PHILADELPHIA—Outside the basketball arena at Temple University, a long line of anxious Democrats contemplated their party’s possibly bleak political future, as a brass band played Taylor Swift’s “Shake It Off.”That strange juxtaposition of dread and joy seemed to be the theme of Saturday afternoon’s rally at the Liacouras Center.

Large numbers of American workers are reporting feeling stressed and exhausted on the job. Some of that is beyond the reach of the workplace—people have been living through more than two years of a global pandemic, and, more personally, most people have stressors at home that are hard to leave behind when the workday starts. But some elements of burnout do lie within an employer’s control, because they can result from the way jobs and workplaces are structured.

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.Ever feel like the person you’re talking to is just waiting for you to finish so they can start speaking? It turns out every human does that. And it’s a good thing—not necessarily a sign of a bad listener, but a complex communication skill that bonds humans across the world.

Russian President Vladimir Putin talks about using nuclear weapons against Ukraine, adding, “This is not a bluff.” President Joe Biden warns Americans of possible Armageddon. Experts discuss the nuances of so-called tactical nuclear weapons.And news outlets are full of stories that give some version of The threat of nuclear war is back. But they are wrong: The threat never went away. Only the fear did.

Rain noises for sleeping, chill beats for studying, spacey melodies for getting stoned: The ecosystem of sounds known as ambient music excels at blocking out the world. But Brian Eno, the man who named the genre, has spent a life recording songs that reflect the reality around him. In the 1970s, the drab bustle of an airport terminal and the ruckus of New York City helped inspire him to use then-novel synthesizer technology to paint pastoral soundscapes: the yin to the yang of modern life.