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What to Know About Fall COVID Vaccines

www.theatlantic.com › newsletters › archive › 2023 › 09 › fall-covid-vaccines-boosters › 675313

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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.

Yesterday, officials from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommended that everyone above the age of six months should get a dose of the new, updated COVID-19 vaccine that the FDA just green-lighted. To learn more about the vaccine, and for guidance on how to approach COVID as cases rise, I called Katherine J. Wu, an Atlantic staff writer who covers science.

First, here are three new stories from The Atlantic:

Stress drinking has a gender divide. The conservative censorship campaign reaches its natural conclusion. Kevin McCarthy is a hostage.

For Everyone

Lora Kelley: Why is the CDC recommending that everyone get a COVID vaccine this fall?

Katherine J. Wu: Experts at yesterday’s CDC advisory panel were really making it clear that everyone stands to benefit in some way from this vaccine. COVID is very much still a real threat. People are still dying, and people are still being debilitated by long COVID. Even if risk is not equal across everyone in the population, this is a really important public-health intervention.

It’s also important to keep in mind the historical and cultural context here. Last year, uptake for the fall COVID vaccine was abysmal; less than 20 percent of people got it even though it was also widely recommended. And certainly, with uptake that low, the goal will be to raise uptake this year.

Lora: How does this shot differ from previous COVID shots and boosters?

Katherine: I would argue that this is not a booster. This is another move toward routinizing COVID-19 vaccines to be like the annual flu vaccine, a shot that is given to much of the population every fall in advance of respiratory-virus season. With the flu vaccine, there’s an expectation that the composition of the vaccine is going to change with some regularity: The main variants or strains the vaccines are targeting may change.

This COVID shot is different from last year’s: It no longer contains any ingredients targeting the original coronavirus variants that were in the very first vaccines that we got in 2020 and 2021. It targets just the XBB subvariants of Omicron.

Lora: In your article today, you wrote about an expert who believes vaccine recommendations should prioritize only vulnerable groups. What is motivating some experts not to offer full-throated endorsements of everyone getting a vaccine this fall?

Katherine: To be clear, there is really widespread consensus that everyone needs at least a couple doses of the vaccine. There’s no doubt in experts’ minds that going from zero vaccines to two or three is essential. The gains are going to be massive for everyone.

The disagreement here is not necessarily about the facts—it’s more about how they should be framed. There’s widespread consensus that certain groups are at higher risk than others, including people who are older, immunocompromised, pregnant, living with chronic health conditions, and living in congregate settings, to name a few. The question then is: Should we target the recommendations only to these groups, to really make sure that they are the ones going out to get this vaccine with no hesitation?

There is worry among some experts that the universal recommendation does not adequately focus vaccination efforts on the people who most need it. And some experts feel that young, healthy people, who are at a lower risk of bad COVID outcomes, may be set with the vaccines that they’ve already got.

Lora: How would you recommend that people who aren’t in those high-risk categories approach vaccines this fall?

Katherine: I am all for enthusiastically recommending this vaccine to everyone. Some people are at higher risk, so I would even more strongly encourage those people to go get it.

When we think about any vaccine, especially COVID-19 vaccines, we think most about preventing severe disease. But there are secondary benefits of these vaccines too: For at least a time, you will have a lower risk of getting infected and spreading the virus. And if you do get sick, your symptoms may be shorter if you’ve been recently vaccinated. There may even be a lower risk of developing long COVID down the road, which is an important thing to keep in mind because we know that it can come out of even mild infections. Also, there’s really not a concern at this point of the vaccine running out.

Lora: When should people get this vaccine?

Katherine: There are a few things to keep in mind on timing: If you are lower risk, there is relatively less rush to get the shot. That said, COVID cases have been rising for weeks now. So I certainly wouldn’t tell anyone to not get a shot anytime soon.

The one exception is if you’ve recently been infected. If you have had COVID recently: First, I’m sorry. Second, there are a lot of immunologists who would argue it’s not a terrible idea to wait maybe two or three months after your infection before getting a shot, because you probably have some lingering immunity left behind from that infection. (Huge caveat here: This is not an endorsement of infection, but just a matter of fact.) You don’t want to hamper the ability of your body to form a good immune response to the vaccine if you get it too close to infection.

