Captain Wendie Renard scores a late headed winner as France beat Brazil in a thrilling Group F game in Brisbane at the 2023 Fifa Women's World Cup.

Captain Lindsey Horan comes to the rescue of defending champions the United States after the Netherlands threaten an upset at the Women's World Cup.

Captain Ben Stokes says England's Ashes hopes being over is a "tough pill to swallow" because they were "pretty much perfect" in the drawn fourth Test.

Captain Ben Stokes says a weather-shortened fourth Ashes Test could suit England as they look to level the series with Australia at Old Trafford.

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A child’s job is to be oblivious to their parents’ stress. On a recent trip, our roles were reversed.

First, here are four new stories from The Atlantic:

Russia has a new gulag. Is a glass of wine harmless? Wrong question. Climate change feels more real now than ever. China doesn’t want to compete. It wants to win.

A Child’s Job

The most peaceful place at Chicago O’Hare is the tunnel linking Concourses B and C in Terminal 1. It’s a long hallway with a ceiling covered in snaking neon lights that change color while piano melodies play from a speaker somewhere. As a kid, I spent hours in this tunnel during flight delays with my mom. While she figured out our next move, I’d press my legs into the cold, shiny floor and watch the lights shift from pink to red to blue. I’d have a soft pretzel. I was happy.

My parents and I traveled a lot when I was young. Sometimes we flew across the country for American Camp Association conferences—Mom worked for the Girl Scouts—and other times, we drove 12 hours from Iowa to Pennsylvania, where my grandparents lived. There were always logistical snags, but I don’t remember them. What I remember is sitting cross-legged for hours on the airport floor playing Farkle, an obnoxious portable dice game that my mom always packed. I remember happily reading Harry Potter in the back seat during a blizzard that halted traffic for six hours outside Dayton, Ohio. I was unaware of the fact that, on a trip to Hungary for a family friend’s wedding, my parents were struggling to figure out forints.

I was never anxious about any of it—whether our flight would be delayed a few more hours, what we’d scrounge up for dinner, who would pick us up from the kiss-and-ride. A child’s job is to be completely oblivious to their parents’ stress, and I was very good at my job.

Then, this spring, I planned a trip to Europe. We hadn’t traveled anywhere as a family for years—decades, maybe—and my parents hadn’t been abroad since 2002. I took photos of them against the beige walls of their living room and renewed their passports. I bought them the latest Rick Steves guide, booked our plane tickets, and planned a driving route across the Emerald Isle. I advised my parents against packing their money belts—frankly, I’d rather they get robbed—but they did anyway: “Rick says it’s a must.”

In England and Ireland, my boyfriend and I downloaded eSIM cards to our phones and navigated our little posse toward sheep-covered overlooks and affordable Indian restaurants. I told everyone what time we were waking up and where we’d catch the bus. “Relax,” I told the crew. Driving on the left side will be easy and fine. I was Captain von Trapp with his whistle, but my parents didn’t seem to mind. “It’s nice,” Mom said at one point, “not to be in charge.”

Last month, the philosopher Agnes Callard made a lot of people mad online when she wrote an essay arguing that traveling doesn’t actually change people in any special way. She wrote that tourism is nothing more than “locomotion”: “The single most important fact about tourism is this: we already know what we will be like when we return.” I think Callard’s essay has worthwhile points, but this is not one of them. Travel doesn’t make you a fundamentally different person, but it does have a way of serving up lessons about yourself—and the people you love.

For me, the Godfrey Family’s International Locomotion was a useful, if not particularly original, reminder: To evolve from child to adult is to slowly become aware of the fact that your parents are just people; they’re working and cooking and arguing and budgeting and traveling, all while trying to give you steadiness and a good time. Then, I think, you spend the rest of your life trying to give it back.

On the last day of our trip, I opened my inbox to an email from United: Our flight from Dublin had been canceled. Exasperated, I left my parents on an airport bench to negotiate with an airline associate, who gave us a new flight and three meal vouchers each. We’d have a lot of time to kill. It was okay: Mom and I had both packed Farkle.

Related:

Air travel is a mess again. What travel can, and cannot, teach us

Today’s News

A heat dome will reach peak strength over parts of the western United States this weekend and potentially break about 100 heat records.   India launched its Chandrayaan-3 rocket into space. It hopes to be the fourth country to complete a successful moon landing. A suspect, Rex Heuermann, has been arrested in a series of killings that led to the discovery of bodies near Gilgo Beach, in Long Island, over a decade ago. Heuermann’s attorney said he has denied any involvement.

Dispatches

The Books Briefing: Gal Beckerman writes about the forgotten postwar best sellers that exposed bigotry at home.

Explore all of our newsletters here.

Evening Read

Dave Kotinsky / Getty

What I Learned About Life at My 30th College Reunion

By Deborah Copaken

On the weekend before the opening gavel of what’s being dubbed the Harvard affirmative-action trial, a record-breaking 597 of my fellow members of the class of ’88 and I, along with alumni from other reunion classes, were seated in a large lecture hall, listening to the new president of Harvard, Lawrence Bacow, address the issue of diversity in the admissions process. What he said—and I’m paraphrasing, because I didn’t record it—was that he could fill five whole incoming classes with valedictorians who’d received a perfect score on the SAT, but that’s not what Harvard is or will ever be. Harvard tries—and succeeds, to my mind—to fill its limited spots with a diversity not only of race and class but also of geography, politics, interests, intellectual fields of study, and worldviews.

I loved my four years at Harvard, largely because of the diversity of its student body. I don’t love the fact—now made public through the trial but previously understood by all of us to be true—that the kids whose parents donate buildings are given preferential treatment over those whose parents don’t.

Read the full article.

More From The Atlantic

The fundraising stunts are getting out of control. The dos and don’ts of hydrating in a heat wave Fans have always screamed at concerts. Why does it feel different now?

Culture Break

Craig Blankenhorn / Max

Read. Interpreter of Maladies, by Jhumpa Lahiri, is one of five books that’ll fit right into your busy schedule.

Watch. The fifth episode of And Just Like That, the Sex and the City reboot, finally addresses the problem of its most hated character.

Play our daily crossword.

P.S.

If you know me at all, you know that, aside from being completely obsessed with the belly-jiggling antics of the Phillie Phanatic, I don’t follow sports of any kind. Still, I appreciate great stories about the people who play them, which is why I devoured this article by The Washington Post’s Sally Jenkins about the tennis stars Chris Evert and Martina Navratilova. The two players were polar opposites who, for decades, took turns playing nemesis and friend to each other. They kept getting mixed up in each other’s personal lives; they were confidantes. And eventually, near-simultaneous cancer diagnoses brought them closer than ever.

— Elaine

Katherine Hu contributed to this newsletter.

How much money did Captain Tom raise and why is his family under the spotlight?

NHS Charities Together says £38m raised by Capt Sir Tom Moore is "not under investigation".

It has also emerged his daughter used the charity's name on plans for building later used as a spa.