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Welcome back to The Daily’s Sunday culture edition, in which one Atlantic writer or editor reveals what’s keeping them entertained. Today’s special guest is Valerie Trapp, an assistant editor who has written about the adult stuffed-animal revival, a fun way to pick up a new language, and the long tradition of villain comedy.

Valerie is a “self-appointed emissary” for Crazy, Stupid, Love, which she calls “the perfect rom-com.” She loves listening to Bad Bunny’s “unfailing bangers,” will watch anything Issa Rae does, and was left in a brief stupor after reading The Order of Time by the physicist Carlo Rovelli.

First, here are three Sunday reads from The Atlantic:

Gavin Newsom can’t help himself. Welcome to pricing hell. “Nostalgia for a dating experience they’ve never had”

The Culture Survey: Valerie Trapp

The upcoming event I’m most looking forward to: I’m still riding a wave of postconcert bliss from the Bad Bunny tour, which left me wanting little. But if I could, I’d love to see the Shakira, Maggie Rogers, and Jazmine Sullivan tours, and Steve Carell and William Jackson Harper in the Uncle Vanya production on Broadway.

Something I recently revisited: I’ve been rereading the civil-rights lawyer Valarie Kaur’s memoir See No Stranger: A Memoir and Manifesto of Revolutionary Love. It’s an absolutely gorgeous and lucid guide on how to stretch our heart a little past what we think is possible. Kaur defines the act of wonder as looking at the world—trees, stars, people you do and don’t like—and thinking, “You are a part of me I do not yet know.” I return to such phrases when I need a way forward.

Best novel I’ve recently read, and the best work of nonfiction: The novel The Vulnerables, by Sigrid Nunez, entranced me with a voice I’d follow down any train of thought. And the physicist Carlo Rovelli’s The Order of Time left me walking around in a mild stupor for about 20 minutes, seeing buildings as events instead of as objects. Did I quickly forget all the physics Rovelli tried to teach me? I’d barely grasped it in the first place. But his poetic musings on how humans experience time and mortality have stayed with me. [Related: A new way to think about thinking]

Authors I will read anything by: Jia Tolentino, Maggie Nelson, Andrew Sean Greer, Joy Harjo, Michael Pollan.

My favorite blockbuster and favorite art movie: Maybe not a blockbuster, but I’ll mention it anyway, because I am its self-appointed emissary: Crazy, Stupid, Love is the perfect rom-com. It’s a Shakespearean comedy of errors with jokes about the Gap and many perfect uses of the word cuckold. Could we ask for more? As for an art film, I love Pedro Almodóvar’s Parallel Mothers—Penélope Cruz is brilliant in it (and in pretty much everything she does).

An actor I would watch in anything: In college, I was fascinated by Margot Robbie’s “animal work” method-acting process, which involves studying and embodying different animals to shape the physicality of her roles. She prepared for I, Tonya by observing bulldogs and wild horses; for Babylon, she studied octopi and honey badgers! I had a philosophy professor in college who once made us do a similar exercise as homework. I ended up embodying a crow, and by this I mean I made a gigantic fool of myself by squawking in front of passersby. So props to Margot—I’m happy to sit that exercise out and watch her do it instead.

A quiet song that I love, and a loud song that I love: A quiet song: “Rodeo Clown,” by Dijon. I’ll play the entirety of Dijon’s discography when I feel even a bit moody, and this song is the pinnacle of moodiness. It’s perfect and a little deranged, all soul and catharsis. “You’re missin’ out on some good, good lovin’!” Dijon wails, screeching and theatrical, shortly before an interlude of quiet sobs.

A loud song: “Safaera,” by Bad Bunny, Jowell & Randy, and Ñengo Flow. Bad Bunny makes unfailing bangers that switch up and crescendo, taking you on a complete and adequately tiring perreo journey. “Todo Tiene Su Hora,” by Juan Luis Guerra, also can get me both dancing and crying happy tears of wonder at the magic of the world. [Related: Bad Bunny overthrows the Grammys.]

