Innehållsförteckning för May 2, 2025 från The Week Magazine

In high school in the 1980s, we all had to read Profiles in Courage, John F. Kennedy’s history of U.S. senators who stood up for their beliefs in defiance of their party or even their constituents. If the book were written now, it might include a chapter on John McCain (R-Ariz.), who saved Obamacare with his famous thumbs-down vote on repeal. Maybe there’d be room for Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.), who just went to El Salvador to fight for the rights of a Maryland resident deported without due process. And certainly it would feature Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska), the only one of the seven Republicans in favor of convicting President Trump in his second impeachment who dared to face voters afterward in an election. Asked last week about the creeping…

■ A Texas school district has removed Virginia’s state flag from its online learning platform because it depicts the bare breast of the Roman goddess Virtus. Lamar Consolidated Independent School District deleted a section about Virginia’s history on the grounds that the flag violated the district’s ban on “visual depictions or illustrations of frontal nudity” in elementary school materials. The flag, adopted in 1861, shows Virtus standing over a defeated tyrant, above the state’s motto, “Sic Semper Tyrannis.” ■ A California mayor says he wants to give homeless people “all the fentanyl they want” to purge them from his city. R. Rex Parris, Republican mayor of Lancaster, conceded that “it’s harsh” to encourage the fatal overdoses of homeless people who commit crimes. “But it’s my obligation as the mayor…

Phoenix ICE wars: Arizona Gov. Katie Hobbs vetoed a GOP-backed state bill last week that would have blocked cities and schools from limiting immigration enforcement efforts. The Arizona Immigration Cooperation and Enforcement (ICE) Act would have overridden rules like that of the Phoenix Union High School District, which in January barred immigration enforcement agents from its schools. The ICE Act would also have required all state and local officials and law enforcement agencies to assist with ICE detainers—written requests from the agency that ask local law enforcement to hold migrants in jail for 48 hours beyond their scheduled release to turn them over to federal immigration officers. Hobbs, a Democrat, suggested the GOP priority bill would enable federal overreach. “Arizonans, not Washington, D.C., politicians, must decide what’s best for…

When Dwyane Wade’s daughter came out as transgender several years ago, the Miami Heat legend had to make a choice, said D. Watkins in The Atlantic. Growing up in Chicago, Wade witnessed distinct versions of masculinity. Some were violent, but even positive role models like his father, who pushed Wade to become the best basketball player he could be, were far more strict than affectionate. “It was a lot of tough love as a Black man in America,” Wade says. “At that time, wasn’t a lot of hugs going around.” So as Zaya, Wade’s now 17-year-old daughter puts it, he decided “to evolve to be a better dad.” Wade says he learned from fellow NBA Hall of Famer Magic Johnson, who often spoke about his son, EJ, who came…

Tom Nichols The Atlantic President Trump’s nominee for U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia “has completely disqualified himself,” said Tom Nichols. Acting U.S. Attorney for D.C. Ed Martin is a conservative podcaster and fierce MAGA loyalist who has called Justice Department prosecutors “President Trump’s lawyers.” Martin is also “a Russian state TV darling.” It was revealed last week that he appeared on RT America, the Kremlin’s English-language propaganda outlet, and its sister outlet, Sputnik, 150 times from 2016 to 2024, spouting “conspiracy-laden anti-American rants,” parroting Russian talking points about Ukraine and Vladimir Putin’s interference in U.S. elections. Sorry, but a U.S. attorney shouldn’t be a regular “on the state television outlet of a neofascist dictatorship.” Martin initially failed to tell the Senate about “his appalling comments” on RT,…

Paolo Luers El Diario de Hoy The “disgusting” display by Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele and President Trump in the Oval Office last week was “nothing less than an international kidnapping ring in action,” said Paolo Luers. Trump’s administration admits it mistakenly arrested Kilmar Abrego Garcia and sent him to his home country, El Salvador, in violation of a 2019 court order. And now the U.S. Supreme Court has ordered Trump to pursue Abrego Garcia’s release from CECOT, our notorious prison camp from which Bukele has said nobody ever leaves “except in a coffin.” But Trump and Bukele insisted, without evidence, that Abrego Garcia was a terrorist and couldn’t be released. For Bukele, it’s “a piece of cake” to lock people away without trial. He rode to power on a…

