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How to describe this year … Slop? Rage-baiting? Pantone white? Yes, and: The Katie Miller Podcast.

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Are your parents addicted to their phone? In this episode of Galaxy Brain, Charlie Warzel explores how technology is affecting an older generation of adults. Instead of a phone-based childhood, Warzel suggests, we may be witnessing the emergence of a phone-based retirement—one shaped by isolation, algorithmic feeds, and platforms never designed with aging users in mind.

For those of us north of the equator, winter officially arrived last week. The early darkness and the chill in the air demand a change in our habits. For many, the season provokes an unmistakable turn inward—toward our warm homes, or the loved ones we see on holidays, or meditative thoughts that, in other times of year, might be crowded out by the light and noise of the world.
Perhaps saying so is sentimental, but these feel like the perfect days and nights for poetry.

The approach of a new year is an opportunity to reflect on time spent with friends, family, and partners who have played a role in your life—and how you can improve these relationships.
For parents, 2025 might have been a year that felt fraught with questions about what it means to raise a child today.

When the Chinese cargo freighter Istanbul Bridge set sail for Europe in late September, it took an unusual route. Instead of heading south for the 40-day voyage through the Suez Canal, it tacked north. The freighter arrived in the United Kingdom at the port of Felixstowe just 20 days later—successfully launching the first-ever Arctic commercial-container route from Asia to Europe.
For most of human history, the surface of the world’s northernmost ocean has been largely frozen.