Lifestyle
How to have the best Sunday in L.A., according to Sophie Thatcher
Sophie Thatcher isn’t in L.A. at the moment — but “Yellowjackets” fans will appreciate the reason. She’s in Vancouver filming the new season of the hit Showtime series, in which Thatcher’s character Natalie was revealed last season as the ringleader of a soccer team marooned deep in a mystical wilderness after their plane crashed on their way to a tournament. “I think this season will be very satisfying for viewers,” Thatcher says.
In Sunday Funday, L.A. people give us a play-by-play of their ideal Sunday around town. Find ideas and inspiration on where to go, what to eat and how to enjoy life on the weekends.
She’s also gearing up for two big film releases. On Nov. 8, she’ll star in the new A24 theological thriller “Heretic,” playing a Mormon missionary trapped in a game of cat-and-mouse with Hugh Grant. It’s a role she was born for: Thatcher was raised Mormon in Illinois, and though she no longer practices, members of both sides of her family are still in the church. “I was a little scared because I didn’t want my mom to be judged because she still goes to church,” she says. “Her church is very liberal, so they’re hopefully open minded. But, that was scary and strange doing that.” She also has a starring role in the upcoming thriller “Companion.”
And she’s been busy making music as well. Thatcher just dropped “Pivot & Scrape,” a five-song debut EP of emotional balladry that showcases her deep, resonant voice and penchant for cathartic pop-rock arrangements.
With so much going on, Thatcher takes her time off seriously and spends it in her favorite areas of L.A. Those include her former neighborhood of Silver Lake, her new one in Nichols Canyon (“We’re isolated, but we have this beautiful mid-century cabin-esque place. It’s ideal”) or her musician boyfriend Austin Feinstein’s birthplace of Sherman Oaks. Here’s how she’d spend her ideal day.
This interview has been lightly edited and condensed for length and clarity.
10:30 a.m.: Wake up late and scroll
I love my sleep. I’m a great sleeper. 10:30 wake up. Scroll. I’m working on that. I know it’s not the healthiest thing in the world, but I’m aware. The first step is to be aware. I deleted TikTok. I’m anti-TikTok because I would waste a good six or seven hours. It was bad. Now I just have [Instagram] Reels. Then feed my cat, Gigi, of course.
11:00 a.m.: Head out for a breakfast and a cannabis gummy
I’ll bring my boyfriend to Tartine. I always get the Smoked Salmon Tartine, and it’s so good. And a cold brew. Then, I’m going to the weed shop [MOTA] across the street from Tartine. I get Camino Gummies, cherry-flavored. Sometimes I’ll take half of one. One is only five milligrams, but just for, like, a little something. I don’t drive, so throughout the day, I’m just bossing my boyfriend around; he’s driving me.
11:40 a.m.: Peruse the antique mall for vintage earrings
My boyfriend’s from Sherman Oaks. So when I first came to L.A., he showed me a lot of Sherman Oaks. I was like, “This is very charming, and not at all what I expected.” Because, you know, you hear the valley… I’ll be slightly off the Camino gummy in the Sherman Oaks Antique Mall: it’s endless and there’s so much. It’s a little overwhelming. I am a hoarder when it comes to antiques. Maybe I’ll get some earrings there, maybe a record or new piece of art. A lot of the stuff on my walls is from the Sherman Oaks Antique Mall. The last record I got there was this weird Scandinavian children’s choir record, and then I listened to it, and it made me really anxious. It was too obscure.
12:40 p.m.: Grab sushi and a maté
There’s a Bristol Farms near me in West Hollywood. I’ll get a maté there as a little pick-me-up. I’m obsessed with energy drinks. Sometimes coffee doesn’t do it. I feel like I’m almost immune to coffee now, so I’ll get an energy drink there. I’ll get sushi there. Their sushi is really good sushi. And I get a Chomps beef stick, because I need some protein.
1:30 p.m.: Shop for industrial records
If I want to get more records or books, there’s this place called Mount Analog in Silver Lake that’s really sick. It has my favorite records, my favorite books and it’s a very niche collection. They also have very cool movie posters. If I want to get a record that’s more industrial, I’ll go to Mount Analog. The owner [Mahssa Taghinia] and I have a lot of mutuals. I want to meet her, because she seems very cool.
3:00 p.m.: Take high tea at the Museum of Jurassic Technology
I’m going all around L.A. and Austin, my boyfriend, is driving, and I got the aux. We’re gonna go to the Museum of Jurassic Technology, and hopefully get a discount, because my friend Emma works there. I’ll take another half of a Camino for the Museum of Jurassic Technology, and then hang out up on the [Russian tea room rooftop] balcony for a while, get some tea and talk. I feel like a good two hours is solid for the museum.
5:00 p.m.: Grab early dinner in the valley
We’re gonna do an early dinner. There’s a Petit Trois in Sherman Oaks, and that’s my favorite date spot to go with Austin. I’m gonna get the French onion soup and I’m gonna get a glass of Pinot Noir, and me and my boyfriend are gonna talk, hang out. We’ll be there for a good hour and a half. I usually will be fighting wanting to take a nap because I did a lot, but I’m not going to take a nap.
6:30 p.m.: Head into the music studio
We’re gonna go home and I’m gonna work on music, and then I’m gonna get frustrated and stop working on music unless it goes well, but it’s a 50/50 chance it won’t. I can’t force it.
