I got my COVID-19 booster shot last week, on the first day I was eligible. My shot was delayed because I caught COVID in early December, an experience that was low-key grim: two days of shotgun sneezing, no taste or smell for a week, and a constant fatigue that didn’t abate until the holidays. I was very glad to face the coronavirus with two Pfizer doses already in my arm, and even more grateful that my parents and 91 percent of Britons in their age group are triple-jabbed.

What was so spooky about the 1980s? Maybe Freddy Krueger, Thriller, and goth eyeliner just reflected Cold War anxieties and suburban dread. Or maybe technological progress in the entertainment industry better explains the decade’s Halloween-party aesthetics. After all, without certain synthesizers and drum machines, you don’t get the sinister arpeggios of John Carpenter soundtracks or the telltale beat of New Order’s “Blue Monday.

In early August, 254 Tamarisk Drive went on the Bay Area housing market asking $850,000, and it sparked a bidding war that topped out at $1 million. The 1968 four-bedroom ranch, clad with half-century-old fixtures and set behind a patchy lawn, was not only unremarkable but had actually been “fire charred” before it was put up for sale. And yet its buyers likely got a good deal: According to the real-estate-listing site Redfin, the home could now be worth as much as $1.36 million.

Two years before the beloved family sitcom Full House began airing on ABC, Bob Saget appeared on HBO’s The Ninth Annual Young Comedians Special. Though his role as Danny Tanner—that affectionate, straitlaced father to three young girls—would eventually define his acting career, his stand-up set showcased a much bawdier side.

When Delta swept across the United States last year, the extremely transmissible and deadlier variant threw us into pandemic limbo. The virus remained a danger mostly to unvaccinated people, but they largely wanted to move on. Vaccinated people also largely wanted to move on. The virus did not want to move on. So we got stuck in a deadly rut, and more Americans died of COVID-19 in 2021 than in 2020.

The Atlantic is welcoming three new editors to the Culture team as it begins an expansion of Books coverage. Joining The Atlantic are Gal Beckerman as senior editor for Books, coming from The New York Times Book Review; Maya Chung as an associate editor, most recently with The New York Review of Books; and Emma Sarappo as an associate editor, previously the arts editor at Washington City Paper.

To be on the internet today is to confront unsettling images—of war, climate change, humanitarian crises. Weird visuals crop up too. A YouTube algorithm provides me, for instance, with videos of a pimple-popping bonanza, or a series of videos in which young men eat glue.