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November 22, 2025

Welcome back to The Weekender, where you’ll find a new batch of stories about culture and the way we live today.

This week, you may have seen my colleague Annemarie Conte’s face sticking out of a gigantic pile of clothes in the photo that accompanies her article about purchasing a 450-pound mystery pallet filled with returned goods. What she found inside struck a nerve with readers. “I’ve seen people go through the same roller coaster of emotions that I did when I was unpacking our pallet,” she told me. She’d embarked on this journey to discover some truths about shopping today and found a wide world of wastefulness. If you haven’t read it yet, or watched the videos of what she found, that story is below.

Also in this edition, we travel through a century of kitchen design; get our critic’s take on “Wicked: For Good”; and meet one man doing his part to eliminate a bit of that aforementioned waste while rediscovering his soul in the process.

— Farah

P.S. We’ll be taking a break next weekend(er) for the Thanksgiving holiday, but if you have any requests for the types of articles you’d like to get in forthcoming issues, please email me at weekender@nytimes.com.

Giulia Mangione for The New York Times PAGE TURNER She has taken 30 years to write a seven-part novel about one day. It’s a sensation. →

Ohni Lisle SEXUAL AWAKENINGS Sex had become a chore. Then they started reading romantasy. →

Ruth Fremson/The New York Times FIX A TYPEWRITER, FIX YOUR LIFE This is the story of how a man traded steady, grinding corporate security for a dying craft and, in the process, found his soul. →

Hannah Beier for The New York Times MIGRATORS We can now track individual monarch butterflies. It’s a revelation. →

Guinness World Records Day Q&A The world’s largest Afro took three people to measure it. Meet the new record-holder. →

The New York Times 110 YEARS IN HOME DESIGN Here’s why your kitchen looks like that. →

Jackson Gibbs NEED A BREAK? Black Friday travel sales have begun, and the Frugal Traveler has rounded up some of the best deals. →

Giles Keyte/Universal Pictures ALL SEEING OZ In “Wicked: For Good,” Cynthia Erivo and Ariana Grande return to Oz. Read our review. →

Pete Gamlen HIGH N' DRY How does smoking weed affect drinking? Researchers set up a makeshift campus bar to find out. →

Marki Williams/NYT Wirecutter and Dana Davis/NYT Wirecutter WHAT'S INSIDE We bought a 450-pound mystery pallet packed with returned goods from Amazon and beyond. Here’s what was inside. →

HOLIDAY PREP

BY THE SLICE These six pies are easy enough to actually make and beautiful enough to simply admire. →

Henry Clarke/Condé Nast via Getty Images FRIENDSGIVING Newly opened archives reveal that Joan Didion was not just a literary maven, but an impeccable hostess for as many as 75 guests. →

Darren Shaddick PICK YOUR SIDES And now, here are 61 hot takes about Thanksgiving food, drinks, etiquette and more to argue about. →

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This edition of The Weekender was edited by Farah Miller, Kellina Moore and Patrick Hays.

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