Innehållsförteckning för April 25, 2025 från The Week Magazine

American conservatives have long compared left-wing campus zealots to the Red Guards of China’s Cultural Revolution, given to intolerance and empty sloganeering. There may have been some truth to that, but now it is the Trump administration that seems to be following the Cultural Revolution’s path. While we associate the Cultural Revolution with images of students dragging out their bloodied professors, that period was soon followed by the closing of the universities as Chairman Mao sought to stamp out the remnants of pre-Communist culture. Now, similarly, the culture war of the Right has come, with full force, to our universities. The presidents of the University of Pennsylvania and Harvard University resigned after a disastrously out-of-touch performance in Congress at the end of 2023. Republicans then had legitimate points about…

■ A sixth-grade teacher in Idaho was ordered to remove a classroom poster saying “Everyone is welcome here.” Sarah Inama said administrators told her that the poster’s depiction of hands with varying skin tones was “a “political opinion’’ that violated President Trump’s ban on “equity ideology’’ in schools. Inama briefly took the poster down, but then put it back up. “You either believe everyone is welcome here or you don’t,” she said. ■ Flight attendants for a charter airline taking deported migrants to El Salvador are wondering how to handle an emergency when their passengers are in shackles. The attendants have been told not to talk to or touch the deportees. If the plane has to be evacuated, said Lala, an attendant for Global Crossing Airlines, “I don’t know…

Having a famous father didn’t spare E.A. Hanks from hardship, said Mike Sacks in Vanity Fair. Now 42, Elizabeth Ann Hanks—the full name of the daughter of Tom Hanks and his first wife, Susan Dillingham—spent much of her childhood with her mother after her parents’ 1985 divorce. That meant growing up in a home with a mentally ill woman who abused drugs and alcohol. “I understood my mom was an addict, and I had a good grip on what that meant because of all the hours I spent at 12-step programs,” she says. “But I had no vocabulary for why my mom talked to God out loud or would tell me there were men hiding in our closets.” While she says her mother “was doing the best she could,”…

Joe Cirincione The New Republic In his first term, President Trump “for no good reason blew up the successful agreement the U.S. and its allies had negotiated with Iran,” said Joe Cirincione. Now he’s trying to bring it back—in much the same form. The Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) negotiated by the Obama administration had “successfully blocked all of Iran’s paths to a bomb” with an intrusive inspection and monitoring regime. In 2018, Trump withdrew the U.S. from the deal, as part of his efforts “to erase anything Barack Obama had achieved.” Trump claimed at the time he would force Iran to accept “a bigger, better deal” that would include ending its regional aggression—but “it didn’t happen.” Instead, Iran went to work enriching a stockpile of uranium that…

Fifi Abou Dib L’Orient-Le Jour The unthinkable has become thinkable, said Fifi Abou Dib. In Lebanon, people are suddenly talking about “normalizing” relations with Israel—a country we have refused to recognize since its 1948 creation, and with which we have been in a state of on-again, off-again conflict for 60 years. With Hezbollah weakened by Israeli bombing, and a more pro-Western government in Beirut, the U.S. is pushing for a deal. In an “ideal world,” of course we would want relations with our neighbor. But this isn’t that world. For a treaty to be “honest and lasting,” it has to be balanced, and there’s nothing equal about our relationship with Israel. It not only continues to bomb Beirut neighborhoods on the pretext of targeting Hezbollah but also insists on…

■ Researchers using cadavers to study the accumulation of microplastics found on average 7 grams of plastic per brain—about the amount in five water bottle caps. Brain samples from 2024 had nearly 50 percent more microplastics than samples from 2016. The New York Times ■ Federal spending has gone up even as DOGE slashes jobs and contracts. The government has spent $154 billion more since the inauguration than President Biden’s administration spent over the same period, in part due to higher Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid payments and higher costs to service the debt. The Wall Street Journal ■ The Department of the Navy has culled 381 books from the Naval Academy library, including works covering the Holocaust, feminism, civil rights, and racism. Maya Angelou’s I Know Why the…

