These Sunday reads look at the shifting fall season, how Starbucks perfected the pumpkin spice latte, and more.
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The pumpkin patch was a sweaty place to visit this year. My friends and I made our annual trip to Maryland to buy apple-cider donuts, admire the changing leaves, and get lost in a stunningly complicated corn maze—but we hadn’t accounted for the sun beating down on us, peaking near 80 degrees in early October.
As I swatted the yellowjackets away from my food, I longed for the October I had experienced just two years ago, on a trip to the same farm: the cool, misty weather; the prevalence of knitwear; the diminished threat of sunburn. Finally, weeks later, the autumn I love is creeping back. Here are some stories I’ve compiled for the sweater-wearing, Halloween-observing, pumpkin-spice-drinking readers.
A Fall Reading List
What Do Professional Apple Farmers Think of People Who Pick Apples for Fun?
“It must be an East Coast or urban thing.”
By Joe Pinsker
How Starbucks Perfected Autumn
The pumpkin spice latte has defined fall for 20 years.
By Ian Bogost
“A great many, who have spent their lives in cities, and have never chanced to come into the country at this season, have never seen this, the flower, or rather the ripe fruit, of the year.”
By Henry David Thoreau
How Much Can the Seasons Bend Before They Break?
Yearly weather patterns are changing. Our traditions need to keep up.
By Ferris Jabr
The Everlasting Joy of Terrifying Children
Pop-horror writers like R. L. Stine see fear and storytelling the way the Victorians did.
By Adrienne LaFrance
The Week Ahead
- Venom: The Last Dance, an action film about a man and an alien symbiote (in theaters Friday)
- Before, a psychological-thriller miniseries about a child psychiatrist who comes across a troubled young boy (streaming Friday on Apple TV+)
- My Good Bright Wolf, a memoir by Sarah Moss about girlhood, food, and the conflict between the body and the mind (out Tuesday)
Essay
The ‘Peak Obesity’ Illusion
By Daniel Engber
Taken on its own, the number is astonishing. According to the CDC, as of August 2023, 40.3 percent of U.S. adults—some 100 million people—met the clinical definition for obesity. But this same estimate, which is based on National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey numbers gathered between 2021 and 2023, also seems remarkably low compared with prior readouts. For the first time in more than a decade, NHANES data hint that our obesity epidemic is no longer growing.
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