Owning a pet makes you as happy as being married or earning an extra $90,000 a year, a new study has found. Researchers from Britain’s University of Kent drew on data from a nationally representative survey in which members of 2,500 British households were asked how satisfied they were with their lives. It turned out that living with a cat or dog to cuddle was associated with an increase of three to four points on a scale of seven, with one being miserable and seven being perfectly content. The team then used a technique devised by economists to translate intangible assets, such as living near a park, into monetary worth to reach the equivalence of a $90,000-a-year boost. While that figure might seem high, other studies have assigned a…

(Scribner, $29) In David Szalay’s new novel, “the feeling of unease begins with the title,” said Sam Sacks in The Wall Street Journal. The Hungarian protagonist, Istvan, ages from 15 to his mid-40s, and we see him move through life “like a half-feral animal, helpless to his instincts, terrible and strangely pitiable.” He’s a teenage victim of sexual abuse, then a juvenile prisoner, then a soldier in Iraq, then a chauffeur in London who marries his wealthy employer’s widow, and Szalay relates the events of Istvan’s life in ruthlessly pared-back prose. Though the flatness at times feels over the top, “the effect is hypnotic.” Szalay, a former Booker Prize finalist, is an “uncommonly gifted” writer, said Dwight Garner in The New York Times. The simplicity of his language is,…

Enough Is Enuf by Gabe Henry (Dey Street, $28) Many an American has yearned to reform the spelling standards we all use, and “it’s fitting that our guide through this history is a humorist,” said Barbara Spindel in The Wall Street Journal. In Enough Is Enuf, Gabe Henry has great fun recounting how Andrew Carnegie, Teddy Roosevelt, Upton Sinclair, and even Noah Webster, among others, mounted futile attempts to simplify written English. Though no sweat was spared on research here, “Henry’s primary purpose is to entertain.” The Fact Checker by Austin Kelley (Atlantic Monthly, $27) “We’ve come a long way from Bright Lights, Big City,” said Alexandra Jacobs in The New York Times. Set in the Manhattan of 2004, this “sprightly hyperlocal caper” follows a fact-checker for a New…

On their terrific new country album, Julien Baker and Mackenzie Scott “haven’t just mastered the form,” said Jon Dolan in Rolling Stone. “They’ve folded their own lives into its history.” Both are queer indie-rock heroes: Baker is a member of Boygenius and Scott records as Torres. But each grew up in the South listening to and loving Patsy Cline, George Strait, and more recent country luminaries, and this set of original songs reflects those deep connections even while the two friends rewrite genre conventions to fit themselves in. “The album’s obsessed with love, in every iteration,” said Caitlin Wolper Phillips in Pitchfork. On the rollicking single “Sugar in the Tank,” Baker sings “I love you” at the start of each line, ramping up to a chorus, fueled by…

Becoming Led Zeppelin A hagiographic examination of the mighty British rock band covers the group’s founding through its seismic 1970 U.S. tour. Great footage of the band abounds, but it’s the power of the music that carries things. $20 on demand Janis Ian: Breaking Silence This by-the-numbers documentary is elevated by its subject. A chicken farmer’s daughter, Ian was 14 when she recorded “Society’s Child,” a 1967 hit about an interracial romance, and she kept writing powerful songs while battling homophobia, depression, illness, and an abusive marriage. $13 on demand Tom Petty: Heartbreakers Beach Party You got lucky, Tom Petty fans. A long-lost documentary, shot by Cameron Crowe while the Heartbreakers were touring in support of 1982’s Long After Dark, has been found. It finds Tom and the band…

