2025-04-01 03:30:20
Trying to get better at relaxing might sound silly—but learning how to rest can help a person get the most out of it, Isabel Fattal writes in The Wonder Reader.
Some people might think that the point of relaxing is to not work at all, but as Arthur C. Brooks points out, “doing leisure well will generate the sort of growth in our well-being that work cannot provide.” To get to that place of growth, “we must treat it with every bit as much seriousness as we do our careers,” he argues.
“Part of that process is redefining what rest and relaxation look like,” Fattal continues. When you hear the word “rest,” you might think of idleness, or just sleep. But experts on rest (yes, they exist) have highlighted the importance of more active types of relaxation too, such as exercising and pursuing hobbies.
Read more stories about the exploration of rest, and sign up for The Wonder Reader, a guide to new and classic Atlantic stories, published every Saturday.
🎨: 1-2. Jan Buchczik. 3. The Atlantic. Source: H. Armstrong Roberts / ClassicStock / Getty.
2025-04-01 00:53:07
Americans never really quit soda—they’ve just found new ways to drink it, Ellen Cushing writes.
In a Super Bowl ad this year, the company Poppi suggested that anyone tortured by the idea of drinking soda should “stop spiraling” and “get a Poppi!” But Poppi, Cushing writes, “is largely indistinguishable from soda.” It’s a carbonated, sweetened, canned beverage, available in flavors including root beer, cherry cola, and grape.
Poppi contains significantly less sugar than standard soda, as well as stevia, a calorie-free, plant-based sweetener. It also contains inulin, a type of soluble fiber derived, in this case, from agave. “This is what allows Poppi to sell itself as a healthier, anxiety-free kind of not-soda soda, and what makes it the perfect beverage for a country that loves talking about how bad soda is almost as much as we love drinking it,” Cushing writes.
For years, soda—due to its negative health effects—has been “shunned, taxed, and villainized,” Cushing explains. A coalition of nutritionists, public-health experts, legislators, and consumer advocates who took on Big Soda did win—but only to some degree. After climbing steadily starting in the 1960s, sales of full-calorie soda decreased by about 25 percent from 1995 to 2015. But in gross terms, Americans were still consuming a lot of sugary drinks, turning instead to sweetened coffee and tea, energy drinks, sports drinks, dirty soda, and boba.
“Now the second-wave sodas have come for us,” Cushing writes. “In November, Walmart announced an entirely new category: ‘modern soda.’” This includes drinks such as Poppi and its biggest competitor, Olipop. Although experts say these are healthier than regular full-sugar soda, scientists are still evaluating the new drinks. The science on inulin is “pretty meh,” one nutritionist told Cushing. Although these fibers do increase one specific kind of bacteria in the gut, there’s no strong evidence that this translates to better gut health or any other kind of health. The new drinks, much like their predecessors, are really just a miracle of marketing, Cushing continues at the link in our bio.
🎨: @ohrosewong
2025-03-31 21:00:53
Our May issue examines America’s slide toward autocracy—and how to fight it.
Anne Applebaum explores how Hungary could be a preview of America’s future. MAGA allies love the country’s prime minister, Viktor Orbán—even though he’s left his country corrupt, stagnant, and impoverished.
George Packer writes about how by changing sides in Russia’s war against Ukraine, Donald Trump got Republican leaders to betray an entire worldview without missing a beat.
Aziz Huq explains that Trump doesn’t need to destroy the court system to get his way; he just needs to create a shadow zone where the law no longer applies.
Plus, Mark Leibovich profiles Ringo Starr, who at 84 has become a roving ambassador of joy and amity in an America starved of such things.
Find all these stories and more at the link in our bio.
🎨: @_ricardotomas_
2025-03-31 05:55:22
The Paul brothers’ new reality series looks like a showcase for dude-bro supremacy. But in setting out to “build their macho fantasy,” John Hendrickson writes, “The Pauls may have also revealed the manosphere’s intellectual limits.”
“Paul American” is a “slick attempt by two giants of the so-called manosphere—the loose network of podcasts and YouTube channels by, for, and about testosterone-laced males—to conquer the cultural mainstream,” Hendrickson continues. And yet it’s the brothers’ girlfriends who steal the limelight. Logan’s fiancée is the Danish supermodel Nina Agdal, and Jake recently proposed to Jutta Leerdam, a Dutch Olympic speed skater. “In capturing their relationship dynamics on camera, the show demonstrates that not even the most successful ‘alpha male’ self-promoters can live in a world entirely of their own making,” Hendrickson writes.