Life-threatening invasive strep infections are skyrocketing in the U.S., with cases more than doubling between 2013 and 2022. The bacteria known as group A streptococcus is common: Many of us have had strep throat. Invasive strep, though, occurs when the bug spreads through the bloodstream and infects areas like the lungs. Then it can cause complications like flesh-eating disease or streptococcal toxic shock syndrome, which can quickly lead to organ failure. Data collected by the Centers for Disease Control for just 10 states showed cases rising from 1,082 in 2013 to 2,759 in 2022. Of the 21,000 recorded cases, almost 2,000 resulted in death. “Extrapolate that across the country,” Victor Nizet, from the University of California, San Diego, tells NBCNews.com, “[and] we’re probably well into more than 10,000 deaths.”…

Katie Kitamura’s latest novel, her first since 2021’s Intimacies, recalls Alfred Hitchcock’s Vertigo and Ingmar Bergman’s Persona, said Priscilla Gilman in The Boston Globe. Like those mind-bending films, it’s “a radically disquieting meditation on the nature of identity and the construction of selfhood.” The unnamed narrator, a middle-aged film and stage actress, meets with a young man who has claimed he may be her son. Though she has informed him that she’s never given birth, they grow close. But halfway through the novel, the story begins again, with sharp differences in the characters’ shared reality. “Bold, stark, genre-bending, Audition will haunt your dreams.” It also rewards a re-reading, said Justin Taylor in The Washington Post. On my second go, I was more aware of the effects of the young…

There Is No Place for Us by Brian Goldstone (Crown, $30) The people profiled in this “appropriately enraging” book “work a lot, and for very little,” said Jennifer Szalai in The New York Times. Author Brian Goldstone profiles five families as they shuffle from shared apartments to hotel rooms to cars in their struggle to stay housed while holding down jobs. “There Is No Place for Us is an exceptional feat of reporting, full of an immediacy that calls to mind Adrian Nicole LeBlanc’s Random Family,” and it spotlights a nearly invisible national crisis. The Social Genome by Dalton Conley (Norton, $30) This “immensely informative” book reframes the nature vs. nurture debate, said Glenn C. Altschuler in Psychology Today. Princeton sociologist Dalton Conley explains how a measure known as…

Justin Vernon, at 43, is “ready to walk into the light,” said Leah Lu in Rolling Stone. Ever since the Eau Claire, Wis., native debuted under the alias Bon Iver with 2007’s acclaimed For Emma, Forever Ago, all of his albums until now “captured him in the throes of spiritual crisis.” But Sable, Fable, which adds nine songs to the three he released on an EP in October, finds him “at his most hopeful and open.” On the new tracks, he often still employs his “signature lilting falsetto.” But he’s leaning into “more triumphant, anthemic pop melodies,” and those melodies ride atop “propulsive percussion and a whole lot of pedal steel.” As usual, Vernon is stretching his sound, said Stephen Thompson in NPR.org. But while Sable, Fable “revels…

Chef’s Table: Legends Season 8 of the beautifully executed docuseries about the lives and kitchens of the world’s top chefs focuses on some heavy hitters in its four new episodes: British chef Jamie Oliver, Spanish-American restaurateur José Andrés, French Laundry founder Thomas Keller, and farm-to-table pioneer Alice Waters. Netflix Yes, Chef! Speaking of Andrés, the man who turned Americans on to tapas is also co-hosting this new cooking competition alongside Martha Stewart. The duo will put 12 contestants through rigorous cooking challenges, with the winner claiming a $250,000 prize. Peacock 24 in 24: Last Chef Standing And you thought Carmy’s kitchen in The Bear was stressful. This competition throws a 24-hour barrage of cooking challenges at its contestants. The second season pits upstart chefs against seasoned vets like Stephanie…

