Welcome to The Daily’s Sunday culture edition, featuring our newest advice column, “Dear James,” from James Parker. Are you something of a mystery to yourself? Do you suffer from existential panic, spiritual fatigue, libidinal tangles, and compulsive idiocy? Are your moods beyond your control? Is every straw, for you, the last straw? Do you suspect, from time to time, that the world around you might be an enormous hallucination? Do you forget people’s names and then worry about it terribly? Do you weep at bad movies but find yourself unaccountably numb in the face of genuine sadness? Is stress wrecking your complexion, your joints, your digestive system? Do you experience a surge of pristine chaotic energy at precisely the moment that you should be falling asleep? Are you doing much too much of this, and not nearly enough of that? If so, “Dear James” might be for you. Below are the latest editions, which tackle issues as varied as post-graduation anxiety and an addiction to wellness podcasts. If you’re looking for advice, drop a note to [email protected]. Sign up here to receive this column weekly. First, here are three Sunday reads from The Atlantic: |
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The Reading List | | (Illustration by Miguel Porlan) | |
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| | I’m totally exhausted with myself. | |
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| | (Illustration by Miguel Porlan) | |
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| | (Illustration by Miguel Porlan) | |
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| | So is meditation. And push-ups. And breathing. | |
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| (Courtesy of The Atlantic's TikTok) | | |
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Check out James Parker’s latest TikTok video about his column and why he wants to hear what’s ailing, torturing, and nagging readers. |
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- Saturday Night, a comedy film about the 90 minutes of preparation before the October 1975 debut of Saturday Night Live (in theaters everywhere Friday)
- Season 4 of Abbott Elementary, a sitcom about a group of Philadelphia public-school teachers (streaming Wednesday on Hulu)
- Our Evenings, a novel by Alan Hollinghurst about the son of a Burmese man and a British dressmaker who gets a scholarship to a prestigious boarding school (out Tuesday)
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Essay | | (Illustration by The Atlantic) | |
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| | Last month, Amazon CEO Andy Jassy announced that the company’s more than 350,000 corporate employees must return to the office five days a week come January. In a memo, Jassy explained that he wants teams to be “joined at the hip” as they try to out-innovate other companies. His employees don’t seem happy about it. The Amazon announcement was met with white-collar America’s version of a protest—a petition, angry LinkedIn posts, tense debates on Slack—and experts predict that some top talent will leave for companies with more flexible policies. Since May 2023, Amazon has allowed corporate employees to work from home two days a week by default. But to Jassy, 15 months of hybrid work only demonstrated the superiority of full-time in-office collaboration. | |
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| A woman holds a plastic bag over her head to shelter herself from the rain as she walks along Fifth Avenue in New York City. (Charly Triballeau / AFP / Getty) | | |
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Check out these photos of the week from around the world, showing a woman walking in the rain, devastating floods in Nepal and the United States, early Christmas celebrations in Venezuela, and more.
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Getting to know the neighbors. Listen to the new podcast now. | | | About a year ago, Radio Atlantic host Hanna Rosin and her partner, Lauren Ober, met their new neighbors. In getting to know them, Rosin and Ober ended up deep inside an alternate world, where January 6 was a day when martyrs were made and people were unfairly imprisoned. But they also got to know their hobbies, their pets, their grief, and their love for one another. Listen to We Live Here Now, wherever you get your podcasts. | |
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