for my father
My father’s hands flapped in a spiral of smoke—a weak light.
What did I dream then, a child drenched in image? Sleek light,
falling honeyed rivers, purpled fruit. What did I need
to imagine my body, calm in migration? I wanted to seek light.
Dawn sank into my hands like rain. I wanted to evaporate
& ask God to reveal my face. I wanted to speak light
& watch the earth settle into being. Each splash of wilderness
unraveled into clean, solid lines. From there I would leak light.

Kim Kyung-Hoon / Reuters
A man in a bear costume takes part in an emergency-response drill simulating a bear intrusion in Yaita, Tochigi Prefecture, Japan, June 17, 2026.Kim Kyung-Hoon / Reuters
Hunters look at a map and diagram while taking part in a bear-emergency-response drill in Yaita on June 17, 2026.Kim Kyung-Hoon / Reuters
A man wearing a bear costume takes part in a bear-emergency-response drill in Yaita.Kim Kyung-Hoon / Reuters
A participant deploys bear spray during the drill.

On a fall afternoon 15 years ago, I met an idealistic researcher outside a Stanford coffee shop to discuss our shared dream: using AI to detect cancer. He had wiry hair, a penchant for talking with his hands, and a reputation for brilliance. He worked at a research lab that developed early screens for cancer; I, at 20, had just learned that I carried a mutation that conferred a very high risk of breast, ovarian, and other cancers.

In early 2025, J. D. Vance paid a visit to Les Invalides, in Paris, where he was invited to clutch the sword of the Marquis de Lafayette, a hero of the American Revolution. In a speech the next day, Vance drew a parallel between that sword and artificial intelligence, calling them both “weapons that are dangerous in the wrong hands but are incredible tools for liberty and prosperity in the right hands.”
Whether the rollout of AI in the U.S.

For several months last year, a Ukrainian housewife, 35 and lonely in a marriage that had gone cold, traded WhatsApp messages with a Chechen commander, Achmad, stationed somewhere in Ukraine’s occupied south. They wrote about their days, their disappointments, what they hoped to do when the war ended. She asked about the front. He told her.
“Send me a picture,” she said. “I want to see your life.

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.
Last night on Washington Week With The Atlantic, panelists joined to discuss the signing of an agreement between the United States and Iran, and what Donald Trump’s deal with the regime may mean for other countries.

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The word adventure tends to conjure images of people climbing mountains, kayaking through rapids, or traveling to remote corners of the world. It sounds expensive, athletic, and slightly exhausting.

Before Serena Williams picked up her racket at London’s Andy Murray Arena last week, two questions hung over her return to tennis.
First: How would she do? She answered that, in her first competition in nearly four years, by winning. The 44-year-old and her doubles partner, the 19-year-old Victoria Mboko, ended up besting the third seed in their opening match of the Queen’s Club tournament. Their victory was sealed by a 116-mile-an-hour serve from Williams that her opponents couldn’t return.

Early one evening in August 1798, a sitting justice of the Supreme Court named James Wilson died in a sparsely furnished boarding room on the second floor of a North Carolina tavern. He had been holed up there for nearly a year to avoid creditors, to whom he owed unspeakable debts from land speculation. Delirious and destitute, he died from malarial fever, which burned through the Carolinas every summer.
There was no public announcement of Wilson’s death.

Sylvia Meagher was 44 years old in the fall of 1965 and lived alone, except for her cat, Allegra, named after the ballet dancer Allegra Kent. She commuted from her one-bedroom apartment in the West Village to the United Nations, where she’d been working for nearly two decades at the World Health Organization. Although Meagher was a bureaucrat, her sensibilities were bohemian. She was acquainted with many of the painters, musicians, and writers who lived near her.