“You won’t find lingcod outside of the West Coast,” says Scott Clark in Coastal: 130 Recipes From a California Road Trip (Chronicle Books). Also known by its nickname, “buckethead,” lingcod is what I use in this ceviche, but you can choose any white-fleshed fish. “Just don’t use frozen fillets,” and make sure you get something that’s super fresh and of high quality by telling your fishmonger that you intend to eat it marinated raw. “You can go crazy with the other ingredients.” If you can’t find gooseberries, just double the Sungold cherry tomatoes, but aim for a variety of textures, colors, and sensations. I serve this ceviche with tortilla chips I make from homemade tortillas, dusted with a homemade Tajín-style spice blend. Tortillas are simple to make if you…

May 7 is a deadline that every U.S. air traveler should know about, said Hannah Sampson and Andrea Sachs in The Washington Post. On that date, after years of delay, the Transportation Security Administration will finally stop accepting standard driver’s licenses as adequate identification for passengers boarding domestic flights. The new standard will be a security-enhanced Real ID, which is what you have if your current driver’s license is emblazoned with a star. There are a few acceptable substitutes, including a U.S. passport, so not all travelers will need to update their license quickly. TSA branches have been freed to employ a “phased” approach to enforcement, but “what that means in practice is not entirely clear,” so don’t risk facing a long delay at the security check or being…

Jean Marsh knew firsthand that Britain runs on its servant class. While house-sitting for a wealthy friend, Marsh—then in her mid-30s and nearly broke—and fellow actress Eileen Atkins forged the idea for a TV show about the overlooked staff in an aristocratic household. The two created Upstairs, Downstairs, which debuted in 1971 to much fanfare, and not just in the U.K. The show’s 68 episodes eventually reached 80 countries, and it was particularly popular in the U.S. So was the Emmy-winning Marsh, who played Rose Buck, the head parlormaid and became a household name in London and beyond. “I was on buses and rubbish bins everywhere,” Marsh said. Born to a working-class London family, Marsh was a talented dancer, singer, and actress from an early age. She attended drama…

Redesigning the pearly gates, after the Vatican put “God’s architect,” the modernist master Antoni Gaudí, on the path to sainthood. Togetherness, after three female elephants at the San Diego Zoo Safari Park quickly formed a protective “alert circle” to protect two calves as the ground shook from a magnitude-5.2 earthquake. On sensing the tremors, the females immediately surrounded 7-year-old calves named Zuli and Mkhaya until the quake passed. Try, try again, after Rory McIlroy finally won the Masters to give him the last of the four majors in golf’s Grand Slam—11 years after he clinched his third. McIlroy, who lost a three-stroke lead on the final round of the Masters in 2011, called the victory “the best day of my golfing life.’’ Bad week for: Security, after a whistleblower…

Tracy Chapman was just 16 when she wrote the 1988 hit “Talkin’ Bout a Revolution,” said Lindsay Zoladz in The New York Times. The song’s theme of social justice—of how “poor people gonna rise up”—might seem precocious for a high schooler, but “that was the world that I knew,” says the Cleveland native, now 61. “I grew up in a working-class family and was very much aware of the struggles that my mom encountered as she was raising me and my sister. There were other people in my family who were working in blue-collar jobs as the industrial economy was starting to fail. So I’m trying to understand them and paint a picture in these songs.” She landed at Tufts University, outside Boston, on a scholarship. “I felt like…

Cathy Young The Bulwark President Trump’s vow to bring peace to Ukraine “seems all but dead and forgotten,” said Cathy Young. Late last month “Trump was touting an apparent success”: an agreement for a partial cease-fire. But Putin agreed only to limited terms that were “likely to benefit Moscow more than Kiev,” such as ending the destruction of Russia’s oil depots and the use of force in the Black Sea, where Ukraine has already taken out a third of Russia’s warships. Trump has issued only tepid objections as Russia escalated its attacks on residential neighborhoods, such as a recent missile strike on a playground that killed nine children. The White House says peace efforts continue but confirmed Ukraine wouldn’t even be discussed at U.S.-Russia talks that started last week…

