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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 staff writer Annie Lowrey, who covers economic policy, housing, and other related topics. She recently wrote about how Montana performed a housing miracle, and why you have to care about these 12 elite colleges.

Annie just moved to New York and already has tickets to both a Fleetwood Mac dance night and a Mozart performance. When she’s not out seeing shows, you might find her walking the streets and listening to Metallica—the ideal working-mom soundtrack.

First, here are three Sunday reads from The Atlantic:

Cover story: “I never called her momma.” What Mitt Romney saw in the Senate “The only productivity hack that works on me”

The Culture Survey: Annie Lowrey

The upcoming event I’m most looking forward to: I just moved to New York with my family; gosh, is there a better city for music? Among the many things I have tickets to and am pumped to go see: this small experimental-music festival, this Fleetwood Mac–heavy dance night, this performance of Mozart’s Requiem. (Fun fact: Mozart died prematurely while he was writing his Requiem. The guy functionally wrote his own funeral mass! That’s got to be the most metal musical act of all time. It is also the music playing when Jeffrey “The Big” Lebowski gives his “strong men also cry” monologue, by the way.) [Related: The secret to Mozart’s lasting appeal]

An actor I would watch in anything: Helen Mirren.

My favorite blockbuster and favorite art movie: Jurassic Park for the blockbuster. I must have seen it a hundred times by now; I can recite pretty much the entire thing. I’d argue that it’s not just a great movie; it’s a perfect movie: perfectly structured and perfectly paced, with perfectly formed characters whose arcs wrap up perfectly, in several cases because the character gets eaten by a dinosaur, as they fully deserve. As for the art film, I’m going with Into Great Silence, a documentary about monks living in an isolated monastery in the French Alps. [Related: The high tension and pure camp of Jurassic Park]   

Best novel I’ve recently read, and the best work of nonfiction: I am terrible at picking favorites! I love everything. I pick good stuff to read! As for novels, I adored Hamnet. I adored Convenience Store Woman. I adored The Love Songs of W. E. B. Du Bois. I loved Matrix. I loved All This Could Be Different. In terms of nonfiction, I’m mostly reading books that have to do with the book I am writing, which is about administrative complexity, bureaucracy, administrative harassment, and paperwork. Protecting Soldiers and Mothers, Slavery by Another Name—there are so many astonishing books that touch on the subject. I just read a great book about Pakistan called Government of Paper.

An author I will read anything by: Namwali Serpell.

A quiet song that I love, and a loud song that I love: For a quiet song, I really like the Max Richter recomposition of Vivaldi’s Four Seasons. For a loud song, I love “Creeping Death,” by Metallica. I often listen to it while walking around the city. Working moms deserve soundtracks that capture their desire to pour gasoline in a public trash can and light it on fire, you know?

The last museum or gallery show that I loved: Nam June Paik at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. What a showstopper. What a sense of humor! I wanted to live in that exhibit for the rest of my life.

A painting, sculpture, or other piece of visual art that I cherish: My older son is full of malapropisms. For a long time, he’d sing, “You are my shinecone, my only shinecone” instead of “You are my sunshine, my only sunshine.” And he insisted that there was a bird called a “peagle,” a combination of a peacock and an eagle. A good bird! I had a little oil painting made and framed.

The last arts/culture/entertainment thing that made me cry: I feel lucky to be a person who cries easily; it is a wonderful, cathartic thing to do. I sobbed while watching the “Sleepytime” episode of Bluey for the 78th time. I cry every time. Holst! What a majestic composer. [Related: In praise of Bluey, the most grown-up television show for children]

A poem, or line of poetry, that I return to: I read tons of poetry. It’s so great for when you’re tired, stressed out, short on time. You read a poem; it takes three minutes or 20 minutes; you get drop-kicked out of the galaxy and torn apart and rebuilt and returned home anew. I think about this Aracelis Girmay poem all the time. I mumble, “I translate the Bible into velociraptor” often. I love this Sophie Robinson poem. Is it possible not to tear up reading the last line of this Nicole Sealey stunner? Or not laugh at the last line of this David Berman poem?

I have also been reading and rereading and rereading poetry about or that includes administrative and bureaucratic language: Tracy K. Smith’s “I Will Tell You the Truth About This, I Will Tell You All About It.” Claire Schwartz’s Civil Service. Solmaz Sharif’s Customs.

The Week Ahead

Wellness, a new novel by Nathan Hill (the author of The Nix), features a couple trying to repair their marriage as the idealism of their youth fades (on sale Tuesday). The 12th season of American Horror Story features Emma Roberts, Kim Kardashian, and Cara Delevingne (premieres Wednesday on FX). In Spy Kids: Armageddon, a game developer unleashes a computer virus that threatens the world (streaming on Netflix this Friday).

Essay

Illustration by Katie Martin

Why Are Women Freezing Their Eggs? Look to the Men.

By Anna Louie Sussman

The struggling American man is one of the few objects of bipartisan concern. Both conservatives and liberals bemoan men’s underrepresentation in higher education, their greater likelihood to die a “death of despair,” and the growing share of them who are not working or looking for work. But the chorus of concern rarely touches on how male decline shapes the lives of the people most likely to date or marry them—that is to say, women.

In Motherhood on Ice: The Mating Gap and Why Women Freeze Their Eggs, Marcia C. Inhorn, a medical anthropologist at Yale, tells this side of the story. Beginning in 2014, she conducted interviews with 150 American women who had frozen their eggs—most of them heterosexual women who wanted a partner they could have and raise children with. She concluded that, contrary to the commonly held notion that most professional women were freezing their eggs so they could lean into their jobs, “Egg freezing was not about their careers. It was about being single or in very unstable relationships with men who were unwilling to commit to them.”

Read the full article.

More in Culture

Don’t let love take over your life. The problems that marriage can’t fix Political art isn’t always better art. The Morning Show has a star problem. Lauren Groff has written a new gospel. The man who became Uncle Tom The secret to appreciating Garfield From feminist to right-wing conspiracist America has a private-beach problem. Ada Limón: “The Origin Revisited” Poem: “Rainbow Queen Encyclopedia” Editor’s note: A warning from another time

Catch Up on The Atlantic

America just hit the lithium jackpot. The truth about Hunter Biden’s indictment America gave up on the best home technology there is.

Photo Album

Surfing dogs compete in Helen Woodward Animal Center’s 18th Annual Surf Dog Surf-A-Thon, in Del Mar, California. (Daniel Knighton / Getty)

A new volcanic eruption in Hawaii, an end-of-summer cattle drive in Germany, and more, in our editor’s selection of the week’s best photos.

Katherine Hu contributed to this newsletter.

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