The Best Movies, TV Shows, and Books of 2024

This is an edition of The Atlantic Daily, a newsletter that guides you through the biggest stories of the day, helps you discover new ideas, and recommends the best in culture. Sign up for it here.

Each of our 10 [picks] is a triumph of alchemy, deriving insight from fresh combinations of dismay and delight, tragedy and comedy, mourning and hope … The feature that distinguishes all of these titles—or any book worth cherishing—is the surprising experience of reading them.

Hollywood seems to be shifting away from the superhero industry, following decades of reliable box-office domination, but the next trend has not yet emerged. I’m heartened, though, by the broad swath of genres and storytelling approaches of my favorite movies this year, made by a mix of rising filmmakers and established figures.

Whether they transported us to another century or dropped us in the middle of a high-stakes work environment, these are the series that kept our hope for TV’s creative future alive.

Pop stars and punks alike are … saying exactly what they feel, exactly how they want to say it. Although my top picks span a variety of genres, many of them have a similar spewing quality. They play like glorious run-on sentences, full of oversharing and id.

This list represents the 20 best podcasts I heard this year, with a lean toward either new shows, or shows that have a renewed focus. Virtually all of them, even the most entertaining and quirky ones, suggested an underlying preoccupation with the power of narrative to shape our sense of reality.

• 77 facts that blew our minds in 2024
• The most memorable advice of the year
• Radio Atlantic: The joy of reading books in high school

In pizza heaven, it is always 950 degrees. The temperature required to make an authentic Neapolitan pizza is stupidly, unbelievably hot—more blast furnace than broiler. My backyard pizza oven can get all the way there in just 15 minutes. Crank it to the max, and the Ooni Koda will gurgle up blue flames that bounce off the top of the dome. In 60 seconds, raw dough inflates into pillowy crust, cheese dissolves into the sauce, and a few simple ingredients become a full-fledged pizza.

Violinists have the Stradivarius. Sneakerheads have the Air Jordan 1. Pizza degenerates like me have the Ooni. I got my first one three years ago and have since been on a singular, pointless quest to make the best pie possible.

• Two different ways of understanding fatherhood
• Six books to read by the fire
• The Atlantic’s favorite images of the year
• The 20 best podcasts of 2024
• The darkest movie of the year
• Bob Dylan broke rules. A Complete Unknown follows them.
• Trapped—and lavishly rewarded—for playing a part
• The agony of indulging in Squid Game again