“Once you grasp Trump as an elected monarch, his full rebuke to the very idea of America comes into clearer view. He is precisely—almost uncannily—what this country was founded to oppose: an arbitrary, corrupt, mendacious, and utterly incompetent king. We need to repeatedly expose this king’s long train of abuses and usurpations, his imposition of taxes, i.e. tariffs, without our consent, his transporting people in America beyond seas to jails in dictatorships from which there is no escape or reprieve. We need to insist that a president whose character is marked by every act which may define a tyrant be subjected once again to the Constitution.” Andrew Sullivan in his Substack newsletter…

Jarrel De Matas Daily Express Trinidadians are hurtling “backward into our colonial past,” said Jarrel De Matas. Our highest appeals court has just overturned a 2018 ruling that had nullified an anti-gay law adopted a century ago, under British rule. The “buggery law,” as it’s known in the terminology of the era, criminalized same-sex intimacy. The ruling nullifying it should have ended forever the threat that “consenting adults” could be jailed for what they do behind closed doors. But the government challenged the decision, starting a yearslong legal battle that has already cost taxpayers a fortune, “all to defend religious conservatism.” The justices shrugged off concerns that they were trampling the rights of LGBTQ Trinidadians by noting that nobody has yet been punished or even charged under the outdated…

Andrei Ivanji Vreme President Aleksandar Vucic seems to have pulled his new prime minister “out of his sleeve,” said Andrei Ivanji. The previous two people he named to what is supposed to be the “most powerful political position in the country” were both fellow members of the Serbian Progressive Party, “raiders and proven defenders” of the nationalist Vucic’s agenda. Yet the incoming premier, Djuro Macut, is not even a politician; he’s a doctor, a professor of endocrinology. With his “unassuming face,” he looks like “an AI-generated robot” that some PR team created to “halt the sliding popularity of a Vucic government steeped in corruption.” It’s obvious why Vucic picked a professor. Universities “stood firmly behind the students” who led the recent mass protests against cronyism and democratic backsliding—protests that…

During his confirmation hearings, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. “presented himself as a supporter of vaccines,” said Apoorva Mandavilli in The New York Times, but his actions as health secretary tell a starkly different story. He and his agencies have taken “far-reaching, sometimes subtle steps to undermine confidence in vaccine efficacy and safety.” Last week, the health secretary announced a “massive” study that he says will determine by September the cause of the “autism epidemic”—led by a top proponent of the repeatedly debunked theory that vaccines cause autism. Under RFK Jr.’s conspiracy-minded, anti-scientific leadership, health agencies have halted research into vaccine hesitancy, cut billions in state funding for childhood immunization, and terminated an ad campaign promoting flu shots. Top FDA vaccine regulator Peter Marks quit last month under pressure, saying…

The covers of medieval manuscripts were typically fashioned from the tanned skins of local livestock such as calves, goats, and sheep. But more than a dozen books at Clairvaux Abbey in northeastern France in the 12th and 13th centuries are covered in something else: something hairy. Now, using DNA analysis, researchers have figured out that those skins come from seals not native to France. Several of the books were found to be bound in harbor-seal skin, and at least one in the skin of a harp seal. These animals appear to have come from Scandinavia and Scotland, and potentially as far away as Iceland or Greenland—a finding that sheds light on the complex trading networks that operated in the Middle Ages. The Cistercian monks at Clairvaux likely favored this…

“Government workers are saddled with a stereotype of being faceless, lazy, corrupt paper pushers,” said Janet Hook in Washington Monthly. So at a moment when President Trump and his billionaire surrogate Elon Musk are slashing government jobs while bashing the very people they’re firing, it’s a pleasure to discover that this recent best-seller about several formerly faceless federal employees is also “a surprisingly engaging read.” Michael Lewis, the author of Moneyball, The Blind Side, and other nonfiction best-sellers, persuaded several other talented writers to contribute profiles of individual workers providing important public services. While the book “sometimes smacks of puffery and boosterism,” the spotlighted subjects are good people performing good works, and it’s clear that only government can support such endeavors. “Each chapter has its own distinct flavor,” said…