■ Camelcamelcamel is “among the best ways to track prices on Amazon products.” When you install the browser extension, it’ll show you as you search Amazon how the price of each product has changed over time, and you can ask to be sent alerts when the price hits your target. You can also use the service simply by entering a product code or name into the search bar of the camelcamelcamel website. ■ Honey is the only reliable browser extension that “compares prices from a whole bunch of retailers, not just Amazon.” It also applies coupons automatically at checkout, but know that you may find better coupons if you do a manual search. Register and you can create a Droplist for all the products you want to track pricing…

This week’s question: Pop star Katy Perry said she is “for sure” going to write a song about the recent trip she took with journalist Gayle King and others on the first all-female multiperson spaceflight. Suggest a title for the pop star’s upcoming musical tribute to the brief voyage. Last week’s contest: 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? THE WINNER: Upload, Download Tim Mistele, Coral Gables, Fla. SECOND PLACE: The Servers Larry Rifkin, Glastonbury, Conn. THIRD PLACE: Modem Family Rick Torrence, The Village, Okla. For runners-up and complete contest rules, please go to theweek.com/contest. How to enter: Submissions should be emailed to contest@theweek.com. Please include your…

What happened A federal judge this week accused the Trump administration of ignoring court orders and acting in “willful and bad faith” in the case of Kilmar Abrego Garcia, who remains locked up in El Salvador despite a Supreme Court order that the administration facilitate his return. U.S. District Judge Paula Xinis blasted the administration for failing to answer questions about what it was doing to free the Maryland sheet metal worker and father of three, instead taking “refuge behind vague and unsubstantiated assertions of privilege.” Her order followed a blistering ruling from a federal appeals panel. The White House is claiming the right to “stash away residents of this country in foreign prisons” without due process, which “should be shocking” to all Americans, wrote Judge Harvie Wilkinson, a…

Good manners, after Open AI CEO Sam Altman said the human habit of saying “please” and “thank you” to soulless AI chatbots has an upside, even though it costs “tens of millions’’ in electricity and computing power for AI to respond in kind. Given the high stakes of the human-machine relationship in the future, Altman said, the cost of teaching AI to be polite is money “well spent,’’ adding ominously, “you never know.’’ Prehistoric skin care, after University of Michigan researchers concluded that early Homo sapiens may have used a form of sunscreen about 40,000 years ago. Topical applications of the pigment ocher may have helped early, cave-dwelling humans survive during an age of “increased atmospheric penetration by energetic particles.” Faint praise, after President Trump said former President Jimmy…

Paris A reckoning with colonialism: France will form a task force with its former colony Haiti to examine the two countries’ troubled history, President Emmanuel Macron said last week. Activists want the task force to recommend reparations—not for enslaving the Haitian people but to make up for the crushing “independence debt” from 1825, which has crippled the country’s development. After Haiti’s people rebelled and drove out its former slave masters in 1804, France forced it to pay the unimaginable sum of 150 million gold francs in compensation. The payments on the debt, which Haiti finally paid off in 1947, ultimately cost its economy some $21 billion. Macron promised that the task force would get to “the truth,” but did not say whether he’d consider reparations. Mexico City Canceling Noem:…

For Jon Hamm, things often take time, said Austin Considine in The New York Times. The actor rose to fame relatively late, in Hollywood terms, after hooking the role of the enigmatic Don Draper in Mad Men in his mid-30s. “I was a late bloomer in every sense,” Hamm says. His mother died when he was 10, and he lost his father a decade later. His life has shared some of the darkness of Draper’s. For a long time, Hamm says, he wasn’t able to “really participate in life in the way that my friends that had normal adolescences” did. He was, as his therapist used to say, “kind of surviving.” When Mad Men ended, the strains and struggles returned. Hamm kept working, but often in supporting roles, and…

Aaron Tang The New York Times “What goes around, comes around,” said law professor Aaron Tang. The “major questions doctrine,” championed by the Supreme Court’s conservative justices to restrain the Biden presidency, could soon come back to haunt President Trump’s “boldest assertions of authority.” The high court relied on this “particularly potent brand of judge-made law” to strike down the Biden administration’s student loan forgiveness program and to limit its ability to regulate greenhouse gas emissions. The invented doctrine requires the executive branch to cite a “clear congressional authorization” when making policy “of great economic and political significance.” Now a blizzard of lawsuits is seizing on that Supreme Court precedent to challenge Trump’s “boundless claims of presidential power.” One lawsuit seeks to halt the Department of Government Efficiency’s reckless,…

