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.Before writing this newsletter about how hard it is to remember things, I decided to test myself. I wasn’t sure how much of the recent culture I’d consumed would jolt back into my brain; if it turned out I was a memory savant, I figured I should mention that here.

Janet Malcolm once emailed to tell me she found an introduction I had written for my book on writers’ deaths, which included my own thoughts on a childhood illness, to be “surprising” but “powerful.” I understood this to be her diplomatic way of referring to the possibly showy or undignified decision to put myself into a book that was otherwise a work of biography and journalism. I think she was telling me she was surprised that she liked it.

I wake up and eat a banana.
Stand naked in my kitchen.
Shave and listen to Billie Holiday.My god, I’m so obsessed with you.
You’re new. You’re tall. You make me feel
like never putting clothes on.
Who’s to say if you’ll still be around
when anyone’s reading this poem.
Or if the Earth will continue(it’s getting very hot!)
or if we’ll get it right in language
exactly how we feel about each other.
I don’t care about being remembered.

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.Good morning, and welcome back to The Daily’s Sunday culture edition, in which one Atlantic writer reveals what’s keeping them entertained.

This is Work in Progress, a newsletter by Derek Thompson about work, technology, and how to solve some of America’s biggest problems. Sign up here to get it every week.Last year, I called America a “rich death trap.” Americans are more likely to die than Europeans or other citizens of similarly rich nations at just about every given age and income level.

Updated at 6:30 p.m. ET on January 13, 2023This 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.Much has been said about the salacious revelations in Prince Harry’s new memoir, Spare. But as London-based Atlantic staff writer Helen Lewis writes, the book also makes a powerful—if perhaps futile—case against the monarchy.

Somehow, in a few short days, gas stoves have gone from a thing that some people cook with to, depending on your politics, either a child-poisoning death machine or a treasured piece of national patrimony. Suddenly, everyone has an opinion. Gas stoves! Who could have predicted it?The roots of the present controversy can be traced back to late December, when scientists published a paper arguing that gas stoves are to blame for nearly 13 percent of childhood-asthma cases in the United States.