In hurricane-ravaged western North Carolina, the schools have provided a necessary lifeline.

Asheville City Schools emptied its freezers and pantries so food could be sent to emergency shelters. Its bus garage donated fuel to help run generators at local nursing homes. A high school football field morphed into a landing zone for helicopters. And T-Mobile set up a Wi-Fi and charging station in a middle school parking lot.

“Right now, it’s about giving resources,” says Kimberly Dechant, chief of staff for the roughly 4,000-student district in the Blue Ridge Mountains.

The complicated task ahead – educating children whose families and communities have been starkly affected by extreme weather – underscores a reality that experts say is playing out daily worldwide. As climate events intensify, more schools are closing either temporarily or for prolonged periods of time.

The United States alone has been a case study in recent weeks. Thousands of miles west of Hurricane Helene’s path, wildfires have triggered school closures in California, Oregon, and Nevada.

The torrential rain and wind brought by the hurricane one week ago wiped out roads, buildings, power lines, cellphone towers, and water system infrastructure – along with entire towns – in this mountainous region. So far, authorities have reported more than 200 deaths associated with the storm across several states. And hundreds of people remained unaccounted for as of Thursday.

The district’s schools were not damaged, which Dr. Dechant calls a “blessing.” However, given the storm’s regional destruction, instruction has been paused indefinitely. The neighboring Buncombe County Schools has made a similar decision, noting on its website that schools will remain closed until it is “safe to open.”

Still, Dr. Dechant says a team is discussing when and how learning can resume for students. The conversations involve input from educators who taught during the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans. She says a key question is this: “How did they respond with limited resources?”

Lifesaving efforts take precedence after natural disasters strike, and rightfully so, say the authors of a World Bank report published last month that details the effect of climate events on education. The economists are among a growing number of voices calling for heightened awareness about weather-related learning disruptions and ways to mitigate academic and emotional harm.

“The student that leaves the school before a climate shock is very different from the student that returns,” says Sergio Venegas Marin, an economist with the World Bank. “And I think that’s something we have to remember.”

Measuring climate’s effects on education globally

The World Bank estimates that at least 404 million children around the globe experienced a school closure associated with extreme weather events between January 2022 and June 2024. In Pakistan, for instance, severe flooding closed schools for more than three months – or roughly half a typical academic year – in 2022.

Lost instructional time ranged from about 18 days per school year in low-income nations compared with about six days in higher-income countries, according to the report, which is based on closures reported through press releases or by news outlets.

Mohammad Ponir Hossain/Reuters

Teenager Sheikh Tamim Hasan studies in his room as authorities decided to close schools during a countrywide heat wave in Dhaka, Bangladesh, April 30, 2024.

The economists say the problem is likely much larger. Governments typically aren’t tracking weather-related school closures yet.

“To improve on something, you have to first measure it or track it,” Mr. Venegas Marin says.

UndauntedK12, a nonprofit advocating for climate-resilient public schools, has been trying to track such closures in the United States. The group’s interactive U.S. map indicates that a majority of states have had schools shuttered for at least one climate event, including extreme heat or cold, flooding, hurricanes, severe weather, and wildfires.

“It is an emergency unfolding for America’s children,” says Jonathan Klein, co-founder and CEO of UndauntedK12.

While an occasional missed school day might not raise alarm bells, experts say the cumulative effect is worrisome. The increasing frequency of extreme weather events means students will likely face closures repeatedly over the course of their academic careers. Remote learning, which carries its own inequities, isn’t even possible if, as with Helene, severe weather cuts electricity or internet capability.

“Those kinds of small disruptions of a few days of school closed here and there compound that problem,” says Sara Hinkley, the California program manager for the Center for Cities + Schools at the University of California, Berkeley. “They disrupt the habit of going to school. They disrupt some of the extracurricular activities that keep kids coming to school.”

Solutions for climate-related effects on education

So what can be done to minimize climate-caused learning disruptions?