A musical artist who means a lot to me: Beyoncé. She’s ecstatic and lavish in her artistry. I think sometimes about a moment in her documentary Life Is but a Dream in which she emphatically tells a crowd, “I’m gonna give you everything I have. I promise!” I find that kind of exuberant generosity very moving.

A favorite story I’ve read in The Atlantic: Recently, Sarah Zhang’s article about the life-changing effects of a cystic-fibrosis breakthrough and Ross Andersen’s story about our hypothetical contact with whale civilizations left me in absolute awe.

The last entertainment thing that made me cry: I might not be the best gauge for this question, because I cry easily and for most movies—including once during a viewing of Justin Bieber’s 2013 concert film. But recently: the song “2012,” by Saba. It feels like time travel and sounds like nostalgia. It was the sweeping post-chorus, which speaks to simpler days, that got me: “I had everything I needed, everything / ’Cause I had everyone I needed.”

An online creator that I’m a fan of: I’m a devoted reader of Heather Havrilesky’s Ask Polly Substack, which is consistently hilarious, comforting, and sharp.

A good recommendation I recently received: Young Miko’s new album, Att.—it’s a 46-minute-long party. I saved pretty much every track and especially loved “ID” and “Fuck TMZ.”

The last thing that made me snort with laughter: I started rewatching Insecure this year while doing my taxes. Dare I say, I almost had a nice time on TurboTax. The show’s pilot remains brilliant. The “Broken Pussy” rap remains hilarious. I will watch anything Issa Rae does. [Related: How Issa Rae built the world of Insecure]

A poem, or line of poetry, that I return to: I mutter lines from “The Story Wheel,” by Joy Harjo, like affirmations. Whenever I feel myself slipping into self-deprecation or pride, I recall: “None of us is above the other / In this story of forever. / Though we follow that red road home, / one behind another.”

The Week Ahead

Challengers, a film directed by Luca Guadagnino about a former tennis star turned coach, played by Zendaya, who is enmeshed in a love triangle with two pro players (in theaters Friday) The Jinx: Part Two, the second installment of the infamous true-crime docuseries, in which the real-estate heir Robert Durst seemingly confessed to murder (premieres today on HBO and Max) Funny Story, a book by Emily Henry about a woman whose life is upended when her fiancé leaves her for his childhood best friend (out Tuesday)

Essay

Getty

The Most Hated Sound on Television

By Jacob Stern

Viewers scorned the laugh track—prerecorded and live chortles alike—first for its deceptiveness and then for its condescension. They came to see it as artificial, cheesy, even insulting: You think we need you to tell us when to laugh? Larry Gelbart said he “always thought it cheapened” M*A*S*H. Larry David reportedly didn’t want it on Seinfeld but lost out to studio execs who did. The actor David Niven once called it “the single greatest affront to public intelligence I know of.” In 1999, Time judged the laugh track to be “one of the hundred worst ideas of the twentieth century.” And yet, it persisted. Until the early 2000s, nearly every TV comedy relied on one. Friends, Two and a Half Men, Everybody Loves Raymond, Drake & Josh—they all had laugh tracks.

Now the laugh track is as close to death as it’s ever been.

Read the full article.

More in Culture

Taylor Swift is having quality-control issues. Eight cookbooks worth reading cover to cover The uncomfortable truth about child abuse in Hollywood The illogical relationship Americans have with animals Something weird is happening with Caesar salads. Short story: “The Vale of Cashmere” Is this the end for Bluey? Prestige TV’s new wave of difficult men Ken will never die.

Catch Up on The Atlantic

The Trump trial’s extraordinary opening Finding justice in Palestine Why did U.S. planes defend Israel but not Ukraine?

Photo Album

Theo Dagnaud, a member of a fire crew, scans the horizon during Canada’s recent summer of gigantic forest fires. (Charles-Frederick Ouellet)

Check out the winning entries of this year’s World Press Photo Contest, including images of the aftermath of an earthquake in Turkey, Canada’s scorching wildfire summer, and war in Gaza.

Explore all of our newsletters.

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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.

In our digitally chaotic world, relying on the election-reporting strategies of the past is like bringing the rules of chess to the Thunderdome.