You totally can get the COVID shot at the same time as the flu shot. It’s convenient, and you only have to deal with possible side effects once.

Lora: What precautions can people take this fall, beyond just getting vaccinated?

Katherine: I am definitely getting a vaccine this fall. But a vaccine is not a silver bullet. It’s going to work best against severe disease, but the protections against infection and transmission are more porous and more temporary. So when I go into crowded settings, when I travel on planes, when I see people in my life who are more vulnerable than I am, I am going to be testing and masking.

We’ve already seen that cases have been rising even at the tail end of summer, which is atypical for most respiratory viruses. That’s another reminder that COVID has not yet settled into a super predictable pattern. I don’t want to hide in my house forever. I want to be able to enjoy the company of others. But I see vaccines, testing, and masking as tools that enable me to interact more safely in those settings.

Evening Read

Didier Viodé

I Never Called Her Momma

By Jenisha Watts

Ms. Brown didn’t tell me where we were going. I knew we would be visiting someone important, a literary figure, because we took a gypsy cab instead of the subway. It would probably be someone I should have known, but didn’t.

A brownstone in Harlem. It was immaculate—paintings of women in headscarves; a cherry-colored oriental rug; a dark, gleaming dining-room table. Ms. Brown led me toward a woman on the couch. She knew that I would recognize her, and I did, despite the plastic tube snaking from her nostrils to an oxygen tank. Maya Angelou’s back was straight. Her rose-pink eyeshadow sparkled.

My mind called up random bits of information from I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings. Canned pineapples—she loved them. Bailey—her brother’s name. What she felt when she heard someone read Dickens aloud for the first time—the voice that “slid in and curved down through and over the words.” And that, like me, she had called her grandmother Momma.

Read our October cover story.

The Joy and the Shame of Loving Football

found Sep '23 The Atlantic

www.theatlantic.com › newsletters › archive › 2023 › 09 › football-sports-entertainment-recommendations › 675270

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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 the staff writer and author Mark Leibovich. Mark has recently written about the long-shot presidential candidate who has the White House worried, and how Moneyball broke baseball.

First, here are three Sunday reads from The Atlantic:

Streaming has reached its sad, predictable fate. Hip-hop’s fiercest critic A knockout technique for achieving more happiness

The Culture Survey: Mark Leibovich

Mark wrote a little introductory note for our newsletter readers, so I’ll attach that here before we get to his culture-survey responses:

Okay, I will admit to just rereading a bunch of these recent culture surveys and marveling at how well-read, well-watched, and well-listened some of my Atlantic colleagues are. Intimidating! They set such a high and considered bar. Now allow me to lower it.

In comparison, my tastes are a hodgepodge of high-low delights that I pick up from random films, TV shows, or social-media feeds, which then lead me down various other rabbit holes. In other words, my tastes tend to be a meandering mess, depending on my moods, whereabouts, chemical intakes, endorphin bursts, and general exposures (or maybe I just flatter myself, and some algo-god is reading this from a Menlo Park lair, laughing like hell).

Here’s an example from an hour ago: I was driving my daughter to school, hopped up on espressos and flipping around on SiriusXM. Thankfully, Franny (my daughter) shares my quickness to punch the presets, my need for better options at all times, and my jumpy attention span (shorter version: ADHD). I happened to land on the ’80s-on-8 station and somehow found myself hooked on a cover of Bruce Springsteen’s “Pink Cadillac” by Natalie Cole (!). Who knew that existed? I didn’t until this morning, and wouldn’t you know it, the song stuck to my predilection lobes like bubble gum. Then, for some reason, the DJ—the former MTV VJ Mark Goodman—felt the need to come on and trash Natalie’s effort. Totally bogus, dude. And wrong.

This also reminded me that I once had tea with Nat King Cole’s widow, Maria, sometime in the ’90s, at the Ritz Carlton in Boston, where she happened to be living. Lovely woman, since departed. I have a cool story about Mrs. Cole too, which I started to tell Franny, but she was by then deep into her phone.

Anyway …

The upcoming event I’m most looking forward to: I’m writing this on the first weekend of the NFL season. There’s a reason most of the top-rated television shows every single year are NFL games. America’s most successful sports league is such a juggernaut, and I’m definitely part of the problem. Why problem? Because, among other things, football is morally precarious, causes incalculable damage to its players’ bodies and brains, and is run and owned by some of the worst people in the world, nearly all of them billionaires.