Experts say there is no one-size-fits-all solution. Severe storms and wildfires that render schools uninhabitable or impossible to access differ from, say, poor air quality or extreme heat.

UndauntedK12 has been urging American school districts to take advantage of tax credits for clean energy equipment through the Inflation Reduction Act. Electric buses, solar power, and ground-source heat pumps are among the eligible technologies. For cash-strapped schools, these types of improvements can save millions of dollars over the long term, Mr. Klein says.

Researchers say modern ventilation and heating and cooling systems can also gird against closures associated with extreme heat or wildfire smoke if they make schools safer places to be amid poor air quality or high temperatures.

Dr. Hinkley suggests communities prepare for catastrophic weather events by taking stock of all available facilities. Which buildings could be quickly converted to makeshift learning hubs if schools are damaged? Conversely, could other structures serve as command centers to free up schools for students’ return?

“How can we get some facilities up and running quickly to be able to give students … a place to learn, even if it’s a place to go to be doing hybrid or remote learning?” she says.

Jason Pierce/Sacramento Bee/Zuma Wire/TNS/ABACAPRESS/Reuters/File

Berry Creek Elementary School was destroyed by the Bear Fire in Northern California in 2020. The school reopened in 2024.

Experts also point to calendar flexibility as part of the solution. Schools may need to adjust their start and end dates to avoid peak storm, heat, or wildfire seasons, for instance, or be able to add extra learning hours when such natural disasters force closures.

Record-breaking heat in May kept millions of children out of school in Asian countries such as India, Bangladesh, and the Philippines.

“To the extent possible, we have to think beyond just a handful of calamity days,” says Shwetlena Sabarwal, a lead economist at the World Bank’s Education Global Practice.

And when it is safe to resume schooling, Dr. Sabarwal says, communities need a concerted effort to not only bring back students but also a plan for how to help them catch up academically.

Extreme weather requires resiliency

As Hurricane Helene bore down on the southeast last Friday, Sinclaire Houston was among the thousands of students not physically in school. The ninth grader at West Charlotte High School in North Carolina emailed her math teacher with questions during the remote learning day. As the region confronted extensive damage, Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools canceled school entirely on Monday.

Sinclaire says she didn’t mind getting to sleep longer on Monday, but she wondered what the disruption would mean for scheduled tests. The cheerleader and honor roll student says remote learning days can be useful for review but are challenging for making any progress.

“Teachers aren’t there to actually tell me what I’m doing wrong and tell me how to do it correctly,” she says.

Her peers further west in the state face even more uncertainty. Dr. Dechant of Asheville City Schools describes ongoing concerns about children’s safety and access to basic needs like food and water. Her voice fills with emotion as she talks about how the community has rallied together through the crisis. She reflects on students dealing with back-to-back traumas, starting with the pandemic.

“These kids are going to grow up to, I hope, be extremely resilient adults,” she says. “... But it’s unfortunate that these are the experiences that they have to have to build that resiliency.”

Kevin Lamarque/Reuters

Vice President Kamala Harris applauds as she departs a campaign event in Pittsburgh. With the economy topping the list of voter concerns, Ms. Harris pledges to keep low tax rates in place for all but the highest-income Americans.

With the economy consistently ranking as the top issue on voters’ minds, Kamala Harris and Donald Trump are locked in a fierce contest of messaging – each portraying their own policies as recipes for prosperity and their opponents’ as a threat to financial security.

In some ways their plans are actually similar. Both major-party candidates want to keep taxes low for the vast majority of Americans. Both favor efforts to produce more goods at home rather than importing them. And in pursuing their policies, both largely ignore an ever-rising national debt.

But key differences aren’t hard to find, notably on the role of tariffs, tax rates for wealthy people, and the treatment of immigrants. Here’s an overview of what Republican presidential nominee Mr. Trump and Democratic nominee Ms. Harris propose on the economy.

Tax policies are a centerpiece, in part because whoever wins the White House will oversee what comes next after former President Trump’s tax cuts, from his previous administration, expire after 2025, says Erica York, senior economist at the Tax Foundation, a tax policy nonprofit.

