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 reveals what’s keeping them entertained. Today’s special guest is Vann R. Newkirk II, a senior editor and the host of the podcasts Floodlines and Holy Week.

Fresh again from summer
and its fields of unrepentant grass,
we strip down in the dooryard
of my little house, check each other over
for ticks. By now we have
outlived embarrassment,
though of the naked pastimes,
this one remains the more intimate:
what shapes we make
in the flashlight’s chiaroscuro,
interrogating every mole, every freckle,
before kissing them, an apology
to the innocent for such accusations.

This article was originally published by Knowable Magazine.Haldre Rogers’s entry into ecology came via the sort of man-made calamity that scientists euphemistically call an “accidental experiment.”She’d taken a job in 2002 on the Pacific island of Guam and the neighboring Mariana Islands to study the invasive brown tree snakes that were introduced to Guam, likely from a cargo ship, shortly after World War II.

After the devastating mass shooting in Lewiston, Maine, late last month, an all-too-familiar ritual began to play out: The initial horror over the deaths of 18 victims gave way to second-guessing about what more local authorities might have done.The gunman, Robert Card, went on a rampage at a bar and at a bowling alley. He crossed town without any police intervention, abandoned his car, and disappeared for days, until he was found dead of a self-inflicted wound.

When Florida Governor Ron DeSantis appointed six new members to the board of New College of Florida earlier this year, giving the oversight panel of the public liberal-arts college in Sarasota a decidedly right-wing bent, there was no ambiguity in the message he was sending. But in case anyone had doubts, one of his appointees, Christopher Rufo, the conservative activist who led the push to redefine critical race theory, quickly eliminated them.

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. President Joe Biden is facing a unique set of challenges as he prepares to run for reelection. The most unique of all: No one his age has ever run for president. And voters are worried, even those who give him credit for an improving economy.

A new pattern is emerging in Chinese foreign policy that bodes poorly for global stability: Chinese leader Xi Jinping pretends to favor peaceful resolutions to international conflicts while actually encouraging the world’s most destabilizing forces.In the Middle East, Beijing has vociferously called for an end to the fighting between Israel and Hamas and claims to take an evenhanded approach to the belligerents.

This is an edition of The Wonder Reader, a newsletter in which our editors recommend a set of stories to spark your curiosity and fill you with delight. Sign up here to get it every Saturday morning.When you’re suffering from a cold, the situation might seem perfectly clear—your nose is stuffed. But the truth about what’s happening to you is a little more complicated.

This article was originally published by Hakai Magazine.On November 14, 2016, a huge earthquake rocked Kaikōura, a town on New Zealand’s South Island, killing two people, triggering a tsunami, and thrusting stretches of coastline 18 feet up out of the sea. The biologists Ceridwen Fraser and Jon Waters were watching the aftermath on television. “We were seeing images of kelp and [abalone] lifted out of the water and dying,” Waters says.

Earlier this week, while walking through central Jerusalem, I heard a chant in the distance. War has driven away tourists, and in a tourist city without tourists, sounds carry far. The discernible portion of the chant was a single word in Hebrew, akshav—“now.” I followed the sound to Safra Square, where a crowd had gathered, yelling in sorrow and fury, to protest the kidnapping of more than 240 people, most of them Israelis, by Hamas.