The Courtney Barnett Songs and 'Summer' Movies That Got Us Through the Week

Courtney Barnett is up to something good: releasing an ambient instrumental album called End of the Day, featuring music she wrote for a 2021 doc about herself called Anonymous Club. The album isn’t out ’til September, but a few guitar-heavy singles are here—pulsing, etherial, and moody as fuck. In other words, the kind of music I will be listening to as I take walks around my neighborhood, hoping I look like I’m deep in brilliant thought; a soundtrack to alone time, if you will. (I think other people use ambient music to clear their minds? How? Couldn’t be me.)

Hard to believe this is the same rocker who rapidly spat out tricky lyrics on the extraordinary 2015 album Sometimes I Sit and Think, and Sometimes I Just Sit, but then again, this new stuff is great music for just sitting. —Sarah Rense

The Summer I Turned Pretty, which returns for Season 2 on Amazon Prime this Friday, is quintessential summer watching. The show’s name, which has the word “summer” in it, is reason enough to give it a watch, but as the AV Club notes, it’s also one of the most authentic on-screen reflections of teen angst and coming of age. For those who missed Season 1—which I vehemently recommend—the teen drama follows the story of Asian-American teen Belly’s summer love triangle with two boys (Conrad and Jeremiah) she’s spent every summer vacationing with. Their latest summer, portrayed in Season 1, is complicated by Belly’s ~maturing~, spurring all kinds of romantic and sexual tension in their families’ beach house—all while Conrad and Jeremiah’s mother has secretly been grappling with her cancer diagnosis. I’ve yet to watch Season 2, as it came out just hours ago, but suffice to say, I know how I’ll be spending my weekend. If you haven’t yet watched Season 1, I heartily recommend it; Season 2 will be right there waiting for you when you inevitably binge it all in two days’ time. —Kylie Cheung

The Slate podcast’s eighth season is about how Justice Clarence Thomas became the conservative firebrand he is. I cover the Supreme Court and I did not know until listening that Thomas had a poster of Malcom X in his college dorm room and wanted to be a civil rights lawyer—that’s how much the man has changed. And were those changes genuine or opportunistic? That’s one of the questions host Joel Anderson explores as he talks to Thomas’ college friends, family, and a former girlfriend. Anderson even goes to Georgia and speaks with Thomas’ mother—yes, the woman who lives in a house purchased by a GOP megadonor. I’ve only listened to two of the four episodes so far, but I can already recommend it. You’ll just probably need to chase each episode with something apolitical. —Susan Rinkunas

The WNBA All-Star Weekend kicks off on Friday. There will be a skills challenge and 3-point contest on Friday, with the game on Saturday night. A’ja Wilson and basically the entire Las Vegas Aces starting lineup will face off against New York Liberty’s Breanna Stewart’s team. The W has had a fun season this year, but it’ll be nice for teams like the LA Sparks to have a break to heal. The things I’ll be looking out for are Brittney Griner’s return to the game and who will be awarded the MVP trophy. Last year, one of my favorite ballers Kelsey Plum won the All-Star MVP trophy, a dainty little cup that looked straight out of Party City. Hopefully they’ve upgraded this year. Watch on ABC. —Caitlin Cruz

An exclusive college packed with young literary savants. Depictions of obscene wealth and even more obscene cocaine habits. And oh, the tantalizing 1980s gossip! That’s about as much as you need to know about writer Lili Anolik’s podcast exploration Once Upon a Time…at Bennington College, which dives into the young adult lives of the literary Brat Pack of the past: Bret Easton Ellis, who would go on to write American Psycho; Jonathan Lethem, a future MacArthur Fellow; and Donna Tartt, the novelist behind The Secret History, now a Pulitzer Prize winner. I found the controversial series by way of an Eve Babitz short story binge (Anolik also wrote a nonfiction book chronicling Eve’s life), and am looking forward to continuing down this achingly depressing rabbit hole. —Emily Leibert

To risk being too meta for this particular post, I always appreciate when my colleagues recommend things to me; I can’t tell you how many TV shows I’ve watched or songs I’ve listened to thanks to these recurring slideshows. This week, Jezebel published the best movies with “summer” in the title, and I immediately put the ones I hadn’t seen onto my proverbial Letterboxd queue. (Is that how Letterboxd works? Actually, don’t respond, I don’t care.)

Some I am very familiar with—the Wet Hot American Summer extended universe is one of my favorite franchises (if it can be called that)—but some I had only ever heard the title of, including a queer bildungsroman-esque movie starring a young Emily Blunt?? Anyway, I highly recommend reading through this list and choosing a few for yourself this lazy (rainy) summer weekend. —Nora Biette-Timmons

This miniseries about Phyllis Schlafly’s war against the Equal Rights Amendment premiered in April 2020, and for six weeks, was the only thing I looked forward to while I quarantined alone in my Brooklyn apartment. It was nominated for a slew of awards, including 10 Emmys, and features a truly outstanding All-Star cast, and yet, I’m constantly learning that not a lot of people watched it, let alone even heard of it.

I rewatched it for maybe the 15th time a couple of weeks ago, and it was as enjoyable and infuriating as the first time. If you don’t know much about Schlafly (who was credited with helping Donald Trump get elected in 2016 and is played by a phenomenal Cate Blanchett), this series shows you exactly how she went from Illinois housewife to conservative firebrand...but through a nuanced lens that, despite the damage Schlafly’s movement has done, shows her as someone who was merely fighting like hell to have a place and a voice within the deeply sexist, patriarchal structures that oppress us all. She just fought on the side of saying sexism doesn’t exist anymore in order to get the approval of the men around her. As Bella Abzug (played by Margo Martindale) says at one point, Phyllis might have been “the most liberated woman in America.”

With Elizabeth Banks as Jill Ruckelshaus, Rose Byrne as Gloria Steinen, Uzo Aduba as Shirley Chisholm, and about a dozen more stars, Mrs. America is just...so fucking good. Inspiring and infuriating, sobering and eye-opening, I honestly might rewatch it for the 16th time this weekend. —Lauren Tousignant

Willa Paskin’s New York Times interview with Greta Gerwig also serves as a preview for much of the film, doing two very different but intertwined things—which, perhaps not coincidentally, is what Gerwig said she was trying to do with the movie: “I’m doing the thing and subverting the thing.” How possible that is becomes the locus of Paskin’s piece. There are so many competing forces at play with Barbie—Gerwig’s earnestly held but inexplicable belief that Barbie is a spiritual journey, even as Mattel leadership goes on the record saying the goal of this movie is to sell more toys, for example—that I remain extremely curious to learn what my own reaction is going to be. Paskin’s story explores these arguments in a thoughtful way, and I highly recommend it for anyone else who may be a bit skeptical of the whole point of this movie. —NBT