Taxes upon taxes are just one of the reasons that both financial-industry hotshots and businesses are moving out of the Big Apple. We look at what that might cost the city. A snapshot of the drinks business reveals a subtle picture of who is drinking what, and where. And the Chinese rapper that is fast becoming a global household name.
They are four times more likely to kill themselves, three times more likely to struggle with addiction, and 12 times more likely to be incarcerated than women. If that weren’t enough, record numbers of men are not getting married, not dating, not enrolling in school or working, and struggling with serious mental health issues.
In response, a cottage industry has emerged—full of influencers and paid courses claiming to teach young men how to become “high value.”
But there seems to be a deeper intractable challenge: Young people lack meaning. Fifty-eight percent of young adults say they’ve experienced little or no sense of purpose in their lives over the past month.
Shilo Brooks has a simple idea for all of it. He’s telling young men—and really, all young people—to read. Yes, read. The idea is simple: Reading great books can make stronger and better men.
He knows he’s facing an uphill battle: Reading for pleasure among American adults has dropped 40 percent in the past 20 years. In 2022, only 28 percent of men read a fiction book, compared to 47 percent of women—a 19-point gap.
Shilo doesn’t have the stereotypical profile for a “lit boy,” as Gen Z might describe him. He’s from a small town in Texas and has a thick Southern drawl. When he was a baby, his stepfather stole his mother’s savings, leaving them with nothing. And he almost didn’t go to college because he couldn’t afford it.
But today, Shilo is president and CEO of the George W. Bush Presidential Center and Professor of Practice in the Department of Political Science at Southern Methodist University. He has also taught at Princeton, the University of Virginia, the University of Colorado, and Bowdoin College.
His prescription is simple. Shilo says: “Great works of literature are entertaining, but they are not mere entertainment. A great book induces self-examination and spiritual expansion. When a man is starved for love, work, purpose, money, or vitality, a novel wrestling with these themes can be metabolized as energy for the heart. When a man suffers from addiction, divorce, self-loathing, or vanity, his local bookstore can become his pharmacy.”
This is the driving vision of the new podcast he just launched with The Free Press, called Old School, where he talks to guests about the books that shaped their lives: Fareed Zakaria on The Great Gatsby, Nick Cave on The Adventures of Pinocchio, Richard Dawkins on P.G. Wodehouse novels. Then there’s Coleman Hughes, Ryan Holiday, Rob Henderson, and so much more. Think of it like a boy’s book club that anyone can enjoy.
So, here’s what you’ll hear today: a conversation between Bari and Shilo about this project, and how it fulfills the desperate needs of a lost generation.
During the First World War, most of the attention, at least in the West, was focused on the Western Front.
However, the Western Front was not the only front in the war. There were actually multiple fronts, including the Middle East, Africa, the Balkans, and Italy.
However, the largest of these non-Western fronts was in the East. In a front extending from the Baltic to the Black Sea. The war in the East was almost as brutal as in the West, with casualties almost as high.
Learn more about the Eastern Front in World War I on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily.
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Killing the Dead: Vampire Epidemics from Mesopotamia to the New World (Princeton UP, 2025) by Professor John Blair provides the first in-depth, global account of one of the world’s most widespread yet misunderstood forms of mass hysteria—the vampire epidemic. In a spellbinding narrative, Dr. Blair takes readers from ancient Mesopotamia to present-day Haiti to explore a macabre frontier of life and death where corpses are believed to wander or do harm from the grave, and where the vampire is a physical expression of society’s inexplicable terrors and anxieties. In 1732, the British public opened their morning papers to read of lurid happenings in eastern Europe. Serbian villagers had dug up several corpses and had found them to be undecayed and bloated with blood. Recognizing the marks of vampirism, they mutilated and burned them. Centuries earlier, the English themselves engaged in the same behavior. In fact, vampire epidemics have flared up throughout history—in ancient Assyria, China, and Rome, medieval and early modern Europe, and the Americas. Blair blends the latest findings in archaeology, anthropology, and psychology with vampire lore from literature and popular culture to show how these episodes occur at traumatic moments in societies that upend all sense of security, and how the European vampire is just one species in a larger family of predatory supernatural entities that includes the female flying demons of Southeast Asia and the lustful yoginīs of India. Richly illustrated, Killing the Dead provocatively argues that corpse-killing, far from being pathological or unhealthy, served as a therapeutic and largely harmless outlet for fear, hatred, and paranoia that would otherwise result in violence against marginalized groups and individuals.
This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose book focuses on post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts, with qualitative analysis of the Angolan and Mozambican civil wars. You can find Miranda’s interviews on New Books with Miranda Melcher, wherever you get your podcasts.
A Virginia judge allowed the state’s Democrats to pursue a redistricting plan on Wednesday that would permit them to amend the state’s constitution and redraw its congressional districts before next year’s midterm elections – despite a lawsuit from Virginia Republicans. Those Democrats are following a national trend, kicked off by President Trump. Back in August, Trump called on Texas to redraw its congressional maps ahead of the 2026 midterms in order to minimize Republican losses in the House. And after Texas redrew its maps, California Democratic Governor Gavin Newsom responded by putting forward a plan to redistrict his state through a ballot measure, Proposition 50, that would redraw California’s congressional districts and push five Republicans out of their seats. Californians will be voting on the proposition on Election Day next week. To explain the fight and how the 2026 Midterms became a battle royale, I spoke with John Bisognano. He’s the President of the National Democratic Redistricting Committee.
We'll explain President Trump's announcement about nuclear weapons testing, made just before his highly anticipated meeting with the Chinese president.
Also, sticker shock as Obamacare window shopping begins.
And what to know about the latest interest rate cut.
Plus: an unprecedented milestone for an American tech company, which major AI platform is now banning teens, and the "word of the year" that you probably won't understand if you're over the age of 15.
Those stories and even more news to know in about 10 minutes!
Join us every Mon-Fri for more daily news roundups!
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About Us: The daily pop-biz news show making today’s top stories your business. Formerly known as Robinhood Snacks, The Best One Yet is hosted by Jack Crivici-Kramer & Nick Martell.
China and India have a long, complicated history. Just a few years ago, there was a spate of armed skirmishes between the two nations. And yet, there are signs of warming relations amidst President Trump’s ongoing trade war. Today on the show, is that trade war pushing India toward China? And what could happen if two of the world’s largest economies come together?