“The United States and others are imitating China in large part because China succeeded in a way that was unexpected. Its success in electric vehicles and clean technology did not come from liberalizing economic policies but from state interventions in the market in the name of nationalist objectives. The U.S. is now operating largely in accordance with Beijing’s standards, with a new economic model characterized by protectionism, constraints on foreign investment, subsidies, and nationalist state capitalism. In the war over who gets to define the rules of the road, the battle is over, at least for now. And China won.” Michael B.G. Froman in Foreign Affairs…

Micheal Gumisiriza The New Humanitarian (Switzerland) Humanitarian aid isn’t always the game changer international charities claim in their “glossy reports,” said Micheal Gumisiriza. As an aid worker in my native country, Uganda, I’ve seen this firsthand. Much of the work that aid organizations do is but a “well-dressed performance—carefully packaged, transactional, and self-serving.” Host governments welcome people fleeing war and famine “not out of pan-African solidarity or hospitality, but as a means to court dollars and soft power.” Refugees “have learned the script,” dutifully thanking aid groups for improving their lives to provide a line in the next funding proposal. “Their suffering becomes merely currency.” As a refugee elder in one camp put it, “The cow that bellows the loudest gets the salt.” But this charade “breeds dependency” and…

Editorial Le Temps The World Health Organization has proved it can function without Donald Trump’s U.S., said Le Temps. In fact, it may have “emerged stronger.” The U.S. contributed a fifth of the Geneva-based WHO’s budget, and American health experts were widely respected, so when Trump pulled out, WHO officials feared the agency would lose focus. But in a “hopeful ray of light,” the 194 remaining countries last week came together to clinch a global agreement on pandemic preparedness. Without Trump, who denied the need for such planning, reaching a compromise was actually easier. It still took plenty of negotiation, of course. A dispute over vaccine and drug patents broke out between pharmaceutical powers, like the EU and Switzerland, and poorer nations, and it “almost derailed everything.” South Africa…

President Trump and his advisers have offered many rationales for his tariff obsession, said Emily Steward in Business Insider, but a key goal is often overlooked: to “make work manly again.” MAGA world thinks that Trump’s levies on cheap imports will drive a renaissance in American manufacturing and bring back a time when men toiled with their hands in factories or mines instead of getting soft in feminized “email jobs.” The concept of testosterone-boosting jobs drew recent cheers from Fox News host Jesse Watters: “When you sit behind a screen all day, it makes you a woman,” he said. The prospect of a factory boom excites internet “incels” who can’t find a wife or girlfriend, said Constance Grady in Vox. They believe it will shift the economy back to…

(Scribner, $35) Robert Crumb had one stipulation before agreeing to participate in the creation of this biography: that his myriad faults be part of the story, said Chris Vognar in the Los Angeles Times. In a book that “astutely connects the work to the life story,” author Dan Nadel more than keeps his promise. Crumb is “the kind of biography that opens up an entire scene and movement.” The so-called godfather of underground comix arrived in San Francisco in 1967 primed to call out the lies of the misogynist, racist culture he had grown up in. He’d endured an upbringing “as macabre as anything he drew,” rife with adults prone to beatings, addiction and mental illness, and his comics rendered “with grotesque vitality” the worst of the human traits…

Dolen Perkins-Valdez can’t resist a good mystery, and she has found one in a place called the Kingdom of the Happy Land, said Sophia Nguyen in The Washington Post. The American University professor and best-selling author of Wench and Take My Hand was hunting online for legendary banjo players of western North Carolina when she came upon mention of Happy Land, a 19th-century Appalachian community created by freed Black men and women who elected their own king and queen and shared the profits of their labor. She didn’t know if she could trust the story. “I wondered if it was local lore, because it was so fantastical,” she says. But there was enough truth in the tale that she soon teamed with two local historians to do what she…

