Isabel Fattal

This is an edition of The Wonder Reader, a newsletter in which our editors recommend a set of stories to spark your curiosity and fill you with delight. Sign up here to get it every Saturday morning.
Something about getting older makes it easier to say “No, thank you.” On average, older Americans score higher on well-being than younger adults, and much of this is thanks to developing a clearer sense of what’s worth time and attention. At 61 years old, Arthur C.

This is an edition of The Wonder Reader, a newsletter in which our editors recommend a set of stories to spark your curiosity and fill you with delight. Sign up here to get it every Saturday morning.
The year 2025 was hard for the film industry but good for movies.

This is an edition of The Wonder Reader, a newsletter in which our editors recommend a set of stories to spark your curiosity and fill you with delight. Sign up here to get it every Saturday morning.
“Talking about politics at our family gatherings can be like smoking a cigarette at a gas station—there’s a good chance it will make the whole place explode,” the journalist Elizabeth Harris wrote last year.

This is an edition of The Wonder Reader, a newsletter in which our editors recommend a set of stories to spark your curiosity and fill you with delight. Sign up here to get it every Saturday morning.
It’s humbling to realize that other people may live the majority of their life at entirely different hours than you do. If you’re a morning person, you’re sleeping through the joys, crises, snacks, arguments, and laughs of many night owls—and vice versa.

This is an edition of The Wonder Reader, a newsletter in which our editors recommend a set of stories to spark your curiosity and fill you with delight. Sign up here to get it every Saturday morning.
A few years ago, my colleague Olga Khazan shared a radical proposition: What if we stopped firing our friends? The friendship breakup has become a feature of modern life: Online, advice abounds on “how to aggressively confront, or even abandon, friends who disappoint us,” Olga noted.

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“Keep your voice down.”
“That’s enough of you.”
“Be nice; don’t be threatening.”
“There was blood coming out of her eyes, blood coming out of her wherever.”
“Quiet, piggy.

This is an edition of The Wonder Reader, a newsletter in which our editors recommend a set of stories to spark your curiosity and fill you with delight. Sign up here to get it every Saturday morning.
The kayaker who went missing—and stayed missing for so long that rescue teams were at a loss. The seemingly perfect man who conned women—and was brought to justice by his own victims.

This is an edition of The Wonder Reader, a newsletter in which our editors recommend a set of stories to spark your curiosity and fill you with delight. Sign up here to get it every Saturday morning.
Some critics of the suburbs argue that they’re not a place at all. “The anthropologist Marc Augé coined the term non-places to describe interchangeable, impersonal spaces lacking in history and culture that people pass through quickly and anonymously,” Julie Beck wrote last year.

This is an edition of The Wonder Reader, a newsletter in which our editors recommend a set of stories to spark your curiosity and fill you with delight. Sign up here to get it every Saturday morning.
Why have Americans clung so hard to the dream of a fancy wedding? Hanna Rosin asked Xochitl Gonzalez, our staff writer who used to be a luxury-wedding planner, this question on the Radio Atlantic podcast in 2023.

This is an edition of The Wonder Reader, a newsletter in which our editors recommend a set of stories to spark your curiosity and fill you with delight. Sign up here to get it every Saturday morning.
Regret, my colleague Julie Beck wrote in 2016, is “the emotional price we pay for free will.” If we were just pawns tossed around on the chessboard of life, she explains, there’d be nothing to regret.

This is an edition of The Wonder Reader, a newsletter in which our editors recommend a set of stories to spark your curiosity and fill you with delight. Sign up here to get it every Saturday morning.
One of my highlights of the past year has been receiving your weekly emails with photos that spark a sense of awe in the world around you. In reviewing your submissions, I’ve most enjoyed seeing how the beholder’s mind works.

This is an edition of The Wonder Reader, a newsletter in which our editors recommend a set of stories to spark your curiosity and fill you with delight. Sign up here to get it every Saturday morning.
One of my highlights of the past year has been receiving your weekly emails with photos that spark a sense of awe in the world around you. In reviewing your submissions, I’ve most enjoyed seeing how the beholder’s mind works.

This is an edition of The Wonder Reader, a newsletter in which our editors recommend a set of stories to spark your curiosity and fill you with delight. Sign up here to get it every Saturday morning.
Judy Blume’s Forever wasn’t a book that most readers just stumbled upon. “Obtaining, hiding, and reading it—and then sharing it with others—was a rite of passage for many teens who came of age during and after the sexual revolution,” Anna Holmes writes of the teen novel.

This is an edition of The Wonder Reader, a newsletter in which our editors recommend a set of stories to spark your curiosity and fill you with delight. Sign up here to get it every Saturday morning.
Good news: If you’re worried you might be a phony, there’s a good chance you’re the real deal. “The true phony is convinced they’re not one,” Arthur C. Brooks explained earlier this summer.