Daniel Breyer swears that his satirical debut novel is not about his own family, said Emily Shugerman in The San Francisco Standard. Smokebirds savages an ultra-wealthy San Francisco clan, the Petersons, who belong to a class of people who simply jet elsewhere when wildfires put others’ homes and lives in danger. Breyer knows that social set well. His father, who’s also his current boss, is billionaire venture capitalist Jim Breyer, who famously bet early on Etsy and Facebook. “He’s a much better person than all of my characters, I promise,” Breyer says. The callous, self-absorbed, mendacious Petersons, however, do have a basis in reality. “Maybe they’re all the worst parts of myself, or the worst thoughts that have ever entered my head, coupled with the worst behaviors I’ve seen…

As bleak news abounds, Valerie June’s sixth album arrives as “a necessary reminder that happiness is just as potent a tool for beating back the darkness as anger,” said Andy Crump in Paste. The 43-year-old Tennessee native is still blending elements of roots rock, Americana, and soul, but she’s more insistently exhorting listeners to fight despair by connecting in small ways with others. The opener, “Joy, Joy!” sets the tone with a “funk-forward downbeat,” blasts of horns and fuzzed-out guitars, and a vocal melody that’s “like the cheeriest roller coaster you’ve ever been on.” Taken whole, Owls, Omens, and Oracles is “a textured, grungy-sounding album, full of melody, soul, and inspired songwriting,” said Timothy Monger in AllMusic. Despite its genre hopping, this M. Ward–produced collection is also “June’s…

Big banks enjoyed a surge in first-quarter trading revenues, largely thanks to President Trump’s tariff chaos, said AnnaMaria Andriotis in The Wall Street Journal. Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan Chase, and Morgan Stanley reported this week “more than $12 billion in fees in their equities business, the desks that run stock-related activities for clients.” This figure topped even “the Covid-era swings.” For now, the policy uncertainty means more trading. But “too much volatility for too long” could become a problem for banks if clients choose to “sit on the sidelines.” AI: Nvidia faces new limits on chips meant for China Nvidia said this week that new restrictions on chip exports will cost it $5.5 billion, said John Liu in CNN.com. In a regulatory filing, the chipmaker said “it was informed by…

■ The myth of the flighty Millennial Young workers are no more prone to job-hopping than their parents were, said Josie Cox in Business Insider. “Despite Millennials and Gen Z making up more than half the workforce, data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics shows that the median job tenure today is actually longer than it was in the 1980s.” About a third of Baby Boomers and Gen Xers switched employers at age 20, compared with less than a quarter of Millennials and 20 percent of Gen Zers at the same age. “The share of workers who have stayed with the same employer for over 20 years, meanwhile, is about the same as it was in 1983.” How did the myth of the flighty Millennial worker arise? One…

Andy Kessler The Wall Street Journal President Trump, who grew up 15 minutes from Archie Bunker, is trying to bring back the All in the Family nostalgia: “Those were the days!” said Andy Kessler. But going backward “is a meathead move.” I am all for America on top, but Trump’s America First vision “is a vertical model: Do everything.” A self-sufficient, stand-alone country. News flash: Vertical always fails. American prosperity comes from a horizontal empire in which industries are “organized into layers of expertise.” Apple designs iPhones in California but assembles them lower down the stack in China, where living standards are also increased. “Even the artificial intelligence revolution is horizontal,” where OpenAI uses Nvidia chips made by Taiwan’s TSMC using Dutch equipment. “Sadly, this horizontal model causes freak-outs…

Xinis’ discovery order “sets up a high-stakes sprint,” said Kyle Cheney and Josh Gerstein in Politico, during which Trump officials may be forced to reveal much about their arrangement with El Salvador. But “the Justice Department appears likely to throw up a series of legal obstacles,” including claims of confidentiality and national security. If that happens, expect the case to boomerang “back to SCOTUS,” said Jonathan V. Last in The Bulwark. Surely, as our authoritarian president seeks to establish his dominion over the courts, Chief Justice John Roberts can see “what Trump is playing at.” So, does he gamble on standing up to Trump? If “SCOTUS pushes all in on this case and loses, then it can no longer even pretend to have authority over the executive,” rendering the…