“You would not know, on first listen, that this effervescent debut solo album by the sometime frontman of TV on the Radio was steeped in grief,” said Kitty Empire in The Guardian. Tunde Adebimpe had begun working on the songs when his sister died of a heart attack, and the singer-actor-artist channeled his anger and sorrow into “snaggle-toothed synth-punk cuts and bouncy synth-pop sounds.” While nothing he does here will surprise fans of the Brooklyn art-rock outfit he led, “his pop instincts have come to the fore,” even as they draw on a range of influences from New Order to electronic dancehall reggae. When Thee Black Boltz is firing, it sounds like “an unmediated transmission from the songwriter’s soul,” said Mark Richardson in The Wall Street Journal. “Somebody…

Abercrombie & Fitch Julia Maxi Halter When the invitation calls for “formal” attire, you want “a classic, stylish dress,” but have some fun by choosing a spring color. “Think light greens, pink, yellow, baby blue, and lots of bright patterns.” $130, abercrombie.com Source: Condé Nast Traveler Rixo Christabel Sequined Mini At a summer beachside ceremony, this “thigh-grazing” mini in cotton-candy pink is “sure to be a hit.” Laden with starfish, it’s also fully sequined. And you can order it in black as well. $450, mytheresa.com Source: Elle Yukiko Noritake x Anthro-pologie Midi This asymmetrical cotton-poly dress “screams springtime wedding from the rooftops.” Wear it in black or this reddish orange and you’ll feel like “a walking piece of art.” $248, anthropologie.com Source: BuzzFeed ASTR the Label Blythe Dress “Florals…

President Trump flirted with an economic redline this week, said Courtenay Brown and Neil Irwin in Axios. Trump sent the financial markets spiraling after repeatedly demanding that “major loser” Jerome Powell, the chairman of the Federal Reserve, “pre-emptively cut interest rates ‘NOW’” and suggesting that Powell acted on rates only to benefit his rival Kamala Harris in the election. Markets fell sharply on Trump’s comments, and the president backed down, saying he had “no intention” of firing Powell, who can be terminated only for cause, and that he just wanted “to see him be a little more active.” DOGE: Musk promises attention to Tesla as sales crash Elon Musk vowed to “significantly” reduce his White House responsibilities to focus on Tesla’s struggles, said Kara Carlson and Dana Hull in…

■ Missing the middle managers Welcome to the ‘unbossed’ company, said Emily Peck in Axios. A new survey from Korn Ferry of 2,000 professionals found that 44 percent said that their company “has cut back at the manager level.” The trend began “amid tech layoffs in 2022 and 2023, perhaps most famously at Meta,” where in 2023 Mark Zuckerberg bemoaned his company’s bloated workforce. “I don’t think you want a management structure that’s just managers managing managers, managing managers, managing managers, managing the people who are doing the work,” Zuckerberg said. That view is now increasingly common. The cutback, though, can leave companies “unmoored.” Forty percent of respondents to the Korn Ferry survey said that without as many middle managers they felt “directionless.” ■ A comeback for the family…

Kim Severson The New York Times A few years ago, Big Meat looked like roadkill, said Kim Severson. Burgers and bacon were “blamed for poor health, implicated in climate change, and attacked for cruelty to animals.” The recipe website Epicurious announced in 2021 that “beef would be banished from all future content,” citing its contribution to greenhouse gas emissions, and a star New York chef “retooled his $355 tasting menu to eliminate animal products.” Four years later, the butcher is back. “On average, Americans ate nearly 7 percent more meat last year than before the pandemic,” while meat sales in the U.S. hit a record high. After sales grew by almost 15 percent last year, Texas Roadhouse became the nation’s top casual-dining chain, knocking off Olive Garden. Even Kismet,…

High court ready to let students opt out of LGBTQ lessons The Supreme Court this week appeared primed to rule in favor of parents who want their children to opt out of public-school classes with LGBTQ-themed lessons. A group of Maryland elementary school parents argued the Board of Education violated their right to religious freedom by not giving them the option to pull their children from classes reading books with LGBTQ themes. The court’s 6-3 conservative majority seemed sympathetic to the parents. “What is the big deal about allowing them to opt out of this?” asked Justice Samuel Alito, who said the books send a “clear moral message” endorsing same-sex marriage. A ruling in their favor would expand the common practice of allowing opt-outs for sex-ed classes. The school…

