Albert Brooks once got directions from a cow, turned down the lead role for the movie “Big,” and had a “brain explosion” performing in front of an audience of clowns. Adrienne LaFrance on the godfather of American comedy: theatlantic.com/magazine/archi…

.Gal Beckerman on PEN America: “Does it really make sense to jettison such an entity without first thinking through what its absence would mean, what a world without PEN, without a defense of expression ... would actually look like?” theatln.tc/toaqJcoY

JUST IN: PEN America has now canceled its annual World Voices festival, Gal Beckerman reports, after calling off its literary awards ceremony last week. Can the free-speech group survive? theatln.tc/3quY9Nis

Erwin Chemerinsky adds some backstory to the protest at his house, detailing anti-Semitic flyers of him that were put up across campus: “The poster attacks me for no apparent reason other than that I am Jewish.” theatln.tc/k9SMj04G

cogent Charlie Warzel question: if TikTok's data-mining and discourse-shaping abilities are too potentially nefarious for an authoritarian government to control them......why should anyone be able to control them? theatln.tc/FJRUNzrZ

I bought tickets from a service other than Ticketmaster recently, and was so confused when the final price was the same as the original price that I thought the sale hadn't gone through.

I spent the past two-and-a-half months profiling Mike Johnson for The Atlantic, chronicling his improbable rise to the speakership, his anachronistic approach to the job, and his uneasy detente with Trump: theatlantic.com/politics/archi…

“Each honeymoon-to-heartbreak story she’s sung about over the years has conveyed the lesson that worshiping another person is a recipe for disappointment. When will it sink in?” theatln.tc/x19u9PmR

happy 'ordering ankle socks, two-thirds of which you will immediately lose' season to all who celebrate

this tweet actually reminded me that I needed to do the dishes

awww, I remember the first time Nowadays was over deezlinks.com/p/this-so-call…

.Graeme Wood games out how Netanyahu could use the Iranian drone strike to jumpstart hostage negotiations, refresh regional alliances, reframe Israel's global standing, and potentially harness his country's far right. Will he do it? theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/…

I told a story in slack about a TV 'being wheeled into the classroom,' and had a walker by the end of it

Who asked for seltzer with ashwagandha? theatln.tc/JtyM7vu7

“He used to walk around the cloakroom showing people porno of him and his latest girlfriend,” one former Republican lawmaker told Elaine Godfrey. “He’d show me a video, and I’d say, ‘That’s great, Matt.’ Like, what kind of a reaction do you want?”

theatlantic.com/politics/archi…

.Graeme Wood: “It is one thing to refuse to negotiate with extremists because they are extremists. It is another to refuse to negotiate with them because you are extreme too.” theatln.tc/5IdSSsuw