This article was originally published by High Country News.
On a warm day in August, Anthony Stewart hiked through a forest on Washington’s Olympic Peninsula, making his way through a tangle of ferns and grasses. Wispy, lichen-coated branches hung overhead, providing shade as he set down his backpack and shovel, and he and his team prepared to dig.
This was one of Stewart’s favorite study sites, he says.

Nuclear energy occupies a strange place in the American psyche—representing at once a dream of endless emissions-free power and a nightmare of catastrophic meltdowns and radioactive waste. The more prosaic downside is that new plants are extremely expensive: America’s most recent attempt to build a nuclear facility, in Georgia, was supposed to be completed in four years for $14 billion.

There’s rarely a dull moment in Iranian affairs. The past few months alone have seen clashes with Israel and Pakistan, and a helicopter crash that killed Iran’s president and foreign minister. But spectacular as these events are, the most important changes often happen gradually, by imperceptible degrees.

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.
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 Malcolm Ferguson, an assistant editor who has written about the case for Kwanzaa, and why he wishes his family would take up the holiday again.

The Atlantic has often channeled the resources of poetry—its charged and immediate patterns of language—to mourn and memorialize the war dead. The earliest years of the magazine spanned the Civil War, during which the editors published dirges, elegies, and ballads that told stories to console, to heal, to hearten. An elegy for Rupert Brooke took the sonnet into a new, modern vernacular at the time of the First World War.

This week, Israel released an appalling video featuring five female Israeli soldiers taken captive at Nahal Oz military base on October 7. Fearful and bloody, the women beg for their lives while Hamas fighters mill around and alternately threaten to kill them and compliment their appearance. The captors call the women “sabaya,” which Israel translated as “women who can get pregnant.

Editor’s Note: Washington Week With The Atlantic is a partnership between NewsHour Productions, WETA, and The Atlantic airing every Friday on PBS stations nationwide. Check your local listings or watch full episodes here.  
As the vice-presidential sweepstakes continues, Republicans are vying for a slot as former President Donald Trump’s potential running mate.

This article was originally published by Hakai Magazine.
There’s an old adage about oysters: During months whose names don’t contain the letter r—May, June, July, and August—it’s best to stay away.
An oyster eaten outside these months should have a satisfying snap, like al dente pasta, says Shina Wysocki, the farm director at Chelsea Farms, in Washington State. That slightly firm texture is a sign that you’re eating a sexually immature oyster.

Even as Donald Trump relies on unprecedented support from Black and Latino voters, he is embracing policies that would expose their communities to much greater police surveillance and enforcement. The policies that Trump is pledging to implement around crime and policing in a second presidential term would reverse the broad trend of police reform that accelerated after the murder of George Floyd, four years ago today.

They did not break the mold when they made Glen Powell. That’s not to say the actor isn’t talented—after first really noticing him as a strapping baseball hunk in the filmmaker Richard Linklater’s Everybody Wants Some!!, I figured Hollywood would take quick notice of his charms. Since then, he’s vaulted to fame in movies such as Set It Up, Top Gun: Maverick, and Anyone but You.