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This is an edition of The Atlantic Daily, a newsletter that guides you through the biggest stories of the day, helps you discover new ideas, and recommends the best in culture. Sign up for it here.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 Kevin Townsend, a senior producer on our podcast team. He currently works on the Radio Atlantic podcast and has helped produce Holy Week—about the week after Martin Luther King Jr.’s assassination—and the Peabody-winning Floodlines, which explores the devastation of Hurricane Katrina.Kevin enjoys reading Philip Levine’s poems and visiting the National Gallery of Art, in Washington, D.C., where he can sit with Mark Rothko’s large-scale works. He’s also a Canadian-punk-music fan—Metz is one of his favorite bands—and a self-proclaimed Star Trek nerd who’s excited to binge the final season of Star Trek: Discovery.First, here are three Sunday reads from The Atlantic: Amanda Knox: “What if Jens Söring actually did it?” How Daniel Radcliffe outran Harry Potter The blindness of elites The Culture Survey: Kevin TownsendA quiet song that I love, and a loud song that I love: In college, I developed a steady rotation of quiet songs that didn’t distract me while I was studying. Artists such as Tycho and Washed Out were some of my favorites.Recently, I’ve been into Floating Points, the moniker for Samuel Shepherd, a British electronic-music producer. I could recommend his Late Night Tales album or Elaenia, but the one that stands out most to me is his collaborative album, Promises, featuring the saxophonist Pharoah Sanders and the London Symphony Orchestra. It’s a gorgeous, layered work that’s best listened to all the way through—but if you’re pressed for time, “Movement 6” is an exceptional track.As for a loud song, one of my favorite bands is the Canadian punk trio Metz. I’ve had “A Boat to Drown In” on heavy rotation for the past year. It doesn’t have the thrumming precision of their earlier singles such as “Headache” and “Wet Blanket,” but the song is a knockout every time. Metz just released a new record, Up on Gravity Hill, that I’m excited to get lost in.The last museum or gallery show that I loved: “Mark Rothko: Paintings on Paper,” an exhibition at the National Gallery of Art, showcased some of the abstract painter’s lesser-known works. The show closed recently, but the museum’s permanent collection features a good number of his works, including some of his famous color-field paintings. The National Gallery is also home to many pieces from the collection of the now-closed Corcoran Gallery of Art, and they’re worth a visit—especially the Hudson River School paintings, which must be seen in person in all of their maximalist glory.Best novel I’ve recently read, and the best work of nonfiction: A few months ago, on my honeymoon, I reread No Country for Old Men. It’s far from a romantic beach read, but few writers are as tersely gripping as Cormac McCarthy. The Coen brothers’ film adaptation is fantastic, but the novel—published in 2005, two years into the Iraq War—encompasses a wider story about generations of men at war. It’s worth reading even if you’ve seen the movie.I also brought with me a book I’d long meant to read: Lulu Miller’s Why Fish Don’t Exist. Part science history, part memoir, the book is mostly a biography of David Starr Jordan, Stanford University’s first president and a taxonomist who catalogued thousands of species of fish. It’s a unique and remarkable read that I can’t recommend highly enough. Fundamentally, it’s about our need for order—in our personal world, and in the natural world around us.Miller’s book reminds me of a recent Radio Atlantic episode that I produced, in which Atlantic staff writer Zoë Schlanger discusses her new book, The Light Eaters, about the underappreciated biological creativity of plants. Miller and Schlanger both examine and challenge the hierarchies we apply to the natural world—and why humanity can be better off questioning those ideas.A poem, or line of poetry, that I return to: My favorite poet is Philip Levine. His work is spare and direct, alive with love for the unsung corners of America and the people who inhabit them. Levine lived in Detroit during the Depression and spent more than three decades teaching in Fresno. Having grown up in Pittsburgh and moved to California as a teenager, I connected easily with the world he saw.