Today The Atlantic is launching The Permanent Questions, a new video podcast hosted by staff writer David Brooks about the fundamental questions of human life that every generation—and every individual—must attempt to answer. In new episodes publishing every Sunday, David will engage thinkers, writers, and artists in conversations about what makes us human, what gives life meaning, and how we can build richer relationships and a more just society.

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In the debut episode of The Permanent Questions With David Brooks, David speaks with the philosopher Meghan Sullivan about perhaps the most important question of them all: How should we live our lives? Sullivan is a co-author of The Good Life Method, based on a popular course she teaches at Notre Dame. Leading a good life, she argues, means not just maximizing our positive impact in the world, but cultivating virtue within our own souls.

My aunt, who in her mild imagination
was Ginger Rogers lacking an Astaire,
lived to the last a notch above her station,
an exiled queen propped up by Medicare.
A mirrored sideboard’s porcelain swans and swains
(no Meissen, some Limoges, all very late)
amount now to the bulk of her remains:
even en masse, the daintiest estate.
Bring bubble wrap and drive them to the thrift store.

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On the first day of self-defense class, I learn to say “no.”
We’re in a Southern California martial-arts studio not far from an In-N-Out Burger. The space smells faintly of cooked meat. I’m one of six students, all women: four nurses, one flight attendant, and me. In this introductory session, we’re supposed to get a taste of what it means to protect ourselves—and, if necessary, to fight back.

In the race to develop intelligent machines, the leading AI companies have built bots that can whip up spreadsheets at a moment’s notice, write sophisticated code, and even solve long-standing math problems. But when it comes to the more mundane tasks of life—such as ordering groceries or booking flights—these tools sometimes still struggle. Now a new bot called Instinct is outperforming the AI giants.

Four days after a researcher publicly quit his job at Anthropic, warning that top AI firms are not “acting responsibly” and that their products might be on track to “kill us all,” the company’s CEO, Dario Amodei, seemed to basically agree. “We must slow the pace at which we improve the capabilities of AI models,” Amodei wrote in a 3,800-word essay that he published today on his personal website and posted to social media.

Politicians have no shortage of ideas about how to rein in AI: a 100 percent federal tax rate on data-center incentives, a pause on all development of advanced AI, new standards to block AI agents from going rogue, a halt to the construction of data centers altogether.
The flurry of proposals has been impossible to miss, with both Democrats and Republicans proclaiming that something must be done to avert a disaster foretold by AI insiders.

Editor’s Note: Washington Week With The Atlantic is a partnership between NewsHour Productions, WETA, and The Atlantic airing every Friday on PBS stations nationwide. Check your local listings, watch full episodes here, or listen to the weekly podcast here.
It has been 25 years since nearly 3,000 people died in a terror attack on the World Trade Center on September 11.

This week, the White House removed a Tetris-inspired game called Build the Wall from its recently launched arcade website after the Tetris Company publicly warned that it takes copyright law “very seriously.”
Here are a few options the White House might consider to replace the game:
Super PAC-Man
Players direct a round creature with a constantly moving mouth through a maze as he munches on tiny coins.