In September 2009, a Republican congressman from South Carolina named Joe Wilson inserted himself into history. He interrupted President Barack Obama’s speech to a joint session of Congress by shouting, “You lie.”The outburst shocked viewers. Wilson, not Obama, was the top trending item on Twitter in the aftermath of the speech. Wilson apologized, “I let my emotions get the best of me.

It took one of the most powerful earthquakes in a century, but the world’s attention has finally returned to Syria, a country devastated by 12 years of civil war; divided among government, militia, and foreign powers; and home to millions of internally displaced people.So far, most of the images of the devastation have come out of Turkey, where the 7.8-magnitude quake struck early Monday morning, followed by another quake of 7.5 magnitude.

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.Until recently, women entertainers could count on their 40th birthday as the death knell for their cultural relevance. But a generation of performers is reentering the pop-culture spotlight in midlife, forcing the public to reckon with the way their stories have been told.

Since the hit sitcom Seinfeld went off the air in 1998 after nine seasons, the show’s devoted followers have long mused about an alternate reality: What if the original “show about nothing” had never ended?Now they’ve gotten what they wished for—well, sort of. In mid-December, a never-ending AI-generated reboot, aptly named Nothing, Forever, launched on the streaming platform Twitch.

The scar first appears on Annie Bonelli’s TikTok on March 18, 2021. In the video, she is in a car, earbuds in, lip-synching to the song “I Know,” by D. Savage. The mark on her cheek is blurry and soft, like a smudge of dirt. She is bobbing her head underneath a caption about how it feels when someone accidentally likes a social-media post that’s more than a year old.

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 this time in an American president’s term, the next presidential race is typically in full swing. But the GOP’s Trump problem is making the 2024 race an unusual one.First, here are three new stories from The Atlantic.
American Christianity is due for a revival.

I grew up in a nonstick-pan home. No matter what was on the menu, my dad would reach for the Teflon-coated pan first: nonstick for stir-fried vegetables, for reheating takeout, for the sunny-side-up eggs, garlic fried rice, and crisped Spam slices that constituted breakfast. Nowadays, I’m a much fussier cook: A stainless-steel pan is my kitchen workhorse.

This is an edition of Up for Debate, a newsletter by Conor Friedersdorf. On Wednesdays, he rounds up timely conversations and solicits reader responses to one thought-provoking question. Later, he publishes some thoughtful replies. Sign up for the newsletter here.

The musical artist Bad Bunny—Benito Antonio Martínez Ocasio—is known on social media as “San Benito”: Saint Benito, perhaps a wink to his anything-but-chaste lyrics. But the nickname has taken on a somewhat literal meaning. Bad Bunny is—particularly after his bomba- and merengue-infused, fully Spanish-language opening-act performance at last night’s Grammys—the official patron saint of Latinidad.

In 2016, two years after Russia’s invasion of Crimea and the Donbas, I was invited to the Kyiv Suvorov Military School to present the Ukrainian edition of my novel set in Afghanistan. The auditorium was mostly filled with fresh-faced cadets and their instructors, some of whom had recently returned from fighting in the east. After an hour’s discussion, the cadets filed back to their barracks. Then, out of the dark recesses of the auditorium, three men in their mid-50s approached me.