This is an issue of The Wonder Reader, a magazine in which our editors recommend a set of stories to pique your curiosity and delight you. Register here get it every saturday morning.
A familiar problem: You open Netflix, determined to watch something new. Twenty minutes of scrolling later, after rejecting many perfectly good options, you land on a movie you’ve seen many times before.
We do this all the time—re-watch TV shows, play albums over and over again, re-read our favorite books until all the moments or words to a song are committed to memory. Part of the reason is comfort. Ordinary things require little from us; they provide the emotional payoff we expect. But repetition is also a way of returning to earlier versions of ourselves. Old songs, movies, and shows become an emotional time capsule, preserving not just the story but the person we were when we first fell in love. “We like to relive pop culture experiences because they help us remember the past, and the act of remembering the past feels good,” Derek Thompson wrote in 2014.
In a pop culture age of limitless choices, there’s something very reassuring about a story that ends the way you expect it to. Although it may be small, that kind of knowledge can make us feel understood.
On Popular Favorites
Over and Over: Why People Watch Movies and Shows Over and Over
Written by Derek Thompson
The glories of old movies, memories, and the existential cure for nostalgia (From 2014)
What Rereading Children’s Books Teaches Adults About Themselves
And Emma Court
Whether they’re fun or frustrating, old books provide pointers for pursuing personal growth. (From 2018)
15 Books You Will Never Regret Reading Again
By Bethanne Patrick
Years after these names became popular, they are still worth picking up. (From 2022)
Still Curious?
Other detours
PS
My colleague Isabel Fattal recently asked readers to share a photo of something that evokes their sense of wonder in the world. “While visiting the Monterey Aquarium, the sheer beauty of the effortless and graceful movements of the jellyfish was a delight to me…I could have watched them with complete childlike joy for hours,” Barbara C. from Las Cruces, New Mexico, writes.
We will continue to focus on your responses in the coming weeks.
– Rafaela