Kamala Harris has pledged to:

• Not raise taxes on personal incomes below $400,000.
• Raise the top personal income tax rate from 37% to 39.6%.
• Expand the child tax credit and earned income tax credit.
• Create an “America Forward tax credit” to invest in strategic industries.
• Raise the tax rate on long-term capital gains.
• Create a new tax on unrealized capital gains for people with a net worth of $100 million or more.
• Raise the corporate tax rate from 21% to 28%.
• Expand the small-business tax credit from $5,000 to $50,000 to encourage people to start new businesses.
• Respect Federal Reserve independence to set monetary policy.

Donald Trump has pledged to:

• Extend the expiring provisions of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, which he signed in 2017.
• Cut the corporate tax rate from 21% to 15%, a change that applies only to domestic production.
• Eliminate taxes on Social Security benefits.
• Eliminate taxes on overtime work.
• Impose a 10% to 20% tariff on all imports, and a 60% tariff on imports from China.
• Seek to deport unauthorized immigrants, reducing the overall number of workers and consumers in the economy.
• Replace Jerome Powell as Federal Reserve chair. Mr. Trump has also said that he thinks the U.S. president should have some say on how the Fed sets interest rates, and he publicly pressured Mr. Powell on policy during his White House term.

The candidates also have policies on the big issue of housing, which we’ll cover in a separate story.

What the Trump and Harris tax plans would mean for Americans

With tax policy, what presidents get – versus what they want – depends crucially on Congress. If the opposition party controls even one house of the legislature, change is difficult.

Distribution of their proposed tax cuts would be starkly different. As with his 2017 tax cuts, former President Trump’s new plan gives the most money to the highest-income households: $376,910 apiece on average to the top 0.1% versus $320 to the bottom fifth in income distribution, according to estimates by the Penn Wharton Budget Model.

Evan Vucci/AP

Former President Donald Trump, the Republican presidential nominee, speaks during a campaign event in Mint Hill, North Carolina, Sept. 25, 2024.

Under Vice President Harris’ plan, it’s the reverse. The bottom fifth of households would get the most money, an estimated $2,355 each, while the top 5% of households (those making well over $300,000 a year) would see a tax increase, with the top 0.1% (those making well over $3 million a year) paying an extra $167,255.

These estimates come with some caveats but give a general picture.

Tariffs: taxes by another name?

For Mr. Trump, the biggest unknown is what he would do with tariffs. He has stated he wants to impose a 60% tariff – or surcharge – on all Chinese imports and a 10% to 20% tariff on imports from everywhere else to boost U.S. manufacturing jobs.

An across-the-board tariff would be a radical departure from current economic policy. Many economists criticize that strategy, saying that whatever U.S. job growth tariffs might spur would be swamped by the negative consequences of higher consumer prices and slower economic growth.

The Peterson Institute for International Economics, a Washington think tank, estimates that the Trump tariffs, if fully implemented, would cost the typical household up to $2,600 next year.

Tariffs also invite countertariffs from the targeted countries, making it harder for U.S. firms to export. China retaliated in the face of stiffer tariffs under both Presidents Trump and Biden. And in the 1930s, the Great Depression deepened after President Herbert Hoover initiated what became a trade war with other nations.

What their plans would mean for federal deficits

The combination of the Vice President’s pro- and anti-growth tax proposals would increase the federal deficit by $2 trillion over 10 years, according to Penn Wharton estimates. Mr. Trump’s lighter taxes on business might spur more economic growth. But they would also add $4.1 trillion over 10 years to the national debt, the model finds.

And other models differ on whether Mr. Trump’s policies would raise economic growth. Weighing the likely tariff and immigration moves alongside other policies, Goldman Sachs estimates lower growth under a Trump administration than under current policies. (Its estimate envisioned a slowdown in immigration, not the larger disruption to labor supply that economists say would accompany mass deportation, a proposal that experts say would be hard to carry out quickly in practice.)

