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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 Emma Williams, an associate editor who helps oversee the magazine’s social media and has also written about her home state of Texas.
Emma is a habitual rewatcher of Normal People, a show that she says has resonated with her differently over time. She also enjoys listening to her namesake Emmylou Harris, laughing over Adults episodes, and watching Hailee Catalano’s comforting cooking videos.
— Stephanie Bai, senior associate editor
The television show I’m most enjoying right now: The first scene of FX’s Adults tells you pretty much everything you need to know about the show: It’s crass, crude, absurd, and indulgently hilarious. Adults pokes fun at Gen Z without being judgmental or predictable, and it features some familiarly ridiculous plights. Maybe don’t watch it with your grandmother—but your spunky aunt is probably okay.
A quiet song that I love: I discovered the British DJ Fred Again when I was going down an NPR Tiny Desk Concert rabbit hole years ago. I was immediately struck by his talent—but over time, I have come to better appreciate the emotion he evokes through his performances. Even in his natural habitat, behind the DJ booth, Fred isn’t what you might normally expect from an EDM artist: He samples spoken-word poems, Zoom calls, and random internet videos to create songs that you can just as easily dance to as you can cry to.
I know I’m cheating a bit by saying that his entire Tiny Desk production is my favorite quiet song, but the fact that he was able to pull off an acoustic EDM performance is remarkable. To re-create the sound of electronic beats, he used the marimba, the vibraphone, and the piano; he also pounded and tapped on a desk and layered in his soft, husky voice. It is gentle, engrossing, and stupidly impressive. A loud song that I love: The first time I heard “Dance Yrself Clean,” by LCD Soundsystem, I was confused. My best friend played it for me, and by minute two, I was enjoying the song, but I could not comprehend how this hazy and somewhat repetitive tune could continue for another seven minutes and be as “life changing” as she had promised. Then I hit 3:05 on the track. I felt the ba-da-da-dum in my bones before James Murphy’s newly impassioned voice flooded through the speakers. This is now my song for any moment when I need to drown out my thoughts. Whether I’m going through a breakup, a bad day, or an existential crisis, I’ll put on “Dance Yrself Clean” and itch through the first three minutes, eagerly anticipating the rush of euphoria that hits after the beat drops. Years later, that same friend and I heard the song live. I have no idea whether we were crying or laughing or shouting, but I know we were dancing with abandon—and letting the music wash over us.
A cultural product I loved as a teenager and still love: I watched Normal People for the first time when I was 19, and I’ve rewatched it at least once a year every year since. I have never wavered in my fondness for it, but my reaction to the characters and storylines has evolved with time. When I first saw the show, based on Sally Rooney’s novel of the same name, I fell madly in love with Connell, barely registering that his cold avoidance of Marianne in public was wrong. I just thought he was broody and complicated; therefore, to my teenage mind, he was perfect and dreamy. I’m glad to say that I have moved past that (kind of), and I now find it difficult to watch his treatment of Marianne in the first few episodes. In my 20s, I resonate more with Marianne’s college arc. Specifically, her need to become the coolest, most stylish, most successful version of herself—even if it comes at the cost of her own happiness. Marianne and Connell’s lack of clear communication is always maddening. But I understand it more with age. Sometimes vocalizing what you really want can be more terrifying than staying quiet.
A musical artist who means a lot to me: I have to pay homage to my namesake, the inimitable country folk artist Emmylou Harris. Her music reminds me of my home state of Texas. Listening to her song “Boulder to Birmingham” transports me back to long drives through the plains of West Texas and the seemingly endless miles of wind turbines. I hear my parents’ voices, lovingly calling me Emmylou and Emmy-lou-lou. Whenever I feel adrift, her music pulls me back to the ground.
A YouTuber, TikToker, Twitch streamer, or other online creator I’m a fan of: I have an embarrassing confession: There is a cooking influencer whom I’m really obsessed with—as in, I went to a meet and greet of hers, and I send her the occasional tipsy Instagram DM. (Sometimes she even responds!) Hailee Catalano is a James Beard–winning chef. Her food is fresh and unique, and her video style isn’t gimmicky or aggressive like that of so many other cooking accounts—it’s simple and personable. My favorite series of hers is called Friday Night Dinner, which is a collaboration with her partner, Chuck Cruz, who is also a chef and content creator. They film themselves making a new meal every week, and I can only describe their vibe as homey. The videos sometimes have awkward pauses and funny asides (and, of course, clips of their dog, Gus), and watching them makes me feel like I’m sitting at the kitchen counter as two of my friends prepare something delicious for us to eat.
A poem, or line of poetry, that I return to: The older I get, the more I find myself recalling the lines of Langston Hughes’s poem “Harlem.” Hughes asks: “What happens to a dream deferred?” I recently turned 25, and the “quarter-life crisis” is certainly hitting me. I think about all of my childhood hopes that have dissipated, and all of the ones I still have that I’m not sure will come true. I, too, wonder what happens to these dreams.
Here are three Sunday reads from The Atlantic:
- George Packer on sons and mothers
- Anne Applebaum: MAGA is making the world safe for corruption.
- What comes after America
The Week Ahead
- Primetime, a crime thriller about the rise of the To Catch a Predator host Chris Hansen and the world of televised vigilantism (in theaters Friday)
- Youth, a comedic-drama series about a 50-year-old divorcée balancing dating with caring for her aging parents and adult son (streaming today on HBO Max)
- Mazywood, a horror novel by Tananarive Due about a man uncovering the truth about his grandmother, set in Old Hollywood and the present day (out Tuesday)
Essay
Math Can’t Go On Like This
By Kai Williams
In late July, one of the world’s most famous mathematicians issued a warning to his field. Math is entering a “turbulent period,” the UCLA professor Terence Tao said in front of a packed lecture hall at the International Congress of Mathematicians. AI is getting so good at math, he said, that it’s causing a “crisis in our mathematical values and practices.”
Earlier in the same week that Tao gave his talk at math’s most prestigious conference, a researcher at Anthropic had used Claude to disprove an 87-year-old math conjecture. Still, when I asked mathematicians at the conference about their experiences with AI, most hadn’t thought deeply about the topic. Many seemed a little surprised that a journalist was asking them about it at all.
More in Culture
- An ingredient that’s all too rare in adult life
- A shouting match and an ultimatum at the Kennedy Center
- The next change Trump has planned for the Smithsonian
- A night for actor’s actors, not movie stars
- The knives are out for Bill Belichick.
Catch Up on The Atlantic
- What Trump’s bizarre posts are teaching us about AI
- Pennsylvania’s measles outbreak is enormous.
- Ian Bogost: College is coming apart.
Photo Album
Willem de Kooning took the language of drawing, ripped it up, and rearranged it, Sebastian Smee writes. Take a look at some of his drawings from a new exhibition about the influential abstract expressionist—and read about what he had to unlearn.
Rafaela Jinich contributed to this newsletter.
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The post A Show That Lovingly Pokes Fun at Gen Z appeared first on The Atlantic.
