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Welcome back to The Daily’s Sunday culture edition, in which one Atlantic writer or editor reveals what’s keeping them entertained. Today’s special guest is Toluse Olorunnipa, a staff writer whose stories cover the month the president went missing, the Project 2025 shutdown, and Kari Lake’s attempt to deport her own employees.
Toluse enjoys watching Nollywood movies and reading Chimamanda Adichie’s books. He has heard “Shallow,” by Lady Gaga and Bradley Cooper, a few hundred times too many, and recommends listening to the band Shallow Alcove instead.
— Stephanie Bai, associate editor
A cultural product I loved as a teenager and still love: Nollywood movies and Afrobeats. Before, Nigerian entertainment could easily be found on Netflix or American radio stations, I remember waiting eagerly for my cousins in Nigeria to send me the latest CDs and VCDs. (One of my favorites at the time was an epic thriller called Egg of Life.) As a child of immigrants, those films and songs helped me connect with my parents and gain a better understanding of their childhoods. Usually made on shoestring budgets, the movies back then had no choice but to rely on powerful storytelling and dialogue. The budgets have gotten bigger and the production has improved significantly as the industry has gone more mainstream in recent years (King of Boys on Netflix is a modern-day favorite), but the storytelling is still just as fantastic—and fantastical.
Something I loved but now dislike: America’s Funniest Home Videos. Now that I have two young children (and an aging, accident-prone body), I find videos of people inadvertently hurting themselves much less amusing!
An author I will read anything by: Chimamanda Adichie. I started reading her novels 20 years ago and have yet to be disappointed. Probably 90 percent of what I read overall is nonfiction—mostly audiobooks cranked up to 3.5x speed—but Adichie’s storytelling is so rich and textured, I make time to curl up with her physical books and transport myself to the intricate and colorful scenes she creates. I love everything she writes, but Purple Hibiscus, Half of a Yellow Sun, and Americanah are all-time favorites. [Related: Chimamanda Adichie is a hopeless romantic.]
A favorite story I’ve read in The Atlantic**:** I read anything by Clint Smith. Tim Alberta’s profile of former CNN CEO Chris Licht and Caitlin Dickerson’s cover story on family separations are paragons of the craft. Also, W. E. B. Du Bois’s 1897 essay “Strivings of the Negro People” remains timeless.
Something delightful introduced to me by a kid in my life: So, my family and I were stuck out of town earlier this year after a bad snowstorm snarled the airports on the East Coast for days. My then-two-month-old son let us all know how much he didn’t appreciate the inconvenience by wailing his little heart out in his car seat while I was driving. I had turned on the radio to compete with the shrieks and was considering pulling over, when the song switched to “Shallow,” by Lady Gaga and Bradley Cooper. He calmed down at once.
For the next several months, that was our go-to song whenever he was fussy and needed to be soothed. It was like a magic trick—the guitar riff at the beginning would brighten his mood and still his angst without fail. It worked almost too well, to the point where I had listened to the song hundreds of times and I kind of began to dread it. I tried to see if similar songs, including from the same soundtrack, might work, but the child made clear in no uncertain terms that he wanted “Shallow,” and only “Shallow,” on repeat, forever and always. One day, defeated, I asked Alexa to play “Shallow,” and it began playing music by this delightful up-and-coming band called Shallow Alcove instead. I instantly loved its songs, and my tiny music critic approved as well. Now when he’s crying, I’ll turn on its track “Music Box” (which coincidentally opens with the lyrics “Sorry that I’m crying …”), and he’ll break into a knowing grin. It’s the cutest thing.
Something I recently revisited: Little Dragon’s debut record. All of the group’s music is excellent, but its self-titled first album still transfixes me almost 20 years later.
An actor I would watch in anything: Issa Rae. She is hilarious.
My favorite way of wasting time on my phone: Watching videos of battle rap. I find the whole subculture weirdly addictive: The puns, multisyllabic rhyme schemes, double and triple entendres, metaphors, alliteration, ad-libs, and humor—all mixed with unhealthy levels of aggression—serve to make the entire enterprise magically ridiculous.
A good recommendation I recently received: Quiet, by Susan Cain. I was late to it, but her book extolling the virtues of introversion is awesome. [Related: When schools overlook introverts]
A poem, or line of poetry, that I return to: “Finally, brethren, whatever things are true, whatever things are noble, whatever things are just, whatever things are pure, whatever things are lovely, whatever things are of good report, if there is any virtue and if there is anything praiseworthy—meditate on these things.” (Philippians 4:8)
Here are three Sunday reads from The Atlantic:
(Some) MAGA girls just wanna have fun.American kids can’t do math anymore.Advent calendars are totally out of control.
The Week Ahead
Season 5 of Stranger Things, the final season of a series about a group of friends in the ’80s who must defeat sinister supernatural forces (Part 1 out Wednesday on Netflix)Hamnet, a film about Agnes, the wife of William Shakespeare (out Wednesday in theaters)Capitalism, a book by the historian Sven Beckert on the history of the forces that shape capitalism (out Tuesday)
Essay
Illustration by The Atlantic. Source: Hy Peskin / Getty.
How to Fix the Mess of College Sports
By Sally Jenkins
Here’s an idea for overhauling the mess that is money in college sports: For every dollar that a university athletic department spends on coaching salaries fatter than a duke’s inheritance, or locker rooms as luxurious as Hadrian’s villa, a dollar should go toward academic funding—to faculty salaries, library maintenance, and other necessities that benefit all students, athletes included.
Such an arrangement might help reform a truly broken system, which demands compulsive, destructive overspending—on coaching, facilities, and more—in a cycle of one-upmanship.
More in Culture
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Catch Up on The Atlantic
The 2025 Atlantic gift guideSophie Gilbert: President PiggyJonathan Chait: Trump’s toddler response to the Epstein saga
Photo Album
Two polar bears gather on the porch of an abandoned research station. (Vadim Makhorov / AP)
The photographer Vadim Makhorov recently captured photos of a group of polar bears that were taking shelter inside an abandoned research station on Russia’s remote Kolyuchin Island.
Rafaela Jinich contributed to this newsletter.
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