The Trump tariffs could raise substantial revenue for the federal government, even as they create extra costs for consumers and raise the risk of a trade war.

“The range of [economic] uncertainty is much narrower with Harris than it is with Trump – maybe a little more growth, maybe a little less growth,” says Howard Gleckman, a senior fellow at the Tax Policy Center. “With Trump, you’re looking at this wide variation, and you could have very serious negative consequences.”

Eric Risberg/AP/File

People listen during a rally in support of reparations for African Americans outside City Hall in San Francisco in September 2023.

When a California reparations task force released a thousand-page report last year addressing the effects of systemic racism on Black residents, it made headlines with ambitious and comprehensive recommendations, including reforms at every level of government and cash payments with an eye-popping price tag.

Now, acting on the recommended framework, California Gov. Gavin Newsom signed a package of reparations legislation, including a formal apology to African Americans for the state’s role in perpetuating slavery and its legacy – and budgeted up to $12 million to pay for it.

State lawmakers touted the handful of bills as significant milestones, but the bills disappointed advocates who have been calling for more aggressive action. The efforts amount to a small fraction of what would have been needed for cash payments to descendants of slavery or for other forms of monetary redress, like subsidies for education or homeownership.

Still, California’s effort to mend harms endured by generations of Black Americans as a result of slavery and institutionalized racism is considered a model for the rest of the nation.

“Everyone is looking to California to lead, looking to California to understand what obstacles might be ahead of us, looking for how community and institutions work together and wrap around in this process of reparations,” says Robin Rue Simmons, founder of FirstRepair, an organization leading reparations discussions across the country.

But those hoping to capture momentum around last year’s recommendations say lawmakers missed an important opportunity.

“I think that was a good start,” says state Sen. Steven Bradford, vice chair of California’s Legislative Black Caucus, who also sat on the reparations task force. “But I think we could have really done more, especially at this time. And, you know, the urgency of now was here.”

Paul Kitagaki Jr./The Sacramento Bee/TNS/ABACAPRESS.COM/Reuters

California state Sen. Steven Bradford, vice chair of California’s Legislative Black Caucus, was a member of the reparations task force.

A national model

Out of 14 bills proposed by the Legislative Black Caucus at the beginning of the year, eight made it to law at the end of September.

The marquee law is the bipartisan apology. California joins several other states, including Florida, Virginia, and Alabama, which have also issued apologies. Other laws include:

• Requiring grocery stores and pharmacies to notify their communities of any plans to shutter or change ownership. This law is aimed at combating “food deserts” by protecting access to healthy foods through community-based grocery stores.

• Updating the state’s Civil Rights Act, making it a violation to discriminate on the basis of any traits associated with race, including hair texture and style.

• Procedures to enforce laws that require implicit bias training for health care workers, as a way of supporting better maternal health in marginalized communities.

• Creating a designation for California Black-Serving Institutions at state universities that indicates they will provide extra support for Black students, who historically have disproportionately lacked access to educational resources.

• Requiring a program that provides grants to students at career technical colleges to report race and gender data to the state department of education as a form of accountability.

• Making it more difficult for the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation to ban books available to incarcerated people by posting its list of banned books online and making public notifications of any changes to that list.

• Preventing counties from repurposing federal benefits owed to children in the foster system and putting it toward the cost of their care.

California voters will decide a ballot measure in November that would eliminate involuntary servitude, which is still on the books in California, allowing its use for incarcerated people. Missing from the slate: the creation of a California Reparations Fund to establish permanent financial support for ongoing redress, and a new state agency responsible for determining claims and distributing funds. Both were recommended by the reparations task force, and would be central to implementing harm-based monetary awards.

Rich Pedroncelli/AP/File

Copies of the interim report of California's first-in-the-nation task force on reparations for African Americans are stacked in a pile at the Capitol in Sacramento in June 2022.