Even so, I will definitely tune in to a bunch of games this weekend, with generous bowls of Trader Joe’s kettle corn and reheated leftover pad thai on my lap. Which is a great segue into …

A favorite story I’ve read recently in The Atlantic: One of the teams that kicked off the season Thursday night, the young and promising Detroit Lions, is the subject of a great romp by the long-suffering, lionhearted Tim Alberta. The story is packed with poignancy, hitting many levels and themes: futility and resilience, legacies and character, fathers and sons. Also, faith rewarded: Lions 21–Chiefs 20. [Related: The thrill of defeat]

I’m going to cheat and suggest another article from The Atlantic, even though I read an early version and it is not yet online: next month’s cover story, by my desk-neighbor and pal Jenisha Watts. I have truly never read a story like this in my life, ever, and can’t even begin to describe the wonder of its triumph, or the triumph that is Jenisha, whom I am so proud to know.

The television show that I’m most enjoying right now: Daisy Jones and the Six (on Amazon Prime Video). A total joy. L.A. in the ’70s, road trips, and “you regret me, and I regret you” (that’s a lyric). Speaking of which …

Best work of nonfiction I’ve read recently: The Daisy Jones title cut is “Dancing Barefoot,” by Patti Smith, which led me to Smith’s memoir, Just Kids, which I purchased at my favorite local independent bookstore, Politics and Prose, because screw Amazon, even though it gave us Daisy Jones. (Like football, it’s complicated. Or maybe not.)

Aside: Riley Keough, if you or your reps are reading this, I want to interview you. MLeibovich@TheAtlantic.com.

An author I will read anything by: Christopher Buckley. The maestro’s been on my mind lately because I just finished Make Russia Great Again, an utterly hilarious Trump-era novel. And yes, there actually is a “Trump-era novel” genre (another pearl being The Captain and the Glory, by Dave Eggers).

I’ll also mention that Buckley once reviewed one of my books, and it was pretty much the highlight of my life—and damn right I’m linking to it.

Something I recently rewatched, reread, or otherwise revisited: The Worst Person in the World and Licorice Pizza. These were two of the few movies I’ve seen in theaters since (or during) the pandemic, both of which I rewatched on a long flight this summer. Each got into my bones, in their own wanderlusting, generationally particular way. The Norwegian film Worst Person is better than anything the Oslo Chamber of Commerce could ever have spawned (salmonlike!). It also led me to Todd Rundgren’s glorious song “Healing,” which has been feeding my heart ever since.

As for Licorice (again, L.A. in the ’70s), the film blissfully reacquainted me with a long-lost friend of a song, “Let Me Roll It,” by Paul McCartney and Wings. We’ve kept in touch since via Spotify, usually while I’m on my stationary bike, which I try to ride every day in an attempt to mitigate the various erosions of being in my 50s. Speaking of aging and life cycles and the transience of it all … [Related: Licorice Pizza is a tragicomic tale of 1970s Hollywood.]

A poem, or line of poetry, that I return to: “Nothing Gold Can Stay,” by Robert Frost. The title is also the last line of the poem, and is now the last entry in this scavenging of serendipity. May the golden wisdom of these words stay, eternally.

The Week Ahead

A Haunting in Venice, Kenneth Branagh’s supernatural mystery film (in select theaters Friday) The Vaster Wilds, a new novel by Lauren Groff (out Tuesday) How I Won a Nobel Prize, a novel by Julius Taranto (out Tuesday)

Essay

Bob Berg / Getty

The Album That Made Me a Music Critic

By Spencer Kornhaber

Smash Mouth has long been, as its guitarist, Greg Camp, once said, “a band that you can make fun of.” The pop-rock group’s signature hit, 1999’s “All Star,” combines the sounds of DJ scratches, glockenspiel, and a white dude rapping that he “ain’t the sharpest tool in the shed.” Fashionwise, the band tended to dress for a funky night at the bowling alley. And over nearly three decades, Smash Mouth has remained famous partly because of the flatulent cartoon ogre Shrek.