Aimee Lou Wood’s career has been on an upward trajectory for a while, but it’s her recent turn playing the sunny and slightly kooky Chelsea in The White Lotus that has propelled her to global fame, said Alice Jones in The Sunday Times (U.K.). For Wood, a 31-year-old from Manchester, the part felt like a chance to embrace her “goofy, nerdy side,” which she sometimes tries to suppress. But over the course of seven months filming the murder mystery on set in a luxury hotel in Thailand, she began to wonder whether she ought to look “more Hollywood.” One moment especially was a catalyst for this. “One day the camera guy came up to me and said”—she adopts an earnest American accent—“‘That choice you made with Chelsea’s run? Genius.’…

■ Haley Joel Osment apologized last week for an antisemitic outburst captured on police bodycam footage while he was being arrested for public intoxication at a California ski lodge. In the footage, the Sixth Sense actor can be heard calling the arresting officer both an antisemitic slur and a “f---ing Nazi.” He was later charged with possession of cocaine and disorderly conduct. Osment, 37, said he was “absolutely horrified” by his behavior, saying his “disgraceful” choice of words occurred “in the throes of a blackout.” He said he was still reeling emotionally from “the past few months of loss and displacement”—having lost his Altadena, Calif., home in January’s Eaton Fire—but added that “that’s no excuse” for his behavior. “I’ve let the Jewish community down, and it devastates me,” he…

Jesse Singal The Dispatch More government funding isn’t necessarily “a cure-all,” said Jesse Singal. While there’s no defending the “almost bafflingly cruel, capricious, and haphazard way” the Trump administration and Elon Musk’s DOGE have slashed federal spending, the reality is that some government programs truly are wasteful and ineffective. Progressives often insist that social programs fail only because they need more funding. But many problems can’t be solved by money. Consider the recent spate of violent attacks by homeless people in the New York City subway system. They’re not caused by inadequate funding of services for the homeless. They’re the product of the city’s “revolving-door approach to dealing with severely disturbed individuals,” who aren’t kept in psychiatric facilities if they refuse to stay. In Los Angeles, a plan to…

Alessandro Sallusti Il Giornale When Giorgia Meloni became prime minister of Italy in 2022, European leftists feared she was so far to the right that she’d be a liability to the EU’s cohesion. Instead, her leadership is “proving to be a lifeboat for Europe,” said Alessandro Sallusti. Meloni last week became the first European leader to visit President Trump since he started his reckless tariff war by imposing and then pausing duties that could cripple transatlantic trade. While other European leaders were wringing their hands, Meloni set to work flattering Trump, promising she would “make the West great again” with his help. “No panic, no tears, Western unity must come first.” She’s clearly been accepted into Trump’s “political family,” and she shares with him the “gift of pragmatism, helping…

President Trump is “well positioned to secure a lasting deal” with Iran on its nuclear program, said Ivo Daalder in Politico. Unfortunately, it may be “on Iran’s terms.” Since 2018, when Trump scrapped President Barack Obama’s Iran nuclear deal, Tehran has been enriching uranium and now has a stockpile at 60 percent purity. At this point, it could jump to the 90 percent purity required for a bomb whenever it chooses, and that has alarmed Israel, which considers a nuclear Iran an existential threat. Israel was reportedly planning to bomb Iran’s facilities, but Trump insisted on talks first, bombs second. The “carrots and sticks” approach has brought Iran to the negotiating table, and U.S. envoy Steve Witkoff has met twice with Iranian diplomats in the past two weeks. But…