Direct payment is essential for meaningful repair, says Chris Lodgson, lead organizer with the Coalition for a Just and Equitable California. “Nothing works without the return of our economic wealth,” he says. “As a matter of fact, some things will hurt if they don’t have the monetary piece to it. So compensation is at the core of it.”

Mr. Lodgson also noted that he was “pleasantly surprised” by “near unanimous support for all of the most meaningful pieces of legislation that were advancing this year.”

And, echoes Ms. Rue Simmons: “I’m hearing much more about unity [in California]. We see that some of the bills have passed. Others, we believe will have success eventually. … I’m encouraged.”

Civil rights advocates across the country are watching. Some will call California’s actions historic, says Raymond Winbush, director of the Institute for Urban Research at Morgan State University in Baltimore. He sits on Baltimore’s reparations commission and testified before California’s task force – and calls the legislative reforms good but weak.

“It’s not bad,” he says, “but it’s not complete reparations, which would be much more comprehensive, and [would mean] that each Black Californian would receive some form of historical justice through repair.”

‘Transformative’ steps

Before California, there was Evanston, Illinois. The city north of Chicago, on the shore of Lake Michigan, passed its own reparations law in 2019 – the first of its kind in the nation. Repair in Evanston takes the form of housing subsidies: $25,000 to Black residents who suffered from discriminatory housing policies between 1919 and 1969 and their direct descendants. The funding can go toward homeownership, home improvement, or mortgage assistance.

Repair must be tangible in order to be meaningful, says Ms. Rue Simmons, who as an Evanston alderman, led passage of Evanston’s reparations law.

“We as Black communities and our allies are really looking for impact, change, for our quality of lives to be improved, to feel safe, included and so on,” she says. “That will happen with tangible forms of reparations.”

Ms. Rue Simmons, who is also a commissioner on the National African American Reparations Commission, calls California’s steps transformative for the reparations conversation – especially as other states and cities begin to take up their own work on the subject. That process is complex. Politics, infrastructure, and education all play a part. And it takes time.

“California’s a bellwether state,” says Dr. Winbush. “And you know, what happens there eventually happens in the rest of the country.”

Superheroes have secret identities. In the sequel to “Joker,” opening this weekend, the supervillain has an identity crisis.

“Joker: Folie à Deux” once again stars Joaquin Phoenix, who won an Academy Award for the first film, as the man who becomes Batman’s nemesis. The origin story picks up where the first movie left off. Arthur Fleck, a.k.a. Joker, is in prison. The down-and-out loner has murdered people who’d made fun of him, including the host of a TV talk show. As the defendant’s court trial looms, he appears to be schizophrenic. Arthur has reverted to his earlier self – feeble, insecure, despondent. But he’s tempted to once again adopt the persona of the flamboyant villain. Especially once he falls in love with Lee Quinzel (Lady Gaga), a fellow inmate who is drawn to Joker’s celebrity. Yet is that his true identity?

The Monitor’s culture writer and its movie critic exchanged thoughts recently about this central tension in “Joker: Folie à Deux.” (The French subtitle translates as “Shared madness” or “Madness for two.”) Their conversation is also a sequel of sorts. In 2019, the pair had a discussion about “Joker” and the tumult surrounding the violent antihero story at the time. There were concerns that the nihilistic movie would inspire someone to dress up as the titular character and embark on a shooting rampage at a cinema. It didn’t. Director Todd Phillips’s daring gambit became the first R-rated movie to gross over $1 billion. 

How will the sequel, which is a musical, land five years later? The writers consider that, and how the followup film deals with themes of sensationalism and violence.

The following conversation and audio clips include a few spoilers, and have been edited for length and clarity.

Stephen Humphries (culture writer): I almost wondered if this movie was a response to the sensationalism that surrounded the release of “Joker” in 2019. It really was, in its own way, a media circus. There was so much furor and fear. I wondered if this movie was critiquing it in some way.

