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 familiar dilemma: You open Netflix, determined to watch something new. Twenty minutes of scrolling later, after having rejected dozens of perfectly fine options, you land on a movie you’ve seen many times before.
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.
Somewhere between a Red Lobster and a three-Michelin-star dining room lies the best free restaurant bread in America. For The Atlantic’s May cover story, our staff writer Caity Weaver set out to find it, surveying more than 500 people and traveling 13,000 miles along the way.
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 more popular something gets, the less appealing it can start to feel. Take The Pitt: Suddenly, everyone’s watching it and everyone’s talking about it. At a certain point, the excitement starts to make you feel like you should be into it—and just like that, you don’t want to watch it anymore.
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.
For as long as people have been looking for love, many have been convinced that they know exactly what it looks like. We might talk about having a “type”: someone with certain traits, habits, beliefs, or quirks that we assume will add up to a successful match.
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 people spend a lot of energy trying not to feel out of place. You learn the rules, blend in, and aim to belong. But what if resisting that uncomfortable feeling is a mistake?
In 2022, 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.
At one point or another, we’ve all probably been that friend—the one who calls, texts, or sends a five-minute voice note with a long list of grievances.
This is an edition of Time-Travel Thursdays, a journey through The Atlantic’s archives to contextualize the present. Sign up here.
It’s January 1, and the self-help corners of the internet tell me I’m supposed to wake up as a matcha-drinking, Pilates-doing goddess of discipline. Except I don’t like matcha, my gym leggings are in hibernation, and my discipline is nowhere to be found. Outside, winter has the nerve to continue.
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 did dinner stop being an occasion and become just another transaction? The convenience of delivery apps has quietly hollowed out one of America’s most beloved rituals, Ellen Cushing writes.
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.
Read about the sneaky tactics behind bad customer service, a bizarre PTSD therapy that “seemed too good to be true,” why the dictionary might be obsolete, and more.
Why Can’t Americans Sleep?
Insomnia has become a public-health emergency.
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.
Read about the surprising cells you carry from your relatives, why getting up early might be the best life hack, what happens when your kid’s best friend is a problem, and more.
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.
For Melani Sanders, a mother and wife, it started after a grocery run. She got in her car, pulled out her phone, and declared that she didn’t care—about shaving her legs, about wearing a “real bra,” or about keeping her house tidy.
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.
This Labor Day, spend time with seven back-to-school stories about how parents took over dorm life, why middle-school friendships still shape who we are, why we can’t quite escape dreams of being back at school, and more.
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.
On this late-summer weekend, read stories on what having a crush can teach you about yourself, the rise and fall of computer-science degrees, and how, exactly, America got so mean.
There Are Two Types of Dishwasher People
And only one of them really knows how to load it.
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.
On this summer Sunday, spend time with stories about how the Ivy League broke America, parenting with friends, and more.
How the Ivy League Broke America
The meritocracy isn’t working. We need something new.