First, here are three new stories from The Atlantic:

The October 7 rape denialists Finding justice in Palestine Biden’s safe, polite campaign stop in Scranton

New Rules

This past weekend, I was on a panel at the annual conference of the International Symposium on Online Journalism, in beautiful downtown Austin. Several journalists discussed the question: Are we going to get it right this time? Have the media learned their lessons, and are journalists ready for the vertiginous slog of the 2024 campaign?

My answer: only if we realize how profoundly the rules of the game have changed.

Lest we need reminding, this year’s election features a candidate who incited an insurrection, called for terminating sections of the Constitution, was found liable for what a federal judge says was “rape” as it is commonly understood, faces 88 felony charges, and—I’m tempted to add “etcetera” here, but that’s the problem, isn’t it? The volume and enormity of it all is impossible to take in.

The man is neither a riddle nor an enigma. He lays it all out there: his fawning over the world’s authoritarians, his threats to abandon our allies, his contempt for the rule of law, his intention to use the federal government as an instrument of retribution. Journalists must be careful not to give in to what Brian Klaas has called the “Banality of Crazy.” As I’ve written in the past, there have been so many outrages and so many assaults on decency that it’s easy to become numbed by the cascade of awfulness.

The former White House communications director Dan Pfeiffer points out a recent example in his newsletter: On a radio show earlier this month, Donald Trump bizarrely suggested that Joe Biden was high on cocaine when he delivered his energetic State of the Union address. It was a startling moment, yet several major national media outlets did not cover the story.

And when Trump called for the execution of General Mark Milley, it didn’t have nearly the explosive effect it should have. “I had expected every website and all the cable news shows to lead with a story about Trump demanding the execution of the highest military officer in the country,” this magazine’s editor in chief, Jeffrey Goldberg, told The Washington Post. “If Barack Obama or George W. Bush had done so, I’m sure [the news media] would have been all over it.” (Trump’s threats against Milley came after The Atlantic published a profile of Milley by Goldberg.)

In our digitally chaotic world, relying on the reporting strategies of the past is like bringing the rules of chess to the Thunderdome. There has, of course, been some progress. The major cable networks no longer carry Trump’s rallies live without context, but they still broadcast town-hall meetings and interviews with the former president, which boost ratings. NBC’s abortive decision to hire Ronna McDaniel, a former chair of the Republican National Committee, as a contributor, despite her role in spreading lies about the 2020 election, highlighted the disconnect between this moment and much of the national media.

And then there is the internet. It is certainly possible that richer, more insightful media will emerge from the digital revolution, but we’re obviously not there now. Back in 2016, we worried that social media had become a vector for disinformation and bigotry, but since then, we’ve seen Elon Musk’s extraordinary enshittification of X. In 2016, we worried (too late) about foreign interference and bots. In 2024, we are going to have to contend with deepfakes created by AI.

This year will see some of the best journalism of our lifetime. (You’ll find much of it here in The Atlantic.) But because both the media and their audiences are badly fractured, much of that reporting is siloed off from the voters who need it most. Because millions of Americans are locked in information bubbles, half of the country either won’t see important journalism about the dangers of a second Trump term or won’t believe it.

As Paul Farhi notes in The Atlantic, MAGA-friendly websites have experienced massive drops in traffic, but social media continues to thrive on negativity and providing dopamine hits of anger and fear. And of distraction—last week, the most-liked videos on TikTok about the presidential race included a video of a man singing to Biden and Trump’s visit to a Chick-fil-A.

To put it mildly, the arc of social media does not bend toward Edward R. Murrow–style journalism.

So what’s to be done? I don’t have any easy answers, because I don’t think they exist. Getting it right this time does not mean that journalists need to pull their punches in covering Biden or become slavish defenders of his administration’s policies. In fact, that would only make matters worse. But perhaps we could start with some modest proposals.