Peter Rainer (film critic): The fact that it took [the director] years to make this movie means he must have been thinking about all of that. He must have been reflecting on why the film was so successful and what that says about us and about the world. Based on the evidence of this movie, I think Todd Phillips has a great deal of reservations about fandom and the ways in which that can go wrong – the ways in which we can adulate celebrities, especially if they commit awful crimes.

And who are the people behind those crimes? They’re people. They’re not monsters. So he tries to humanize everyone in this movie, starting with Arthur. But everybody else, too, so that we’re looking at real people. We’re not looking at cartoon characters or superheroes. It’s definitely a response to the first film’s reaction by sort of doubling down on the hysteria that was created in that first film, by creating a new situation where you have these rabid fans who are calling this “the trial of the century.” The media is stirring up all of this bloodlust and wanting to see someone play out his role as the Joker – even though in many ways [Arthur] doesn’t want to do that, or doesn’t know how to do that, or doesn’t know who he is.

Stephen: I really admired that audacious choice of turning the sequel of “Joker” into a musical. And right from the get go, there are nods to classic musicals. For example, we see a movie poster for “Sweet Charity.” And there’s a strikingly beautiful overhead shot of colorful umbrellas, which is a nod to the 1960s French musical “The Umbrellas of Cherbourg.” Peter, back when we discussed the first movie, one of your criticisms of it then was that there wasn’t any countervailing lightness to the darkness of the story. So did you feel that the musical elements in the sequel offered a welcome contrast to the darker and more unsettling elements this time around?

Peter: Well, it’s interesting, Stephen, and I would say no. And because in a way you could argue, I could argue, that the musical numbers in the film only deepen the darkness because it shows you that this isn’t real. This is a fantasy. This is wish fulfillment of a happier time, of a happier life, which clearly does not exist in the world of Arthur Fleck or anyone in the movie, really. Gotham is about as dark as anything in “Blade Runner.” And I think, you have to ask yourself, why is this film a musical in the first place? I think that it’s because the director wanted to sort of leaven the darkness with some kind of spritz of at least joy.

But for me, it worked in reverse in a way, because I could definitely see what was being played out in the musical scenes, some of which are quite violent as well … and so it to me, it just was an indication of what was missing from this guy’s life, as opposed to what he aspired to and might achieve.

Stephen: Lady Gaga has considerable vocal and stylistic range. She’s the love interest in this film. At first they seem ideally suited to fall in love. They’re both loners. They both have a flair for the dramatic. Both enjoy putting on garish makeup. But as the movie progresses, we start to realize that there are substantial differences between the two of them.

Peter: We’re made to feel as totally enamored with him the first time they lock eyes. It’s a sort of classic movie moment where we know that they’re in love based on a glance. She incarcerated herself – contrary to the story she tells Arthur – in order to get close to him, in order to effect this romance. Arthur’s lawyer, played by Catherine Keener, is very intent on getting him a psychiatric discharge so that he can be put in a proper facility. She’s the one who tells Arthur that he’s being played by Lee. That she’s not who she seems. So [Lee’s] a very ambiguous character. She’s also, I think, representative of a disturbing trend that, you know, you hook onto a character in popular culture, or in politics, or wherever, because of their celebrity. And you become a rabid fan. That certainly was a part of the first film. It’s a part of this film, too, which is why Arthur’s trial is called “the trial of the century,” because so many people are attracted to his danger. I mean, he killed somebody on a talk show and yet that elevates him to superstardom. That’s saying a lot about the culture that we’re in.

Niko Tavernise/Warner Bros. Pictures/AP

Joker (Joaquin Phoenix, center) resists prison officers, including Jackie Sullivan (Brendan Gleeson, center back), in "Joker: Folie à Deux."

Stephen: There’s a media circus in the courtroom. Everyone wants to see this clownish, larger-than-life villain. At a meta level, the audience watching “Joker 2” also wants to see that larger-than-life villain. I thought it was a very interesting critique of the public appetite for sensationalism. And the media’s willingness to provide it.