But the affection Smash Mouth commands is serious—the result of music so simultaneously pleasing and odd that it could rewire a young listener’s brain. In fact, the sad news of the death of original front man Steve Harwell at age 56 has me wondering if the band’s 1999 album, Astro Lounge, is the reason I’m a music critic. Most people can point to songs that hit them in early adolescence, when their ears were impressionable but their interest in other people’s judgment was still, blessedly, undeveloped. Smash Mouth’s second album, the one with “All Star,” came out when I was 11. Every goofy organ melody is still engraved in my mind, and today, the album holds up as an ingeniously crafted pleasure capsule.

Read the full article.

More in Culture

“Some have yoga. I have Montaigne.” Fiction on trial Okay, the 1980s Lakers were great—what else? How men muscled women out of surfing A constantly rebooting children’s franchise that’s actually good A rom-com franchise that needs to end The problem Olivia Rodrigo can’t solve

Catch Up on The Atlantic

Elon Musk’s latest target hits back. The China model is dead. Can Poland roll back authoritarian populism?

Photo Album

This picture, taken on September 2, 2023, shows a player scoring a try during Water Rugby Lausanne by jumping into Lake Geneva from a floating rugby field. The match was part of a three-day tournament organized by LUC Rugby that gathered more than 240 players in Lausanne, Switzerland. (Fabrice Coffrini / AFP / Getty)

The World Tango Championship in Argentina, a scene from the 80th Venice Film Festival, a cricket game in Afghanistan, and more in our editor’s selection of the week’s best photos.

Isabel Fattal contributed to this newsletter.

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American Democracy Perseveres—For Now

found Sep '23 The Atlantic

www.theatlantic.com › newsletters › archive › 2023 › 09 › trump-us-american-democracy-authoritarianism › 675243

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Democracy is under attack around the world; in the United States, the summer brought good news and bad news. The institutions of democracy are still functioning, but not for long if enough Americans continue to support authoritarianism.

First, here are four new stories from The Atlantic:

Tim Alberta: The thrill of defeat The metaphor that explains why America needs to prosecute Trump There’s a word for blaming Jews for anti-Semitism. What were the Russians doing in Chornobyl?

Layered Repression

Almost two years ago, I engaged in a thought experiment about what the failure of democracy in the United States might look like. I wrote it for an Atlantic subscriber newsletter I had back then, and I hope you’ll forgive me for revisiting it, but after a summer in which American democracy has been walking a tightrope over the authoritarian chasm, it’s worth looking back to see how we’ve done since early 2022.

The most important point, and the one that I think bears repeating, is that the failure of democracy in America will not look like a scene from a movie, where some fascist in a black tunic ascends the steps of the Capitol on Inauguration Day and proclaims the end of freedom:

The collapse of democracy in the United States will look more like an unspooling or an unwinding rather than some dramatic installation of Gilead or Oceania. My guess—and again, this is just my stab at speculative dystopianism—is that it will be a federal breakdown that returns us to the late 1950s in all of the worst ways.

We’re already seeing this unwinding in slow motion. Donald Trump and many on the American right (including the national Republican Party) have made clear their plans to subvert America’s democratic institutions. They made continuous efforts to undermine the will of the voters at the state level, most notably in Georgia, after the 2020 presidential election, and then they tried to overrule the results at the national level by setting a mob on Congress on January 6, 2021. If Trump returns to the Oval Office, he and his underlings will set up a system designed to set up a series of cascading democratic failures from Washington to every locality they can reach.

They intend to pack courts with judges who are loyal to Trump instead of to the Constitution. They want to destroy an independent federal civil service by making all major civil servants political appointees, which would allow the right to stuff every national agency with cronies at will. They want to neuter independent law-enforcement institutions such as the FBI, even if that means disbanding them. They will likely try to pare down the senior military ranks until the only remaining admirals and generals are men and women sworn not to the defense of the United States but to the defense of Donald Trump, even if that means employing military force against the American public.

Trump and his supporters are not even coy about some of these ideas. The Heritage Foundation—once a powerhouse think tank on the right that has since collapsed into unhinged extremism and admiration for foreign strongmen—has a “Project 2025” posted on its website, with sections that read like extended Facebook comments. I took a look so that you don’t have to, including at a policy-guide chapter on the military authored by former Acting Secretary of Defense Christopher Miller.

