Updated with new questions at 4:30 p.m. ET on February 23, 2026.
If you put any stock in the ability of IQ tests to assess intelligence, we humans have spent the past century steadily getting smarter. (And if you don’t put any stock in them, well, we humans have steadily gotten better at IQ tests.)
Because IQ is a standardized measure, humankind’s average score still sits at 100—but this isn’t your granddaddy’s 100.
Supporters of the health secretary’s Make America Healthy Again movement are worried Kennedy is selling out.
As the winter Olympics come to a close, a number of athletes have drawn controversy for their political statements. U.S. athletes, in particular, have expressed conflicting feelings about representing the United States during the current political moment.
We speak with former athlete Jules Boykoff, who has written extensively on the Olympic games, about how politics intersect with the Games. “The Trump administration has politicized these Olympics from the very beginning,” he says.
We speak with Mosab Abu Toha, the Pulitzer Prize-winning Palestinian poet and author from Gaza, who responds to recent developments in the region including the Trump administration’s policy on Palestine, a recent report finding that the genocide’s death toll is much higher than originally reported and more.
The Supreme Court struck down President Donald Trump’s sweeping tariffs on Friday in a 6-3 vote. The justices ruled that the tariffs — which were imposed by a series of executive orders — exceeded presidential powers under a 1977 law that gives the president authority to regulate commerce only in the case of international emergencies. The ruling takes away a “leverage power tool by Trump,” says Lori Wallach, director of the Rethink Trade program at the American Economic Liberties Project.
No one knows what happened. That explains what’s unfolding just north of Tucson.
The Trump administration is capping student loans, but doctors and dentists opposed to the health secretary will get more than his wellness allies.
Our friends at Planet Money have written a book! Author Alex Mayyasi takes us through a few of the best chapters.
If you’re hoping for grocery prices to go down, I’ve got some bad news.
Mariana van Zeller joins Felix Salmon for a look into the hidden economics of black and gray markets.
Alphabet issues century bonds, the majority of Trump’s tariffs were paid by US citizens, and Felix defends fakes.
Regrettably, I must support the Dunkin’ commercial.
After letting the health secretary have his way in 2025, Trump is reining him in now that it’s an election year.
President Trump called Commissioner Marty Makary to the White House to discuss his frustration with the agency handling of vaccine issues, sources told POLITICO.
Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. dismissed Jim O’Neill, whom Trump will nominate to lead the National Science Foundation, from the CDC job last week.
Lawmakers delayed negotiations despite a drumbeat of warnings. That was just the first problem.
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.
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.
Sixty-one percent of voters told a CNN poll released Friday that they disapprove of the way Trump is handling the economy.
An immigration judge has blocked the Trump administration from deporting Mohsen Mahdawi, a Columbia University graduate and green card holder who was detained last April at what he thought was a citizenship interview. Mahdawi grew up in a refugee camp in the occupied West Bank and was an outspoken critic of Israel’s genocide in Gaza while attending Columbia. He spent two weeks in ICE custody before a federal judge ordered his release.
Journalist Jeremy Scahill says the Trump administration’s vision for the Gaza Strip is of a continued “colonial apartheid regime” with Israel and U.S. interests controlling the lives of millions of Palestinians in perpetuity. “Palestinians are being told that they must completely surrender,” says Scahill. President Trump chaired the first meeting of his so-called Board of Peace this week, a body established for Gaza but whose remit has already expanded.
Despite chairing the first meeting of his newly formed Board of Peace on Thursday, President Donald Trump continues to threaten war against Iran as the Pentagon positions a massive fighting force in the Middle East. Trump said he would give Tehran about two weeks to reach a deal on its nuclear program, but media reports indicate that he could launch an attack within days. Iran maintains its nuclear enrichment program is for peaceful civilian purposes.
British police released former Prince Andrew on Thursday after 11 hours in custody, with his shocking arrest earlier in the day making him the first senior British royal to be arrested in nearly 400 years. Police are probing his connections to the deceased sexual predator Jeffrey Epstein and whether he shared classified government information with him while serving as a U.K. trade representative from 2001 to 2011.
A year after the Trump administration began the dismantlement of USAID, it is initiating a new round of significant cuts to foreign assistance. This time, programs that survived the initial purge precisely because they were judged to be lifesaving are slated for cancellation.
Nicole Shanahan has recruited a top screenwriter and enlisted Covid contrarian Jay Bhattacharya.