is, it’s like you can’t really get around it. Like any relationship that you’re going to have, like, has to start with a conversation.

So it’s more a situation where I am trapped on the train with an acquaintance I don’t know that well, and we have 20 minutes to fill, and I’ve got five minutes of material.

Beck: And you have to kind of navigate: How much are we going to talk to each other? What are we going to talk about? Would they rather I just left them alone? But we’re both too polite to say so.

I do get in my head a lot about that, and I find it very hard to relax sometimes if I am receiving a service. And probably if I was just normal and relaxed and enjoyed the situation, it would make them more comfortable.

Rashid: It can be extra challenging when the terms of that relationship are not really established in any way; like, just having a conversation with that person doesn’t necessarily mean you’re moving toward friendship.

—

Beck: Do you both consider yourself extroverts?

Derosa/Craft: No. Oh, no, no, no. Hard no. Extreme no.

Beck: Well, then, how do you sit here and make small talk all day, every day? Does it exhaust you?

Craft: I am not interested in small talk. I want to get right into the real talk immediately.

Beck: Well, how do you define small talk, then?

Craft: For me, small talk is like: “Oh, it’s cold out.” “Yeah, it’s cold out.” “Oh, do you like cold?” “No?” “Oh, yeah; me too.” And that’s really boring.

Beck: Well, are you coming in hot with your clients? Like, “Do you believe in God?”

Craft: I mean, sometimes I’m coming in hot. Sometimes if I’m like, “Oh, how was your weekend?” “Great.” I will be like, “Did anything crazy happen? Did anybody go to the hospital?” Like, I want to get straight into it.

Derosa: I don’t come in: “Hey, how’s your hair? Do you believe in God?” It’s more like, somehow it’ll come up somewhere in the conversation. You know; you’ll be talking about their family or like their parents or whatever. And then it’s like, “Oh, how were you raised? Were you raised religiously?” It sort of evolves. And then I will say: “Well, do you believe in God?” (Laughter.)

Beck: So that’s a real example that has happened?

Derosa: Oh, yeah; for sure. For sure. But I like to have conversations like that with people.

Craft: She is so genuinely curious that even if somebody maybe was not going into a conversation thinking they were going to reveal a detail, she will get it out of them because of her genuine curiosity.

Derosa: Yeah; cause a lot of people are sort of in denial about what is happening in their situation. And because we’ve heard so many stories that are similar, and we are like: “No; like, this is what’s really happening.”

Craft: Because that is the value in good small talk and conversation; it’s that you learn from other people’s experiences. Everything repeats itself. Like, nothing’s really a new thing. So somebody comes in, and you’re like: I know what’s happening there.

—

Beck: I think small talk gets a lot of hate, but even if it’s a little boring, it serves a purpose. So those basic, neutral topics that people love to hate on, like: “How’s the weather?” Those serve a purpose of being something neutral that can smooth the path of our interactions.

Rashid: I’m not always as delicate in the way I phrase my questions. And my intent is not to be offensive, but maybe just to connect with the person in the way I know best, or maybe be respectfully personal and try to bridge that gap.

Beck: So your approach to small talk is to try to get personal as quickly as possible.

Rashid: Not uncomfortably so. But I struggle with the repeated “How’s the weather?” with someone I see every day.

Beck: I feel like I thrive on that surface level. Once we transition to something that is a little more personal, that is where I feel like a little bumpy. In our conversation with Erin and Mimi, it really wasn’t that awkward, surface-level kind of small talk that I think people fear.

Rashid: They were really naturally cognizant of people’s different comfort levels and what would be an appropriate story to share, and they were sort of able to read the room and read the space of the conversation.

Beck: I think for those of us who aren’t quite so practiced as they are, I want to understand more so what can cause a seemingly innocuous conversation to take a turn for the awkward, and how we navigate it when that happens.

Rashid: Ty Tashiro is a social scientist who writes about awkwardness, and his book called Awkward: The Science of Why We’re Socially Awkward and Why That’s Awesome explores a lot of these social and behavioral trends specific to adults in the United States. And he helps people think through how to be in social spaces and feel just a bit more confident.

—

Tashiro: One of the great things about studying awkwardness is that everybody has had an awkward moment. For example, you’re giving a presentation, and you have an undone zipper. That’s super awkward, super embarrassing, but it’s actually not that big of a deal. It’s just an uncomfortable deviation from actually a small social expectation. But we have this really powerful emotional reaction to it.

