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One of the most humbling parts of being alive is realizing you’ve long been doing a simple thing wrong—or, at least, not in the way experts say you should be doing it. Did you know that the best time to apply deodorant is right before bed? Or that you should get rid of your black plastic spatulas? Or that you probably shower too much?

Being hit with these truths can feel unmooring. What if some of your reflexive daily rituals need to be reconsidered? But there’s power in the knowledge too. Today’s newsletter explores our ever-evolving understanding of how humans live, and what’s best for us.

On Our Habits

Your Armpits Are Trying to Tell You Something

By Yasmin Tayag

The best time to apply antiperspirant is right before bed. Seriously.

Read the article.

Throw Out Your Black Plastic Spatula

By Zoë Schlanger

It’s probably leaching chemicals into your cooking oil.

Read the article.

You’re Showering Too Much

By James Hamblin

Wash your hands, but lay off the other parts. (From 2020)

Read the article.

Still Curious?

Stop looking at your therapist: The couch is there for a reason, Shayla Love argues. Nutrition science’s most preposterous result: Studies show a mysterious health benefit to ice cream. Scientists don’t want to talk about it, David Merritt Johns wrote last year.

Other Diversions

Three ways to become a deeper thinker A ridiculous, perfect way to make friends One food to change the world

P.S.

Courtesy of Monica Shah

Sign up for our new newsletter Being Human for more stories on the mysteries of the body and the mind.

I recently asked readers to share a photo of something that sparks their sense of awe in the world. “In my garden, I was mesmerized by this dahlia's fractal symmetry, a kaleidoscope in nature,” Monica Shah from Edison, New Jersey, writes.

— Isabel

The Atlantic is announcing a new staff writer: Jonathan Chait, who will bring his prolific writing and analysis of national politics and policy to the magazine at a pivotal moment. Chait has been a political columnist at New York magazine since 2011. He begins at The Atlantic this week.

“Jon Chait is a journalist of immense gifts who writes in the tradition of Michael Kinsley. He is fearless, indefatigable, funny, acutely analytical, and smartly (which is to say, not axiomatically) contrarian. Our time requires truth tellers like Jon, and The Atlantic’s readers will benefit greatly from his writing,” said editor in chief Jeffrey Goldberg.

Chait has been one of the most influential political columnists of the past three decades, first at The New Republic, where he was a staff writer for 15 years, and most recently with his daily columns for New York magazine. He is the author of Audacity: How Barack Obama Defied His Critics and Created a Legacy That Will Prevail and The Big Con: Crackpot Economics and the Fleecing of America.

Last month, The Atlantic announced that it was adding more print issues in 2025 and expanding the newsroom––hiring a number of writers and editors to grow coverage of defense, national security, and technology, in addition to health, science, and other areas. For the first time in more than two decades, The Atlantic will once again publish monthly, beginning with the January 2025 issue, which will be released in December.

Other editorial hires who have joined The Atlantic recently include the staff writers Kristen V. Brown, Nicholas Florko, Shane Harris, and Shayla Love; Jen Balderama, Serena Dai, and Allegra Frank, all senior editors for Culture; and contributing writers Danielle Allen and Robert Kagan, both formerly of The Washington Post. Katie Gunn is a new director of creative operations overseeing art and design.

Press Contact: Anna Bross, The Atlantic | press@theatlantic.com

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.

Welcome back to The Daily’s Sunday culture edition.

The thought of Election Day may bring a twinge of anxiety for some people. “A big event should prompt big feelings,” our staff writer Shayla Love recently observed. But waiting for the results also leaves plenty of downtime for many Americans, whose nerves are unlikely to abate until after the race is called. Today, The Atlantic’s writers and editors answer the question: What should you watch if you’re feeling overwhelmed by election anxiety?

What to Watch

Marcel the Shell With Shoes On (streaming on Max)

When thinking of movies that ease my anxiety, election-related or not, this one is a no-brainer. Allow me to introduce you to Marcel, the shell with shoes on, who will likely give you some hope for the future.

In this mockumentary for all ages, Marcel (co-created and voiced by Jenny Slate) faces tough situations with incredible grace—something we could all aim to do right now. He takes care of his grandmother while also looking for the rest of his family and community, who all disappeared one night. But this heartbreaking situation is no match for Marcel’s relentless positivity, corny sense of humor, and cheesy-but-adorable observations (for example, he says that a documentary is “like a movie, but nobody has any lines and nobody even knows what it is while they’re making it”). And when things don’t go his way or he wants to back down, his grandmother steps in to show us where Marcel got his cheerfulness from—and to tell him to be more like Lesley Stahl from 60 Minutes.

— Mariana Labbate, assistant audience editor

The Verdict (available to rent on YouTube), Darkest Hour (streaming on Netflix)

I should probably recommend something uplifting and funny and distracting, but whenever I feel down or stressed, I return to two rather heavy movies that inspire me. Both of them are about the determination of one person to do the right thing, even when all seems lost.

Start with The Verdict, a 1982 courtroom drama starring Paul Newman as Frank Galvin, a down-and-out lawyer trying to win a medical-malpractice case against a famous Boston hospital. Once a rising legal star, Frank is now just a day-drinking ambulance chaser. But he rediscovers himself—and his sense of justice—as he fights the hospital and its evil white-shoe law firm.