9:30 p.m.: Watch TV in bed (and scroll some more)
Austin’s going to be in bed with our cat, Gigi. If, for some reason, Austin’s out of town, I watch “Bojack” to fall asleep, and I think I’ve seen each episode 30 times. It’s my go-to sleep show, which is really depressing. It’s my comfort show, and it makes me feel better about myself. If we’re together, we’re watching “Sopranos.” I’m going to be scrolling and watching. I can’t just watch something. I have to be scrolling. I’ll go on Depop and I’ll go through my “suggested for you,” and I’m going to buy clothes that I don’t need, and they usually don’t fit. I’m still on Tumblr. I find really good art on Tumblr, and I use it for a lot of references. I’ll also be scrolling on Instagram Reels. My algorithm is really funny right now on my finsta. It’s just monkeys. I have a very public love for orangutans. I have three stuffed animals I bring everywhere, and they’re all monkeys. At this point, it’s been a long day, and I’m falling asleep.
Students walk on the Stanford University campus on March 14, 2019, in Stanford, Calif.
Ben Margot/AP
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Ben Margot/AP
When Theo Baker arrived at Stanford University a few years ago, he joined the student newspaper, following the path of his journalist parents, Peter Baker, a White House correspondent for The New York Times, and Susan Glasser, a writer for The New Yorker.
Through his reporting as a student journalist, he eventually broke a story about manipulated data in Stanford President Marc Tessier-Lavigne’s neuroscience research that helped lead to the university president’s resignation.
Theo Baker’s book, How to Rule the World: An Education in Power at Stanford University was released May 19. In it, Baker describes Stanford as a place where proximity to Silicon Valley gives rise to a parallel system of influence, recruitment and money, with investors looking to identify promising students almost as soon as they arrive on campus.
He told Morning Edition host Steve Inskeep there was “a sort of Stanford inside Stanford,” where elite students are drawn into an “alternate reality” of excess and access to cut corners.
In the interview, he discusses how Stanford is not just a university but also a pipeline where status and power can matter as much as ideas.
We reached out to Stanford University for comment and have not heard back.
Listen to the interview by clicking play on the blue box above.
The scoreboard shows the results of the women’s singles final match between Iga Swiatek of Poland and Amanda Anisimova of the U.S. at the Wimbledon Tennis Championships in London, Saturday, July 12, 2025.
Kirsty Wigglesworth/AP
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Kirsty Wigglesworth/AP
Fifteen points in tennis? Nice. Thirty, 40 — even better. Advantage — that sounds good. “Love” — that also must be great, right? Well, not quite.
As the French Open rolls on and Serena Williams has announced her return to the sport, maybe you’ve been paying a little more attention to tennis. The sport’s scoring system is notably distinct, and can sometimes be hard to grasp for newcomers. But even tennis aficionados might not know why, or how, “love” became the unmistakable callout for zero points. For this installment of NPR’s Word of the Week, we’re exploring how a word that signifies trailing behind got such a sweet name.
“Love” comes from the heart — or an egg?
It’s hard to pinpoint when the first tennis ball went over the net. Tennis is a derivative of lots of other sports, such as “jeu de paume,” a handball game played in France, said JT Buzanga, the collections manager at the International Tennis Hall of Fame museum.
But tennis became a patented, official sport in 1874, said Steve Flink, a journalist whose tennis coverage got him inducted into the International Tennis Hall of Fame. It has retained its unique, mysterious scoring system ever since.
“By and large, the original system has held up almost entirely,” Flink said.
The use of “love” goes back to the late 18th century, said Jesse Sheidlower, a lexicographer. But it was used earlier than that in card games such as whist and bridge. Before the term made its way to tennis, the sport favored plain old “nothing,” or “nil,” he said.
Why love in the first place, though? Historians don’t really know for sure, but there are a few theories.
The French could have something to do with it. Some historians believe “love” derives from “l’oeuf,” which means “the egg” in French. Because eggs are shaped like zeros, terms such as “goose egg” and “duck’s egg” have been used in other contexts to mean zero, Sheidlower said.
It’s also possible English speakers mispronounced l’oeuf as “love.” But Sheidlower isn’t convinced that’s the answer.
“It’s the French equivalent of an English expression. But since that expression doesn’t appear in French, the French word wouldn’t have been used,” he said.
To be sure, France has had a lot of influence on tennis culture, Buzanga said. For example, “deuce” or a game tied at 40 points, comes from the French word for “two”: “deux.” But he prefers another prominent theory: that “love” comes from the idiom “for the love of the game.” Even if a player hasn’t scored, it doesn’t matter, because their heart is in it. It’s the theory Sheidlower said is the most plausible, because the idiom was used by the English before tennis was popularized.
Another variation of the “love of the game” theory is that the word could have come from the Dutch “lof,” or “honor” — or the Latin “amare,” meaning “to love,” Flink said.
But if tennis’ “love” doesn’t come from a French word, the theory at least has a French sensibility.
“I think the ‘for the love of the game’ is kind of romantic,” Buzanga said.
“Love” probably isn’t going anywhere
Tennis used to be a sport of leisure. The style of play has changed a lot over the years; players are more athletic and competitive, for instance, Flink said. But the rules of the sport are more steadfast, he said.
“There’s this incredible, enduring respect for tradition in tennis,” he said. “Changes are not made easily.”
There has been one major change in modern history: the tie-break. Matches can go on and on because players have to score two consecutive points to break a deuce, or by two games to break a tied set. But the onset of television meant matches would have to get shorter if the sport wanted to capture a larger audience, Flink said.
Change even came for “love.” An alternative sprouted up in the 1970s, and is still used today: “bagel,” named for its zero shape, Sheidlower said. Novices may say “zero,” and insiders will understand what they mean, but they “will needle them about it,” Flink said.
But “love” still prevails.
“People kind of like it,” Flink said. “It’s different. Why say zero when you can say love?”
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