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.
For the better part of 15 years, my colleague Spencer Kornhaber has been working in and around music-and-film coverage at The Atlantic, performing a service that was once, if not exactly universal, at least fairly common at newspapers and alt-weeklies across the country.

Updated with new questions at 4:05 p.m. ET on October 17, 2025.
Atlantic Trivia reaches Week 3, which is by definition the most trivial of all: The word trivia originally referred to places where three (tri-) roads (-via) met in a crossing. If those slouch Romans had been more industrious builders, we might be playing quintivia or even septivia today.

Thirty years ago, parents everywhere were compelled to weigh the pros and cons of allowing their kids to see Titanic. At the time, it was the biggest movie ever made, a historical epic (potentially educational) about mass death (possibly traumatizing) with a romantic plotline that was maybe too exciting (you know what I mean!).

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.
Sometimes just a few news items over a couple of days can capture an entire zeitgeist. Here are several that caught my eye this week: The Supreme Court is poised to weaken or destroy one of the last remaining pillars of the Voting Rights Act.

This week, Politico revealed the contents of Young Republican leaders’ group chats, which were filled with rampant bigotry, endorsements of rape, and praise for a certain fascist dictator (“I love Hitler”).
Some Republicans, including those who have directly employed the people in these chats, condemned these messages. But Vice President J. D. Vance had a different, and more telling, response. “I refuse to join the pearl clutching,” he posted on X defiantly.

Earlier this week, I stopped for breakfast in Sunset Park, Brooklyn, a largely Hispanic neighborhood where street vendors sell tamales and rice pudding out of orange Gatorade coolers. I speak some Spanish, but I wanted to test out Apple’s new “Live Translation” feature, which has been advertised as a sort of interpreter in your ears. I popped in my AirPods, pulled up the Translate app, and approached.
As I opened my mouth, the AirPods blared a message into my ears: AMBIENT SOUND LEVELS ARE HIGH.

This is an edition of Time-Travel Thursdays, a journey through The Atlantic’s archives to contextualize the present. Sign up here.
Imagine this: A tech guy has revolutionized the world with an innovation that unleashes unimaginable productivity, and brought himself unimaginable wealth. An imperial president, empowered by the Supreme Court to wield unchecked authority, seeks a third term in office, or else to pass the reins on to his son.