Heritage and Miller (a seat warmer brought in by Trump at the tail end of his administration) think it’s very important for the next president—I wonder who they could possibly have in mind—to “eliminate Marxist indoctrination and divisive critical race theory programs” and to reinstate personnel dismissed for disobeying orders to get vaccinated.

Also:

Codify language to instruct senior military officers (three and four stars) to make certain that they understand their primary duty to be ensuring the readiness of the armed forces, not pursuing a social engineering agenda.

Why not just write up a loyalty oath to Trump? Little wonder that Senator Tommy Tuberville of Alabama is holding up the promotion of some 300 senior officers; perhaps it’s occurred to him (or others) that sitting on those promotions until 2025 might open the door for Heritage’s unnamed next U.S. president to sweep out the Marxist gender theorists and replace them with “real Americans” who know that their duty is to a man rather than a moldering document in the National Archives.

The rest of Project 2025 is a lot of putative big-think from wannabe conservative intellectuals such as Ken Cuccinelli, Ben Carson, Stephen Moore, and Peter Navarro (who is currently on trial for contempt of Congress). Much of this stuff is nonsense, of course, but it’ll be nonsense right up until the point it isn’t: These are all names that would reappear in a second Trump administration, and this time, they’d move a lot faster in breaking down the federal guardrails around democracy.

This layered state, federal, and local repression is what I worried about back in early 2022:

This is where we really will have “free” and “unfree” Americas, side by side. To drive from Massachusetts to Alabama—especially for women and people of color—will not be crossing the Mason-Dixon line so much as it will be like falling through the Time Tunnel and emerging in a pre-1964 America where civil rights and equal treatment before the government are a matter of the state’s forbearance. If an American citizen’s constitutional rights are violated, there will be no Justice Department that will intervene, no Supreme Court that will overrule. (And arresting seditionists? Good luck with that. I expect that if Trump is reelected, he will pardon everyone involved with January 6.)

Trump, of course, has since made the promise to drop pardons like gentle rain from the sky. America’s democratic immune system, however, is for now still functioning. The courts have done their duty even when elected officials have refused to do theirs. (Imagine how much healthier American democracy would be right now if the Senate had convicted Trump in his second impeachment. Alas.) Trump is now under indictment for 91 alleged crimes, and Jack Smith seems undaunted in his pursuit of justice.

Likewise, the major ringleaders of January 6—all but one, I should say—have been convicted of seditious conspiracy, among other crimes, and sentenced to lengthy prison terms. Some of these supposed tough guys ended up blubbering and pleading for mercy in a federal courtroom, but to no avail. The would-be Oath Keepers centurion Stewart Rhodes and a leader of the Proud Boys, Ethan Nordean, each got 18 years, a record broken yesterday when a Trump-appointed federal judge sent the ex–Proud Boys chair Enrique Tarrio inside for 22 years, meaning he will be sitting out the next five presidential elections.

This is the good news, but none of it will matter if Trump returns to the White House.

I shouldn’t end on such a dire note. Trump is the likely nominee, and although I still feel a chill about the threat of authoritarianism, I also can’t shake the feeling that most Americans in most states want no part of this ongoing madness. I still have faith that most people, when faced with the choice, will continue to support the constitutional freedoms of the United States—but only if they understand how endangered those freedoms are.

Today’s News

A Russian missile strike killed at least 17 people and injured dozens of others in Kostyantynivka, according to Ukrainian officials. A federal judge found Donald Trump liable for making defamatory statements against the writer E. Jean Carroll in 2019, carrying over a federal jury’s verdict in a related defamation case earlier this year. Trump has appealed the jury’s verdict. Delta Air Lines announced that it is bringing Tom Brady on board as a strategic adviser.

Evening Read

Photograph by Erik Paul Howard for The Atlantic

Hip-Hop’s Fiercest Critic

By Spencer Kornhaber

One sunny day in 1995, the Notorious B.I.G. sat in the passenger seat of a black Mercedes-Benz, smoking joints and talking shit. Of course, Biggie did these things on many days during his short lifetime, but on this particular day, a neighborhood friend named dream hampton was in the back seat with a video camera. Wearing Versace sunglasses and a checked purple shirt, the 23-year-old rapper—whose breakout album, Ready to Die, had come out the year before—held a chunky cellphone to his ear. He was making plans and talking about girls, riffing in his lisped woof of a voice. He laughed and brought a square of rolling paper, full of pot leaves, to his lips.