Some of my close friends had moved to new cities and I would go visit them, and we’d go out to parties or go to a bar or something. And some of these friends were awkward. And, you know, I’d watch them in these social interactions meeting new people, and it was just heartbreaking. Because they would be their regular awkward self. And you could see the other folks losing interest and saying “I gotta go get another drink” or something.

They ruled out any chance of future social interaction based on three or four minutes of chitchat. And so I had this thought, like, If the awkward person could skip the first five minutes of a social interaction, I actually think they’d be all right.

So, I wanted to see—are there ways that the awkward person can navigate those awkward moments a little bit more smoothly? On the other hand, for people who aren’t awkward, can they have a little more empathy for the awkward person’s situation?

Beck: So in your book you write that some people are more prone to awkwardness than others. Where do you think you fall?

Tashiro: Oh, boy. I’m pretty awkward. When I was a kid, I was very awkward. And I think in adulthood, I can pass for socially fluent in most situations. But I certainly still have my moments.

Beck: You’re doing great. I’m curious, can you just walk me through what goes through your mind when you, say, enter a party where you only know one or two people?

Tashiro: So, you know, before the social event occurs, I do get some social anxiety. I think maybe the difference for someone who’s awkward is that these feelings of anxiety aren’t irrational. So I’ll give more thought to small details, like, What am I going to wear? What would be an appropriate thing to bring? What time am I gonna get there?

And so I just have a little self-talk before I go into these situations. I call it my mental preparation, and I’ll just say, Hey, you don’t know anybody; you’re nervous about that. And that’s okay. You’ve been in these situations before, and you can do it. But I need to have a more assertive attitude than would be natural for me.

So let’s say we walk into the party, and it’s in full swing. It’s pretty common; someone might say something like, “Oh, there’s a really good vibe here.” And to me, that is totally bewildering how they discern that vibe within a few seconds.

So awkward people, when they enter a social situation, they’re not all at once kind of evaluating what’s going on. Instead, what they’re doing is looking at individual pieces of information and then kind of putting it together, almost like a puzzle, to figure out what the situation is like, and how they should behave.

So it takes longer for me to read the room, I guess, and then feel comfortable enough to get in there and interact smoothly with other people. And then when I get into it, I just try to be honest, actually. And so I would approach people—if you had the uncomfortable situation where you’ve talked to somebody and they’ve moved on to something else, and you’re standing there by yourself—I’ll just approach a group, and I’ll say, “Hey, I’m Ty. I’m new here. Do you mind if I join you?” And that might sound a little daunting to some folks, but I always find that people are really receptive to that. It took a little bit of boldness, maybe, to say something like that, and I think people appreciate that.

Beck: So why do people feel awkward in that awkward moment where they’ve broken one minor expectation? Is it the same thing as social anxiety, or is it a unique feeling?

Tashiro: So, social anxiety is more of a forward-looking kind of emotion. So when we feel social anxiety, the core of that is we have some irrational fear that we’re going to mess up, or we’re going to make a fool of ourselves in a social situation.

With awkwardness, it’s more of this just in-the-moment, very present kind of feeling. And it even comes along with things like a racing heart, or your muscles might tense. Of course, one of the hallmarks is that you might blush, right? And people usually feel horrible about that. They think, I’ve just made this awkward moment worse by blushing.

So blushing actually sends a signal: Hey, I just did something awkward. I feel bad about that, and I’m blushing. I’m sending you this social signal. And people actually really appreciate that. And actually just being honest about the awkward moment that just took place can actually be beneficial for building some trust with another person.

Beck: So do you think that you’ve gotten more comfortable with socializing over time, or do you just feel like you’ve learned strategies?

Tashiro: I think it’s that I’ve learned strategies first, and then the social comfort came after that. So let me give you a quick example, maybe from childhood, about some of these strategies I had to learn.

So when we would go to Wendy’s to get a hamburger, my parents would park the car. And they would turn around, and they’d say, “Ty, it’s time to mentally prepare.” And I would shake my head: Yes. I knew exactly what this meant.

And what it was was this kind of Socratic dialogue where they would ask me a series of questions. And it would help me prepare for what the expectations would be in the social situation, and also help me think about what I needed to do with my social behaviors to handle it well and appropriately.

So they’d say things like, “Well, where are we?” And I’d say, “Well, we’re at Wendy’s!” And “What’s the first thing you need to look for when you step inside the door?”

And I would say, “Well, I need to look and see if there’s a line.” And that’s because sometimes I would go in and just shoot straight to the front, and not because I was trying to cut or cheat.

