Every meal I make begins with a single choice: extra-virgin olive oil or canola? For as long as I’ve cooked, these have been my kitchen workhorses, because they’re versatile, affordable, and—most of all—healthy. Or so I thought.
These days, every trip to the grocery store makes me second-guess myself. Lined up next to the bottles of basics such as canola, vegetable, and corn oil are relatively exotic—and expensive—options: grapeseed oil, pumpkin-seed oil, walnut oil.

The men dominating the Billboard Hot 100 this summer are doing traditional male things: picking fights, playing guitar, bellowing about being saved or sabotaged by the opposite sex. Meanwhile, what are the women of popular music up to? Being brats.
Brat may sound like an insult; Hollywood’s “Brat Pack” certainly didn’t appreciate the term in 1985.

It’s troublingly hot in June, which means the United States is entering the heat-death zone for workers again. We’ve been here before. In San Antonio, on a blisteringly hot June day in 2022, Gabriel Infante, a 24-year-old construction worker, died in his first week on the job, after he entered a state of delirium while laying fiber-optic cable; medics measured his temperature at 109.8 degrees Fahrenheit. That same month, Esteban Chavez Jr.

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.
Donald Trump’s reported idea to replace the income tax with huge tariffs on imports exposes the hollowness of his populism.
First, here are three new stories from The Atlantic:
The 1970s movie that explains 2020s America
Trump dreams of a swifter death penalty.

Water gave every living thing on Earth the gift of existence. And yet, of late, it seems determined to wipe us out. The Atlantic hurricane season, widely predicted to be a fierce one, is here, and early this morning the first named storm, Alberto, made landfall in northeastern Mexico and drenched everything in its path.
And in Florida last week, it was as if the heavens had turned on the tap and simply left it running.

This is an edition of Time-Travel Thursdays, a journey through The Atlantic’s archives to contextualize the present and surface delightful treasures. Sign up here.
Working on the Books desk of a 167-year-old publication offers incredible opportunities—and dredges up some insecurities.

Like the members of Fleetwood Mac, or the Mamas & the Papas, or the Beatles, or Van Halen, the rock band at the center of the Broadway play Stereophonic can’t seem to keep its act together. The bassist stumbles drunk and late into a recording session; the guitarist keeps futzing with the tempo on a song. The musicians are clearly close with one another—lots of inside jokes, lots of casual touching—but that only makes the bickering more personal.