“Make no mistake, empathy is not weak or woke.” Jane Fonda, quoted in The Hollywood Reporter “Writing…makes the extraordinary natural and the natural extraordinary, dissipates chaos, beautifies ugliness, eternalizes the moment, and turns death into a passing spectacle.” Mario Vargas Llosa, quoted in The Knowledge “Free speech includes not only the inoffensive but the irritating, the contentious, the eccentric, the heretical, the unwelcome, and the provocative.” British judge Stephen Sedley, quoted in The Critic (U.K.) “Always make the audience suffer as much as possible.” Alfred Hitchcock, quoted in the Philippine Daily Inquirer “The stock market is a device for transferring money from the impatient to the patient.” Warren Buffett, quoted in The New Zealand Herald “Vulnerability is having the courage to show up and be seen when we have…

■ An X competitor from OpenAI? OpenAI is working on its own social network, said Kylie Robison and Alex Heath in The Verge. The company has created “an internal prototype focused on ChatGPT’s image generation that has a social feed” to let users share and comment on their AI creations. But there are other reasons for the push into social media. It “would give OpenAI its own unique, real-time data that X and Meta already have to help train their AI models,” a valuable commodity as OpenAI runs up against the limit of quality data available on the internet. It’s also a shot in OpenAI CEO Sam Altman’s rivalry with Elon Musk, who made an offer to buy OpenAI in February. Musk recently merged his social media company, X,…

We might not be alone in the cosmos. An international team of astronomers has found the strongest evidence yet that there could be life on a planet far from our solar system. Known as K2-18b, the planet was scrutinized because it’s a decent candidate. Just 124 light-years away, it orbits its red dwarf star in the so-called Goldilocks zone of habitability. The researchers believe that the planet has liquid water, and they’ve identified a possible biosignature: The atmosphere appears to show traces of the molecule dimethyl sulfide, which on Earth is exclusively produced by microbes. While K2-18b isn’t clearly visible through a telescope, its orbit can be seen from Earth when it crosses the dwarf star. That journey alters the starlight’s spectrum, creating a pattern that reveals the planet’s…

Amor Towles’ best-selling 2024 story collection, Table for Two, is now out in paperback. Below, the author of A Gentleman in Moscow and The Lincoln Highway shares six of the books he’s enjoyed most during a recent immersion in American fiction of the 1950s. Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov (1955). Seventy years later, Lolita remains refreshing, funny, sharp, and shocking. It is worth reading just for the humbling pleasure of witnessing what a late adopter of English can achieve with our language. Seize the Day by Saul Bellow (1956). Only 100 pages or so long, Seize the Day is a moving portrayal of a man approaching his wit’s end. The story, which takes place over half a day, is an intimate depiction of a middle-aged Manhattanite who, having lost his…

What Did the Blackbird Say to the Crow “has the warm glow and relaxed feeling of a back-porch summer jam session,” said Matt Collar in AllMusic. Banjoist Rhiannon Giddens and fiddler Justin Robinson, two members of the Grammy-winning folk trio the Carolina Chocolate Drops, reunited to record this “exuberantly rootsy” set of Black string-band tunes from North Carolina’s Piedmont region. The pair recorded many of the 18 tracks outdoors at the home of their deceased mentor, fiddler Joe Thompson, and others at the former home of singer-guitarist Etta Baker. “Hook and Line” and “Duck’s Eyeball” reel with “a dancerly, downhome energy,” while the record’s vocal duets are especially vibrant. “Giddens is a visionary as well as a revitalizer,” having attracted a large audience to this music, said Grant…

The white wine made from the grape known as pinot gris or pinot grigio “can be as impressively complex as it is refreshing,” said Ray Isle in Food & Wine. Much of Italy’s pinot grigio harvest “goes into relatively anonymous, mass-produced bottles,” but wines like the three below show how expressive and versatile the grape can be. 2023 Santa Margherita Alto Adige Pinot Grigio ($25). Though often dismissed by critics because it’s mass-produced, this is a “charming” pinot grigio, with “light citrus and yellow plum flavors.” 2022 Antiquum Farm Daisy Pinot Gris ($30). This “terrific” wine from Oregon’s Willamette Valley offers “an alluring scent of honeysuckle” and “full-bodied golden apple and pear notes.” 2018 Trimbach Pinot Gris Reserve ($30). A “benchmark” for Alsatian pinot gris, this “crisp and bright”…