“What Work Is” and “The Simple Truth” are two of his poems that I often return to, especially for the final lines, which feel like gut punches. [Related: An interview with Philip Levine (From 1999)]Speaking of final-line gut punches, the poem (and line) that I think of most frequently is by another favorite poet of mine: the recently departed Louise Glück. “Nostos,” from her 1996 book, Meadowlands, touches on how essential yet fragile our memories are, and there’s a haunting sweetness to its last line: “We look at the world once, in childhood. / The rest is memory.”The television show I’m most enjoying right now: It’s May, so, honestly: the NHL playoffs. (And it’s been a great year for hockey.) But when it comes to actual television, I’m excited to binge the fifth and final season of Star Trek: Discovery.It’s bittersweet that the series is ending. Sonequa Martin-Green gives an Emmy-worthy lead performance, but for all of the show’s greatness, it can lean a bit too much into space opera, with the galaxy at stake every season and a character on the verge of tears every episode. Trek is usually at its best when it’s trying to be TV, not cinema. (And that’s including the films—Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan succeeded by essentially serving up a movie-length episode.) [Related: A critic’s case against cinema]Being a friend of DeSoto, I want to give another Trek-related recommendation: The Greatest Generation and Greatest Trek podcasts, which go episode by episode through the wider Trek Industrial Complex. The humor, analysis, and clever audio production elevate the shows above the quality of your typical rewatch podcast. I came to The Greatest Generation as an audio-production and comedy nerd, and it turned me into a Trek nerd as well. So be warned.Something I recently rewatched, reread, or otherwise revisited: The Hunt for Red October. Somehow, it gets better with every watch. “Give me a ping, Vasili. One ping only, please.”The Week Ahead Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes, an action sci-fi movie about a young ape who must face a tyrannical new ape leader (in theaters Friday) Dark Matter, a mystery series, based on the best-selling novel, about a man who is pulled into an alternate reality and must save his family from himself (premieres Wednesday on Apple TV+) First Love, a collection of essays by Lilly Dancyger that portray women’s friendships as their great loves (out Tuesday) Essay Illustration by Ben Kothe / The Atlantic. Source: Courtesy of Elena Dudum. I Am Building an Archive to Prove That Palestine ExistsBy Elena Dudum My father collects 100-year-old magazines about Palestine—Life, National Geographic, even The Illustrated London News, the world’s first graphic weekly news magazine. For years, he would talk about these mysterious documents but rarely show them to anyone. “I have proof,” he would say, “that Palestine exists.” His father, my paternal grandfather, whom I called Siddi, had a similar compulsion to prove his heritage, though it manifested differently. Siddi used to randomly recite his family tree to my father when he was a child. As if answering a question that had not been asked, he would recount those who came before him … Although my American-born father didn’t inherit Siddi’s habit of reciting his family tree, he did recite facts; he lectured me about Palestine ad nauseam in my youth, although he had not yet visited. Similar to his father’s, these speeches were unprompted. “Your Siddi only had one business partner his entire life,” he would say for the hundredth time. “And that business partner was a rabbi. Palestinians are getting pitted against the Jews because it’s convenient, but it’s not the truth.” Read the full article.More in Culture How do you make a genuinely weird mainstream movie? The godfather of American comedy The sci-fi writer who invented conspiracy theory Hacks goes for the jugular. “What I wish someone had told me 30 years ago” Will Americans ever get sick of cheap junk? The complicated ethics of rare-book collecting The diminishing returns of having good taste When poetry could define a life Catch Up on The Atlantic What’s left to restrain Donald Trump? Democrats defang the House’s far right. America’s colleges are reaping what they sowed, Tyler Austin Harper argues. Photo Album Shed hunters unpack their haul on the opening day of the Wyoming shed-hunt season. (Natalie Behring / Getty) Take a look at these images of devastating floods across Kenya, a pagan fire festival in Scotland, antler gathering in Wyoming, and more.Explore all of our newsletters.When you buy a book using a link in this newsletter, we receive a commission. Thank you for supporting The Atlantic.

