Richard Branson was hungover on the day the Apollo 11 astronauts landed on the moon in 1969. He had turned 19 two days earlier and had celebrated accordingly. But he was “gripped” as he watched Neil Armstrong on his family’s little black-and-white television, he later wrote in a memoir. He knew then—he was “instantly convinced”—that someday he would go to space himself.

Photograph by Mengwen Caoand I’m thinking of the years I spent sweating
to the choreo of every K-pop song with a decent
dance break, me and the other girls from church,
practically saintly in our diligence as we
rehearsed our isolations and body rolls, winding
and rewinding the tapes, our noses almost
grazing the screen, though in truth I only understood
maybe about half the words, the other half
mostly sounds, which nevertheless sank
into my muscles, pathways laid by so many
hours of indu

1. Soccer finals Wish the footie fan in your life godspeed. First, the Copa América concludes with an Argentina-Brazil matchup on Saturday. Then Sunday sees England against Italy for the European Championship.The English team is competing for its first major tournament title in more than half a century. At a time when the country’s identity is in flux, the players offer a progressive and inclusive model of Englishness.

I am not from England. I have no family in England. And I have not spent a considerable amount of time on English soil. So my investment in the success of England’s soccer team, at face value, doesn’t make much sense. I cheer as Raheem Sterling glides past a defender; I smile as Bukayo Saka sends the perfect pass to a teammate; I hold my breath with the anticipation of possibility when Jadon Sancho gets anywhere within 25 yards of the opponent’s goal.

The late Janet Malcolm, writing about the Gossip Girl novels for The New Yorker in 2008, delighted in the heartlessness of the teenage characters—their voyeuristic cruelty and the sharp satisfaction they take in the downfall of their peers. What the series understands, Malcolm wrote, is that “children are a pleasure-seeking species, and that adolescence is a delicious last gasp (the light is most golden just before the shadows fall) of rightful selfishness and cluelessness.