After that, watch Darkest Hour, in which Winston Churchill—magnificently portrayed by Gary Oldman—fights to save Western civilization during the terrifying days around the time of the fall of France in 1940. The United Kingdom stands alone as British politicians around Churchill urge him to make a deal with Hitler. Instead, the prime minister rallies the nation to stand and fight.

No matter what happens on Election Day, both movies will remind you that every one of us can make a difference each day if we stay true to our moral compass.

— Tom Nichols, staff writer

Outrageous Fortune (available to rent on YouTube)

Bette Midler and Shelley Long star in this campy 1987 flick, which starts out as a satire of the New York theater scene before escalating into a buddy comedy slash action thriller (with a healthy dose of girl-power revenge).

Some scenes haven’t aged all that well. But the dynamic between the two stars as they careen into truly absurd situations is winning enough to carry the film. To keep track of who is who—and who mustn’t be trusted—you will need to put down your phone and focus (doubly true because some elements of the plot are slightly underbaked). The blend of slapstick antics and pulpy suspense should help take your mind off the race, as will the costume jewelry, shots of 1980s New York, Shakespeare references, and explosions. Through the plot’s various twists and turns, one takeaway is clear: The power of dance should never be underestimated. This movie may not exactly restore anyone’s faith in humanity, but it will definitely help pass the time as you wait for results to roll in.

— Lora Kelley, associate editor

The Hunt for Red October (streaming on Max)

There are three movies I’ll watch at the drop of a hat: Arrival, a genre-bender in which Amy Adams plays a linguist who learns to speak backwards and forward in time; The Devil Wears Prada, as long as we skip through the scenes with Andy’s annoying friends; and the Cold War underwater thriller The Hunt for Red October. I consider all three films a balm in anxious times, but this week, I’m setting sail with Sean Connery and Alec Baldwin.

Maybe because I write about war, I don’t consider a plotline centered on the threat of nuclear Armageddon an unusually nerve-racking experience. This movie transports me. The script is as tight as the hull of a Typhoon-class submarine. James Earl Jones is near perfect as an admiral turned CIA honcho. Baldwin was super hot then. And a bonus: The supporting performances by Scott Glenn, Courtney B. Vance, Sam Neill, and Tim Curry (Tim Curry!) are some of the most memorable of their careers. (Fight me.) If you haven’t seen this movie, treat yourself—if only for the opening minutes, so you can hear Connery, in Edinburgh-tinged Russian, proclaim morning in Murmansk to be “Cold … and hard.”

— Shane Harris, staff writer

How I Met Your Mother (streaming on Netflix and Hulu)

The right sitcom can cure just about anything. If you, like me, somehow missed out on watching How I Met Your Mother when it first aired, it’s the perfect show to transport you back to a not-so-distant past when TV still had laugh tracks and politics was … not this. For the uninitiated, the series is exactly what it sounds like, featuring a dorky romantic named Ted as he tells his kids the seemingly interminable story of, well, how he met their mother.

The roughly 20-minute episodes are both goofy and endearing. Although the plot, which follows Ted and his four best friends, centers on the characters’ romantic entanglements, the story is fundamentally about friendship. As Kevin Craft wrote in The Atlantic in the run-up to the series finale, the show’s unstated mantra is “We’re all in this together.” Over the next few days, this is perhaps the most important thing we can remember.

— Lila Shroff, assistant editor

Here are three Sunday reads from The Atlantic:

Throw out your black plastic spatula. A future without Hezbollah What Orwell didn’t anticipate

The Week Ahead

Heretic, a horror-thriller film starring Hugh Grant, about a man who traps two young missionaries in a deadly game inside his house (in theaters Friday) Season 4 of Outer Banks, a series about a group of teenagers hunting for treasure (part two premieres Thursday on Netflix) You Can’t Please All, a memoir by Tariq Ali about how his years of political activism shaped his life (out Tuesday)

Essay

Illustration by Jan Buchczik

Why You Might Need an Adventure

By Arthur C. Brooks

Almost everyone knows the first line of Herman Melville’s 1851 masterpiece Moby-Dick: “Call me Ishmael.” Fewer people may remember what comes next—which might just be some of the best advice ever given to chase away a bit of depression:

“Whenever I find myself growing grim about the mouth; whenever it is a damp, drizzly November in my soul; whenever I find myself involuntarily pausing before coffin warehouses, and bringing up the rear of every funeral I meet … then, I account it high time to get to sea as soon as I can.”

Read the full article.

More in Culture

Making new friends is tough. The Golden Bachelorette understands why. The celebrities are saying the loud part quietly. MomTok is the apotheosis of 21st-century womanhood. Eight nonfiction books that will frighten you “Dear James”: My colleague repeats herself constantly. Conclave is a crowd-pleaser about the papacy.

Catch Up on The Atlantic

A brief history of Trump’s violent remarks Trump suggests training guns on Liz Cheney’s face. The Democratic theory of winning with less

Photo Album

A competitor paddles in a giant hollowed-out pumpkin at the yearly pumpkin regatta in Belgium. (Bart Biesemans / Reuters)

Check out these photos of people around the world dressing up in Halloween costumes and celebrating the holiday with contests, parades, and more.

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