In case you’re settling into winter and lamenting not having read everything The Atlantic has published this year, you’re in luck. I’ve created a list of stories you may have missed that are very much worth your time. The assortment ranges widely: eating an organ feast in Mark Twain’s Paris, experiencing a comedy-show adventure in Riyadh, drifting after a shipwreck in the Pacific, and diving into the secrets of the Inca empire. “What Parents of Boys Should Know” sparked many conversations in my group chats, as did this photo of Abraham Lincoln’s ear being cleaned. There are stories that contextualized a chaotic moment for the American experiment, drawing deeply on history.
I hope you’ll spend time with this selection, and I would love to hear what you think. Send me a note: [email protected].
I Watched Stand-Up in Saudi Arabia
By Helen Lewis
What the surreal Riyadh Comedy Festival foretold about the kingdom’s future
The New Rasputins
By Anne Applebaum
Anti-science mysticism is enabling autocracy around the globe.
America and Its Universities Need a New Social Contract
By Danielle Allen
Fifty dollars for STEM, five cents for citizenship—that’s how America apportions its education dollars. Our beleaguered universities must redress the balance—helping the country and themselves.
What Parents of Boys Should Know
By Joshua Coleman
Daughters tend to receive higher levels of affection and patience at home than sons. But the sons might need it more.
Is This the Worst-Ever Era of American Pop Culture?
By Spencer Kornhaber
An emerging critical consensus argues that we’ve entered a cultural dark age. I’m not so sure.
My Shipwreck Story
By Alec Frydman
On my first time out as a commercial fisherman, my boat sank, my captain died, and I was left adrift and alone in the Pacific.
An Innocent Abroad in Mark Twain’s Paris
By Caity Weaver
My quest for a true literary experience resulted in choucroute, a surprise organ feast, an epiphany at the Louvre, existential dread, and a rowboat.
A PTSD Therapy “Seemed Too Good to Be True”
By Yasmin Tayag
What if overcoming trauma can be painless?
What the Founders Would Say Now
They might be surprised that the republic exists at all.
Invisible Habits Are Driving Your Life
By Shayla Love
The science of habits reveals that they can be hidden to us and unresponsive to our desires.
The Rise of John Ratcliffe
A partisan loyalist with a history of politicizing intelligence will soon be running the CIA.
The Man in the Midnight-Blue Six-Ply Italian-Milled Wool Suit
A perfect suit, made by an expert tailor out of superlative fabric, would do nothing less than transform me.
This isn’t single-party rule, but it’s not democracy either.
Turtleboy Will Not Be Stopped
A profane blogger believes an innocent woman is being framed for murder. He’ll do anything to prove he’s right—and terrorize anyone who says he’s wrong.
The Rise of the Brown v. Board of Education Skeptics
Why some mainstream Black intellectuals are giving up on the landmark decision
The Internet’s Favorite Sex Researcher
How Aella went from selling sex to studying it
The Telepathy Trap
By Daniel Engber
A podcast shows how love divides us.
The People Who Clean the Ears of Lincoln (And Other Statues)
By Alan Taylor
A collection of images of the varied workers and techniques used to maintain some of the world’s largest and most prominent statues and monuments.
Accommodation Nation
By Rose Horowitch
America’s colleges have an extra-time-on-tests problem.
Do You Actually Know What Classical Music Is? Does Anyone?
By Matthew Aucoin
The term is applied to radically different compositions across more than 1,000 years of history. We need a better definition.
Miscarriage and Motherhood
What having a baby taught me about the illusion of control
The Short-Circuiting of the American Mind
A century-old book foresaw Trump’s most basic strategy.
When William F. Buckley Jr. Met James Baldwin
In 1965, the two intellectual giants squared off in a debate at Cambridge. It didn’t go quite as Buckley hoped.
A Grand Experiment in Parenthood and Friendship
Would you raise kids with your best pals?
Unraveling the Secrets of the Inca Empire
For hundreds of years, Andean people recorded information by tying knots into long cords. Will we ever be able to read them?
Inside the world of extreme-privacy consultants, who, for the right fee, will make you and your personal information very hard to find
The Wyoming Hospital Upending the Logic of Private Equity
Instead of cutting services to cut costs, one rural hospital plans to thrive by offering more.
How Originalism Killed the Constitution
A radical legal philosophy has undermined the process of constitutional evolution.
The Myth of Mad King George
He was denounced by rebel propagandists as a tyrant and remembered by Americans as a reactionary dolt. Who was he really?
America’s Zombie Democracy
Its trappings remain, but authoritarianism and AI are hollowing out our humanity.
When Adoption Promises Are Broken
Many birth mothers hope to maintain contact with their child. But their agreements with adoptive parents can be fragile.
Evening Read
Jan Buchczik
New Year’s Resolutions That Will Actually Lead to Happiness
By Arthur C. Brooks
If you are someone who follows a traditional religion, you most likely have a day such as Yom Kippur, Ashura, or Ash Wednesday, dedicated to atoning for your sins and vowing to make improvements to your life. But if you are not religious, you might still practice a day of devotion and ritualistic vows of self-improvement each year on January 1. New Year’s Day rings in the month of January, dedicated by the ancient Romans to their god Janus. Religious Romans promised the two-faced god that they would be better in the new year than they had been in the past.
According to the Pew Research Center, historically between one-third and one-half of Americans observe this pagan rite every year by making their own New Year’s resolutions. The most common resolutions are fairly predictable: financial resolutions, like saving more money or paying down debt (51 percent in 2019); eating healthier (51 percent); exercising more (50 percent); and losing weight (42 percent).
Old Janus is pretty annoyed at this point, I imagine, because our resolutions overwhelmingly fail.
Read the full article.
Culture Break
(Illustration by Shawna X)
Watch. Here are the 10 best movies of 2025, according to our critic David Sims.
Explore. What’s the point of school photos anymore? The portraits are kitschy and expensive—but parents can’t seem to stop buying them, Annie Midori Atherton writes.
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Rafaela Jinich contributed to this newsletter.
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