■ White and off-white “always make a room look larger.” To make pure white look “chic and luxurious rather than boring and sterile,” vary the finishes, using super flat for the ceiling, matte on the walls, and semigloss on the trim. Warm off-white walls are “a timeless choice” for small kitchens and hallways and look even better when you choose a slightly lighter tone for the trim and ceiling. ■ Jewel tones such as navy or peacock can be surprisingly effective in expanding the feel of a room when the color is used on a single wall. That one dark wall “gives your eye somewhere to land” and the contrast it provides makes a room feel open-ended. ■ Light blue or a soft blue gray suggests the sky and…

■ The price of gold hit a record $3,500 a troy ounce this week and has surged by more than 30 percent this year. Investors poured at least $19 billion into gold-backed exchange-traded funds during the first quarter. Financial Times ■ Only a third of the 38 million Americans who have borrowed money to pay for college or graduate school and should be making payments actually are. Loan servicers estimate that 4 million people have already been reported to credit bureaus for late payments this year, and that number is projected to climb past 9 million by the end of June. The New York Times ■ More than 35 million people worldwide are likely to take a cruise this year, up from about 22 million in 2015, just over…

Renting out clothing is a booming side hustle, said Elana Klein in Wired. New peer-to-peer rental apps are a lot like Airbnb for a pair of jeans, and some are thriving. Pickle has tripled its number of active monthly users year over year and recently raised $12 million in funding. It currently lists more than 200,000 items, from “a $100 Goldbergh Pascale headband that can be rented for $30 to a Cult Gaia dress—$898 to buy, $100 to rent”—with couriers coming by to pick up and return the items. The trend goes beyond clothes: Another app, Yoodlize, lets users lend out “party supplies, tools, electronics, and outdoor sporting equipment.” There’s also BabyQuip for baby items. Jason Fairbourne, the chief executive of Yoodlize, said that peer-to-peer rentals appeal to young…

Since 1990, the Partnership With Native Americans (nativepartnership.org) has worked with more than 500 tribal partners to directly support Native Americans living on underserved, remote reservations. Through eight programs, the nonprofit provides aid and resources for high-need reservations across nine states, including South Dakota’s Pine Ridge and Rosebud. More than a quarter of Native Americans face food insecurity, and a core PWNA program supplies staples to food pantries, soup kitchens, and the elderly. PWNA medical programs provide pre- and postnatal care and screening for cancer, tuberculosis, and other illnesses. When natural disasters hit reservations, the nonprofit’s first responders also bring firewood and emergency kits to Native families. PWNA supports Native students from pre-kindergarten to college, and every year, 300 Native college students receive laptops, care packages, and scholarships. Each…

Greg Ip The Wall Street Journal President Trump’s economy is eerily calm, said Greg Ip. You wouldn’t guess that by following the news. “Trump’s deportations, tariffs, federal layoffs, and funding suspensions have generated nonstop headlines.” Business leaders have spoken out with rising alarm. Banks have cranked up their recession odds. The financial markets have been in turmoil. Yet if you just look at the key economic indicators, you wouldn’t guess that “the White House changed hands in January.” Job growth has averaged “almost the same as that of the prior six months.” Inflation is little changed. And while gross domestic product looks flat, that seems to mostly “reflect unusual import behavior and the effect of weather.” The U.S. economy “is subject to countless influences, and actions by the president,…

Pope Francis was a pontiff of firsts. Born Jorge Mario Bergoglio to a family of modest means in Argentina, he was the first pope from the Americas and the first non-European in more than 1,200 years. Chosen in 2013, he was the first Jesuit pope and the first to take the name Francis, in honor of St. Francis of Assisi, the 13th-century saint known for his devotion to the downtrodden. The name was a sign of the ministry to follow. Declaring his desire for “a church that is poor and for the poor,” Francis wore $20 plastic watches, placed his own phone calls, traveled Rome in a Ford Focus instead of a bulletproof limo, and spurned quarters in the Apostolic Palace for a two-room Vatican guesthouse. Politically outspoken, he…