Cinematic history has long been lousy with Draculas: Dozens of remakes, sequels, and spin-offs of Bram Stoker’s seminal gothic novel have graced the screen over the years. But F. W. Murnau’s Nosferatu is a rarer breed. The 1922 German expressionist film cribbed the plot of Stoker’s Dracula (with some alterations) and created the first horror-movie masterpiece, conjuring a unique take on one of the genre’s hoariest texts.

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.
Around the world, authoritarians seem to be regaining their strength and daring. In the United States, a political coalition—one that includes people for whom, as my colleague Adam Serwer has memorably written, “the cruelty is the point”—is returning to power.

Editor’s Note: Is anything ailing, torturing, or nagging at you? Are you beset by existential worries? Every Tuesday, James Parker tackles readers’ questions. Tell him about your lifelong or in-the-moment problems at dearjames@theatlantic.com.
Don’t want to miss a single column? Sign up to get “Dear James” in your inbox.
Dear James,
I’m typically quiet and mind my own business. But in recent weeks, I’ve been having conflicts with people over minor things. Just today, I got yelled at twice.

ESA / Webb, NASA and CSA, P. Zeidler, E. Sabbi, A. Nota, M. Zamani
Day 24 of the 2024 Space Telescope Advent Calendar: an energetic stellar nursery. This new image from the James Webb Space Telescope features the young star cluster NGC 602, surrounded by the varied clouds of a nebula, near the outskirts of the Small Magellanic Cloud, about 200,000 light-years from Earth.

My family includes a farmer and a fiber artist in rural Kentucky, who rarely miss a Sunday service at their local Baptist church; a retired Jewish banker on the Upper West Side of Manhattan; a theater director in Florida; a contractor in Louisville; a lawyer in Boston; and a gay Republican.
Talking about politics at our family gatherings can be like smoking a cigarette at a gas station—there’s a good chance it will make the whole place explode.