The meeting prompted the Libyan foreign minister to flee to Turkey and led to street protests in Libya.

Five people, including four children, died and dozens were rescued Monday in two separate incidents involving migrant boats heading to Greek islands from nearby Turkey.

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 to The Daily’s new Sunday culture edition. Every weekend, one Atlantic writer will reveal what’s keeping them entertained.

Today’s special guest is senior editor Hanna Rosin, who hosts our Radio Atlantic podcast. Hanna is rewatching The Sopranos with her teenage son, reading three pages of a graphic novel before bed every night, and taking “evidence-based” life advice from an astrologist.

First, here are three Sunday reads from The Atlantic:

David Brooks: The new old age When wealth fixes (almost) everything The raunchy teen comedy gets a queer twist.

The Culture Survey: Hanna Rosin

Something I recently rewatched, reread, or otherwise revisited: I’m watching The Sopranos with my teenage son, beginning to end. I’d forgotten so many details: how Tony Soprano’s eye twitches when he gets mad. How early-Millennial Christopher Moltisanti is, with his thirst for minor fame. Carmela’s hair! Uncle Junior’s vanity! I also forgot what a large role Tony’s mother plays in the first season; somehow I remembered her dying earlier. And I forgot how absolutely correct and bold Dr. Melfi was in pushing Tony to realize that his mother was trying to kill him, and not in a Freudian way. #narctok would be impressed!

My son, who just took his first creative-writing class, keeps asking me, “Is this a comedy? Is it a drama?” And I want to answer from the lordly perch of the aged and wise, “Son, this is the source of all television as you have known it.” [Related: James Gandolfini, beyond The Sopranos]

Best novel I’ve recently read, and the best work of nonfiction: My favorite book I read this summer was The Rabbit Hutch, by Tess Gunty. She interweaves the stories of tenants in a crappy midwestern apartment building, and her character sketches are exquisite. Everything pops through them—American boredom, class, desperation, genius from unlikely sources, an undercurrent of violence. She’s a first-time novelist, and I will read everything she writes.

As for nonfiction, last week, I started When Crack Was King, by Donovan X. Ramsey (an adapted essay from it appeared in The Atlantic last month). We’ve done so much contemporaneous analysis of the opioid crisis: books, movies, documentaries, congressional hearings (if you want to dip into that analysis, watch All the Beauty and the Bloodshed, an incredible documentary about Nan Goldin that follows, among other things, her addiction to pain pills and then her successful protests against the infamous Sackler family’s museum philanthropy). But we haven’t reckoned with the crack era, or pinned it as the historical marker it was. I’m halfway through this book, and Ramsey gives the full view, from teenagers who grew up in the shadow of crack to city leaders who got overwhelmed by it. The sweep is long overdue. [Related: What we meant when we said crackhead]

My final pleasure of the summer: The Unfortunate Life of Worms, a graphic novel by the Italian illustrator Noemi Vola. I miss reading illustrated children’s books, so I read three pages before bed every night.

An online creator that I’m a fan of: Zillions of shiny creators have come and gone, but two have stuck around for me:

QueerCosmos, a.k.a. Colin Bedell. He does life advice for queer people by combining astrology and “evidence-based research.” (Fact-checkers of the world, move on). He is my Brené Brown, my Malcolm Gladwell, my Oprah, my therapist, and my couples therapist. May he live forever in the cosmos. Blackforager, a.k.a. Alexis Nikole. She forages in Columbus, Ohio. She’s my nutritionist, my healer, the fairy in the garden. Alexis makes me feel for a minute that I don’t need to buy or achieve or food-optimize my way to happiness. I just need to walk outside and find myself a mulberry leaf.

The upcoming entertainment event I’m most looking forward to: The Janelle Monáe tour. I already have tickets. The Age of Pleasure has been my easy soundtrack of the summer. [Related: The age of pleasure is here.]

A poem, or line of poetry, that I return to:

There is no single particular noun

for the way a friendship,

stretched over time, grows thin,

then one day snaps with a popping sound.

— “Special Problems in Vocabulary,” by Tony Hoagland

The end of a couple of close friendships, in the last half of my life, have shocked me. (Jennifer Senior, thank you for helping.) I didn’t see it coming, and I puzzle over it every day.

The last museum or gallery show that I loved: Musical Thinking: New Video Art and Sonic Strategies, at the Smithsonian American Art Museum. I went to this exhibit mostly to see Love Is the Message, The Message Is Death. I’d read a lot about this 2016 video by the cinematographer Arthur Jafa and seen it online, but never in a gallery space. The gentle phrase gallery space makes me wince when I think about the images in the video. It’s a cascading series of video clips about Black culture, Black experience, and violence. It feels like image poetry, the most concise and affecting portrayal of the Back American experience I’ve seen. As the actor Amandla Stenberg asks in the video, “What would America be like if we loved Black people as much as we love Black culture?”

The Week Ahead

Happiness Falls, a new novel by Angie Kim, illustrates a family in crisis after their beloved father goes missing (on sale Tuesday). One Piece, a live-action series adapted from the popular manga (premieres Thursday on Netflix) The Equalizer 3 features Denzel Washington as a former government assassin trying to reconcile with his past (in theaters Friday).

Essay

Lionsgate

You’ve Had a Good Run, Liam Neeson

About 15 years ago, Liam Neeson picked up a cellphone and growled a haunting, threatening monologue that changed the course of his career. Playing the hardened ex-CIA agent Bryan Mills in the movie Taken, Neeson warned the men who’d kidnapped his teenage daughter about his “very particular set of skills, skills I have acquired over a very long career, skills that make me a nightmare for people like you.” It was the beginning of a surprising renaissance for the esteemed actor. In his mid-50s, he became an action star, headlining a long run of cheaply made, typically European-set thrillers in which he played gun-toting men in leather jackets with, well, murderous skills.

There are too many of these movies to name, and they tend to be better known by a one-sentence plot description. Neeson on a plane? That’s the marvelous Non-Stop. On a train? The decently schlocky The Commuter. Neeson at a ski resort? Cold Pursuit. Neeson as an ice-road trucker? They just called that one The Ice Road. Further evidence that the studios are running out of ideas for him comes in Neeson’s latest effort, the depressingly blank Retribution, which shamelessly steals the premise of another famous film.

Read the full article.

More in Culture

​​Stephen King: My books were used to train AI. Megan Rapinoe answers the critics. A still-shocking masterpiece worth catching in theaters Love is magic—and also hormones. Diamonds are for girls’ best friends. A very silly movie about some very good dogs The death of an indispensable person Poem: “A Better Story” Poem: “Heritage”

Catch Up on The Atlantic

Trump’s mug shot gives his haters nothing. What Bradley Cooper’s makeup can’t conceal The first GOP debate makes it obvious where the Republican Party is headed.

Photo Album

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Katherine Hu contributed to this newsletter.

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