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.Like millions of other Americans, I enjoy many of Sylvester Stallone’s movies. But in recent years, I’ve come to think that Sly might have also been teaching me something.First, here are four new stories from The Atlantic.
Streaming has reached its sad, predictable fate.

The first question plaguing omnivorous, content-hungry humans with a spare hour or two is this: What should I watch? In recent years, a second question has come to dominate our evening streaming rituals: How do I watch it? Drenching your eyeballs in sweet television can be surprisingly tricky, requiring some amount of research to determine which streaming platform has whatever you want to watch and, crucially, whether you pay for it already.

Over the past few days, hundreds of thousands of posts on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter, have lambasted a Jewish organization that many people are only vaguely aware of: the Anti-Defamation League.

Have you ever loved a song without knowing what it means? That rarely happens when I listen to Olivia Rodrigo. The 20-year-old pop star has conquered the world by singing about unruly emotions with the precision of a court reporter. The songs on her new album, Guts, offer tidy thesis statements about the nature of heartbreak, declaring, “Love’s embarrassing” (on “Love Is Embarrassing”) or “Love is never logical” (on “Logical”).

This is an edition of the revamped Books Briefing, our editors’ weekly guide to the best in books. Sign up for it here.Sylvia Plath lived only to the age of 30—this year marks the 60th anniversary of her death. When you consider all that has been written about her, and the writers still thinking of her, the shortness of her existence is shocking.

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.But first, here are three new stories from The Atlantic.
The China model is dead.
A knockout technique for achieving more happiness
Why would anyone become a politician?
Challenging Power, AgainThe year was 1998. Bill Clinton was in office. Titanic had just won the Academy Award for Best Picture.

Smash Mouth has long been, as its guitarist, Greg Camp, once said, “a band that you can make fun of.” The pop-rock group’s signature hit, 1999’s “All Star,” combines the sounds of DJ scratches, glockenspiel, and a white dude rapping that he “ain’t the sharpest tool in the shed.” Fashionwise, the band tended to dress for a funky night at the bowling alley.

The Atlantic is today announcing new speakers––including former Secretary of State and United States Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton––appearing at the 15th annual Atlantic Festival, taking place on Thursday, September 28, and Friday, September 29, at The Wharf in Washington, D.C. Clinton will be in conversation with The Atlantic’s editor in chief, Jeffrey Goldberg, discussing existential threats to democracy.

One thing we crave after our collective pandemic experience is certainty. If a potentially powerful new variant is out there, we need some answers about it: How fast is its evolution? Will it spread as quickly and widely as Omicron? And will the vaccine be effective against it?In this episode, I talk with Atlantic science writers Katie Wu and Sarah Zhang. They know a lot, and they are very honest about all the things they don’t know.