‘By Any Means Necessary’ at Columbia

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Last month, a pro-Palestinian activist stood in front of me on Columbia University’s campus with a sign that read By Any Means Necessary. She smiled. She seemed like a nice person. I am an Israeli graduate student at the university, and I know holding that sign is within her rights. And yet, its message was so painful and disturbing that after that moment, I left New York for a few days.If I’d had the courage, I would have asked that student, "What exactly do you mean by ‘any means necessary’?” Holding up signs? Leading demonstrations? Or do knives also fall under that category? Guns and rifles as well? Raping and taking civilians hostage? (As of this writing, 133 hostages are still being held in Gaza.) And whom would these means be employed against? Columbia? The Israeli government? Soldiers? Civilians? Children?Since my return to Columbia, tensions have escalated dramatically. After protesters broke into Hamilton Hall on Tuesday night, the administration sent in the NYPD to evacuate the building and arrest the occupiers. This is the second time such measures have been taken—and they may only intensify the frustration and hostility of all involved. More worrying, this frustration might push more students to believe that “by any means necessary” is the only way to achieve their goals.At this point, anyone reading this essay might suspect that I am not objective, and they would be absolutely right. Because if you ask me what I think about when I see the words by any means necessary, it is only one thing. I think about Sagi: my best friend, whom I knew since sixth grade, the funniest and kindest person I have ever met.On the morning of October 7, Sagi Golan woke up at home with his boyfriend, Omer Ohana, whom he was supposed to marry two weeks later. They had already bought their beautiful white suits, and I had bought a plane ticket to the wedding. As a reservist, Sagi immediately headed south, where he fought bravely for hours at Kibbutz Be’eri, saving the lives of innocent adults and children, until he was killed in combat with terrorists. One hundred civilians were killed in Be’eri, and 30 more were taken hostage.I am a writer who has published short stories and a novel, but the day Sagi was killed, I lost my words. I couldn’t get a plane ticket to Israel for the funeral, so I just showed up at the airport. I was so confused and upset that when the ticketing agent tried to understand why I was trying to get on a plane without a ticket, I said, “My best friend … a wedding … a funeral …” The agent, a complete stranger, asked if he could give me a hug. Half an hour later, he’d arranged a one-way ticket.I landed an hour before Sagi’s funeral. The flowers that were meant for my best friend's wedding were laid upon his grave.[Mark Leibovich: House Republicans at the ‘Liberation Camp’]Back in New York, I barely left my apartment. I barely ate, barely slept. By that time, protests had already become routine on campus, but I was so deep in my own grief that I didn’t even notice. This went on for months. Toward the end of the fall semester, a professor took me aside after class. He told me that in his youth, he’d had friends who spent summers at kibbutzim in Israel, describing the people there as the nicest in the world. Neither he nor his friends were Jewish, but they were captivated by the concept of a cooperative socialist society. “Hearing about the attacks on those kibbutzim on October 7 was deeply painful for me,” he said. “So I can’t even imagine how painful it is for you.”That professor is a strong critic of the Israeli government and its policies. But in that particular moment, he chose to address only my pain. Although I’m still grieving and will be for a long while, his compassion helped me start to heal, and allowed me to better perceive the suffering of many others, Israelis and Palestinians, whose lives have been shattered since October 7.As an Israeli, I despise the rhetoric emerging from certain extremist politicians, who have claimed that there are no innocent civilians in Gaza or advocated for a forced deportation of Palestinians. I also believe that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will go down as one of the worst leaders in the history of the Jewish people. His willingness to grant political power and public legitimacy to racist and fascist ideologues is a moral stain on the history of the nation, and I am alarmed by the possibility that Netanyahu would reject a hostage deal and a cease-fire to preserve his own power.But some of the demonstrators are calling for something categorically different from an end to the Netanyahu government or even the war. Some of them are suggesting, implicitly, that there is no place for Jewish life between the river and the sea. Indeed, many of their slogans have nothing to do with peace. Almost every day, I hear protesters chant “Brick by brick, wall by wall, Israel has to fall” and “Intifada Revolution.” Growing up in Israel during the early 2000s, I lived through the Second Intifada. I witnessed buses blown up by suicide bombers and mass shootings in city centers, terrorist attacks that killed many innocent civilians in the name of an “Intifada Revolution.”Recently, a video surfaced of a student leader saying, “Zionists don’t deserve to live”; on campus, an individual stood in front of Jewish students with a sign reading Al-Qassam’s next targets. In the encampment itself, signs hang with small red triangles that might seem like an innocent design choice. Whether the protesters realize it or not, Hamas uses that icon to indicate Israelis that they’ve targeted and murdered.I don’t want to paint with too broad a brush. Bringing the NYPD onto campus on April 18, when the encampment had just been established, likely contributed to the escalation, and I know that off-campus bad actors, including politicians, are taking advantage of the volatile situation and fueling tensions. Most of the student protesters are peaceful; Jews are participating in the demonstrations. But most is not all. And what’s significant is that many students on campus minimize or ignore extreme or violent rhetoric, and some even laugh and cheer along. I’ve heard Columbia students claim that these incidents are so petty that they are not worth discussing at all. I find myself debating intelligent people who treat reported facts like myths if they don’t align with their narrative.Universities don’t have to be battlefields. More people, including faculty and students, should speak out against hateful rhetoric that is morally wrong, even if this rhetoric is protected by the First Amendment. Fundamentally, I don’t see how the protesters’ insistence on using the language of violence will contribute to the Palestinian cause, or their own. They have to know that their actions have only strengthened the extreme-right political forces in the U.S. and Israel, who are already using these statements to consolidate more power. Their expressions and actions trample the voices of Israeli and Palestinian peace activists who advocate for complexity and compassion. And they further entrench today’s distorted public discourse, which demands complete conformity from people within the same group and zero compassion for those in another.