From behind the camera, hampton asked whether he intended to consume their entire bag of weed. Annoyed at the interruption, Biggie mocked her question. Hampton’s voice turned sharp. “Why are you going at me today?” she asked. “What’s the problem? Do we need to do something before we go on the road? Take this outside?” The video cut to static.

Read the full article.

A K-Drama Without a Drop of Romance

found Sep '23 The Atlantic

www.theatlantic.com › newsletters › archive › 2023 › 09 › k-drama-dp-entertainment-recommendations › 675218

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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 Shan Wang, The Atlantic’s programming director. Shan has written about why it’s a mistake to write off Korean-language TV series as sappy melodrama, and offered 19 ways to think about the heat. She’s currently watching a distressing yet compelling K-drama, drowning in snacks from an Asian grocery-delivery service she recently discovered, and begging everyone in her life to stop quoting Zoolander at her.

First, here are three Sunday reads from The Atlantic:

Retailers bet wrong on America’s feelings about stores. Take a wife … please! What adults forget about friendship

The Culture Survey: Shan Wang

The upcoming entertainment event I’m most looking forward to: It’s a doubleheader for me: Olivia Rodrigo’s Guts and V of BTS’s Layover (both out September 8). Perfect voices, no notes.

The entertainment product my friends are talking about most right now: Still Barbie. I was personally unmoved, but I’ve learned a lot about how my friends feel about men, motherhood, and Michael Cera through their reactions to the movie—views they previously had trouble articulating in casual conversation. [Related: The surprising key to understanding the Barbie film]

The television show I’m most enjoying right now: Having watched a lot of 16-episode romance K-dramas lately, I pivoted and have been savoring D.P. (the title stands for “deserter pursuit”; a second season was released on Netflix this summer). In it, a young private, An Jun-ho, is recruited to a special squad that tracks down soldiers who have deserted. Each episode—deviating from K-drama tradition, D.P. has only six per season—is the story of a deserter, their sorrows and circumstances chipping away at Jun-ho’s rigidity about doing the “right” thing within a system that violates people’s humanity at every turn.

The show can be distressing to watch; its main notes are bullying, abuse, and social alienation. But well-timed humor and the relationships between characters keep it from descending into total darkness. At a time when more and more conversations are happening in the open about how troubled young men turn into violent ones, D.P. has its own unsparing view. [Related: The secret to a good K-drama]

My favorite blockbuster and favorite art movie: I am required by law to rewatch all three Lord of the Rings movies every few months so that I can brush up on some of the most important dialogue in cinema history, such as “What about second breakfast?” and “What’s this? Crumbs on his jacketses!” The effects remain impressive and the storyline satisfying. What more does one need?

Even though I don’t think I can stomach a second viewing, Park Chan-wook’s slow-burn romance slash murder mystery Decision to Leave is my favorite art movie I’ve seen recently. I do like feeling out the edges of my comfort zone, and Decision to Leave is halfway between sexy and disturbing. [Related: Decision to Leave is this century’s first great erotic thriller.]

Something I recently rewatched, reread, or otherwise revisited: The Elena Ferrante (and translator Ann Goldstein) fan club is large, and I’m an active member. Every so often, I revisit parts of My Brilliant Friend, the first in a four-book family epic centered on the coming-together and coming-apart of childhood friends Elena and Lila, who grow up in the poor outskirts of Naples. When I’m feeling uneasy—usually because there’s a family dynamic I haven’t properly excavated or a social norm I feel I’ve breached—the novel is my other therapist. These books are for anyone who’s ever left a place or a person, and for anyone who’s ever shamed themselves into trying to be a different way.

A quiet song that I love, and a loud song that I love: Quiet: Colde, “I’m Still Here.” Loud: Sleigh Bells, “A/B Machines.”