President Trump “fired a warning shot from the edge of autocracy” last week, said Thom Hartmann in The New Republic. The U.S. moved much closer to becoming a “police state” when Trump signed executive memoranda directing Attorney General Pam Bondi to investigate public comments made by two former officials: Christopher Krebs, a former top cybersecurity official in the first Trump administration who debunked baseless claims that the 2020 election was stolen, and Miles Taylor, a former Homeland Security official who wrote an anonymous newspaper column and book criticizing Trump. They’re “public servants whose only crime” was speaking truth to power—but a vengeful Trump now wants them prosecuted to send “a chilling message to current and future whistleblowers: ‘Cross me, and you’ll pay.’” Trump is no longer simply “using the…

ATF still without permanent head as U.S. replaces Patel The Justice Department confirmed last week that Army Secretary Daniel Driscoll has replaced FBI Director Kash Patel as acting head of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives—an unusual move that places a civilian defense leader in charge of a domestic law enforcement agency. The White House, worried that running the ATF and FBI would be too time-consuming for Patel, reportedly decided to replace him in February, shortly after he was given the role. Driscoll, an Iraq veteran with ties to Vice President JD Vance, maintains his role as Army secretary, overseeing a budget of over $187 billion. President Trump has not indicated whether he has any plans to nominate a permanent head for the 5,000-person agency. The Justice…

Micky Dolenz almost got trampled by pop stardom, said Alexis Petridis in The Guardian. The Monkees’ last surviving member, now 80, was barely out of his teens when he answered a 1965 casting call for a new TV show seeking “singers for acting roles.” The Monkees, about a fictional, Beatlesque band, made Dolenz an instant star. A year after the show started airing, he walked into a shopping mall near his parents’ home and saw people suddenly running screaming toward him. “I thought it was a fire. I hold open the big door and I’m going, ‘Slow down! Don’t run! Don’t panic!’ And suddenly I realized they were running at me.” The Monkees had a series of real-life hits, but at first the actors contributed only the vocals: Professional…

■ Pop star Katy Perry headlined an all-female spaceflight crew aboard a Blue Origin rocket this week in the latest adventure in space tourism, a brief jaunt above Earth’s internationally recognized boundary. Joining her were CBS News’ Gayle King, former NASA engineer Aisha Bowe, film producer Kerianne Flynn, scientist Amanda Nguyen, and Lauren Sánchez, fiancée of Blue Origin founder Jeff Bezos. The New Shepard rocket launched from Blue Origin’s private West Texas ranch and quickly crossed the Karman Line, 62 miles up, where the women were able to float in the capsule a few minutes before buckling in for the return. It was the first multiperson mission ever crewed solely by women. During the descent, Perry sang “What a Wonderful World” to the others and promised she’d “for sure”…

Chris Brennan USA Today “Why are Republicans so hell-bent on keeping people away from polling places?” asked Chris Brennan. Their latest effort to curtail voting rights is the Safeguard American Voter Eligibility Act, which could disenfranchise millions of people—including married women who’ve taken their husband’s last name. The SAVE Act requires anyone registering to vote or modifying their registration to have a passport or original birth certificate. Unlike many state voter ID laws, which target older voters or voters of color, who usually lean Democratic, this “threatens to impose a bipartisan burden.” Only 51 percent of Americans have passports, and 21.3 million—about 9 percent of citizens—lack readily available proof of citizenship. Nearly 80 percent of women in heterosexual marriages take their husband’s last name, meaning their birth certificates no…

Editorial Cyprus Mail “Welcome to the 21st-century version of political dialogue–Kindergarten 2.0,” said the Cyprus Mail. The Education Ministry admitted last week that the viral image that recently shocked the nation—a bunch of high school boys “giving a Nazi salute” in their class photo—was real. But the government’s response was downright “wishy-washy.” It reassured us that the kids signaling “Heil Hitler” had been told never to do it again, because the gesture might “be misinterpreted.” Misinterpreted? Even if this was just a “stupid joke,” these youngsters “knew what they were doing.” None of the girls in the class raised their arms, nor did several of the boys, which indicates they wanted no part in such a shameful spectacle. If the others aren’t budding fascists, they are certainly “sheep” following…

