The Smart Way to Order Good Wine

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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 Charlie Warzel, a staff writer and the author of the Galaxy Brain newsletter. He has reported on the information dystopia embodied by the recent Kate Middleton scandal, last year’s chaos at OpenAI, and his night inside the Sphere, in Las Vegas.

Charlie is a semi-lapsed prestige-TV watcher who found his love for the genre reinvigorated by the fifth season of Fargo, which he calls “harrowing, bizarre … totally propulsive.” He’s also a jam-band guy (Goose is his current fascination) and a golf guy who enjoys bingeing YouTube videos of amateur golfers.

First, here are three Sunday reads from The Atlantic:

• The Great American Novels
• The terrible costs of a phone-based childhood
• America’s long history of secret adoption

The Culture Survey: Charlie Warzel

The television show I’m most enjoying right now: I took some time away from prestige TV in order to catch up on Oscar movies this winter, so it was with some trepidation that I agreed to watch the fifth season of Fargo (I hadn’t seen the first four, but the narrative changes each year, so you can drop in anew). It’s probably the best season of TV I’ve seen in some time. The showrunners succeed in something extremely difficult: The season is somehow funny, harrowing, bizarre, and poignant. And totally propulsive. Most important, it does the original Fargo justice. [Related: The character that breathed new life into Fargo]

Best novel I’ve recently read, and the best work of nonfiction: The most special kind of novel, in my opinion, is one that will rip you out of a reading funk. In December, I was in a total rut—unmotivated to read and floundering in three or so novels that weren’t really doing it for me. And then I picked up North Woods, by Daniel Mason, and tore through it in a day or so. It’s a beautiful, haunting, and at times hilarious story of a house and a piece of land in New England, told over generations. It rekindled my desire to grab a book instead of a smartphone, which is the highest compliment I can give. As for nonfiction, I found a copy of Patrick Radden Keefe’s Rogues in a leave-a-book-take-a-book hotel library and fell in love. It’s an anthology of Keefe’s best New Yorker stories, many about criminals and shady dealings. As a magazine writer myself, I find his work astounding—deeply reported nonfiction that always reads like a thriller. The wine-forgery piece is a delight.

A good recommendation I recently received: One of the best things to happen to me in recent memory is making friends who are significantly older than I am. In 2022, my partner and I met some people on a bike trip who are in their 60s (I’m 35), and they’re constantly helping me learn how to live. One of these friends used to work in the wine industry and shared a great nugget of wisdom. He said that restaurants tend to mark up the wines in the middle tier of a wine list, in part because people are afraid of looking cheap, so they go for the middle and end up paying too much. If you want a great bottle of wine, he said, you need to splurge. But if you’re not a snob, the cheapest thing is often as good as, if not better than, the stuff that’s medium-priced. I love these kinds of tips, because they make me feel way smarter than I am. [Related: What 3,700-year-old wine tasted like]

A musical artist who means a lot to me: Please don’t make fun of me, but I’m a jam-band guy. A few years ago, I stumbled upon Goose, a bunch of young guys who are seen as the next great American jam band. But here’s the thing—their studio albums absolutely slap too. They recently split up with their drummer, and lots of people were worried they’d lose the magic. But last month, they announced a new tour, and it’s been really fascinating to watch them introduce their new drummer. They recently released two long jam-session videos on YouTube, and it’s so fun to see the new energy. Their most recent studio album is a true indie banger that even my partner (not into jam bands) loves.

An online creator that I’m a fan of: I’m going to follow up my jam-band confession with another one: I’m a golf sicko. Love it; can’t get enough of it. And my security-blanket YouTube binges usually involve a lot of forgettable amateur golfers. One big exception is a series called Strapped, by No Laying Up. It centers on two friends, Neil and Big Randy, who go on various three-day golf trips—but the catch is that they have only $500 to spend on food, golf, and lodging. What started off almost five years ago as a low-budget experiment has turned into one of the best travel shows anywhere. Like any good art or entertainment, the series transcends the original premise and is really about friendship, getting outside your comfort zone, and exploring new places. The most recent two seasons (“South Carolina” and “Spring Training”) are phenomenal, hilarious bits of storytelling. Can’t recommend it enough, even if you hate golf (especially if you hate golf)!

The last museum or gallery show that I loved: I grew up outside Philadelphia, but my whole family is from Cleveland, and I go back there for the holidays. This year, we spent a Saturday afternoon at the Cleveland Museum of Art, and … sheesh. There was a cool Chinese-art feature and a great Degas exhibit of his paintings of Parisian laundresses, but, honestly, the permanent collections are astounding. I will admit to being a snob and thinking that Cleveland was going to underwhelm on the art front, but it punches way above its weight. It’s an incredibly underrated city when it comes to culture and food.

The Week Ahead

1. Palm Royale, a comedy series starring Kristen Wiig and Laura Dern about a woman fighting to break into Palm Beach high society (premieres Wednesday on Apple TV+)
2. Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire, a movie featuring new and old Ghostbusters who unite to save the world from a second ice age (in theaters Friday)
3. The Black Box: Writing the Race, by Henry Louis Gates, a book that explores how Black writers have helped shape a common understanding of Black identity in America (out Tuesday)

Essay

The Eternal Scrutiny of Kate Middleton

By Hillary Kelly

Kate Middleton has been reduced to her body. By which I mean: Many weeks into her recovery from surgery, and many years into her life as a royal, the physical form of Catherine, Princess of Wales, has become a commodity that the public feels entitled to consume. Her image has been on screens and in print for the past 20 years, so scrutinized and idolized that now, while she’s out of sight, newspaper columnists and intrepid TikTokers are fixated on not just where she is but also how she might look.

Read the full article.

More in Culture

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• What do crossword puzzles really test?
• A bloody retelling of Huckleberry Finn
• Why that big Abbott Elementary cameo made so much sense
• The cowardice of Guernica
• Love Lies Bleeding is a Coen brothers thriller on steroids.
• Why does romance now feel like work?
• A seriously silly Oscars moment

Catch Up on The Atlantic

• America will be fine without TikTok.
• The real lessons of the Alabama IVF ruling
• How Hur misled the country on Biden’s memory

Photo Album

The United Nations is warning that famine in Gaza is “almost inevitable.” These images show Palestinians’ struggle to find food, clean water, and medicine.

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