And this is hard for some non-awkward people to believe, but because I didn’t see the line, or it didn’t register with me. I was so narrowly focused on the hamburger and the fries that I would just not see all of the social information off to the side.

So this would happen not just once. This would happen dozens of times for various kinds of social situations. And my folks would need me to get into the habit of thinking about, Hey, what’s the goal in this situation? What are the small expectations you’re going to encounter? And then, what are the behaviors that you need to execute to be socially fluent in the situation?

For the awkward kid, that’s not intuitive. And so you just need to break it down into component parts. I mean, if you walked with me into a Wendy’s now, I’m pretty smooth. (Julie laughs.)

—

Craft: Like, I didn’t always know how to get into a conversation and connect with somebody. I just learned it when I started doing hair.

Beck: So do you actually want to or feel comfortable talking about yourself with clients? Or do you actively, like, keep the focus on them in their stories, because you maybe don’t want to share?

Craft: I feel comfortable. I will share anything. Sometimes I feel like I don’t have anything that interesting to share, and so then I don’t want to talk about myself, because, like, “Oh, are you taking vacations?” “No.” “Okay, cool.” A lot of people, really—that is their No. 1 personal question: “Do you have any trips planned?”

Beck: Oh, I’m very guilty of that. Because it’s like, it’s not too personal. But maybe it gives us something to talk about.

Derosa: That is my conversation filler when I have pretty much nothing left.

Craft: Like, even the hair salon, it really is, I think, a safe space in the community, because who am I going to tell? I’m not so invested that telling me is going to have, like any major impact in their personal life. So they can get things off their chest and feel safe; that it’s not, like, a risk.

Beck: Yeah. I don’t know how we get to a place where we just accept that feeling awkward won’t kill us. But I’m not there yet.

—

Rashid: I’m curious if part of the stress, too, is that once you start a conversation with someone—and if you do start to feel awkward, and maybe you’re not comfortable being honest right away about the fact that you’re feeling awkward—and you want to dip out of the conversation, it can be hard to do that.

Beck: I would love to tell you about a man that I once knew, an acquaintance of mine from college, who I truly would not remember at all were it not for this moment.

He was a friend of a friend. And one day we were both on the same train going down to Chicago together. I went to school outside of Chicago, and so this was like a good 40, 45-minute train ride. And he pulled the most, like, amazing Uno-reverse ninja trick I’ve ever seen in conversation.

And so we did the very classic, like: “Hey, how’s it going? How’s the one thing that I know about you?” “It’s still good. How’s the one thing that I know about you?” “It’s fine.” And then we ran out of material. And he just said: “It’s been so great talking to you. I’m going to go read my book now.” And then we both sat down on opposite sides of the train, and we read our books, and we took that half-hour train ride down to Chicago. And when I got off the train, we did like a friendly wave.

And I actually don’t think we ever saw each other again. But I’ve thought about this man so regularly for the past, like, 10 years, because he just handled that interaction in such a smooth way that you almost never see.

Tashiro: I think we feel kind of more awkward than ever about these kinds of things: meeting new people, or the conversation in the elevator. I think maybe some of it has to do with the fact that we don’t have to interact with people as much as we used to. We can do it through our social media, or we can get absorbed in our phones or stay in the comfort of our home and stream some show.

If you’re texting back and forth with somebody, that’s fine. But it’s obviously not as good, right, as sitting down with them for a long dinner and getting into just a deep conversation. In online dating, for example, you might send messages back and forth or whatever. And that kind of gives you a sense of the person; gets the interaction rolling a little bit before you actually meet up. When all you really want to do is get face to face and figure out if there might be some kind of chemistry here.

Beck: One consequence of this fear of awkwardness is people go to parties, or they go to bars, and they only talk to people they already know. Have you noticed that in your life?

Tashiro: Oh, for sure. You know, it’s another thing, kind of, that makes me just want to go over and say things I have no business saying to other people.

Beck: Like what?

Tashiro: I just want to say, like, “Go meet other people. You know, you’re standing here in your group of three you came in with, and you look semi-sad. Go talk to these other people you want to talk to.”

You know, there’s all this disconnection going on. So the average person could benefit from more friends, and certainly benefit from more friends that they’ve built some quality intimacy with and they feel they can go to in a time of need.

So if we go with that perspective, then we should break out of our shell, and we should cross that junior-high dance floor of sorts and go talk to somebody new—knowing that this person might reject us, or knowing that the interaction might be a little bit awkward. But that’s okay.

