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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.

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On a recent flight from Auckland to Sydney, an unruly man reportedly urinated into a cup while sitting at his seat, much to the horror of his fellow passengers. The man later stood up, apparently so he could toss his waste into the toilet, then tripped and spilled the cup’s contents onto a flight attendant. When the plane landed in Australia, the man was escorted off by police and fined.

This appalling incident is devoid of any decorum, which is to say that it seems ripped from a Curb Your Enthusiasm episode. Created by and starring the Seinfeld co-creator Larry David, the HBO show spent 24 years both probing humanity’s depravity (not unlike said plane-urination incident) and questioning the veneer of interpersonal niceties (such as politely praising the mediocre food at a dinner party). No grievance was small enough and no taboo was off the table for David’s character, who seized on the befuddling things that people say and do in social situations—and was just as often guilty of committing his own blunders.

After 12 seasons, Curb Your Enthusiasm took its final bow on Sunday, after its creator expressed wanting to finally “shed this ‘Larry David’ persona.” Calling back to the divisive Seinfeld finale, which David has long defended, Curb ended by putting his character on trial, after he violated Georgia state law by accidentally handing someone water while they were in line to vote. To make its case, the prosecution ushered in a long line of people David had wronged over the years, including the owner of a golf club in his comfortable west–Los Angeles enclave and Bruce Springsteen, who claimed that David once gave him COVID-19 by insisting that he take his glass at a dinner.

Even after the jury found David guilty and the judge gave him the maximum sentence, the series offered no tidy takeaways. Instead, it signed off in the Curb-iest way possible: not with a bang, but with a shrug. Due to a technicality, David’s character didn’t actually end up going to prison like the Seinfeld ensemble did in that controversial finale. In doing so, the finale left viewers with a question, the same one that’s animated the series since its inception: How does one be a decent person in the world when the goalposts for decency are always shifting?

[Read: We’re all Larry Davids now]

If the previous season of Curb addressed the pandemic’s erosion of social norms, this one suggested that people hardly emerged from lockdown kinder or more understanding. If anything, the opposite seems to be true. These days chaos reigns, from people throwing iPhones at pop stars onstage to guests treating restaurants and bars like their own personal kitchens. According to data from the Federal Aviation Administration, 2024 has already seen 490 reports of unruly passengers on airplanes—almost as many as there were in all of 2017. And so it’s fitting that Curb’s series finale includes two separate debates on a plane: one in which David and his friends bicker about whether it’s okay to “squeal” on someone whose phone isn’t in airplane mode, and another where they consider whether opening the window shade requires individual or communal consent.

At a time when many old norms governing public behavior are being rewritten, there’s something appealing about a brutally honest person who’s willing to call out poor conduct among strangers and friends. But, of course, David’s character on Curb is frequently, cringingly wrong in the way he goes about this. He’s incapable of letting small things go and doubles down in a way that makes you want to watch the show through your fingers. He himself is guilty of some egregiously entitled behavior, too—in one scene this season, David brings his own organic eggs to the golf clubhouse, and hands them to a server so the kitchen can make him a special omelet.

Curb proved over and over again that David never truly solved grievances when he went out on a limb to call attention to them, especially with strangers. If anything, by interjecting with his dreaded “let me ask you something,” he typically incited another, worse problem, or caused long-simmering resentments to erupt. Therein lies much of Curb’s humor: Yes, we all probably need to be better about dealing with the gradual buildup of small annoyances in our lives before they ossify. But also, who does this guy think he is, bringing all of this to the surface?

In Seinfeld, David often preached the maxim of “no hugging, no learning” regarding his characters. In a similar vein, Curb refused to be read as a fable or a parable, finding no elegant resolutions for life’s messy moral questions. In a scene from the finale, David crouches down to a small child’s eye level and says, “I am 76 years old, and I have never learned a lesson in my entire life!” By ending on this note, Curb seems to concede that there’s no one right way to be a decent human. So go ahead and call out indignities if you want, as David often did. Or don’t. As long as you’re dealing with other people, you’re going to be slightly miserable either way.