The Saturday Night Live cold open is usually a place for the series to do its most topical, often political, material. But an awkward sense of obligation hung over last night’s sketch, about campus protests surrounding the conflict in Gaza. The activism at colleges across the U.S. has been dominating the news, especially as the university and police responses have led to arrests.

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.
Welcome back to The Daily’s Sunday culture edition, in which one Atlantic writer or editor reveals what’s keeping them entertained. Today’s special guest is Kevin Townsend, a senior producer on our podcast team.

Last month, a pro-Palestinian activist stood in front of me on Columbia University’s campus with a sign that read By Any Means Necessary. She smiled. She seemed like a nice person. I am an Israeli graduate student at the university, and I know holding that sign is within her rights. And yet, its message was so painful and disturbing that after that moment, I left New York for a few days.

Shangri-la is best-known as a fictional place—an idyllic valley first imagined by a British novelist in the 1930s—but look at a map and you’ll find it. Sitting at the foot of the Himalayas in southwestern China, Shangri-la went by a more prosaic name until 2001, when the city was rebranded by Chinese officials eager to boost tourism. Their ploy worked.
The star of Shangri-la is the Ganden Sumtseling Monastery.

Hope exhausted years ago
but I still try.
Heart thumps on doggedly
and wants to know
if nice surprises might in time arrive,
and mind likewise. I read
to keep a lookout
unbeknownst,
or make a wild surmise. I dream
the ground I plough and plant
might even now
sprout greenery I never saw before
and not, as I expect, remain
as rolling oceans do in falling snow.

Editor’s Note: Washington Week With The Atlantic is a partnership between NewsHour Productions, WETA, and The Atlantic airing every Friday on PBS stations nationwide. Check your local listings or watch full episodes here.  
This week, President Joe Biden contended with navigating the overlapping domestic and global challenges of the war in Gaza. At home, the president addressed the pro-Palestinian protests that have spread across college campuses.

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.
Forget “Got milk?”—the new question du jour is “What is milk?” The ubiquity of plant-based alternatives has challenged ideas about what the word means and what it encompasses.

This article was originally published in Knowable Magazine.
Shrubbery, toolsheds, basements—these are places one might expect to find spiders. But what about the beach? Or in a stream? Some spiders make their homes near or, more rarely, in water: tucking into the base of kelp stalks, spinning watertight cocoons in ponds or lakes, hiding under pebbles at the seaside or along a creek bank.

Updated at 3:05 p.m. ET on May 4, 2024
My voice was ready. I’d been waiting, compulsively checking my inbox. I opened the email and scrolled until I saw a button that said, plainly, “Use voice.” I considered saying something aloud to mark the occasion, but that felt wrong. The computer would now speak for me.
I had thought it’d be fun, and uncanny, to clone my voice. I’d sought out the AI start-up ElevenLabs, paid $22 for a “creator” account, and uploaded some recordings of myself.

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.
By killing her dog, South Dakota Governor Kristi Noem may have also killed her chances of becoming Donald Trump’s vice president.