—

Beck: I mean, to some degree it’s a justified fear, right? Like, you probably will feel awkward. Like, you actually aren’t going to make it through this life without being awkward in social situations.

But I think, like, Ty made me realize that part of what makes things so awkward sometimes is trying to pretend that they’re not. Like, all of his advice would boil down to: Just be honest.

Some of what is really challenging about small talk is: It’s so situational. And then there’s also each individual person’s reactions, and whether they want to be left alone, and how open they are to conversation. And how awkward you feel, and how awkward they feel.

But I think there can be a middle path where you read the room a bit. Maybe you have some questions in your back pocket, but you also don’t have to stick to “How’s the weather?” for fear of offending anybody.

Rashid: Yes. And I think that’s exactly what I wonder—if what gets lost is all of us getting used to not trying to start up a conversation with anyone. Out of fear, or out of fear that it won’t lead anywhere, or it doesn’t mean anything.

Beck: Yeah. I remember Mimi and Erin talking a lot about how fueled they actually are by all the conversations that they have at work. And, like, not just purely for entertainment value, but also like feeling like these conversations are meaningful, and they are bringing something unique and special into their lives. They were just interested in people. And just, like, having a genuine curiosity for the person that’s in front of you fuels conversation.

Rashid: As meta as that is, we got to talk about it. (Laughter.)

Beck: On that note, Becca, it’s been so great making a podcast with you. And I’m going to go read my book now.

Among the 351 objects being repatriated is a 2nd-Century statue of Alexander the Great.

Trove of 351 objects repatriated including a second-century bronze statue of Alexander the Great.

Peter Nash killed Jillu Nash, 43, and Louise Nash, 12, at their Suffolk home last September.

For nearly a decade, America’s students have been backsliding on the nation’s report card, which evaluates their command of math, science, U.S. history, and reading. The National Assessment of Educational Progress, or NAEP, first began displaying the decline in 2015—when math scores were, on level, five points lower than expected. But even those numbers could fall, and during the pandemic they did.

[From the June 2011 issue: The failure of American schools]

Roughly 40 percent of eighth graders scored below the basic level in U.S. history, and only 13 percent of students were “proficient” in the subject, according to NAEP results released this month. Civics scores were down as well. Last October, the same test showed that, across nearly every demographic group, scores were down in math, science, and reading.

Students need help catching up. And experts seem to have some consensus about what teachers and administrators should do. They should spend more instructional time on history and civics; both subjects have received less time since the introduction of the No Child Left Behind Act in 2002. They should also spend time helping students with their reading comprehension. In addition, some people add, schools should spend more time on math and science to improve those scores as well.

Each of these ideas seems simple enough. But they are all based on an assumption that schools have the resources—time, money, and people—to make this happen. There is only so much instruction time—unless states add weeks on to the school year, as New Mexico recently did. And reallocating resources on this scale takes time, while the kids who need help need it now. America appears to have no way of addressing this crisis, particularly in the hardest-hit schools, on a timescale that would actually help those kids succeed in the long run.

Before the pandemic, many school districts—particularly in high-poverty areas—already had very difficult problems on their hands. Teachers reported being twice as stressed as adults in other professions did; on average, districts had just returned to the levels of per-student funding they had received prior to the Great Recession; and national assessment scores were trending in a negative direction. A bright spot, however, was that most administrators said they felt ready to take on the challenge of leading their schools. In 2019, a survey from the National Association of Secondary School Principals found that 63 percent of principals “strongly agreed” when asked if they were generally satisfied with leading their school. Just four years later, however, only a third of principals are able to say the same; and nearly 40 percent believe they will leave the profession in the next three years.

[Read: What school-funding debates ignore]

“We act like we were starting from a great place in February 2020,” Jess Gartner, a former social-studies teacher who founded Allovue, a tech company that specializes in K–12 finance, told me. “So much of [our system] is held together with duct tape and glue. When you have a scenario like COVID that really threatens the stability of even a high-functioning district, of course we’re going to see disproportionate impacts on those districts that were already teetering on a precipice of insolvency and instability to begin with,” she said.

