A Prequel TV Series That Surprises Viewers
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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 Sally Jenkins, a staff writer who has reported on the man who broke physics, athletes who keep competing into their 40s, and how to fix the mess of college sports.
Sally was pleasantly surprised by the lighthearted tone of A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms. She also recommends listening to Joni Mitchell’s 2000 version of “Both Sides Now,” visiting the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art, and watching I’m Not There for its mosaic-like quality.
— Stephanie Bai, senior associate editor
The television show I’m most enjoying right now: There is a Hollywood story in David Niven’s autobiography Bring on the Empty Horses, in which the screenwriter Charles MacArthur asks Charlie Chaplin how to make the comic pratfall scene of a person slipping on a banana peel new again. Chaplin suggests that MacArthur start with a lady walking down the street and cut to a shot of the banana peel on the sidewalk, which the lady steps over—right before she falls down a manhole.
A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms embodies this precept of good screenwriting. The prequel series illustrates a reversal to innocence after the relentless ruthlessness of Game of Thrones; it’s a great example of how to capture viewers who probably thought nothing more could surprise them.
The upcoming entertainment event I’m most looking forward to: Whatever the next season of The Diplomat brings. Smartest-written show in a long time. Also Project Hail Mary, just because there are no bad space movies, just like there are no bad heist movies. [Related: A splashy drama about the diplomacy of marriage]
An actor I would watch in anything: Meryl Streep, of course. There is something athletic about Streep’s acting, not physically, but in her refusal to ever give less than her absolute all.
My favorite blockbuster and favorite art movie: Aliens for blockbuster, because it ushered in the female action hero. Without Sigourney Weaver spraying fire, there would be no Uma Thurman in Kill Bill or Charlize Theron as the Imperator Furiosa in Mad Max: Fury Road.
For an art movie, Tár. Does that qualify? If not, then I’m Not There, which I saw about seven times. I loved the mosaic-ness of it.
Best novel I’ve recently read, and the best work of nonfiction: Best novel is Ian McEwan’s What We Can Know. He lures you into a physical and psychological world that is entirely believable even though you know it’s total fiction—one that manages to feel prescient and ancient at the same time. To make you believe the most improbable things, he has to credibly write from the character’s psychology, and that’s so much harder than, say, plot. [Related: The best books of 2025]
As for nonfiction, Sidney Blumenthal’s multivolume biography of Abraham Lincoln. Really underrated; you think you’ve heard everything about Lincoln, and yet Blumenthal comes up with all kinds of small facts about him borne by pure dogged research and an eye for detail.
A poem that I return to: Gerard Manley Hopkins’s “God’s Grandeur.” For the groundbreaking rhythm of the poem (“Generations have trod, have trod, have trod”) and the imagery of the sun flaming over the world “like shining from shook foil.”
A quiet song that I love, and a loud song that I love: Joni Mitchell’s rerecorded orchestral, smoky-breathed, and whiskeyed version of “Both Sides Now,” which is a perfect bracket. The first version is about growing up, and the second is about growing old, with an unmatched poignancy. For a loud song, without question: “Mr. Brightside,” by the Killers, which has somehow become a sports-stadium anthem; there’s nothing like 80,000 middle-aged men all singing with the loudspeakers, “Now I’m falling asleep, and she’s calling a cab …”
The last thing that made me cry: I can’t remember the last one, only the most powerful one: the original production of Tom Stoppard’s Arcadia on the London stage with Felicity Kendal, Bill Nighy, and Rufus Sewell. Sat shuddering in my seat as the lights drew down.
The last thing that made me snort with laughter: The ludicrous perfection of the hockey bodies on Heated Rivalry.
A sculpture that I cherish: This will sound so obvious, but Michelangelo’s David. It’s the single best portrayal of an athlete I’ve ever seen, if you observe it from that perspective as opposed to an artistic one or a biblical one. Look at the dangling hand. Look at the stance. Look at the looseness, the pre-coil of the body. He’s getting ready to throw the heat.
The last museum or gallery show that I loved: The Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art’s Anselm Kiefer installation, which includes Women of the Revolution, his haunting sea-battle pieces, and Die Schechina (Sefiroth), the glass-encased plaster wedding dress cut with shards. I’d never seen a Kiefer piece until three years ago. My birthday happens to be at the peak of fall season, so I made a trip to Massachusetts to see the colors change. My friends took me to MASS MoCA—and it was the best gift anyone ever gave me.
Something I recently reread: I periodically revisit To Kill a Mockingbird to remind myself how to build mood and apprehension. Sportswriting is often about trying to make the reader feel a sense of anticipation even if they already know the final score. Harper Lee does something remarkable in the opening of her book: Even though the reader knows that this story about children will likely turn out okay for them in the end, Lee seeds dread in the first sentence, making you want to know how it’s all going to happen. “When he was nearly thirteen, my brother Jem got his arm badly broken at the elbow.” First of all, got his arm badly broken! Somebody did it to him; he didn’t fall from a tree. Second, “at the elbow” is an automatic flinch for the reader. It’s a master class, that sentence—a cloud passes right across the sun. And she maintains that tension throughout the book.
A piece of journalism that recently changed my perspective on a topic: Anything by Nellie Bowles in her Friday column for The Free Press. I don’t always agree, but I usually come away saying, “I hadn’t really thought of that,” and laughing like hell while I do.
A favorite story I’ve read in The Atlantic: Isn’t William Langewiesche on the Malaysia ghost flight the best piece of modern magazine writing ever?
Something delightful introduced to me by a kid in my life: Not ashamed to say, Taylor Swift. My goddaughter would come over, and it was Radio Free Taylor in our house: all Taylor, all the time. Slowly but surely, the lyrics worked on me, and I realized I was listening to a hell of a writer. I later took great pride in introducing my goddaughter to a Swift song she hadn’t heard: “Renegade,” a collaboration with Big Red Machine. “Are you really gonna talk about timing in times like these?” Bang.
The Week Ahead
- How to Make A Killing, a comedy thriller (starring Glen Powell) about a disowned heir who will do anything to reclaim his family fortune (in theaters Friday)
- Season 3 of The Night Agent, about an FBI agent who goes to Istanbul on a mission to track down a Treasury agent (out Thursday on Netflix)
- The AI Paradox, a book by Virginia Dignum on how AI’s limits highlight the uniqueness of human intelligence (out Tuesday)
Essay
The Multibillion-Dollar Foundation That Controls the Humanities
By Tyler Austin Harper
In 1964, an influential report identified a disquieting trend in academia. “Increasingly during the past few years,” it began, “concern has been expressed about the condition, in this country, of those fields of intellectual activity generally called the humanities.” The 200-plus-page document was a publication of the National Commission on the Humanities, which had been established the previous year.
Reading the commission’s findings six decades later, one could reasonably conclude that what today gets called the “crisis of the humanities” is not so much a discrete 21st-century emergency as the latest expression of an educational catastrophe long in the making. The challenges outlined in 1964 are familiar: meager funding, insufficient support for graduate students, too few faculty jobs, an education system that glamorizes science and math, dense writing that alienates the public, and on and on. “The state of the humanities today creates a crisis,” the report concluded. “There is genuine doubt today whether the universities and colleges can insure that the purposes for which they were established and sometimes endowed will be fulfilled.”
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Photo Album
At the Winter Olympics on Tuesday, competing short-track racers crashed into one another at the finish line.
Rafaela Jinich contributed to this newsletter.
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