Is Reality TV Abusive?

In today’s newsletter:“Love Is Blind” contestants call for solidarity, the inside story of how forever chemicals came to be in almost everyone’s blood, and tips on adding years to your life.Jump to a complete list of what’s in the issue.

Reality-TV contestants are barely paid, and the experience can feel like abuse. Former cast members of Netflix’s megahit are speaking out—and calling for solidarity.

When it débutedin February of 2020, “Love Is Blind” was a smash hit for Netflix. In the show, fifteen men and fifteen women were gathered in Los Angeles, where they were ensconced in “pods” to flirt with strangers through the wall. The intention was that during a speedy blind courtship, contestants would fall in love and get engaged—circumventing superficiality. It was a hopeful experiment in human intimacy. But the reality for participants was something different: they were deprived of sleep and plied with alcohol; workdays could be as long as twenty hours; quitting could net a fifty-thousand-dollar fine. Emily Nussbaum spent time with former contestants fora feature in this week’s issue; her piece details the culture of forced isolation, psychological manipulation, and abusive behavior which has made the show the center of a nascent labor movement for reality stars. “The power lies with those who design the experiment,” Nussbaum writes. “The cast members have some choices of their own: they can play up to the producers, resist them, or try to work around them. Like gamblers in Vegas, everyone has a system. But the house always wins.”

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Cover Story:The cartoonist R. Kikuo Johnson lines up all the elements of a brief encounter between a poised passerby and the street venders who hawk imitations of the most coveted brands’ wares.Shop all our covers »

In defense of breasts:When Sarah Thornton woke up from reconstructive surgery following her double mastectomy, she found herself with a pair of “unwieldy Ds,” which she named Bert and Ernie. The experience prompted her to pen “Tits Up,” a book about how boobs are put to work. As Lauren Michele Jackson writes inher review, “Liberated breasts can do and be so many things.”

What is liberalism?“Liberalism is, truly, the love that dare not speak its name,” Adam Gopnik writes inthis survey of authorswho have been considering the precarity of protecting an ideal (liberalism) that encourages the attack of ideas (such as liberalism). Believers in the concept carry “a knowledge that institutions of civic peace are much harder to build than to destroy, being immeasurably more fragile than their complacent inheritors imagine.”

A quickie book:Phone apps, such as Blinkist, now offer to boil down entire books into micro-synopses. “The most potent enemy of reading, it goes without saying, is the small, flat box that you carry in your pocket,”Anthony Lane writes. “Imagine, however, that your foe were to become your literate friend.” But is a friend that was an enemy ever a friend? As Lane shows, what these summaries leave out is revealing.

Plus:Amanda Petrusich on the new Billie Eilishalbum;Thomas Mallon on Garth Risk Hallbergand the life-and-times novel; and more.

1. The questionof how to live forever mostly preoccupies wealthy longevity evangelists. But, in the weekend essay,David Owen suggests another way to extend life: backward. He looks back on many years of keeping track—copying and saving e-mails, crafting photo albums. “My preservation projects,” he writes, “have given me a nearly Einsteinian view of time and mortality.”

2. In forty-five yearsof making “Mad Max” movies, George Miller has learned that audiences are seldom wrong, and his wife is always right. The director of “Furiosa”spoke with Burkhard Bilgerabout his youth in a small town in Australia, and about how, in the art of film editing, “You are tyrannized by time.”

3. Climate changeis threatening the future of Big Sur’s Highway 1, perhaps the country’s most famous roadway.Emily Witt reportsfrom California, where residents seem to agree that conditions are unlikely to get better.

4. In “The Idea of You,”Anne Hathaway is a vision of relatability, self-sufficiency, and poise. “The movie breathes life into the genre of the romantic comedy, which has been languishing recently,”Katy Waldman writes, “by drawing on fan culture, which is very much alive.”

5. John McPhee, in thefourth volume of “Tabula Rasa,”discusses his Wordle strategy, the triumphs of proofreading, and the file of instructions he maintains regarding his literary will.

“The pause before a verdict is read aloud in court is suspenseful, but so is thedot-dot-dotthat appears on your iPhone when someone is sending you a text message.”

—Kathryn Schulzon the role of suspense in storytelling and in life

P.S.Ian Frazier offers a listof “unidentified anomalous phenomena,” including “Preadolescent male in green. Confirmed origin: Neverland” and “Guru in ground-level hover. Confirmed origin: S. California.” 👽