America’s school system is structured around local control of public education—so much so that federal funds make up, on average, only 8 to 10 percent of school funding each year. That has often changed during moments of crisis. In an effort to stabilize schools during the pandemic, federal lawmakers included more than $120 billion in the American Rescue Plan to help them reopen and prevent “learning loss.” Some districts used the money to hire counselors to assist students with mental-health needs, or to supply students with laptops; others used the money to revamp their HVAC systems to provide better air filtration and get students back in classrooms; leaders also provided summer-learning opportunities for students to make up for lost time. Most districts did not seek to hire additional faculty with the onetime injection of funding. Some did, though. Woodland Hills, in Pennsylvania, for example, reinstated 70 full-time positions that had been axed in 2019.

In a way, that funding provided another piece of chewing gum to plug the holes in the education-funding infrastructure. And what schools were able to achieve with it may have prevented further declines on the NAEP and similar assessments. But now districts worry about what will happen when that money goes away.

“The federal funding budget that we're negotiating right now—the one that Republicans want to add deep cuts to—those funding cuts would come to fruition at the exact same time that American Rescue Plan dollars dry up” in 2024, Noelle Ellerson Ng, the associate executive director at the School Superintendent’s Association, told me. “So as much as the federal government wants to drive this narrative of doing more to close achievement gaps and close testing scores, we’ll see the end of ARP dollars, and you’ll see the rescission of federal funding levels.” Add the prospect of a recession—which would bring with it a loss of revenue for schools—and the situation shades more dire.

Districts that used federal money to hire more teachers are readying those faculty for layoffs. Summer programs may soon sunset. Though some efforts—like distributing internet-enabled devices to close the broadband gap or hiring additional counselors—may not go away, school leaders will need to find alternative funding sources for them, which could mean cuts elsewhere.

[Read: The biggest problem for America’s schools]

The federal government is unlikely to step in once again. “I’ve been here 15 years now, and the only time I’ve seen an infusion of funds of the magnitude we’re talking about was the great recession, we saw an infusion of funding during COVID, and then we see an infusion of funding and resources after any major school shooting,” Ng told me. In an ideal world, she said, Congress would fully fund IDEA—the federal program that helps schools serve students with disabilities—which would free up the billions of state and local dollars that currently cover the shortfall to go back into the general education budget. Congress has not given a hearing to a bill to fully fund the program in more than a decade.

The experts I spoke with agree that there will likely be a wave of downsizing—layoffs, furloughs, or even school closures—if this confluence of funding woes is not addressed. And those most in need of additional help will again be left without it.

Organisers say they updated the route for this year to showcase the best of the city.

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 Yasmin Tayag, a staff writer who covers science and health. Yasmin recently reported on the rise of weight-loss drugs such as Ozempic as well as their cheaper, more potent alternatives; the broader implications of the ongoing Adderall shortage; and how climate change is making seasonal allergies worse. She’s also preparing for the birth of her first child next month and, until then, conquering the 2000s indie-band reunion-tour circuit, self-soothing with the Instagram channel of a charming Italian chef, and giggling at the very thought of the new film Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves.  

First, here are three Sunday reads from The Atlantic:

What home cooking does that restaurants can’t Can you have a fun vacation on Ozempic? The only way out of the child-gender culture war

The Culture Survey: Yasmin Tayag

The last thing that made me snort with laughter: About three years ago, some friends suggested that we try playing Dungeons & Dragons—mostly as a joke, given that none of us are typical game-playing types—but it took just one session for us to embrace it wholeheartedly. Our campaign lasted through much of the coronavirus pandemic, but we eventually succumbed to Zoom fatigue. With genuine melancholy, I laid Sabrina, my randy level-nine tiefling sorceress, to rest.

But last month, we reunited to watch the new film Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves, which left us crying with laughter. The jokes are silly, but as my colleague David Sims put it in his review, they’re also sincere—a crucial element to a good D&D session. Merely thinking of the name Jarnathan, bestowed on a huge and hapless eagle-man, still makes me giggle. The film was so much fun that I actually saw it twice—and it inspired my friends and me to start another campaign. My new character, C. Biscuit, a socially awkward druid centaur, is chafing at the bit. [Related: Ta-Nehisi Coates—The unlikely influence of Dungeons & Dragons (2011)]

The upcoming event I’m most looking forward to: As an aging Millennial, I’ve very much embraced the recent indie-sleaze revival. I grew up in Toronto, and bands such as Metric, Stars, and Broken Social Scene were the soundtrack to my coming of age. Of these artists, Feist was the queen: folksy with an edge, slightly mystical, a melodic genius. I’m seeing her live for the first time next weekend as she tours Multitudes, her transcendent new album about motherhood. [Related: Feist’s Pleasure reworks the passage of time. (2017)]

A good recommendation I recently received: Newborns are top of mind for me these days; I’m expecting my first in about a month. Several friends with young kids have offered child-rearing wisdom for the modern age: Don’t let them watch Cocomelon. Just don’t. It’s “drugs for babies,” one told me. Having now YouTubed a few deranged clips, I see their point. Alternatives I feel better about are Rockabye Baby!’s lullaby renditions of the music of Drake and Lauryn Hill, which I think (or hope!) will be gentler on the baby—and me.

