On April 29, 1999, precision-guided NATO bombs tore through the brick facades of two defense-ministry buildings in Belgrade, the capital of the rump state of Yugoslavia. The targets were chosen more for symbolic reasons than operational ones: The American-led coalition wanted to send the country’s authoritarian government, at that time engaged in a brutal campaign of ethnic cleansing in Kosovo, a clear message that human rights weren’t just words. They were backed by weapons.

Seven years ago, while sitting in my eighth-floor apartment with my toddler, I heard a voice over the intercom: Our building had a gas leak, and we needed to evacuate. A few weeks prior, a coffee shop down the street had exploded from a gas leak, killing two people and injuring at least 25. Terror struck me: Our elevators were powered down—and I use a wheelchair. I was trapped, unable to take myself and my child to safety.
The fire department quickly determined that it was a false alarm.

Volodymyr Zelensky built a mythic reputation as a lonely bulwark against global tyranny. On Tuesday, the president of Ukraine signed that reputation away, enacting a law that gutted the independence of his country’s anti-corruption agencies just as they closed in on his closest political allies, reportedly including one of his longtime business partners and a former deputy prime minister.

Can’t lick the witch wind that carries rumors
over shining aurora-lit prairies:
horror of what comes to light at the dawn
of the mind.

In the 1980s, the world’s largest producer of shoes was the Communist Soviet Union. In his 1994 book, Dismantling Utopia, Scott Shane reported that the U.S.S.R. “was turning out 800 million pairs of shoes a year—twice as many as Italy, three times as many as the United States, four times as many as China. Production amounted to more than three pairs of shoes per year for every Soviet man, woman, and child.

About a year and a half ago, I was scheduled to play a concert in Vermont when word came that the gig would be canceled because of an approaching nor’easter. I checked out of the hotel early, lobbed my suitcase into the rental car, and hightailed it to New York as menacing clouds darkened the rearview mirror.

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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 Luis Parrales, an assistant editor who has written about what the border-hawk Catholics get wrong and why the papacy is no ordinary succession.