Republicans are at war over how “to slash the trillions in taxes and spending that Trump is demanding,” said Russell Berman in The Atlantic. House Speaker Mike Johnson secured a win last week when the Republicans’ budget framework squeaked through the lower chamber, setting up a final vote in coming weeks. But the “big, beautiful bill” that President Trump has asked for hangs on the support of the GOP’s House hard-liners. They are demanding $1.5 trillion in spending cuts that “they believe they are on the verge of achieving.” The Senate, which already passed its blueprint, set a minimum of just $4 billion in cuts, but Johnson promised a dozen House holdouts that the Senate would fall in line. One thing all the Republicans agree on is that they…

“Friendship adds a brighter radiance to prosperity and lessens the burden of adversity by dividing and sharing it.” Cicero, quoted in LitHub “Every time a friend succeeds, I die a little.” Gore Vidal, quoted in The Independent “Music is the language of the angels. When I sing, I feel oneness with all creation.” Chaka Khan, quoted inThe Guardian “We may encounter many defeats, but we must never be defeated.” Maya Angelou, quoted in The Bulwark “If we want everything to stay the same, everything needs to change.” Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa, quoted in National Review “At 18 our convictions are hills from which we look; at 45 they are caves in which we hide.” F. Scott Fitzgerald, quoted in Forbes “The law holds that it is better that 10…

■ The great iPhone airlift Apple airlifted roughly 600 tons of iPhones out of India amid uncertainty over tariffs, said Aditya Kalra in Reuters. The tech giant chartered six cargo flights “with a capacity of 100 tons each,” transporting roughly 1.5 million iPhones to the United States since March. The rush was so desperate that Apple “lobbied Indian airport authorities to cut to six hours the time needed to clear customs at the Chennai airport, down from 30 hours.” Ultimately, President Trump decided last week to pause a 26 percent import tax on India, and said that phone imports from China would be exempt from tariffs. Still, Apple has directed India’s biggest iPhone assembly plant to run on Sundays, hoping to boost its regular production by 20 percent. ■…

The shingles vaccine appears to reduce your risk of getting dementia. A large new study has found that those who received the vaccine were up to 20 percent less likely to develop dementia than those who didn’t. Researchers looked at health data from 280,000 older adults in Wales, where the Zostavax shingles vaccine was first given in 2013 to people born on Sept. 2, 1933, or later. This natural experiment allowed scientists to compare dementia rates among those a few months older than the cutoff age, who didn’t get the vaccine, and those a few months younger, who did. The drop in dementia rates among the vaccinated group was significant, particularly among women. Doctors aren’t sure why the shot offers this protection, but it may be because it reduces…

Susan Page’s best-selling biography of Barbara Walters, The Rulebreaker, is now out in paperback. Below, USA Today’s Washington bureau chief, who has also written biographies of Nancy Pelosi and Barbara Bush, recommends six books about rule breakers. Harriet Tubman: The Road to Freedom by Catherine Clinton (2004). This is the definitive portrait of a legendary figure. Tubman escaped slavery and broke the rules of race, gender, and the legal system to lead enslaved people to freedom on the Underground Railroad. She was also a scout and spy for the Union Army. John Lewis: A Life by David Greenberg (2024). For the rest of his life, John Lewis bore a scar on his forehead from the police beating he endured during the 1965 civil rights march across the Edmund Pettus…

“You’ve never heard a Waterboys album like this before,” said Bill Pearis in Brooklyn Vegan. On the group’s “most unusual” release yet, the Scottish-British-Irish band best known for Celtic-tinged 1980s rock anthems pays a mercurial tribute to mercurial actor Dennis Hopper. As frontman Mike Scott and his current collaborators trace Hopper’s life from a Midwest childhood to his Hollywood friendship with James Dean to Easy Rider and beyond, the music of each song matches the relevant era, touching on genres from country to cabaret. Scott has long countered his image as a solemn seeker with a streak of humor, and here he “runs riot with it,” said Tom Doyle in Mojo. “Kansas,” the opener, “throws the first curveball,” with Steve Earle singing about Hopper pining to leave home.…