A YouTuber, TikToker, Twitch streamer, or other online creator whom I’m a fan of: Though I’m trying to spend as little time as possible on Instagram these days, I will always stop to watch the Roman chef Max Mariola cook in his dreamy outdoor kitchen. During the height of the pandemic, Searching for Italy, a CNN series about Stanley Tucci nearly orgasming over Italian meals, was my escape. Mariola is like Tucci turned up to 11. For him, even the humblest ingredients seem to rouse carnal pleasure. That he whispers, ASMR-like, in Italian—his recipes are shared like secrets—adds a frisson of excitement. In one video, while whipping up buttered anchovy spaghetti for guests who unexpectedly stay for dinner, he murmurs, “I didn’t have anything in the house, but I’ll always make you feel great!” Pantry cooking was never so racy.

Something I loved as a teenager and still love, and something I loved but now dislike: I recently made an obscure reference to the early-aughts emo band Dashboard Confessional in a dumb tweet about the failed SpaceX launch, and immediately regretted it. My feelings changed, however, when a colleague caught it—“are you a Dashboard person?” she Slacked incredulously—and then introduced me to a secret cadre of Atlantic emo-lovers. My people! In high school, bands such as Something Corporate, Yellowcard, and Taking Back Sunday supported me through suburban angst and adolescent existential ennui (and, as a bonus, taught me to play guitar, if badly). Listening to their songs at 36 has been a welcome reminder that I once had the capacity to feel so much, so earnestly—an ability I’m hoping to recultivate after spending most of this millennium (so far) mired in irony.

But not all earnestness ages well. Garden State and (500) Days of Summer were popular twee indie romances that tried to convince a generation that true love happened when navel-gazing weirdos discovered quirky-cool girls to allay their insecurities, usually in settings involving obscure music. Somehow as a young adult, the fact that those weirdos were relentlessly self-absorbed and cared little for their partners’ personal well-being escaped me. That oversight now makes me cringe; fortunately, I’ve since learned that there’s more to love than a shared fondness for The Shins. [Related: Is Dashboard Confessional still emo? (2018)]

A quiet song that I love, and a loud song that I love: In my attempt to see as many concerts as I can before giving birth, I recently went to see The Walkmen, another favorite band on a nostalgia tour. (Compression socks have helped with all the standing around.) They sounded as great as they did decades ago, but I was disappointed not to hear my favorite song, “Red Moon,” a gorgeous, gentle ballad about missing someone, rich with mournful horns. “But the stars are cold / And the air is bright,” the lead singer Hamilton Leithauser laments. “And I see you now / You shine like the steel on my knife.”

More chaotic moods often take me to “Pain Killer,” a sexy, boisterous song from the Danish punk rockers Iceage, featuring vocals from the elusive American pop star Sky Ferreira. Vigorous drums and angular guitars provide plenty of joyful noise, but it’s the unexpected addition of horns—what can I say; I love that brass!—that elevates this track into glorious pandemonium.

Read past editions of the Culture Survey with Damon Beres, Julie Beck, Faith Hill, Derek Thompson, Tom Nichols, Amy Weiss-Meyer, and Kaitlyn Tiffany.

The Week Ahead

The Making of Another Major Motion Picture Masterpiece: A Novel, the debut novel by the actor Tom Hanks that was a lifetime in the making (on sale Tuesday) The third season of The Great, a raucous reimagining of the reign of Russian Empress Catherine the Great (begins streaming Friday on Hulu) The Mother, an action-thriller starring Jennifer Lopez as a military-trained assassin on a mission to protect her daughter (available to stream Friday on Netflix)

Essay

Illustration by Joanne Imperio / The Atlantic. Source: Marka / Alamy; Trinity Mirror / Alamy; Pictorial Press Ltd / Alamy.

