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What's Good Wednesdays
Visit: The Gabriele Münter exhibition. If you’re in New York City any time before next April, head to the Guggenheim Museum to see two floors of the artwork of the brilliant Gabriele Münter. A German artist of the early 20th century, Münter’s ever-evolving work demonstrated a commitment to portraiture, landscapes, and still life that defied a broader European movement toward impersonal abstraction. Her paintings (and photographs!) reveal a deep humanism and a clarity of artistic vision that remains a too-well-kept secret. – Willis
Watch: “Nobody Wants This.” The Netflix show about a gentile podcaster (Kristen Bell) who starts dating a rabbi (Adam Brody) has entered its second season, and it's a hit again. Based on creator Erin Foster’s own experiences, the series is funny, heartbreaking, and – especially for those in the Jewish community – all too real. And it’s all fused with “Gen Z” references that keep it current. Enjoy! – Zac
Watch: “Licorice Pizza.” If you need another Paul Thomas Anderson fix after seeing “One Battle After Another.” The film takes place in 1973 Los Angeles, with all the waterbeds, oil crises, and neon lights to match. Alana Haim could give Leonardo DiCaprio a run for his money with her performance in this film – and not just because her character has a love story with a much younger man. – Riley
Read: “The Serpent and the Rainbow.” If you love a good non-fiction book that reads like a fiction adventure tale, look no further. Ethnobotanist and author Wade Davis ventured to Haiti in the 1980s to investigate a strange report: a local man who had been pronounced dead by a doctor – and buried in front of several witnesses – suddenly wandered into his home village twenty years later. With his bereaved family and superstitious locals refusing to interact with the former dead man, our author investigates the secret religious societies of Haiti and the science behind their rituals. Readers will soon discover this case of Haiti’s real-life “zombie” is neither an isolated incident nor a supernatural miracle. – Ted
Go to the edge, in Iran. Influencers do lots of crazy things, sure, but the things done by Milad Karami are not like the others. Karami, a Kurdish mountaineer and guide from western Iran, has amassed a following of millions for videos where he films himself with a selfie-stick, calmy chatting (in Farsi) while he clambers along sheer rock faces hundreds of feet above the floor of the soaring canyon complexes of his region. His stunts would make a mountain goat faint: sometimes he shoots in the rain, or in flip-flops slathered with dish soap, or in rollerblades, or in a full-leg cast, or with a bicycle. Once, he nearly died while filming a cliffside video in a rocking chair. I don’t understand Farsi – but you don’t need to. Not for the faint of heart. – Alex K
Watch: “One Battle After Another.” From the opening scene, you’d think the director Paul Thomas Anderson’s latest film was an overtly political one regarding immigration. While that doesn’t fade entirely from view, this brilliant film – about the long-time police chase of members of a fictional US-based revolutionary group called the French 75 – rapidly turns into a thriller that fuses James Bond-esque chases with Blazing Saddles-like comedy. Who knew Leonardo DiCaprio could be so funny? – Zac
Read: “My Name Is Selma” is an astonishing autobiography from Selma van de Perre, a young Jewish woman from Amsterdam who went into hiding under false names during World War Two, joined the Dutch resistance as a courier, survived arrest and imprisonment at Ravensbrück concentration camp during the Holocaust. She died in London last week at the age of 103. – Alex Gibson
Watch: “Dhoom series.” If you’re wondering which banger song New York City’s mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani walked out to last night, here’s the answer: Dhoom Machale! But more iconic than the song is the movie series that is comes from. The three films are cat-and-mouse thrillers focused on jewel thieves and the cops trying to catch them. Spoiler: you’ll always find yourself rooting for the thief. Also, the soundtrack slaps! My favourite from the three is Dhoom 2 starring Hrithik Roshan and Aishwarya Rai Bachchan! – Suhani
Watch: “Ilha das Flores (Isle of Flowers).” Jorge Furtado’s 1989 Brazilian short film follows a tomato from plantation to garbage dump, exposing absurdities in the market and human hierarchies. It condenses supply chains, poverty, and food waste into biting satire, revealing how the industry can devalue labor and lives. A brisk, unsettling primer on power, scarcity, and who ultimately gets to eat. – Natalie
Read: “Love in the Time of Cholera.” Unpopular opinion, but I disliked “One Hundred Years of Solitude,” Gabriel García Márquez’s famous 1967 novel. I found it virtually impossible to decipher between the various names in the Buendía clan (there were four different “Jose Arcadios” in the family tree). I have found no such issues with the Colombian Nobel laureate’s novel “Love in the Time of Cholera,” a beautiful and tragic romance story about a man who can’t ever get over his first love. The sentences are long, the prose is stunning, and the characters easy to decipher. Enjoy. – Zac
Listen: “Criminal” podcast series by Vox Media. Host Phoebe Judge pores over some of the strangest and most interesting true-crime cases you’ve likely never heard of. With the recent crackdown on forced labor “scam centers” in Myanmar and across Asia, the episodes “The Compound” and “The Phone Call” shed some light on the inner workings of these criminal syndicates. For something a little closer to home, I’d recommend the episode “Mr. Apology” about an answering-machine that captivated New Yorkers in the 1980s, offering an anonymous line for people to confess their wrongdoings. – Ted