First, we should redefine newsworthy. Klaas argues that journalists need to emphasize the magnitude rather than simply the novelty of political events. Trump’s ongoing attacks on democracy may not be new, but they define the stakes of 2024. So although live coverage of Trump rallies without any accompanying analysis remains a spectacularly bad idea, it’s important to neither ignore nor mute the dark message that Trump delivers at every event. As a recent headline in The Guardian put it, “Trump’s Bizarre, Vindictive Incoherence Has to Be Heard in Full to Be Believed.”

Why not relentlessly emphasize the truth, and publish more fact-checked transcripts that highlight his wilder and more unhinged rants? (Emphasizing magnitude is, of course, a tremendous challenge for journalists when the amplification mechanisms of the modern web—that is, social-media algorithms—are set by companies that have proved to be hostile to the distribution of information from reputable news outlets.)

The media challenge will be to emphasize the abnormality of Donald Trump without succumbing to a reactionary ideological tribalism, which would simply drive audiences further into their silos. Put another way: Media outlets will need all the credibility they can muster when they try to sound the alarm that none of this is normal. And it is far more important to get it right than to get it fast, because every lapse will be weaponized.

The commitment to “fairness” should not, however, mean creating false equivalencies or fake balance. (An exaggerated report about Biden’s memory lapses, for example, should not be a bigger story than Trump’s invitation to Vladimir Putin to invade European countries.)

In the age of Trump, it is also important that members of the media not be distracted by theatrics generally. (This includes Trump’s trial drama, the party conventions, and even—as David Frum points out in The Atlantic—the debates.) Relatedly, the stakes are simply too high to wallow in vibes, memes, or an obsessive focus on within-the-margin-of-error polls. Democracy can indeed be crushed by authoritarianism. But it can also be suffocated by the sort of trivia that often dominates social media.

And, finally, the Prime Directive of 2024: Never, ever become numbed by the endless drumbeat of outrages.

Related:

Political analysis needs more witchcraft. Right-wing media are in trouble.

Today’s News

The Senate dismissed the articles of impeachment against Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas and ruled that they were unconstitutional, ending his trial before it got under way. House Speaker Mike Johnson will proceed with a plan, backed by President Joe Biden, to vote on separate bills to provide aid to Ukraine, Israel, and U.S. allies in the Indo-Pacific. The proposed move has raised criticism from some conservative representatives. Four Columbia University officials, including the president, Nemat Shafik, testified in a congressional committee hearing about student safety, free speech, and anti-Semitism on campus.

Dispatches

The Trump Trials: The first days of the criminal case against Donald Trump have been mundane, even boring—and that’s remarkable, George T. Conway III writes. The Weekly Planet: The cocoa shortage could make chocolate more expensive forever, Yasmin Tayag writes.

Explore all of our newsletters here.

Evening Read

Illustration by The Atlantic. Source: Getty.

Something Weird Is Happening With Caesar Salads

By Ellen Cushing

On a November evening in Brooklyn, in 2023, I was in trouble (hungry). I ordered a kale Caesar at a place I like. Instead, I got: a tangle of kale, pickled red onion, and “sweet and spicy almonds,” dressed in a thinnish, vaguely savory liquid and topped with a glob of crème fraîche roughly the size and vibe of a golf ball. It was a pretty weird food.

We are living through an age of unchecked Caesar-salad fraud. Putative Caesars are dressed with yogurt or miso or tequila or lemongrass; they are served with zucchini, orange zest, pig ear, kimchi, poached duck egg, roasted fennel, fried chickpeas, buffalo-cauliflower fritters, tōgarashi-dusted rice crackers. They are missing anchovies, or croutons, or even lettuce … Molly Baz is a chef, a cookbook author, and a bit of a Caesar obsessive—she owns a pair of sneakers with “CAE” on one tongue and “SAL” on the other—and she put it succinctly when she told me, “There’s been a lot of liberties taken, for better or for worse.”

Read the full article.

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The Jews aren’t taking away TikTok. Women in menopause are getting short shrift. The self-help queen of TikTok goes mainstream.

Culture Break

Hulton Archive / Getty

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Read. “The Vale of Cashmere,” a short story by Benjamin Nugent:

“What I liked about your father was that he helped me find my contact lens.”