In the series, the brothers, children of divorce, sometimes tiptoe around their short-fused father. Meanwhile, their mother, Pam, is generally portrayed in a more sympathetic light but can seem overwhelmed by her sons’ celebrity. Jake and Logan’s significant others “come to resemble surrogate moms,” Hendrickson writes. “Each woman keeps her respective Paul in check, even challenges him.”
“Even the distinctly conservative world of the Pauls has to make room for women’s agency,” Hendrickson continues. At one point, the series turns on Nina’s becoming pregnant with her and Logan’s first child—and her ambivalence over turning their baby into content, after her own history of personal abuse online. Logan wanted a boy, but Nina’s carrying a girl. In a moment of reflection, Logan admits, “It almost felt maybe like life karma for the way I’ve treated women.”
“At times, ‘Paul American’ reminds me of ‘The Osbournes’—the classic MTV reality series about how fame and fortune unbalance a family,” Hendrickson writes at the link in our bio. “That show, from the early 2000s, was fundamentally wholesome … If there’s any comparably wholesome side to ‘Paul American,’ it’s that even two man-children can stumble into understanding how their own self-aggrandizement affects the women around them.”
📸: Max
2025-03-31 00:50:13
“Silicon Valley, it seems, is coming to Jesus,” Elizabeth Bruenig writes—but much of the faith’s central traditions run counter to the aspirations of this new Christ-curious class.
According to a recent feature for “Vanity Fair” written by Zoë Bernard, Christianity has become “an object of fascination to the libertarian capitalists of the tech world.” Unlike those in Silicon Valley in the 2010s, these new converts see a great deal of utility in the religion, Bernard explained—including community, professional networking, and an index of ethics. But in reality, many of these Silicon Valley converts are merely pretending at Christianity: “I guarantee you there are people that are leveraging Christianity to get closer to Peter Thiel,” one entrepreneur told Bernard.
“Even if a significant proportion of the new believers are entirely sincere, that doesn’t mean their theology is copacetic,” Bruenig writes. “Silicon Valley Christians perhaps see Christianity as a kind of technology, which is to say a product used to accomplish human purposes.”
But Christianity at its core “is not a religion that can reliably deliver socially desirable outcomes, nor is it intended to be,” Bruenig continues. Key to the faith is the idea that Christianity is worth following not because it has the potential to improve one’s life—though it can—but rather because it is true. “There is no domain of life outside God’s interest,” Bruenig writes. “This means that economics is God’s business, which is bad news for techno-libertarians, because Christ’s teachings decidedly militate against the rapacious acquisition of wealth.”
Although there always have been and always will be rival interpretations of the Christian faith, its “central traditions run counter to the aspirations of this new Christ-curious class,” Bruenig continues at the link in our bio. “Christianity is about moving fast and breaking things, but not in the direction the tech Christians seem to have in mind.”
🎨: The Atlantic. Sources: Getty; Universal History Archive / Getty; Heritage Art / Getty; Culture Club / Getty.
2025-03-30 20:45:15
People tend to assume that professional excellence requires formal training, whereas excellence in the rest of life does not. “There is no Harvard School of Leisure, after all,” @arthurcbrooks writes.
But leisure is not straightforward or easy. To practice leisure properly is to “achieve our best selves—and even our capacity to transform society for the better.”
Leisure is typically defined as the absence of work. But the 20th-century German philosopher Josef Pieper rejected this conception, believing instead that leisure was an inherently valuable, constructive part of life. Pieper argued that the opposite of leisure is not work, but “acedia,” an ancient-Greek word that means spiritual or mental sloth. “Acediac” activities could include scrolling social media or binge-streaming. Leisure “is far from the modern notion of ‘just chillin,’” Brooks writes. “If you don’t do leisure well, you will never find life’s full meaning.”
To Pieper, true leisure involves philosophical reflection, deep artistic experiences, learning new skills, spending time in nature, or deepening personal relationships. “You might be thinking that this approach to leisure doesn’t sound especially fun to you,” Brooks continues. But researchers have found that “do-nothing leisure, including vacation travel, provides only minor, temporary boosts of happiness.” Conversely, social engagement, personal reflection, and outdoor activities give us more sustained well-being.
One way to increase your “leisure aptitude” is to structure your time outside work. This could be “a time in the morning when you read something truly meaningful, or a walk after lunch when you leave your device behind,” Brooks writes. Structure this “into your day as you would an important work meeting.” Programming time in advance can also ensure that you don’t fritter away your leisure time with, say, merely routine and forgettable activities. As with any area of personal improvement, “goals—and making progress toward them—are central to staying motivated,” Brooks writes.
Read more of Brooks’s advice for how to structure your leisure time at the link in our bio.
🎨: @janbuchczik