Read: “Rejection” by Tony Tulathimutte, if you dare. Reading this novel is like looking through a cracked mirror at modern culture. One that amplifies how many things – from social media to the pervasiveness of gambling – are designed to tip the scales of its users towards madness. It is a spooky foray into internet culture, and its offline repercussions, through a series of cleverly entwined vignettes. To say I enjoyed it, would be inaccurate. But it certainly made me think. – Riley
Watch: The World Series. Major League Baseball’s biggest event of the year has always seemed like a misnomer, given that it usually only involves teams from the United States. Not this year, as the Los Angeles Dodgers’ astonishing pitching core faces the big bats of the Toronto Blue Jays. Los Angeles, who won last year, are the favorites, but can they overcome Canada’s finest to cement their place as the best Dodgers team since the days of Sandy Koufax and Don Drysdale? – Zac
Read: Kaliane Bradley’s “Ministry of Time” follows a civil servant tasked with integrating “expats” pulled from the past into the present-day United Kingdom under a secret government program testing whether time travel is feasible. Its time-travel premise examines imperial legacies, bureaucratic power, and state secrecy, revealing how policy shapes identity and allegiance. – Natalie
Listen: To “The Witch Trials of J.K. Rowling.” This podcast from the Free Press is one of the best works of cultural investigation, and podcasts overall, that I have listened to in a long time. It looks at how the root of authoritarianism – in the sense of censorship of political opinion – began a long time ago and exists across the aisle in the US, using the experience of J.K. Rowling’s cancellation on Twitter (now X). Whatever preconceived notions you bring to the story, it will challenge it, and leave you better for it. – RileyWatch: “The Studio.” If you’ve ever wondered how the movies get green-lit before they hit the big screens, you’ve got to watch this 13-time Emmy-winning show. It is a chaotic comedy that follows the life of studio head Matt Remick, played by Seth Rogan, and his team at the fictional Continental Studio. It gives a glimpse into what really happens in the real Hollywood, how many people need to nod, and how many more need to be sweet-talked ahead of a movie launch. It also reminds me of “Entourage,” the 2004 series. Big bonus: It has a stellar cast and cameos from several big names! – Suhani
Read: How AI, Healthcare, and Labubu Became the American Economy. This substack by the prolific Kyla Scanlon is a must read. It gives a picture of what’s driving the US economy right now, what that says about our psychology, and the risks it poses for the future. – Riley
Watch: The Champions League. Europe’s – and likely the world’s – premier soccer club tournament begins this week. There was a cracker of a match in the first slate of games yesterday, with Juventus and Borussia Dortmund sharing eight (8!) goals in a mad second half, including two in injury time. There’s two more sets of matches today and tomorrow, the highlight of which pits the favorites Liverpool against Atletico Madrid. – Zac
Read: The Friday Afternoon Club by Griffin Dunne, a 2024 family memoir from the son of acclaimed crime writer Dominick Dunne, and nephew of Joan Didion. I picked it up in the final days of summer and couldn’t put it down, as Dunne weaves a humorous and often heartbreaking tale of the secrets–and the tragic murder of his sister–that forever changed a famous family. – Tony
Listen: New York Times columnist Ezra Klein’s discussion with human rights lawyer Philippe Sands over what constitutes a genocide. Fair warning: this conversation is a harrowing one, as would be any that involves discussions of mass killing. But given the humanitarian disasters in various parts of the world – be it Gaza, Ukraine, or Sudan – it’s an essential and fascinating listen to understand both the legal definition of genocide, and how this differs at times from public perceptions. – Zac
Watch: The 145th US Open is heading into its final days, closing out the Grand Slam season. The tournament hasn’t quite hit the mark this year (e.g, early exits from Daniil Medvedev and Madison Keys) but the best matches are finally on deck. If you’ve got a spare $600, visit the stadium in the New York City borough of Queens and watch the match live. Otherwise, the couch is just as good a seat to see 38-year-old Novak Djokovic battle young phenom Carlos Alcaraz in Friday’s semi-final and maybe even Jannik Sinner as he chases Grand Slam title number 5 (and his third of this year). – Suhani
Read: “The Mercy of Gods.” The first installment in a thrilling new sci-fi trilogy from James S.A. Corey (the author of “The Expanse” series). It delivers a gripping and darkly atmospheric tale of authoritarian alien domination: humanity is subsumed under the terrifying Carryx empire and forced into a brutal contest with extinction as the stakes. In other words, some nice bedtime reading. – Alex G
Watch: “Couples Therapy.” Dr. Orna Gurlanik is a genius. As the therapist at the center of this hit Showtime docu-series, Gurlanik tries to walk couples back to happiness, getting to the core of their issues and understanding how their past experiences affect their behavior. The show can be a little bit haunting, but, whether you’re in a couple or not, Gurlanik delivers great insights about the challenging aspects of long-term relationships. – Zac
Read: The Booker backlists. Last week, the nominees for the 2025 Booker Prize were announced. If your library is anything like mine, every book now has a months-long waitlist. So why not read the nominees’ earlier works – which, turns out, tend to be pretty award-winning in their own right? High on my list: The Inheritance of Loss by Kiran Desai, a brilliant novel about joy and despair set in the Himalayas and New York City; Intimacies by Katie Kitamura, the story of an interpreter at the International Court exploring language, love, and identity; and Trust Exercise by Susan Choi, a metafiction novel about a 1980s performing arts high school with an unexpected twist. – Molly