Five years ago, after Hurricane Irma pummeled Florida’s Gulf Coast, I rode a boat through the canals of Cape Coral, the “Waterfront Wonderland,” America’s fastest-growing city at the time. It was a sunny day with a gentle breeze and just a few puffs of clouds, so as I pointed to the blown-out lanais and piles of storm debris, my guide, a snowbird named Brian Tattersall, kept teasing me for missing the point of a magical afternoon.

The old, epic story of agriculture in North America had two heroes, long sung and much venerated. One was human ingenuity. The other was corn.That story went something like this. On this continent, agriculture—and therefore civilization—was born in Mesoamerica, where corn happened to be abundant. The more advanced people there began cultivating this knobbly little plant and passed their knowledge north, to people in more temperate climes.

“After Mahsa, everything is hanging by a hair.”Those words, spray-painted in red on a Tehran wall last week, sum up the atmosphere of rage and defiance that has consumed Iran since the death of Mahsa Amini, a young woman who died in police custody in mid-September after being arrested for failing to properly veil her hair.Rallies have turned progressively more violent.

Hocus Pocus, as a film, makes little sense. The plot, about a coven of witches who seek to eat children, involves a talking cat, a boy who despises trick-or-treating, and far too many mentions of virgins lighting candles. Released inexplicably in the middle of summer 1993, it was a box-office failure that put off critics.But Hocus Pocus, as a cultural phenomenon, makes perfect sense. The costumes are easily replicable, the one-liners fantastically quotable.

After my second son was born, my family crossed a painful threshold: We started spending more on child care than we do on rent. The situation is temporary, I keep telling myself—promising myself, praying for myself. My older son will be able to enroll in kindergarten in two years and my younger son in four. But it is excruciating. And I say that from a place of privilege. Most American families earn less than mine does. That does not make day care any cheaper for them.

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.Putin announced his attempt to lay claim to eastern Ukraine with his most unhinged speech yet, intending to terrify the rest of the world into submission. We should instead continue to show courage and steadfastness.But first, here are three new stories from The Atlantic.

The Hubble Space Telescope is falling.Not imminently, but it’s happening. The beloved observatory, which has spent decades revealing cosmic wonders from its perch a few hundred miles above Earth, does not have a propulsion system to maintain its altitude. According to NASA’s latest projections, the observatory could reenter Earth’s atmosphere as early as 2037—a grim fate that the agency has been anticipating for many years.