Peter: It also shows you the power of celebrity and the danger of celebrity. People want Arthur Fleck to be what, in a sense, he doesn’t want to be. He doesn’t know who he is, really. So we’re on edge the whole time, too. Is he faking it? The psychiatrist in the courtroom says he’s not schizophrenic. Or is he truly bonkers and not really aware of his identity switches? It’s unclear, also as it was in the first film, but I think perhaps less so in this movie. Is there blame to be cast as to why Arthur is the way that he is? Is it because of the world that he lives in? Is it because social services funds were cut – which was certainly true in the first film? How political is this movie? I think Todd Phillips backs away from some of those questions more so than in the first film and leaves it up to us to decide just why this man is the way he is.

Stephen: In comic books, the villains are literally cartoonish. In Batman movies, the hero is usually overshadowed by the villains, who are extravagantly flamboyant. What I found so refreshing in this movie is that it brings out the banality of evil. There’s a man behind the make up. He’s human. It made me think about how, in the real world, there’s often a fascination that people have with serial killers or with mass shooters in schools. There’s a fascination with the people who wield the knives or pull the triggers that overshadows attention to the victims.

Peter: Phoenix is a terrific actor and never once did I see him break character or wink at the audience or let on that he was playacting. I think the ambiguity of the character of Arthur Fleck is that he’s both a victim and a perpetrator. I couldn’t fall on either side of those. I certainly sympathized with his abusive upbringing and his mental illnesses. At the same time, you know, he killed people. So there’s that dichotomy where you have to sort of balance out one’s sympathies, which I think was intrinsic to the movie. If a lesser actor had played that role, I think the whole film might have fallen apart.

Stephen: I found the second half of the movie a bit of a slog. The courtroom sequences especially. Give me a classic episode of “Matlock” any day over this. That said, one of the best sequences in the movie was when Arthur Fleck, who’s now dressed up in the character of the Joker, has to confront a witness named Gary Puddles. He was someone that Arthur knew from work. Because Gary is a dwarf, people would make fun of his height. When Arthur kills two coworkers, he spares Gary’s life because Gary was one of the few people who was nice to him. But when Gary’s on the witness stand in the courtroom, he reveals that he’s terrified of Arthur now and he can’t sleep well. He can’t shake what he saw from his memory. Even though Arthur, in the guise of the Joker, cracks jokes and tries to avoid facing what is done, Gary is pointing out the horror of his acts. That raised some moral questions with Arthur having to grapple with his actions.

Peter: The problem I always have with movies that have a great deal of violence in them is not so much the violence per se, but the fact that we don’t see the consequences of the violence. At least this film is on the right side of that.

Stephen: It’s an unusual movie given that it’s a musical. And it’s not something you’d imagine would automatically appeal in some ways to a predominantly male audience that might be attracted to comic book blockbusters. But the first movie was such a huge success. Do you think that this movie will have a similar impact?

Peter: I don’t think so, only because I think in a lot of ways the first film fulfilled a lot of the expectations that its audience wanted. And we’re in a different world now. It’s years later. We have a presidential election coming up soon that’s going to suck a lot of the air out of the room. I think people may have moved on in some ways from the kind of controversies that [were] brought forward in the first film.

Stephen: I’d classify this movie as an ambitious folly. Even though it doesn’t quite work, I found the ideas in it interesting and I appreciated Todd Phillips taking a big swing and trying some unusual things. In mainstream blockbuster Hollywood, that’s something I’d love to see more of.

Peter: If one is ambitious, you can see this film on a double bill with “Megalopolis,” Francis Coppola’s film. And that would truly be a folie à deux!

It’s impossible to comprehend just how crowded Bangladesh’s capital is until you are in the thick of it. Especially in the middle of Old Dhaka, as the capital’s bustling historic district is known, where you might disembark from a rickshaw at your own risk, threatened on the frenetic and narrow streets by weaving motorbikes, delivery trucks, and other rickshaws laden with passengers.