China’s Plan to Turn Buddhism Into Communist Propaganda

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Shangri-la is best-known as a fictional place—an idyllic valley first imagined by a British novelist in the 1930s—but look at a map and you’ll find it. Sitting at the foot of the Himalayas in southwestern China, Shangri-la went by a more prosaic name until 2001, when the city was rebranded by Chinese officials eager to boost tourism. Their ploy worked.The star of Shangri-la is the Ganden Sumtseling Monastery. Since its destruction in 1966, during Mao’s Cultural Revolution, this Tibetan Buddhist monastery has been rebuilt into a sprawling complex crowned by golden rooftops and home to more than 700 monks. It was humming with construction when I visited in October—and filled with Chinese tourists.Like many monasteries, Sumtseling is thriving thanks to Tibetan Buddhism’s growing popularity in China. When the government loosened restrictions on religious worship in the 1990s, the practice took off, especially among urban elites unsatisfied with the Chinese Communist Party’s materialist worldview. It’s an open secret that even high-ranking party officials follow Tibetan lamas.Tibetan Buddhism’s recent spread presents both a threat and an opportunity for President Xi Jinping. He wants to make China politically and culturally homogenous, a goal that could be jeopardized by a tradition steeped in Tibetan language and history. But Xi is enacting a program that seeks to turn the rising popularity of Tibetan Buddhism to his advantage—to transform the tradition from a hotbed of dissent into an instrument of assimilation and party propaganda. If it works, it could smooth his path to lifelong power and help him remake China according to his nationalist vision.[Read: Xi Jinping is fighting a culture war at home]Tibetan Buddhism isn’t only a spiritual practice; it’s an expression of Tibet’s cultural identity and resistance to Chinese rule. The CCP annexed Tibet in 1951, claiming that the then-independent country belonged to historical China and had to be liberated from the Dalai Lama’s Buddhist theocracy. The Dalai Lama fled to India to establish a Tibetan government-in-exile, and Tibet has been a source of opposition to Beijing ever since.According to the Tibetan scholar Dhondup Rekjong, Xi’s ultimate goal is to erase Tibet’s language and cultural identity entirely. In a campaign similar to the CCP’s oppression of China’s Uyghur Muslims, Tibetan teachers and writers have been arrested as “separatists” for promoting the Tibetan language, and more than 1 million Tibetan children have been sent to boarding schools to be assimilated into Chinese culture. Xi’s effort to control Tibetan Buddhism is just one piece of this long-standing effort to suppress Tibetan identity, but it has taken on an additional valence as the practice expands in China.To co-opt Tibetan Buddhism’s popularity, the CCP recruits religious leaders willing to implement what it calls Sinicized Buddhism—a combination of state-sanctioned religious teachings and socialist propaganda taught by party-approved clergy—and rewards their monasteries with money and status. The well-funded Sumtseling monastery, for example, has been officially designated by the CCP as a “forerunner in implementing the Sinification of Buddhism.” To detach Buddhism from Tibetan culture, monks are pressured to replace traditional Tibetan-language scriptures with Chinese translations. According to Rekjong, they will soon be expected to practice in Mandarin.The approach is part of a broader campaign to influence all religions in China. As of January 1, every religious group is legally required to “carry out patriotic education and enhance the national awareness and patriotic sentiments of clergy and believers.” Failure to pledge loyalty to Xi, display the Chinese flag, and preach “patriotic sentiments” is now punishable by law. If Mao wanted to eliminate religion, Xi wants to nationalize it.Co-opting Tibetan Buddhism will bring Xi one step closer to achieving what he and the CCP call the “Chinese dream,” a vision that seeks to unite China’s ethnic groups—its Han majority, Tibetans, Uyghurs, Mongolians, and dozens more—in their dedication to the motherland and party. Xi has already consolidated more political power than just about any other modern leader, but realizing the Chinese dream will require something arguably more difficult: winning the hearts and minds of his subjects. As communist ideology loses its allure, Xi is enlisting religion to sell his program to the people.But it may not be that easy. Joshua Esler, a researcher who studies Tibetan culture at the Sheridan Institute of Higher Education, in Australia, told me that Tibetan Buddhism has grown so popular precisely because it offers the Chinese something their government can’t. Many Han Chinese, he said, “believe that Tibetan Buddhism has retained a spiritual authenticity that is lost in China.” They see Tibet as an alternative to the corruption, materialism, and environmental degradation that characterize life under the CCP. Any government interference in Tibetan Buddhism might alienate its followers, pushing them toward Buddhist leaders who secretly support the exiled Dalai Lama.