Play our daily crossword.

Stephanie Bai contributed to this newsletter.

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On a July weekend in Tijuana, in 1924, Caesar Cardini was in trouble. Prohibition was driving celebrities, rich people, and alcoholics across the border from San Diego, and Cardini’s highly popular Italian restaurant was swamped. Low on ingredients, or so the legend goes, he tossed together what he had on hand: romaine lettuce, Parmesan cheese, and croutons, dressed in a slurry of egg, oil, garlic, salt, Worcestershire sauce, and citrus juice. It was a perfect food.

On a November evening in Brooklyn, in 2023, I was in trouble (hungry). I ordered a kale Caesar at a place I like. Instead, I got: a tangle of kale, pickled red onion, and “sweet and spicy almonds,” dressed in a thinnish, vaguely savory liquid and topped with a glob of crème fraîche roughly the size and vibe of a golf ball. It was a pretty weird food.

We are living through an age of unchecked Caesar-salad fraud. Putative Caesars are dressed with yogurt or miso or tequila or lemongrass; they are served with zucchini, orange zest, pig ear, kimchi, poached duck egg, roasted fennel, fried chickpeas, buffalo-cauliflower fritters, tōgarashi-dusted rice crackers. They are missing anchovies, or croutons, or even lettuce. In October, the food magazine Delicious posted a list of “Caesar” recipes that included variations with bacon, maple syrup, and celery; asparagus, fava beans, smoked trout, and dill; and tandoori prawns, prosciutto, kale chips, and mung-bean sprouts. The so-called Caesar at Kitchen Mouse Cafe, in Los Angeles, includes “pickled carrot, radish & coriander seeds, garlicky croutons, crispy oyster mushrooms, lemon dressing.” Molly Baz is a chef, a cookbook author, and a bit of a Caesar obsessive—she owns a pair of sneakers with cae on one tongue and sal on the other—and she put it succinctly when she told me, “There’s been a lot of liberties taken, for better or for worse.”

It’s all a little peculiar, at least in the sense that words are supposed to mean something. Imagine ordering a “hamburger” that contained a bun and some lettuce, with chicken, marinara sauce, and basil Mad-Libbed between. Or cacio e pepe with, say, carrots and Christmas ham. To be clear, modifying the Caesar isn’t fundamentally a bad thing, as long as the flavors resemble those of the original. Baz likes her Caesar with anchovies (traditional! controversial! correct!) but said she’s happy to swap in fish sauce, capers, or “other salty, briny things.” Jacob Sessoms, a restaurant chef in Asheville, North Carolina, told me he doesn’t mind an alternative green but draws the line at, say, pomegranate seeds. Jason Kaplan, the CEO of a restaurant-consulting firm in New York, doesn’t mind a miso Caesar. “Because of the saltiness and the complexity, because it’s a fermented soybean paste, you know?” he told me. “That doesn’t piss me off as much as somebody saying that ‘this is a Caesar salad,’ when clearly there’s nothing to say it’s even closely related.”

The Caesar’s mission creep toward absurdity began long before the tequila and the fava beans. In fact, it has been going on for decades—first slowly, then quickly, swept along by and reflective of many of the biggest shifts in American dining. Michael Whiteman is a consultant whose firm helped open restaurants such as Windows on the World and the Rainbow Room, in New York. He remembers first seeing the Caesar start to meaningfully change about 40 years ago, when “hot things on cold things” became trendy among innovative California restaurants, and his friend James Beard returned from a trip out West raving about a Caesar topped with fried chicken livers. This was also, notably, the era of the power lunch, when restaurant chefs needed dishes that were hearty but still lunchtime-light, and quick to prepare. The chicken Caesar started appearing on menus, Whiteman told me, followed by the steak Caesar, and “it went downhill from there.”

In the 1980s and ’90s, as advances in agriculture, shipping, and food culture increased Americans’ access to a variety of produce, chefs started swapping out the traditional romaine for whatever the leafy green of the moment was: little gem, arugula, frisée. At that point, the Caesar was still found mostly in Italian American and New American restaurants. But as “fusion” took hold and culinary nationalism abated, the Caesar became a staple of Mexican American and Asian American chain restaurants, zhuzhed up with tortilla strips or wontons for a mainstream dining public who wanted something different yet familiar.

