<em>The Atlantic Daily</em>: A Nonpolitical Reading List

3. A journalist became a poker champion in just one year.

Maria Konnikova was a psychologist and writer who knew almost nothing about the card game. Then she trained with one of the world’s best players.

4. Why are we afraid of bats?

Rebecca Giggs explores how we know—and how we learn—what to fear.  

5. A woman once smuggled her boyfriend out of prison in a dog crate.

Sometimes people ask Toby Dorr if she regrets what she did. She always says regrets are a waste of time.

6. For the fiction lover: Nicole Krauss’s new short story considers manhood through the eyes of a woman.

It begins: “My boys are standing at the edge of the jetty, and either they will jump or they won’t jump.”

7. A fake baby is born. Here’s how—and why.

For years, women on the internet have been writing conspiracy theories about celebrity pregnancies, Kaitlyn Tiffany reported as part of our “Shadowland” project. What sparks them?

Watch

I asked our critic David Sims to pick a few movies worth streaming online this weekend. He chose these five:

1. Dick Johnson Is Dead (Netflix)

This documentary is “a strangely satisfying, yet bittersweet watch in this dark time,” David writes.

2. I’m Thinking of Ending Things (Netflix)

“There’s a weird thrill to getting lost inside this movie, only so you can study every odd detail from new angles, over and over again,” says David.

3. Bill & Ted Face the Music (rent online)

The movie “is very funny, and very sweet, and yes, I may have even cried a little at the end,” the writer Devin Gordon confessed.

4. Boys State (Apple TV)

This documentary about teenagers running a government simulation in Texas is “both inspiring and occasionally terrifying,” David warns.

5. The 40-Year-Old Version (Netflix)

David calls it “an easygoing, charming work, buoyed by [Radha] Blank’s excellent lead performance and suffused with snappy jokes and sparkling supporting turns.”

Did someone forward you this newsletter? Sign up here. Need help? Contact Customer Care.

Caroline Mimbs Nyce is a senior associate editor at The Atlantic.