A.I. is causing fear, even among those who are developing the technology. On this week’s #politicalscene#, Joshua Rothman explains why even the people pioneering this tech are raising alarms. Listen to the full conversation:

In the new play “The Ford/Hill Project” the testimonies produced in two infamous Supreme Court confirmation hearings—those of the conservative Justices Clarence Thomas and Brett Kavanaugh, held 27 years apart—have been spliced, cut, and edited. “The result, somewhat amazingly, is the feeling of vertigo,” Doreen St. Felix writes. Read her review:

Whatever book you pick up, it’s likely to make you feel better—maybe even a whole lot better. “In a secular age, I suspect that reading fiction is one of the few remaining paths to transcendence, that elusive state in which the distance between the self and the universe shrinks,” Ceridwen Dovey writes, in “Can Reading Make You Happier?,” which was published in 2015. Dive into the research behind the therapeutic effect of books:

Rivers Cuomo, the singer and guitarist of Weezer, was born in New York City and raised in various spiritual communities around the Northeast. Throughout this time, he had very limited contact with his father, a painful experience he writes about in the band’s first album. Recently, after his father’s passing, Cuomo began sorting through correspondence between his parents and letters his father had written him. As he looked at everything, he “started to reconstruct a different perspective on that relationship,” Cuomo tells Amanda Petrusich. Read their full conversation:

In Sharon Horgan’s new HBO comedy, “Youth,” Alex, a fiftysomething divorcée, struggles to adjust to her newly empty nest, only to find her son back at home after his first week at college, with nary an explanation. Horgan, the Irish-raised, London-based TV auteur, who tends to write and star in her shows, broke through stateside in 2015 with “Catastrophe,” and later went on to create “Divorce” and “Bad Sisters.” For Horgan, “Youth,” with its half-hour comedic format, is a return to form that tackles a new subject matter: a distant mother-son relationship and the complexities of both teen-age boyhood and being in the “sandwich” generation of life. In an interview with Inkoo Kang, Horgan discusses how she got the show green-lit despite never officially pitching it, about growing older with her series, and how her approach to autofiction has shifted throughout her career. Read their full conversation:

A decade ago, when Facebook and Uber were at the height of their powers, the halls of Silicon Valley were inscribed with two brash injunctions: “Move fast and break things” and “Seek forgiveness, not permission.” As the industry’s center of gravity shifted to A.I., a folksy new motto emerged: “You can just do things.” And, it seems that certain people and organizations can, in fact, just do things: companies like OpenAI and Anthropic move even faster than their Silicon Valley predecessors. Why, then, can’t these same people just do the things that prevent extinction? Lewis-Kraus asks. He considers the recent surge of fears about superintelligence, an emerging A.I. populism, and the maddening lack of communication between our tech overlords:

Almost two years ago, the Carroll Gardens Thai restaurant Ugly Baby announced that it would be closing. Now it has returned, in Williamsburg this time, in a window-lined, B.Q.E.-adjacent space more than twice the size of its former digs. Its new menu, which comes as New York is in the throes of a Thai-spiciness rapture, is divided into three categories, in ascending order of spiciness: the Laughs, the Cries, and the Ugly. While the menu centers on spice, “Ugly Baby—both before and now—is more than just a place to show off your oh-so-manly pain tolerance, or to punish your digestive tract,” Helen Rosner writes. Read her full review:

The Welsh charmer Matthew Rhys, who became the first person to win two Lead Actor Emmys in a single night, first broke out as a likable gay lawyer on the ABC family drama “Brothers and Sisters.” In 2013, his Emmy-winning role in the FX series “The Americans” confirmed his status as one of the great leading men on television. This year, in a startling one-two punch, Rhys broke out all over again: first, he played a sociopathic real-estate magnate in “The Beast in Me,” and then, a single father who’s determined to re-brand his cursed New England island as the new Bar Harbor in “Widow’s Bay.” Back in June, in a conversation with Emily Nussbaum, Rhys discussed the “Widow’s Bay” ’s emotional season finale, his formative love for Richard Burton, and the subtle power of scarfing a whole chicken onscreen. Read the full interview:

“These days, pop stars are required to participate in a relentless cycle of self-annihilation and triumphant rebirth—with each album, a new Era!” Amanda Petrusich writes. “But there’s something almost uncanny about the plasticity of Miley Cyrus.”

In Israel, a nearly unprecedented scandal known as Qatargate has led to a sweeping police investigation and potential indictments of several members of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s innermost circle. Ruth Margalit reports.

With his début short-story collection, “Thrilling Tales of Modern Men,” Danny McBride, best known for acting in “Eastbound & Down” and “The Righteous Gemstones,” analyzes masculinity through the lens of comedy. His thesis is simple: being a man is embarrassing and therefore worth making fun of. Rather than reinforcing the implicit misogyny of masculine self-pity, McBride injects something refreshing into the discussion and encourages guys to loosen up a bit and even laugh at themselves. Read T. M. Brown’s review: