A Whole New Homeland 

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The Showtime drama, which has had more ups and downs than its spy heroine, is back with a compelling string of episodes.

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If a television show could develop mental illness, take anti-psychotics, stabilize, go off its meds, lose all sense of reason, take its meds again, return to normal life, and then repeat that cycle ad infinitum, that show would be

. Ever since it debuted to emphatic critical acclaim in 2012, the Showtime drama has bounded back and forth between two extremes: being a smart, provocative, morally complex drama about a CIA agent fighting in the war on terror, and being a manic, pulsating, teeth-grinding, jazz-riffing, tequila-pounding, sexually impulsive swarm of hot messiness. Like its protagonist, Carrie Mathison, it seems determined to believe that it can’t be one without also being the other—that its brilliant instincts and acute observations wouldn’t be possible without its sloppy, paranoid, downright unprofessional addiction to turmoil.

The ultimate question for the viewer, then, is whether the payoff is worth it. If you can overlook the nonsense—the omnipresent cryfaces, the world’s most pointless pregnancy subplot, the whole Caracas interlude, the time Brody murdered the vice president by hacking his pacemaker—more power to you. If you’re among the naysayers, the doubters, the cringing few who doff their fists at the screen every time Carrie starts constructing her Wall o’ Crazy™, then rest assured that season five won’t necessarily be easy for you. But it is, at least judging from the first three episodes, starting to realize that its star asset might also be its biggest weakness.

After the Carrie-Brody-centric crests and falls of the first three years, season four attempted something of a reboot by definitively dispatching with the latter and sending the former to Pakistan, as the Islamabad bureau chief for the CIA. The exploration of new territory was mostly welcomed by critics, although the show continued to prove it valued shock and awe above logic and reason, enabling a bloody raid on CIA headquarters by a high-profile Taliban leader via a not-so-secret tunnel. But it also, more subtly, established the ways in which Carrie seemed to be doubting the ethics and the efficacy of her job. When she walked away from Saul, her reliable mentor and booster, after realizing he’d agreed to a deal with the man who’d murdered several of her colleagues, her disillusionment felt both plausible and long overdue.

Season five pushes the reset button once again by zipping two years into the future, taking Carrie out of the CIA and relocating her to Berlin, supposedly several time zones from her old life at Langley. She works in private security for an enigmatic German billionaire (Sebastian Koch), spends quality time with her adorable moppet of a daughter, and (old habits dying hard) has a boyfriend with (obviously) red hair whom she (obviously) met at work. She announces at one point that she’s been sober for nine months, a record so transparently destined for interruption as to be almost tragic.

The reason this feels familiar is that it’s exactly how season two of

began, with Carrie living as a civilian, taking care of her health, and seeming anything but enthused about it. The show has never been subtle about the fact that Carrie craves, literally inhales, drama, whether by spinning out of control in a basement apartment, chasing terrorists in a foreign locale, or swigging liquor and snorting crushed-up caffeine pills for “focus.” She just doesn’t know what to do with herself. But the paradox of

is that it doesn’t either: Its writers seem to scoff at the idea that a show with two explosions, one kidnapping, one ambush, and approximately four murders in the first three episodes of a season could find ways to grab viewers’ attention without the protagonist also having a mental breakdown. Inevitably, Carrie will decide at one point to go off her meds. Inevitably, she will recover. It’s season five, and we’re still doing this?

The show has never been subtle about the fact that Carrie craves, literally inhales, drama.

But there are also plenty of ways in which the show shows its sophistication and complexity, typically when its star is out of the frame. When it isn’t hustling for the gotcha moment, jolting viewers awake with surprise after surprise, it’s offering a remarkably insightful take on the compromised morality of everyone involved in the war on terror, regardless of allegiance. So many of its characters, old and new, seem to have been swallowed whole by cynicism: Saul (Mandy Patinkin), whose ability to broker deals to his own benefit now appears to rival only Dar Adal; Peter (Rupert Friend), back from two years in Syria and returned to his off-the-books assassinations; the CIA’s Berlin station chief (Miranda Otto); and a crusading journalist and apparent enemy of the state (Sarah Sokolovic). In one scene, Peter tells a group of U.S. leaders that the only way to win in the Middle East is to send in 200,000 troops and “pound Raqqa into a parking lot.” Almost immediately, the camera cuts to Carrie making balloon animals with Frannie in a jarring, barbed transition.

So, too, the series shows its timeliness when it comes to current affairs, tackling ISIS, Hezbollah, surveillance, hacking, an Edward Snowden-esque security breach that dangerously tarnishes the CIA, and the long-term ramifications of the drone strikes Carrie approved when she was in Islamabad. Its situations are never simple; its solutions are never ideal. In one scene, a bearded man of Middle Eastern descent walks shiftily through a station in Berlin, the camera lingering on his bag. In forcing the viewer to confront their own assumptions about what he might be doing,

shows how shrewd it can be. In making none of its characters obvious good guys, even while it presents a handful of cartoonishly alluring baddies, it offers one of the most honest portrayals of contemporary affairs in culture.

The looming threat, of course, is that things could go off the rails in an instant, as tends to happen when a show wants both the eminence of prestige drama and the permanent adrenaline surge of a late-’90s Nicolas Cage movie. But for now, at least,

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Forget the Common Core, Finland’s youngsters are in charge of determining what happens in the classroom.

“The changes to kindergarten make me sick,” a veteran teacher in Arkansas recently admitted to me. “Think about what you did in first grade—that’s what my 5-year-old babies are expected to do.”

The difference between first grade and kindergarten may not seem like much, but what I remember about my first-grade experience in the mid-90s doesn’t match the kindergarten she described in her email: three and a half hours of daily literacy instruction, an hour and a half of daily math instruction, 20 minutes of daily “physical activity time” (officially banned from being called “recess”) and two 56-question standardized tests in literacy and math—on the fourth week of school.

That American friend—who teaches 20 students without an aide—has fought to integrate 30 minutes of “station time” into the literacy block, which includes  “blocks, science, magnetic letters, play dough with letter stamps to practice words, books, and storytelling.” But the most controversial area of her classroom isn’t the blocks nor the stamps: Rather, it’s the “house station with dolls and toy food”—items her district tried to remove last year. The implication was clear: There’s no time for play in kindergarten anymore.

Even in big cities like Tokyo, small children take the subway and run errands by themselves. The reason has a lot to do with group dynamics.

It’s a common sight on Japanese mass transit: Children troop through train cars, singly or in small groups, looking for seats.

They wear knee socks, polished patent-leather shoes, and plaid jumpers, with wide-brimmed hats fastened under the chin and train passes pinned to their backpacks. The kids are as young as 6 or 7, on their way to and from school, and there is nary a guardian in sight.

, features children as young as two or three being sent out to do a task for their family. As they tentatively make their way to the greengrocer or bakery, their progress is secretly filmed by a camera crew. The show has been running for more than 25 years.

A new study finds that people today who eat and exercise the same amount as people 20 years ago are still fatter.

There’s a meme aimed at Millennial catharsis called “Old Economy Steve.” It’s a series of pictures of a late-70s teenager, who presumably is now a middle-aged man, that mocks some of the messages Millennials say they hear from older generations—and shows why they’re deeply janky. Old Economy Steve graduates and gets a job right away. Old Economy Steve “worked his way through college” because tuition was $400. And so forth.

We can now add another one to that list: Old Economy Steve ate at McDonald’s almost every day, and he still somehow had a 32-inch waist.

found that it’s harder for adults today to maintain the same weight as those 20 to 30 years ago did, even at the same levels of food intake and exercise.

John Boehner is fond of telling stories of how he rose from mopping floors at his family’s bar to being speaker of the House—literally a rags to riches tale, in the finest American fashion.

A reader writes in to ask what retirement benefits Boehner will receive now that he’s handing over the speaker’s gavel and leaving Congress. Suffice it to say, Boehner won’t have to go back to mopping floors at Andy’s Cafe unless he wants to do so. He has long had close ties to lobbyists, and if he chose to go to K Street he could easily make seven figures. Even Boehner’s former Majority Leader Eric Cantor, ignominiously defeated in a primary election, scored a base compensation of $1.6 million, including salary and signing bonus, this year. But Boehner’s loyalists say they don’t think he’ll do that, and the man himself says he has no idea what his plans are.

Spending significant money on each piece of clothing means seeing a purchase as an investment, not a cheap (and exploitative) thrill.

If you’ve ever found yourself buying clothes just because they’re cheap, or if shopping itself has become a form of entertainment for you, I’ve got a proposal: The next time you buy something, spend a whole lot on it. Enough that it makes you sweat a little.

The point is to make you pause and ask yourself, “How much do I really want this?”

In the U.S. and much of the industrialized world, cheap clothes are everywhere. At any fast-fashion chain store, you’ll find piles upon piles of jeans that cost less than $20. The problem is, all that low-cost clothing is produced, sold, and finally discarded in mass quantities, which has serious consequences for the environment, the workers paid poorly to make them, and even the mental well-being of the people buying them.

How caring for one person can foster baseless aggression towards another

I’m not usually in favor of killing, but I’d make an exception for the leaders of ISIS. I’d feel a certain satisfaction if they were wiped off the face of the Earth. This is a pretty typical attitude, shared even by many of my more liberal friends, even though, intellectually, it’s not something that we’re comfortable with or proud of.

Where does this malice come from? Psychologists have standard explanations for murderous feelings towards groups of strangers, but none of them apply here. I don’t think ISIS is a threat to me or my family or my way of life; I’m not driven by disgust and contempt; I don’t dehumanize them; I don’t think of them as vermin or dogs.

Rather, I am motivated by more respectable sentiments, by compassion, love, and empathy. Not for ISIS, of course, but for their victims. I have seen the videos of decapitations and crucifixions and have read accounts of rape, slavery, and torture. If I were less invested in the suffering of their victims, I would be more receptive to a balanced discussion of different options. But because I care, I really just want them to pay.  

Research made national news this week that the cookies are more addictive than psychoactive drugs. That claim may be exaggerated, but the neuroscience of junk food addiction is nonetheless fascinating and relevant—mentally, physically, and socially.

"Nothing gets me high as that sandwich cookie does

I love the white stuff, baby. In the middle of an Oreo

—Al Yankovic, "The White Stuff," 1992

The rat stands in a plastic maze. At the end are two rooms, each decorated in its own unmistakably unique, gaudy fashion. The rat knows them both. Inside one room, he has received injections of morphine or cocaine. In the other, he\'s gotten injections of a saline placebo. The rat has learned to prefer the drug room.

He even chooses to lounge in the drug room after the injection supplies have dried up. It\'s kind of like how you might hang out in the parking lot outside of an old high school, remembering the glory days; or at the apartment of an ex-lover, befriending the new tenants. Your ex-lover is dead, but it still feels good.

Stop. Are you hungry? Then eat something before reading this.

The “self-care” tag on Tumblr is a really sweet place. It’s like if you were walking outside in a thunderstorm, umbrella-less, and you walked into a café filled with plush armchairs, wicker baskets full of flowers, and needlepoints on the walls that say things like “Be kind to yourself” and “You are enough.” It’s jarring, the change in scenery, but nice.  It also makes you realize that you’re soaked—you’d almost gotten used to it, out in the storm.

Taking care of yourself is not actually a new thing, nor is the idea that you may sometimes need to be reminded to do so. Just think of all the people on makeover-shows past who were told, “You spend so much time taking care of other people, it’s time to do something for yourself.”

He’s identified a bloc of culturally conservative voters who are to the left of the Republican Party on economics. But is it enough to win the nomination?

A new Pew poll on the Republican race says several useful things about Donald Trump. For example: He’s still solidly ahead of the field in the race for the Republican nomination. The poll has Trump at 25 percent, followed by Ben Carson at 16, Marco Rubio and Carly Fiorina at 8, and Ted Cruz at 6. Jeb Bush, meanwhile, has taken a beating—sliding out of the top five, only a bit ahead of Rand Paul, who’s on campaign death watch.

Pew includes a very intriguing table that breaks out two major topics of discussion: immigration and raising taxes on the wealthy. Those breakouts show where the Trump boom is coming from and why many pundits think he’s reached the limits of his appeal.

Republican Voters on Immigration and Taxing the Wealthy

Nothing in the Russian president’s UN speech suggested he was about to bomb Syria or withdraw from Ukraine. But that’s what he did.

The thing about Vladimir Putin is, it really doesn’t matter what he says.

When the Russian president took to the tribune at the UN General Assembly earlier this week, he did so amid rampant expectations that he would say something extraordinary—something capable of either ending his standoff with the West, or else sending it to new heights. In the end, he did neither. He said what he’s said countless times before: that the West is full of itself and hypocritical, that the world needs no policeman, and that Russia will do what it pleases.

Nothing in what he said on that UN podium suggested that he was about to bomb Syria, or that he was about to pull his guns back from the frontlines in eastern Ukraine. But that’s what he did. Two days later. Both on the same day. For good measure, he confiscated another year of his citizens’ pension savings, too, but we’ll get to that later.

Jeffrey Goldberg, Sam Price-Waldman, and Kasia Cieplak-Mayr von Baldegg

Rehabilitation and reform in America's largest maximum security prison

In his October cover story, Ta-Nehisi Coates explores how mass incarceration has affected African American families.

Jackie Lay, Bruce Western, Kasia Cieplak-Mayr von Baldegg, and Ta-Nehisi Coates

's October cover story on the effects of the disproportionate imprisonment of black men