[Arthur C. Brooks: Five teachings of the Dalai Lama I try to live by]As for Tibetans themselves, Sinicized Buddhism is unlikely to become popular anytime soon. Many of them consider monasteries that have too eagerly embraced Xi’s program to be sellouts. But as the government ramps up its campaign—and as a new generation of assimilated Tibetans comes of age—that might begin to change.After visiting Shangri-la, I went to the remote Tibetan town of Daocheng, where a young monk named Phuntsok showed me around his monastery. “Without the Communist Party, we would not have freedom of religion,” Phuntsok told me as we walked through ornate chapels. He extolled the CCP’s support for Tibetan Buddhism, and no wonder: Locals told me that the monastery, Yangteng Gonpa, had received substantial government funding. A freshly paved road snaked up the mountainside on which the monastery was perched, ending at a parking lot built to accommodate hundreds of visitors. A new welcome gate was being erected, and the tourism office promoted Yangteng as one of the area’s main attractions.I followed Phuntsok up to the second floor of a chapel, where he showed me an exhibit celebrating the monastery’s “liberation” by the Red Army in 1950. The space doubled as a classroom; a whiteboard showed the faint outlines of a lesson on how monks can “actively guide religion to adapt to socialist society.” Though the monastery belongs to the Buddhist tradition of the Dalai Lama, Phuntsok didn’t mention the exiled spiritual leader, whose name and image are censored in Tibet. Mural at the Yangteng Gonpa monastery celebrating its “liberation” by the Red Army (Photograph by Judith Hertog) Instead, Phuntsok praised Gyaltsen Norbu, a Buddhist leader who was handpicked by the CCP as a child to be the Panchen Lama, a position second only to the Dalai Lama. (Many Tibetans don’t recognize Norbu as legitimate; in 1995, the Dalai Lama identified another child as the Panchen Lama, whom Chinese authorities promptly detained, and whose whereabouts remain unknown.) When the 88-year-old Dalai Lama dies, Norbu will likely be tasked by the CCP to select his replacement, who will be raised under CCP supervision and expected to promote Sinicized Buddhism. Westerners tend to imagine the Dalai Lama as a force for peace and human rights, but the position can just as easily be put into the service of totalitarianism.Gray Tuttle, a Tibetan-studies professor at Columbia University, told me that the CCP is wary of any religious movement that isn’t under its control. In 2017, the government issued orders to tear down Larung Gar, Tibet’s most popular Buddhist monastery. Thousands of residents, including many Han Chinese, were displaced from the remote valley where they had come to study. The official reason for the evictions was that the monastery didn’t comply with safety regulations; the likelier explanation is that, despite the government’s initial support for the monastery, the CCP felt threatened by its success and the influence of its teachers. “The CCP definitely wants to limit the charismatic power of any particular lama,” Tuttle told me.The challenge Xi has set for himself, then, is to reshape Tibetan Buddhism without undermining its allure. Judging by the large crowds at Sumtseling, he’s succeeding—at least among some Han Chinese. “Tibetan lamas possess the deepest knowledge,” a Han woman named Jin Yi, who had traveled 400 miles to the monastery to meet her guru, told me. But devotees like her were considerably outnumbered by tourists, many of them dressed up as Tibetan pilgrims and modeling for photos—striking lotus poses, spinning prayer wheels, or staring in feigned rapture at Buddhist murals. Few entered the chapels, where photography was prohibited. Government-sponsored monasteries like Sumtseling might attract tourists looking for a photo op, but lavish temples won’t win over true believers.

No Subject

Hope exhausted years agobut I still try.Heart thumps on doggedlyand wants to knowif nice surprises might in time arrive,and mind likewise. I readto keep a lookoutunbeknownst,or make a wild surmise. I dreamthe ground I plough and plantmight even nowsprout greenery I never saw beforeand not, as I expect, remainas rolling oceans do in falling snow.

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