This is an edition of The Wonder Reader, a newsletter in which our editors recommend a set of stories to spark your curiosity and fill you with delight. Sign up here to get it every Saturday morning.

Conversation has become optimized—but not always for the better. We send a quick text instead of making a call, react with an emoji instead of a laugh, and turn catching up into a series of efficient updates. Although staying in touch with people is easier than ever, we spend surprisingly little time talking to one another.

“No one picks up the phone anymore,” Alexis C. Madrigal wrote in 2018. That’s in part because too many faceless telemarketers have our number, and in part because more people have come to treat phone calls as something to reserve for emergencies or bad news or major life events. However, in many cases they’re the easiest way to have conversations that texting can’t quite convey—ones that meander, surprise you, and leave you feeling a little more connected than before.

Texting has made communication faster and more efficient, but not necessarily more conversational. Today’s newsletter is a reminder that you don’t need a reason or an agenda to call someone you’ve been thinking about.

On Conversation

Talk to People on the Telephone

By Amanda Mull

It’s time to start calling your friends again. (From 2019)

Read the article.

Why No One Answers Their Phone Anymore

By Alexis C. Madrigal

Telephone culture is disappearing. (From 2018)

Read the article.

Another Symptom of Growing Isolation

By Olga Khazan

A recent study found that people spoke fewer words a day in 2019 than in 2005.

Read the article.

Still Curious?

• The tension that defines modern life: Most people have a smartphone. But many want to use it less, Julie Beck writes.
• Maybe don’t send that voice note. The audio messages can encourage selfishness—unless you use them gracefully, Jacob Sweet argued in 2024.

Other Diversions

• Bring back the blue-book exam.
• The dishonesty of true crime
• The new parent trap

PS

My colleague Isabel Fattal recently asked readers to share a photo of something that sparks their sense of awe in the world. “My sense of awe for this world comes from my backyard, where a family of barred owls nests each year and produces angelic chicks that begin their lives playing among the trees,” Bonnie B. from Cordova, Tennessee, shared. “They make me believe in the magic of life.”

We’ll continue to feature your responses in the coming weeks.

— Rafaela

This is an edition of The Wonder Reader, a newsletter in which our editors recommend a set of stories to spark your curiosity and fill you with delight. Sign up here to get it every Saturday morning.

We often associate wonder with the faraway and the exceptional. But some of the planet’s most extraordinary spectacles unfold every day, largely unnoticed.

For a recent Atlantic story, the senior editor Vann R. Newkirk II traveled to Mexico to witness one such phenomenon: the annual arrival of millions of monarch butterflies after a migration spanning thousands of miles. The journey still puzzles scientists, but perhaps the most remarkable part is that it continues at all. After decades of decline, monarch populations are showing signs of recovery, thanks in part to years of patient conservation work across North America. It’s a reminder of how much the natural world still has left to teach us about not only what it can do, but what it can survive as well.

Today’s newsletter explores the many ways that nature continues to surprise and inspire us to look a little closer.

On Our Living Planet

The Return of the Monarch

By Vann R. Newkirk II

After years of decline, butterfly populations are rising—for now.

Read the article.

Paradise Revisited

By Helen Lewis

What Darwin saw in the Galápagos

Read the article.

How First Contact With Whale Civilization Could Unfold

By Ross Andersen

If we can learn to speak their language, what should we say? (From 2024)

Read the article.

Still Curious?

• Do animals have fun?: Scientists want an evolutionary explanation for animal play. But maybe the answer is simply that it brings them joy, Sallie Tisdale wrote in 2024.
• Winners of the 2026 World Nature Photography Awards: Take a look at a collection of some of the top images “highlighting the beauty, fragility, and power of the natural world,” curated by Alan Taylor.

Other Diversions

• Tyler Austin Harper: “I love my emotionally stunted friendships.”
• Why animal narrators are all the rage
• Another symptom of growing isolation

PS

My colleague Isabel Fattal recently asked readers to share a photo of something that sparks their sense of awe in the world. “I was hesitant to go to Antarctica because I thought it would be uncomfortably cold. Heaven forbid! It turns out, I was so entranced by the landscape, the wildlife, the sounds that I was willing to stand on the open deck for hours,” Jessica D. from Phoenix, Arizona, shared.  

We’ll continue to feature your responses in the coming weeks.

— Rafaela