This is an edition of The Wonder Reader, a newsletter in which our editors recommend a set of stories to spark your curiosity and fill you with delight. Sign up here to get it every Saturday morning.
As a self-proclaimed evening person, I struggle to admit this, but I do find my rare early mornings calming and satisfying in a way I never expected. As Arthur C. Brooks notes in a recent article, not everyone is built to feel their best at the same time of day.

This is an edition of The Wonder Reader, a newsletter in which our editors recommend a set of stories to spark your curiosity and fill you with delight. Sign up here to get it every Saturday morning.
“When the national media turns its eye to college campuses, it often focuses on the ways the college experience has evolved in recent years,” Ashley Fetters wrote in 2018.

This is an edition of The Wonder Reader, a newsletter in which our editors recommend a set of stories to spark your curiosity and fill you with delight. Sign up here to get it every Saturday morning.
College athletics were once casual and fun, more like a club sport than a serious endeavor. But “over the past 75 years, NCAA sports has become ever more professionalized,” Marc Novicoff wrote recently.

This is an edition of The Wonder Reader, a newsletter in which our editors recommend a set of stories to spark your curiosity and fill you with delight. Sign up here to get it every Saturday morning.
In 2024, Russell Shaw made the case for the Lighthouse Parent. “A Lighthouse Parent stands as a steady, reliable guide,” Shaw writes, “providing safety and clarity without controlling every aspect of their child’s journey.

This is an edition of The Wonder Reader, a newsletter in which our editors recommend a set of stories to spark your curiosity and fill you with delight. Sign up here to get it every Saturday morning.
In 2024, Russell Shaw made the case for the Lighthouse Parent. “A Lighthouse Parent stands as a steady, reliable guide,” Shaw writes, “providing safety and clarity without controlling every aspect of their child’s journey.

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Nine years after Canada legalized assisted death—known formally as Medical Assistance in Dying, or MAID—doctors are struggling to keep up with demand, Elaina Plott Calabro reports in a feature for our September issue.

This is an edition of The Wonder Reader, a newsletter in which our editors recommend a set of stories to spark your curiosity and fill you with delight. Sign up here to get it every Saturday morning.
Conventional wisdom says that a beach read ought to be light and fun—a book with a pastel cover. But the beach read can be anything you want it to be. Vacation might feel like the perfect moment to escape into frivolity, or to dive into something dense that you finally have the mental space for.

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Overnight, Israel’s security cabinet approved a proposal from Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to occupy Gaza City, a plan that neither the Israeli security establishment nor the majority of the Israeli public supports.

This is an edition of The Wonder Reader, a newsletter in which our editors recommend a set of stories to spark your curiosity and fill you with delight. Sign up here to get it every Saturday morning.
After losing his corporate marketing job during the pandemic, Stephen Starring Grant decided to move back home and become a rural mail-carrier associate in Blacksburg, Virginia.

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“Reading has been unfairly maligned as an indoor activity for far too long,” Bekah Waalkes wrote this past spring. “As a child, when nice weather came around, I was told to put down my book and go play outside.

This is an edition of The Wonder Reader, a newsletter in which our editors recommend a set of stories to spark your curiosity and fill you with delight. Sign up here to get it every Saturday morning.
A family vacation can seem like the solution to all of life’s tensions: You’ll spend time together, bond, and experience a new place. But travel isn’t a panacea.

This is an edition of The Wonder Reader, a newsletter in which our editors recommend a set of stories to spark your curiosity and fill you with delight. Sign up here to get it every Saturday morning.
A family vacation can seem like the solution to all of life’s tensions: You’ll spend time together, bond, and experience a new place. But travel isn’t a panacea.

This is an edition of The Wonder Reader, a newsletter in which our editors recommend a set of stories to spark your curiosity and fill you with delight. Sign up here to get it every Saturday morning.
It’s become an adage of the modern age to say that the more streaming options there are, the harder it is to decide what to watch.

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Japan is the one place in the world that has felt, and personally mourned, the staggering damage of nuclear warfare. The tragedies of Hiroshima and Nagasaki have turned the country into a longtime proponent of nuclear disarmament. But that national identity is starting to shift.

This is an edition of The Wonder Reader, a newsletter in which our editors recommend a set of stories to spark your curiosity and fill you with delight. Sign up here to get it every Saturday morning.
Although exercise has clear benefits for both physical and mental health, for many people, “those are side effects of the aesthetic goal,” Xochitl Gonzalez wrote in 2023.

This is an edition of The Wonder Reader, a newsletter in which our editors recommend a set of stories to spark your curiosity and fill you with delight. Sign up here to get it every Saturday morning.
Atlantic writers have never been afraid to make bold claims about beloved foods and beverages. Hard seltzer? Pretty bad, Amanda Mull argued in 2022. Wraps? The worst kind of sandwich, Ellen Cushing argued this week. Others have stood up for oft-maligned cuisine, like milk chocolate and candy corn.