My friends gave me a bit of grief for the headline of one of my recent articles: “The ‘Espresso’ Theory of Gender Relations.” The title, admittedly, was a bit heady for a story about a catchy song full of beverage-related puns. Was I overintellectualizing pop, which is supposed to be the dumbest music of all?
Nah. Sabrina Carpenter, who sings the smash “Espresso”—and its follow-up hit, “Please Please Please”—deserves to be taken seriously.

About a year ago, we met our new neighbors—and ultimately found out that they are key figures in the Justice for January 6 movement. One is Micki Witthoeft, the mother of Ashli Babbitt, who was killed in the Capitol building on January 6. Another is the wife of the first person sentenced after standing trial for crimes related to January 6. We could have kept our distance.

When the Supreme Court ruled last month that presidents are immune from prosecution for anything done as an official act, many observers reacted with immediate horror. They warned that the ruling would allow future presidents to act as despots, doing whatever they like without fear of accountability. And in the immediate term, they predicted doom for the federal case against former President Donald Trump for attempting to subvert the 2020 election.

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In the early days of 2023, the Federal Trade Commission made a big announcement: It was proposing a new rule banning noncompete agreements for almost all American workers. The proposed ban was set to take effect next week, but a federal judge in Texas ruled to block it last week.

Last Tuesday, I was supposed to have launched my first book, Tablets Shattered: The End of an American Jewish Century and the Future of Jewish Life, with an event at a bookstore in the Brooklyn neighborhood of Dumbo—a conversation between me and the well-known Reform rabbi Andy Bachman.
The event didn’t happen. About an hour before the intended start, I heard from my publicist that the bookstore had “concerns” about Rabbi Bachman because he was a “Zionist.

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“Frankie met Lucia in that summer …” If there’s a better beginning for that greatest of all genres—the summer romance—I don’t know what it would be. Add in an ice-cream shack, a beach, a thunderstorm, and some distracted parents—all of the irresistible ingredients are here in Ruby Opalka’s “Spit,” a short story published in The Atlantic this week.