This story contains spoilers for Our Flag Means Death.When a man and a woman on TV share an umbrella, and the man asks the woman if she’s happy in her relationship, the romantic implications are usually clear. When that happens on ABC’s Abbott Elementary, the teachers Janine and Gregory have obvious chemistry.

Ambulance is an action movie with a simple hook, the kind of “high concept” story pitch that one can just imagine a Hollywood executive’s eyes lighting up at. Two bank robbers, the adoptive brothers Danny (played by Jake Gyllenhaal) and Will Sharp (Yahya Abdul-Mateen II), hijack an ambulance after a heist gone wrong, using it to sneak by the cops.

In 1997, I was living in Cambodia, working for the U.S. government to help solidify the country’s fragile democracy. The air was hopeful: Civic groups were preparing to monitor upcoming elections, political parties were selecting candidates and drafting platforms, and newspapers had popped up to feverishly report on it all.At his Fourth of July party, however, the U.S. ambassador to Phnom Penh warned of storm clouds ahead.

The Grammys have always been more than a bit old-fashioned. The ceremony typically consists of exciting new artists covering the songs of yesteryear, interspersed with awards going to established acts over those same exciting new artists. But though reforms at the Recording Academy, which hands out the awards, have led to better representation in recent years, this past week’s Grammys renewed debate about whether they’re still too stuck in the past.

Well, here we are again. After our fleeting brush with normalcy during Omicron’s retreat, another very transmissible new version of the coronavirus is on the rise—and with it, a fresh wave of vacillation between mask-donning and mask-doffing.The Omicron offshoot BA.2 is now the dominant variant around the world and in the United States. Case counts are rising in a number of states. It’s too early to tell whether BA.

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 friends who also happen to study friendship. They met at a conference back when very few relationship scholars were focusing on the topic, and became both friends and professional collaborators.

Editor’s note: This week’s newsletter is a rerun.
We’ll be back with a fresh newsletter next week.After the Capitol riot, Matt Hawn, a teacher from Tennessee, brought an Atlantic essay to class for his students to analyze: “The First White President,” by Ta-Nehisi Coates. Earlier the class had discussed a police shooting in Kenosha, Wisconsin; later in the year, they watched a performance of Kyla Jenée Lacey’s poem “White Privilege.