A visit to Old Dhaka – to see the old-fashioned ferries that ply the Buriganga River; to visit the Ahsan Manzil, or Pink Palace; or to taste the mixed-rice dish biryani – is not for the faint of heart, or of ears. From the moment you get here (and don’t be surprised if it takes 90 minutes to arrive from your hotel only 12 kilometers, or 7.5 miles, away), you are greeted by an intensity of noise you aren’t likely to experience anywhere else in the world.

At one point, photographer Melanie Stetson Freeman and I ascended a store owner’s staircase to look out from his balcony onto the landscape below, giving us an opportunity to experience the scene without being part of it. In that moment, I recalled a conversation I had had earlier that day with our Bangladeshi reporting partner. “Where do you go for alone time?” I had asked.

He looked at me funny. He explained that when traveling abroad – to places such as Berlin or Boston – many Bangladeshis miss the energy generated by so much humanity. They don’t see solace in those less crowded spaces, but emptiness.

Instead of trying to understand Old Dhaka through my own lens, I tried hard to see what he saw: community, life, togetherness.

Melanie Stetson Freeman/Staff

RIVER WATCH: Boats, including old-fashioned ferries, ply the Buriganga River by Old Dhaka. Many Bangladeshis depend on rivers for transport or to make a living.

Melanie Stetson Freeman/Staff

HUSTLE AND BUSTLE: A girl travels through Old Dhaka by cycle rickshaw, often one of the fastest ways to get around because of terrible traffic jams.

Melanie Stetson Freeman/Staff

SLICE OF LIFE: A vendor sells pineapple on the streets of Old Dhaka.

Melanie Stetson Freeman/Staff

PRETTY IN PINK: The Ahsan Manzil, or Pink Palace, is a popular tourist site in Old Dhaka. It was built in the 19th century by a wealthy landowner.

For more visual storytelling that captures communities, traditions, and cultures around the globe, visit The World in Pictures.

AP

Singer and actress Jordin Sparks reads from Dr. Seuss' "Happy Birthday to You!" with a student in Washington, D.C. during Reading Is Fundamental's 50th Anniversary in 2016.

When English novelist Frank Cottrell-Boyce was asked to prepare the opening ceremony for the 2012 Olympic Games in London, he took a poll of the workers – from all over the world – who were building the sports stadiums. “When you think of Britain, what do you think of?” he asked. The most common answers included characters from children’s books. “Winnie-the-Pooh, Harry Potter, Mary Poppins ... they just started listing characters,” he told The Times.

A dozen years later, that lasting imprint of childhood imagination is reflected in a poll of 5,000 British children ages 8 to 16. It found half engaged regularly with poetry, whether by reading, writing, performing, or listening to it read aloud. The survey, by the British National Literacy Trust, found that children from poorer families were more apt to enjoy the rhythmic delights of poetry than those from wealthier homes. And the younger the listener, the keener the ear.

The study coincides with a renaissance of youthful enthusiasm for metaphor and euphemism driven through popular culture. The Globe Theatre in London engaged 48,000 children this year in a poetry performance competition. Michael Rosen, one of Britain’s most beloved children’s authors currently working, has 142 million views of his YouTube channel for poetry readings.

In some countries, rap is now a staple of college literature courses. So is Taylor Swift. “I love it, because it’s like she’s training the literary critics out there to do the work,” Elizabeth Scala, a professor who teaches a course in the literary devices of Ms. Swift’s lyrics at the University of Texas at Austin, told Education Week.

Some American high schools are turning to poetry to help students cope with social issues like gun violence, identity, and loneliness. That approach underscores the ability of the word, whether written or spoken, to cultivate empathy, innocence, and a confidence that excellence is innately possible.

“None of us have the slightest idea about what the future holds for our children,” Mr. Cottrell-Boyce, newly appointed as Britain’s children’s laureate, told The Times. But the “experience of being read to in your early years and of finding consolation in a book – that builds the apparatus of happiness in the child.”  It is a happiness that can stir the heart decades later, as the construction workers for the Olympics informed Mr. Cottrell-Boyce.