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A popular joke in the 1850s concerned a man who, upon being convicted for the murder of his parents, throws himself at the judge’s feet and begs for mercy on a poor orphan.
Let today’s trivia be the best of times, and more “age of wisdom” than “age of foolishness.” Good luck!
And by the way, did you know that Dickens’s The Pickwick Papers—a novel released over the course of 1836 in serialized form—was so popular in England that it spawned theatrical performances, joke books, bootlegs, and Pickwick-branded canes, hats, soaps, and cigars?
As was written in The Atlantic in 2015, “‘Literature’ is not a big enough category for Pickwick.
Shower thoughts are typically best left in the shower. Such as: What might Claude the AI chatbot have to say about Claude Monet?
Earlier this month, San Francisco’s de Young Museum unveiled its newest exhibition, “Monet and Venice,” which is dedicated to the impressionist painter’s beautiful and meditative canvases of the floating city. And Anthropic, perhaps having seized on a marketing opportunity, is one of the show’s lead sponsors.
Democracy Now! celebrated its 30th anniversary Monday at the historic Riverside Church in New York. The night ended with Patti Smith performing her anthemic hit “People Have the Power,” joined on stage by Bruce Springsteen, Michael Stipe, Hurray for the Riff Raff, the National’s Aaron Dessner and more.
Watch the entire event here.
Over 2,000 people packed into the historic Riverside Church in New York on Monday to celebrate the 30th anniversary of Democracy Now! The program included a reading by legendary singer Patti Smith from her new memoir Bread of Angels, in which she remembered the U.S. peace activist Rachel Corrie, who was killed by Israeli forces in Gaza in 2003 while trying to protect Palestinian homes from destruction.
As the United States mobilizes thousands more troops for deployment to the Middle East, we speak with retired U.S. Air Force Master Sergeant Wes Bryant, who criticizes the “bloodthirst” of the U.S.-Israeli war against Iran. Bryant led the Pentagon office for civilian harm assessment from 2024 to 2025, before the unit was dissolved under Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth.
Markwayne Mullin was sworn in Tuesday as secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, replacing Kristi Noem, who was ousted earlier this month. Mullin has served as senator for Oklahoma since 2023 following a decade in the House of Representatives. He joins the Trump administration amid a partial government shutdown, with Democrats demanding reforms to immigration enforcement before fully funding DHS.
The seven-year war between the bookstore owner and the good liberals who went rogue.
HBO’s prestige TV luster seems to be taking a hit with the various mergers and rebrands.
It’s quietly reshaping Main Street medicine. Your wallet—and health—might suffer as a result.
Mitu Gulati explains how the pervasive use of boilerplate is creating a legal crisis.
He indicated that the FDA will soon take action on peptides, the mini-proteins biohackers tout as therapies for a range of ills.
The ruling in a lawsuit brought by a group of states deals another setback to the Trump administration in its efforts to restrict the treatments.
As a result of the ruling, HHS has postponed a planned meeting of the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices this week.
More states are giving tax breaks to businesses that help employees sign up for Obamacare using an authority Trump created.
Current grants run out on April 1.
Outward’s hosts sit down with the host and co-creator of When We All Get to Heaven.
The neighborhood changes, the church moves, people forget and remember “the AIDS years,” but AIDS isn’t over.
The AIDS cocktail opens new possibilities. And MCC San Francisco tries to use the experience of AIDS to make bigger social change.
The church’s minister gets sick and everyone knows it.
The church’s “it couple” faces AIDS, caregiving, and loss as part of a pair, part of families, and part of a community.
President Donald Trump has taken one risk after another that could have destabilized the American economy. Iran is the latest crisis to test U.S. economic resilience.
The president stopped in Marjorie Taylor Greene’s old district to defend his economic record.
A brief swing through the farm state underscored administration fears about the midterms.
This is an edition of The Atlantic Daily, a newsletter that guides you through the biggest stories of the day, helps you discover new ideas, and recommends the best in culture. Sign up for it here.
On Friday, after almost a full month of bombing Iran, Donald Trump offered a glimpse of the end. American military operations in the country, he said, could soon be “winding down.
With apologies to baseball, I believe that binge-watching television may have become America’s true pastime. TV sets have ruled living rooms for decades, but gone are the days of viewers exclusively following broadcast schedules. Netflix and its peers have rendered entertainment addictively customizable and hyper-accessible, making entire seasons of shows available at once and commissioning original series of their own.
Today’s trivia is not asserting that loving France makes you lose the presidency, but it’s not not asserting that. See for yourself!
And by the way, did you know—classic fun fact incoming—that thanks to its overseas territories, France technically spans more time zones than any other country?
The European part of France exists entirely within one time zone.
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Even before his son was in high school, Mylo Simmons told me, there was something about flying that fascinated him. Some days, Simmons and his son, Tyler, would sit in the car together, pulled over on a street with a clear view of an airport runway, watching planes take off and land. Tyler was “looking up at the sky all the time,” his father said. “He wanted to be up there.
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The war in Iran has horrified many inside the country, but some worry that peace could be just as frightening. “I am shit-scared,” Shaghayeh, a 32-year-old living in Tehran, told me last week. “But I won’t cheer if the war ends now. You want to leave us alone with Mojtaba?”
Shaghayeh, a left-wing activist, was referring to the new supreme leader, Mojtaba Khamenei, whose regime continues to impose a near-total internet blackout.