A cultural product I loved as a teenager and still love, and something I loved but now dislike: Throughout my life, I’ve unfortunately discarded various cultural products out of a desire to be “cool.” An exception: I watched Hayao Miyazaki’s 1988 animation, My Neighbor Totoro, for the first time when I was 12 and have loved it steadily ever since (it’s my Wi-Fi name). The movie is about bravery in all of its forms, and the friendly woodland spirits that aid the main characters are the cutest things ever created. Something I am ejecting from my life, however, is Zoolander. Please, no one quote it at me ever again.

My favorite way of wasting time on my phone: I’m trying to rein in my shopping to only pre-owned stuff (because, well, this, this, this, and this), but the constraint means I’ve become an absolute Facebook Marketplace and Buy Nothing group monster. Free plastic bucket?! Gimme.

An online creator that I’m a fan of: My name is Cecilia, and I live on Svalbard, an island close to the North Pole. I discovered Cecilia Blomdahl during lockdown, when she showed how cozy life in a tiny cabin just outside Longyearbyen could be despite its months of polar night. Her videos are cheerful, controversy-free (knock on wood) curiosities about the small excitements of life, such as a nice grocery-store vegetable or tidying up a modest home.

Something delightful introduced to me by a kid in my life: The first time I encountered Bluey, an Australian animated children’s series about an anthropomorphic cattle-dog family, I was with a 3-year-old watching an episode called “Copycat.” Like most episodes in the series, this one is about encountering a difficult subject (death) and then processing big feelings through play. As my colleague David Sims has written, the show “trusts that its young audience will be able to understand stories that are about the foibles and insecurities of parents too.” People without children in their life can still appreciate the same about Bluey. And adults could stand to learn a few things from kids about the foundation of good relationships. [Related: In praise of Bluey, the most grown-up television show for children]

A good recommendation I recently received: A friend introduced me to an Asian and Hispanic grocery-delivery service called Weee! (three e’s), and after resisting online ordering for the past 10 years, I now drown myself weekly in Asian snacks. I’m so excited to be able to buy food from my childhood, such as canned fried dace in black-bean sauce and braised gluten in a box. My Proustian madeleines, except venture-backed and delivered within 48 hours of purchase.

The last thing that made me snort with laughter: The chair-pants episode of Jury Duty. I shan’t elaborate. [Related: Jury Duty is terrific TV. It shouldn’t get another season.]

A favorite story I’ve read in The Atlantic: We published James Baldwin’s short story “This Morning, This Evening, So Soon” in our September 1960 issue. It was later included in his 1965 collection, Going to Meet the Man. I stumbled upon it recently while doing some research in our archives. It’s wonderful down to the final sentence:

“I open the cage and we step inside. ‘Yes,’ I say, ‘all the way to the new world.’ I press the button and the cage, holding my son and me, goes up.”

The Week Ahead

My Big Fat Greek Wedding 3, the third installment of the romantic-comedy franchise written and directed by Nia Vardalos (in theaters Friday) Guts, Olivia Rodrigo’s sophomore album (out Friday) Holly, a new novel by Stephen King (out Tuesday)

Essay

Illustration by The Atlantic. Sources: Scott Dudelson / Getty / Youtube.

The Real Men South of Richmond

By Spencer Kornhaber

In an era of artificial wonders, authenticity—or at least the illusion of it—is only going to become a more coveted commodity. Perhaps that’s one reason country music has ruled the highest reaches of the Billboard Hot 100 for most of the summer. And no one is selling authenticity like Oliver Anthony, a former factory worker from Virginia who was totally unknown until his song “Rich Men North of Richmond” hit No. 1 two weeks ago. His rise is surprising, but it also fits with a long pattern of audiences cherishing—and power brokers exploiting—figures who seem like the real deal.

Read the full article.

More in Culture

The Atlantic presents: shorter stories The joyful, punk world of plant-based eating The “transcendent tastelessness” of MySpace The open wounds of Reservation Dogs Meryl Streep is giving yet another killer performance. Six books that will make you feel less alone

Catch Up on The Atlantic

The end will come for the cult of MAGA. This hurricane season is unprecedented. The other work remote workers get done

Photo Album

Jonay Ravelo and his horse Nivaria observe the rising full moon from a mountain in Mogán, in Gran Canaria, Spain, on August 31, 2023.

Scenes from the World Athletics Championship in Budapest, a sunflower maze in England, and more in our editor’s selection of the week’s best photos

Isabel Fattal contributed to this newsletter.

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