A Rom-Com That Seduces the Old-Fashioned Way

By Jane Hu

It is a truth universally acknowledged that a single, hot woman must be in want of a schlubby man who can make her laugh. This is, at least, the fantasy that romantic comedies have too often sold us, from Woody Allen’s Manhattan to Harold Ramis’s Groundhog Day to Judd Apatow’s Knocked Up. In these films, what’s most valued in a man is not his body—or even his bank account—but his winning personality. When it comes to romancing a woman, humor and a heart of gold turn out to be a foolproof strategy of seduction. And part of the comedy is that an average-looking man who tells good jokes is able to tell them all the way to the bedroom.

This familiar trope is also the opening setup to Curtis Sittenfeld’s latest novel, Romantic Comedy, though Sittenfeld deftly toggles between deconstructing a well-worn genre and leaning into its most predictable beats. She does this, in part, by setting her novel in the entertainment industry—that producer of slick narrative arcs and neat archetypes—and, more specifically, by making her protagonist a professional comedian, someone whose literal job is to poke fun at the scripts that govern our desires.

Read the full article.

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Photo Album

Surfer Kai Lenny rides a wave as a big swell hits Teahupoʻo, on the French Polynesia island of Tahiti, on April 30, 2023.

Check out snapshots of big-wave surfing in Tahiti, preparations for a coronation in London, moments from the Met Gala in New York, and more in our editor’s selection of the week’s best photos.

It has been 70 years since the world last witnessed the crowning of a new British monarch. On Tuesday, May 2, The Atlantic’s editor in chief, Jeffrey Goldberg, will join the U.K.-based staff writers Sophie Gilbert and Helen Lewis to talk about the new era of the monarchy and its role both within the United Kingdom and on the international stage. Register for the event here.

One of the stranger aspects of the modern British monarchy is that its special occasions come with an official dish. Where his mother had curried chicken for her coronation, an exotic proposition in 1950s Britain, King Charles III now has a ceremonial quiche. The recipe, according to Buckingham Palace, involves “a crisp, light pastry case and delicate flavours of spinach, broad beans and fresh tarragon.” The quiche is simple to make, can be easily adapted for those with allergies, and—much like the Royal Family’s ongoing revenge on Prince Harry—is a dish best served cold.

I hesitate to read too much into a quiche, but you could argue that the “popular oven-baked savoury tart” (thank you, The Times) is a symbol of the new King’s political outlook. Charles’s worldview is hard to describe, because it blends eco-radicalism with deep traditionalism. He has been talking about green issues since the 1970s—he was way ahead of the curve on organic farming—but his environmentalism is very different from the leftist doomer vibes of Extinction Rebellion or Just Stop Oil. Instead, it springs from an aristocratic sense of merely passing through the world, of being a custodian for the next generation. The Royal Family loves sustainability, as you might, too, if you’d inherited all your sofas. A free tip to anyone lucky enough to be among the 2,000 guests who will be inside Westminster Abbey for the coronation: Don’t wear Shein. As of a few years ago, the new King was still wearing a pair of shoes he bought in 1971.

[From the December 2022 issue: The petulant king]

Last year, when Queen Elizabeth II died, my former colleague Tom McTague referred to her son and heir as the Hobbit King: “He is far more interested in the benefits of traditional English hedgerows than the great, global glory of Britain.” How right he was. The invitation to the coronation on May 6 is illustrated with a hedgerow border, complete with a bee, a wren, and a garland of oak leaves. It even features a Green Man, a quasi-mystical symbol of rebirth carved into many English churches. (Sadly, the new King declined to include a carving often paired with the Green Man, the Sheela Na Gig, a female figure “showing pink,” as they say in the porn industry.)

Whenever I write about the British royals, I find myself wondering how a family that owes its position to the illegitimate son of a Norman noble invading Sussex in 1066 can credibly claim to be at the vanguard of social change. The gold coronation coach will trundle through crowds of onlookers squeezed by inflation of up to 80 percent on basic foodstuffs in the past year. Royal visits to the Caribbean are now marked by intense awkwardness over the legacy of slavery and colonialism. And as Meghan Markle discovered sometime between her 2019 Vogue guest-edit and her escape to British Columbia the following year, duchesses are poorly placed to talk about equality.

[Read: The issue with Meghan Markle’s Vogue issue]

Nonetheless, King Charles is trying, in his hobbitish way, to move with the times. At the coronation, the oil used to anoint him will be vegan-friendly—something that caused consternation among certain tabloids—because it will not be made with ambergris or civet musk (extracted, respectively, from whale intestines and a tree mammal’s anal glands). But family tradition comes into play too: The oil will come from olives harvested from beside the grave of Charles’s grandmother Alice, in Jerusalem. It has been blessed by an Orthodox patriarch with a huge beard.