More recently, stunt food has come for the Caesar. “We’re living in a period of extreme eating, meaning extreme in terms of outlandish,” Whiteman told me, in which “innovation for its own sake” seems to be motivating chefs and restaurants up and down the price spectrum. Whiteman calls the resulting dishes “mutants.”

[Read: How American cuisine became a melting pot]

To some degree, the reason for all of this experimentation is obvious: Caesar salads—even bastardized ones—rock, and people want to buy them. “Isn’t it perhaps kind of the case that the Caesar salad might be close to the perfect dish?” Sessoms said. “It hits all of your dopamine receptors that are palate related, with umami, fat, and tons of salt.”

The Caesar is a crowd-pleaser salad, a name-brand salad, a safe-bet salad. It’s also a format that allows for a sort of low-stakes novelty. That helps explain the rise of the fake Caesar too. Though demand for restaurants has generally bounced back since the start of the coronavirus pandemic, labor and ingredient costs are much higher than they were four years ago. Just like Caesar Cardini before them, chefs are looking for relatively cheap, relatively fast dishes, and creative ones are looking for classics they can riff on without alienating customers. “Would untrained American eaters be more likely to order a Caesar salad than any other salad? Yes,” Sessoms said. Sometimes, when he’s trying to find a use for specialty greens—celtuce, radicchio—he’ll douse them in Caesar dressing to get diners to order them.

At the same time, Kaplan told me, it’s hard to overestimate how important the widespread adoption of the online menu has been over the past decade or so. Recognizable favorites sell. When diners can see what’s available before they make a reservation or leave the house, the menu is as much an advertisement as a utilitarian document. Appending the name “Caesar” to a salad is a shortcut to broad appeal.

Last week, I called up Stewart Gary, the culinary director of Nitehawk Cinema, the Brooklyn dine-in movie theater where I ordered that almond-and-pickled-onion salad. He told me essentially the same thing: In his line of work, people have limited time with the menu, and Caesar is a useful signifier. “Look,” he said. “If we called it a kale salad with anchovy dressing, no one would order it.”

[Read: In 1950, Americans had aspic. Now we have dalgona coffee.]

Ancient philosophers were bedeviled by the question of whether the ship of Theseus retained its fundamental essence after each of its component parts was replaced one by one over the course of centuries. I’ve been thinking about salads for a few weeks now and feel pretty sure that a true Caesar requires, at minimum, garlic, acid, umami, cold leaves, hard cheese, and a crunchy, croutonlike product. Beyond that, you can get away with one or maybe two wacky additions before you start straining the limits of credibility. It’s about principle, not pedantry.

Besides, the more you learn about Caesar salads, the more you come to realize that pedantry is useless. The original Caesar was reportedly made with lime juice instead of lemon. It was prepared tableside and intended to be eaten by hand, like a piece of toast, “arranged on each plate so that you could pick up a leaf by its short end and chew it down bit by bit, then pick up another,” as Julia Child and Jacques Pépin explained in their version of the recipe. It was meant to be dressed in stages, first with oil, then with acid, then with a coddled egg (to coat the lettuce leaves, so the cheese would stick to them), not with the emulsified, mayonnaise-adjacent dressing common today. Crucially, it didn’t have whole anchovies.

As soon as the recipe began showing up in cookbooks, in the early 1940s, it started changing: Some recipes called for rubbing the bowl with garlic, or adding blue cheese or pear vinegar or mustard. In her headnotes for one of the earliest printed versions of the Caesar recipe, published in West Coast Cook Book, in 1952, Helen Evans Brown described the Caesar as “the most talked-of salad of a decade, perhaps of the century.” She then went on to note that “the salad is at its best when kept simple, but as it is invariably made at table, and sometimes by show-offs, it occasionally contains far too many ingredients.” The Caesar is forever, which means it’s forever being manipulated. For better and for worse.