Rock and roll’s relationship with time—as in Father Time, not, you know, tempo—is fascinating. Men and women barely into their 20s, dewy young people without a mark on them, somehow contrive to write songs of shattering, been-there maturity. Whiskery wisdom ballads, epics of regret, failure binge blues, and howling prophetic voyages. Wide-eyed they sing them, these songs of experience. And then they grow old, and it all comes true.

In the media reporter Brian Stelter’s book Hoax, he shares an anecdote that neatly sums up so much about Fox News and its influence on how its viewers communicate. A staffer who described a restaurant chain’s decision to offer a vegan burger as an improvement to the menu said they were castigated and corrected: The new option was actually proof of the “war on meat,” a network superior said. Thus, the story was quickly reframed in the channel’s familiar vernacular.

Each installment of “The Friendship Files” features a conversation between The Atlantic’s Julie Beck and two or more friends, exploring the history and significance of their relationship.This week she talks with two couples—Jenny and Marisa (parents to Atlas and Blaise), and Lora and Michelle (parents to Finnley and Tegan)—who had their children using the same sperm donor.

When I met Flynn Hoob on Monday, he was standing in front of his home. Or rather, what was left of his home. It was the day after Hurricane Ida, and Hoob’s one-story house in Bourg, Louisiana, had fallen off its concrete pilings and sunk halfway into the nearby bayou. He had ridden out the storm inside until his house had tipped over, at which point he fled to the flooded-out bar next door and waited out the storm there for eight hours.

Rare is the New Orleans tourist who doesn’t visit the French Quarter, the 13-block neighborhood sitting at the edge of the Mississippi River. Residents, too, are accustomed to its sounds and smells and images, which together have come to represent our hometown, one of the most special places in the world. I think of the city I come from every day—especially now.