These attempts to reconcile old and new are everywhere in the ceremony. The oil might be free from feline anal musk, but as with his mother’s coronation in 1953, Charles has decided not to allow cameras to film the anointing—which he considers to be a moment of connection with God. At the same time, he has previously defined himself as a “defender of faiths” as well as “defender of the faith.” (The latter title was conferred on Henry VIII by the Pope in 1521, in one of history’s most spectacular “you’ll never guess what happened next” moments.) The coronation will be overseen by the Anglican archbishop of Canterbury, but also attended by Britain’s chief rabbi, who has been given a room at a royal residence within walking distance of the Abbey so he doesn’t have to use a car on the Sabbath; the Catholic archbishop of Westminster; and London Mayor Sadiq Khan, a Muslim. Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, who is Hindu, will read from the New Testament. Not everyone likes these attempts to bring the coronation into the 21st century. One particularly overwrought article in The European Conservative accused Charles of having a “Koraonation” because of his sympathy for Islam, while in The Telegraph, Petronella Wyatt offered my single favorite paragraph on the whole hoopla: “It is particularly disturbing that the Earl of Derby has not been asked to provide falcons, as his family have done since the 16th Century. These little things deprive people of their purpose in life.”

The case against Charles will be well known to anyone who’s watched The Crown; read Prince Harry’s memoir, Spare; or picked up a supermarket tabloid in the past half century. He was cold to his first wife, distant to his second son, and his brother was a friend of Jeffrey Epstein. He used to have an aide to squeeze his toothpaste onto the brush—an aide who later had to resign from Charles’s pet charity after promising to obtain an official honor for a Saudi tycoon in exchange for £1.5 million. Nonetheless, it’s quite funny that the descendant of nearly 1,000 years of mildly inbred aristocrats is less frothingly anti-woke than the average Fox News talking head. To the new King’s credit, Buckingham Palace officially supports academic efforts to research the family’s links to the slave trade, and Charles attended the ceremony in 2021 where the new republic of Barbados formally dispensed with his mother’s services as head of state.

For all his undoubted faults, Charles has recognized something about the British character—that we find change most palatable when we’re wallowing in nostalgia. You can see it in the Brexit vote, which was presented to Baby Boomers less as a leap into the unknown than a reversion to the status quo ante—specifically the early 1970s, before Britain joined the Common Market, a time within living memory. In a similar vein, one of the BBC’s lockdown hits was a show called The Repair Shop, filmed at a historic museum where visitors can see what medieval British houses were like (I’ve been to the museum, so I can tell you: cold, damp, and faintly redolent of pigs). The program, hosted by the furniture restorer Jay Blades, attracts Britons desperate to have their heirlooms revived. If you like the sound of someone spending several hours carefully beating out the dents in a vintage fireman’s helmet, Repair Shop is for you. Last year, the series featured one Charles Windsor promoting the Prince’s Trust vocational-training initiative, in which young people learn how to become blacksmiths and stonemasons.

[Helen Lewis: Prince Harry’s book undermines the idea of the monarchy]

Blades, a Black Briton who comes from inner London and has a gold tooth, bonded with the Windsor heir, who carried a handkerchief that could have doubled as a bedsheet, over their love of traditional crafts. “The great tragedy is the lack of vocational education in schools; not everybody is designed for the academic,” said Charles, who attended Cambridge University despite performing terribly on his secondary-school exams. “Not me,” agreed Blades, who discovered as an adult that he was functionally illiterate. The moment showed that the new King is desperate to give middle Britain what it loves: the aspiration to judge people not by the color of their skin, but by their ability to restore a 19th-century commemorative tea set.

Which brings us back to the quiche. It was specially designed to be shareable, with the hope that patriotic Britons will host coronation street parties at which it can star as the eggy focal point, the savory showstopper, the shortcrust pièce de résistance. I’m tempted to laugh at that idea, but it’s barely been six months since thousands of people lined up for 12 hours straight to see Elizabeth II lying in state. The anti-shoplifting gates at my local supermarket are now decked with purple banners urging me to celebrate her son’s ascent to the throne. My local park is holding a “South London samba” festival. You can buy a coronation-themed illuminated cushion.

Britain is a strange and unfathomable place, even to those of us who have been here all our lives. I want to tell Americans that we are nothing like Downton Abbey and The Great British Bake-Off, and then I remember that our new King has an official quiche.