Whatever else you may think of our state, “there’s no doubt that New York makes great cabernet francs,” said Eric Asimov in The New York Times. Those produced in the Finger Lakes region are “particularly distinctive.” They’re “true cool-climate wines,” almost always “floral and red-fruited” and relatively low in alcohol. I enthusiastically recommend the three below. 2023 Eminence Road Farm Winery Lamb’s Quarters Vineyard ($24). This wine expresses “the lively, easy-going side of cabernet franc,” offering “light herbal aromas and bright flavors of red fruit.” 2021 Hermann J. Wiemer ($25). This “superb value” biodynamic cab franc is “fragrant, complex, pure, and focused.” 2020 Bloomer Creek White Horse Red ($28). Mostly cab franc, with a little merlot, this Bordeaux-like wine is “a bit rustic, with chewy tannins.” Even so, “the…

Death Valley’s surprising neighbors Two of the tiny California towns just outside Death Valley National Park “have more to offer than gas tank refills,” said Jessie Schiewe in the Los Angeles Times. Though “far from chic or trendy,” Tecopa (pop. 169) and nearby Shoshone (pop. 22) are “rife with charming businesses, eateries, and wildlife hot spots.” Both sit in the prehistoric Lake Tecopa basin, source of the fossils now displayed at the free Shoshone Museum. The ancient lake is gone, but the area has four public hot springs to soak in before a beer at Tecopa’s Death Valley Brewing or vegan sandwiches and a wood-fired pizza at the Kit Fox Cafe. There’s also delicious American and Mexican fare, including rattlesnake chili, at the Crowbar Cafe and Saloon, Shoshone’s only…

Hostess hopes to supercharge the Twinkie by marketing to stoners, said Katie Deighton in The Wall Street Journal. J.M. Smucker, which bought the 106-year-old snack maker Hostess for $4.6 billion in 2023, “wants to revitalize sales of a storied yet dusty portfolio” by moving “closer to popular culture.” One way it is doing so: by sending a “Munchie Mobile” on a road trip along the East Coast to hand out free snacks outside cannabis dispensaries on April 20, an unofficial holiday for weed lovers. The move “is a departure from Hostess marketing in its pre-Smucker era, when its sweet baked goods were advertised largely with families and kids in mind.” But with sales trending down, Hostess is trying new approaches, including using geotargeting technology “to serve ads to consumers…

Allison Schrager Bloomberg While much of the world is freaking out about the upending of the global economy, I am feeling an odd sense of calm, said Allison Schrager. That’s because I am a proud neoliberal. “And after President Trump’s tariffs destroy what is left of the post-neoliberal world order, neoliberalism itself will be due for a comeback.” Free trade and free markets raised living standards, reduced poverty, and enabled astounding innovations. It was not immune to attacks, starting from “traditional lefties” who thought free-trade-loving economists had “led the world astray.” Eventually, even the Right joined in the criticism, and the entire neoliberal argument became warped. A poll last year found that the majority of Americans “questioned whether they benefited from trade.” Now that Trump has taken a wrecking…

This week’s question: Tech executive Bernt Bornich has staffed his house with a robot butler. What would you call a Downton Abbey–style drama in which the household servants are all humanoid machines? Last week’s contest: A recent study identified Virginia as the state best equipped to survive an alien invasion. If the state were to change its tourism motto from “Virginia Is for Lovers” to a phrase that promotes this surprising strength, what would it be? THE WINNER: Virginia: Land of Inalienable Rights Barry Cutler, Palm Desert, Calif. SECOND PLACE: Virginia Is for Intelligent Life-forms (Certain restrictions apply) —Nancy Rockefeller, Delmar, N.Y. THIRD PLACE: Where Lovers Can Relax, If Mars Attacks John Bregoli, Weymouth, Mass. For runners-up and complete contest rules, please go to theweek.com/contest. How to enter: Submissions…