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Jeremy Allen White, Jharel Jerome, Sarah Jessica Parker, Rosamund Pike, and More ...

It’s human compulsion to make the world small. We have brought a planet to heel, exploited every quadrant, reduced wilderness to a few tidy squares on the grid. We treat creation like a beaten foe and spare it only patronizing forms of love.

When nature shows its teeth, we are undone. It is disturbing to realize we are not the world. Despite all our tools, the earth refuses to bend to us. It remains enormous and devouring. In its vastness, we’re not very much at all.

Today is a critical day. Ships and aircraft scour the North Atlantic for the Titan, a 22-foot long submersible tube carrying five voyagers. In the surface world, these men are highly accomplished. Some of them are very wealthy, having paid $250,000 each to tour the wreckage of the Titanic, yet another human ingenuity shattered by nature. But what are any of us against the enormity of the sea?

The searchers comb through an area twice the size of Connecticut, nearly 400 miles from the black cliffs of Newfoundland. The wreck of the Titanic rests 12,5000 ft. below the surface of the Atlantic. The great ship’s skeletal hull is a pinprick in that trackless outback; More than 80 percent of the oceans are unmapped and unexplored. We know more about the surface of the moon than we do the bottom of the sea.

The Titan could be bobbing in the big empty, but the hatch can’t be opened from the inside and its oxygen supply is nearly gone. If the craft is marooned on the ocean floor, the odds of a rescue are even longer. Earlier this week, Canadian surveillance planes detected faint banging sounds emanating from the deep. The U.S. Coast Guard deployed underwater drones in the vicinity, and a French robot is aiding in the search. So far, they’ve turned up nothing.

Debris around the Titanic could account for noises picked up by sonar, but there is still a whisper of hope that the men will be snatched back from the abyss and returned to their loved ones. This vigil has gone on since the world was young: We always wait for wanderers to come home, for the lost to be found.

Last month, a Cessna carrying seven people plunged into the Colombian jungle. Four children, aged 13, 9, 4, and 1 years old, walked away from the crash that killed their mother and two other adults. Led by the eldest, a girl named Lesley, they survived in the rainforest for 40 days until rescuers found them.

These children were lost in deep Amazonia, a darkling wood filled with malarial mosquitos, snakes, and jaguars. Because they were Witoto, a people indigenous to the region, they were raised to survive in the wild. Lesley kept her siblings alive by gathering fruit and palm seeds and fashioning makeshift mosquito netting. The group climbed trees to stay safe from wild animals. Later, they supplemented their meager diet with supplies dropped from a search plane. This happened in 2023, when children the world over have retreated from nature into realms that exist only on screens.

When I was eight, I wandered into the woods with my 10-year old stepbrother. We could not find our way out. This was hardly the Amazon, but Appalachia. It was summer, and my feet were bare. The trees closed in around us and the human world vanished. We scrambled over stony hills and through brushy hollers, miles off the grid. As night fell, we became aware that we had crossed into a more dangerous country. It was terrifying but also thrilling. When the first search plane soared overhead, we did what the Witoto children did—took cover in the trees. Foolishly, we wanted to find our own way back. Or maybe stay hidden forever.

We lost ourselves in the wild. It drew us in and transformed us into something feral. We were part of a boundless, terrible world and irrelevant to it; In a matter of hours, there was nothing to do but survive. Even now, nature can work such magic. It tempts the adventurous and proud. Sometimes, it does not let them go. The rest of us keep vigil by the home fire and pray for their return.

Yours Ever,

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Grease Fire

The Bear (FX on Hulu). There was plenty of grit in the first season Wag Christopher Storer’s tale of Carmy (Jeremy Allen White) a young chef trying to turn around his family’s sandwich shop. This time out there’s more sweetness, as he and sous chef Sydney (Amazing Ayo Edebiri) rally their crew and try to turn that dive into a destination restaurant. Come back for seconds. — Babette Hersant

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Divine Sarah

And Just Like That (Max). There’s an unhappy truth buried under all those Bergdorf bags: Sometimes we do not get better as we get older. Life is grief and trial, not Instagram gloss. Carrie Bradshaw (Dame Sarah Jessica Parker) understands this and it gives her a wonderfully wry smile. John Corbett returns as her lost love Aidan and there’s a cameo from the star of Netflix’s Glamorous. Time for everybody to air kiss and make up.—Erica Benton

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Tall Tale

I’m a Virgo (Prime Video). Mad Genius Boots Riley has created a loopy super hero fable, about 13-ft. tall Cootie (Jharrel Jerome) hidden away in Oakland by his protective aunt and uncle (Carmen Ejogo and Mike Epps). As he grows, he can’t be confined at home anymore, so he sets out to explore the world. That’s a problem for the Hero (Diabolical Walton Goggins) a billionaire vigilante who patrols the Bay Area wearing a jet pack. Meanwhile, Cootie gets signed for a racially cartoonish ad campaign. These are metaphors for thorny social dilemmas, but what makes it all work is warmth, humor, and a star-making performance from Jerome. — Bobby Taylor

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Origin Story

Stan Lee (Disney+). As another Marvel series lumbers into town, this doc tells the story of the man behind the madness. Wag Emeritus Stanley Martin Leiber died in 2018, but his comic book creations are eternal. The son of a dress-cutter, Stan Lee challenged the conventions of medium and changed 20th century pop culture. In other words, he was a creative super hero. — Patsy Walker

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During the 9/11 terrorist attacks, Emily Morris (Wag Rosamund Pike) takes a chance. She uses the tragedy to fake her own death and start over in Los Angeles as Connie Prynne. Years later, a cancer diagnosis forces her to confront the past she buried. Hugh Laurie and Alfred Enoch also put on American accents for this thriller based on Kim Hooper’s novel. — Marjorie Duval