WORD OF MOUTH: FALL

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Posted on October 2, 2026 by Valerie Block

Engage or escape? Here are some recommendations for bizarre times.

ESCAPE:

Novel: The Novel Detective — Teresa Dovalpage

Memoir: Wild Game: My Mother, Her Secret, and Me — Adrienne Brodeur

Music: Switched on Pop — Charlie Harding and Nate Sloan

Nostalgia isn’t what it used to be: The Beach Boy: My uncanny night watching one of the legendary group’s last-ever shows.

Analog moments: 36 mechanical keyboards and switches, curated and sound-mapped — The Listening Museum

Survival of the Random, but Not Always the Fittest: Why Don’t Humans Have Tails? — Brian Klaas

Novel: The Dentist — Tim Sullivan

ENGAGE:

Law: Ketanji Brown Jackson is Getting Tired of the Supreme Court’s Shadow Docket Abuses — Madiba K. Dennie, Balls and Strikes

Elections: New Mail Voting Rules Moved Forward Despite USPS Officials’ Concerns About Mass Disenfranchisement — Jenn Fifield, ProPublica

A.I.: In Defense of the Detour: On craft, A.I. and what gets lost when we skip the slow part — Giorgia Lupi, New York Times

Race, Society, Systems, Lack of Empathy: The NYC Subway Chokehold That Divided America, with Anand Giridharadas — Stay Tuned With Preet

Viruses: Witchcraft, or Sheeppox? A 3,700-Year-Old Virus Hiding in a Medieval book Just Killed 500,000 Animals — Elizabeth Rayne, Popular Mechanics

Witchcraft, or Sheeppox? A 3,700-Year-Old Virus Hiding in a Medieval book Just Killed 500,000 Animals — Elizabeth Rayne, Popular Mechanics

Politics: The Midterm Convention: Douche-a-Palooza. Have I Got News for You. Roy Wood, Amber Ruffin, Michael Ian Black, Julia Ioffe, Jon Lovett

Word of Mouth: Really, Truly, Almost Spring

Featured

Posted on March 4, 2024 by Valerie Block

Musical: A Sign of the Times — Lindsay Hope Pearlman, Richard J. Robin, Gabriel Barre, JoAnne M. Hunter, Joseph Church.

Extrauterine Children: The IVF Ruling Is About Who Gets to Raise Your Children — Dahlia Lithwick in SLATE.

Novel: Lady in the Lake — Laura Lippman

Podcast: The Wars in Ukraine and Gaza Have Changed. America’s Policy Hasn’t — Richard Haass on the Ezra Klein Show.

Podcast: Trump and the Age of Disinformation — Barb McQuade on Stay Tuned with Preet.

Double Standards: Israel, Gaza and Double Standards, Including Our Own — Nicholas Kristof in the New York Times.

TV: Avatar: the Last Air Bender — Albert Kim.

Movie: Shortcomings — Randall Park.

Idea: “Dobbs was never self-limiting to abortion—it was a save-the-date card for the religious right’s plan to come for the rest of our reproductive freedoms. …

This is the two-step wherein the state forces women to have babies they cannot raise, does nothing to help support them, then swoops in to seize the babies when their parents are seen as endangering them—a phenomenon that of course predominantly hurts poor women and women of color. The state also ensures that adoptions flow in the direction of more “worthy” parents, which means heterosexual and Christian parents, a regime also built into the legal framework. The list of people who cannot assert autonomy and control over their potential children has, in the course of a few weeks, now expanded from LGBTQ+ parents, single parents, poor parents, and parents of color to anyone who has started the process of IVF in Alabama.” —The IVF Ruling Is About Who Gets to Raise Your Children — Dahlia Lithwick in SLATE.