Podcast: For Scores

In this Disney Music Group-produced podcast, musicians explain how they composed the scores for various movies and television shows within the Disney hierarchy, from Lucasfilm to Pixar to FX. Highlights: Mark Isham and Florence and the Machine’s Isabella Summers describe their collaboration on Little Fires Everywhere; Henry Jackman unpacks his industrial-influenced score for Captain America: The Winter Soldier; and Kristen Anderson-Lopez and Robert Lopez talk Frozen. Google Podcasts, Apple Podcasts. –Geoff Carter

Book: Rodham

Between the pandemic, a Twitter presidency and murder hornets, it’s easy to feel trapped in an alternate timeline. Rodham, a new novel by bestselling author Curtis Sittenfeld, imagines a different global outcome. In her story, Hillary Rodham Clinton never marries a future president, never gains that equally famous and toxic last name. NPR calls the counterfactual “nauseating, moving, morally suggestive, technically brilliant.” As we inch closer to a potential second lockdown, there’s no better time to see for yourself. –C. Moon Reed

Television: Homemade

What happens when filmmakers and actors like Ladj Ly (Les Miserables), Kristen Stewart (The Twilight Saga) and Maggie Gyllenhaal (Secretary) are forced to quarantine due to a pandemic? Homemade on Netflix has some answers, as acclaimed artists and directors from all over the globe channel their creative inspirations into short films about isolation, home and humanity. “Art is a way of surviving,” a voice at the end of the film’s trailer says, and each brief episode provides an enduring examination. Netflix. –Leslie Ventura

Television: I May Destroy You

These are unsettling times, and while you might not want to watch a show with an uncomfortable premise right now, consider making an exception for I May Destroy You. The limited HBO series stars British writer/actress Michaela Coel as millennial writer Arabella, a role so lived in one feels voyeuristic watching her. One seemingly typical night out—marked by a blackout from a spiked drink—sends Arabella down a rabbit hole as she tries to piece together what happened to her in those lost hours. The story that unfolds surprises her, and surely will you, too. HBO. –Genevie Durano

Music: Anna Högberg Attack: Lena

This Swedish jazz combo’s second LP begins with a series of intense alto sax blasts from its leader, as if Anna Högberg wants it known immediately that Lena will take the group even further into the experimental realm than 2016’s eponymous predecessor. From there, she largely cedes the spotlight to her bandmates—holdovers Elin Forkelid (tenor sax), Lisa Ullén (piano), Elsa Bergman (bass) and Anna Lund (drums), plus newcomer Niklas Barnö (trumpet)—who handle the many sharp twists of Högberg’s six original pieces nimbly and creatively. This one’s more for fans of Albert Ayler and Cecil Taylor than for cocktail parties … unless you’ve got really interesting friends scheduled for the latter. annahogberg.bandcamp.com. –Spencer Patterson