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Welcome back to The Daily’s Sunday culture edition, in which one Atlantic writer or editor reveals what’s keeping them entertained. Today’s special guest is Rogé Karma, a staff writer who has written about the secretive industry devouring the U.S. economy, Americans’ enduring economic pessimism, and the large-scale evaporation of the crime and inflation crises.
Rogé is currently enjoying his first watch of The Wire, a show described by a friend as “American Tolstoy.” His media diet also includes reading The Brothers Karamazov, keeping up with ContraPoints videos on YouTube, and listening to Taylor Swift while waiting for her upcoming album.
First, here are three Sunday reads from The Atlantic:
The Culture Survey: Rogé Karma
The television show I’m most enjoying right now: I have to pick two here. The first is Schitt’s Creek, which I think is hands down the funniest show I’ve ever watched.
The second is The Wire, which I began watching a few months ago after a friend (who happens to have an English Ph.D.) described it to me as “American Tolstoy.” I thought there was no way any show could live up to that description—and then it did. What stands out most is the way it blurs the lines between good and evil, just and unjust. Most police shows are predicated on a neat separation between the heroic cops and the terrible criminals. But The Wire makes clear that what sets apart the police officers and the drug dealers isn’t some intrinsic moral superiority; the difference is the respective systems they find themselves in. In one of those systems, anger and ambition are rewarded with accolades and promotions; in the other, they are punished with prison time.
An online creator that I’m a fan of: Again, I have to pick two. There’s just something about lefty YouTubers who create feature-length videos combining dazzling theatrics, ironic humor, and long monologues that really does it for me.
The first is ContraPoints. At a time when I didn’t personally know many trans people, she really opened my mind to what it means to have an experience so unlike my own—but did so in a way that brought me along, and that sincerely answered my very basic (and at times ignorant) questions about everything from pronouns to J. K. Rowling. It also helps that her videos are legitimate works of art.
The second is Dan Olson at Folding Ideas. I first came across his viral video, “Line Goes Up,” in early 2022 and have been hooked ever since. There is, to this day, no single more compelling exploration—and indictment—of the world of crypto than that video. Olson completely immerses himself in fringe internet subcultures and conspiracy theories and then brings you inside of them too, while retaining a sense of bemused detachment that makes his content wildly entertaining.
An author I would read anything by: Greg Boyle, a Jesuit priest and the founder of Homeboy Industries, the world’s largest gang-rehabilitation organization. Boyle’s singular gift as a writer is his ability to see—and communicate—the best of humanity in those who are often considered the worst of it. All of his books are incredible, but my favorite is Barking to the Choir. I don’t think any other author has broken my heart open so fully. And if you’re not convinced yet, just try getting through this 11-minute speech of his without bawling.
Best novel I’ve read, and the best work of nonfiction: I’m usually a nonfiction obsessive, but I’m going to break form and go with two novels here.
The Brothers Karamazov is the single greatest work of moral philosophy I’ve ever read (and I was forced to read a lot of philosophy in college). It is fundamentally about the question: What does it mean to live an ethical life (and how much does morality hinge on belief in God)? The characters don’t just sit in an ivory tower opining about the answers to these questions; they move through the world with radically different ontologies and ethical frameworks, and as a reader, you get to witness firsthand where those worldviews lead them. No amount of Aristotle or Kant can give you that.
There’s a quote from the Dutch historian Rutger Bregman that I love. To him, imagining utopia “isn’t an attempt to predict the future. It’s an attempt to unlock the future. To fling open the windows of our minds.” That’s what The Dispossessed, by Ursula K. Le Guin, did for me. I’ve never come across a more serious effort to imagine what it would mean to build a truly socialist society—including the political structures, cultural traits, social norms, and even linguistic tics that would make that economic system work. The result is neither the hellish dystopia that the right imagines nor the perfect paradise the left does.
My favorite way of wasting time on my phone: Looking at food recipes and recipe videos. I spend an inordinate amount of time thinking about food. Because of my family background, I’m partial to Lebanese and Palestinian cuisine, but I’ve recently been on a pretty strong Korean food kick, and I’ve found The Korean Vegan’s TikTok videos (and cookbook) to be a godsend. Pick Up Limes’s YouTube channel is also a must-watch for anyone who wants access to a plethora of delicious, cheap, healthy, and easy-to-cook meals.
The upcoming entertainment event I’m most looking forward to: Honestly, it’s the release of Taylor Swift’s next album, The Tortured Poets Department. First, because I am engaged to one of the biggest Swifties the world has ever seen (who has successfully converted me to the cause). Second, because of what a once-in-a-generation opportunity it is to witness an artist who is at the top of her game the way T. Swift is. I always wonder what it would have been like to experience Beatlemania, in the 1960s. I think this may be the closest I’ll ever get.
The Week Ahead
- Civil War, a dystopian action film about a team of journalists pushing to reach the White House before rebel factions do (in theaters Friday)
- Fallout, a postapocalyptic drama series based on the popular video-game franchise, about the survivors of a nuclear war who finally venture out of their fallout bunkers (premieres Thursday on Prime Video)
- Mania, a novel by Lionel Shriver that’s set in an alternate version of 2011, in which everybody is considered equally smart and discrimination against less intelligent people is banned (out Tuesday)
Essay
The True Cost of the Churchgoing Bust
By Derek Thompson
As an agnostic, I have spent most of my life thinking about the decline of faith in America in mostly positive terms. Organized religion seemed, to me, beset by scandal and entangled in noxious politics. So, I thought, what is there really to mourn? Only in the past few years have I come around to a different view. Maybe religion, for all of its faults, works a bit like a retaining wall to hold back the destabilizing pressure of American hyper-individualism, which threatens to swell and spill over in its absence.
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