With time, a breakup can become an edifying event in one’s life. The immediate aftermath of a split tends to be less clear, a hazy maelstrom that can involve medicinal tubs of ice cream, insomnia by way of intrusive thoughts, and an aversion to wearing anything other than sweats.

Supposedly, the menstrual cycle is a gift. It’s a product of good design. It’s a miraculous dance of hormones that can’t be contained. Such are the messages flooding the internet these days, courtesy of lifestyle influencers, crunchy moms, so-called hormone coaches, and all sorts of popular entertainers.
The menstrual cycle, according to these same voices, is also an emotional roller coaster, best ridden with the aid of bespoke products.

The good news, for me at least, is that the computer thinks I have a nice personality. According to an app called MorphCast, I was, in a recent meeting with my boss, generally “amused,” “determined,” and “interested,” though—sue me—occasionally “impatient.” MorphCast, you see, purports to glean insights into the depths and vagaries of human emotion using AI. It found that my affect was “positive” and “active,” as opposed to negative and/or passive. My attention was reasonably high.

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Fallout from the war in Iran may play a role in the midterm elections, particularly when it comes to the economy. Panelists on Washington Week With The Atlantic joined last night to discuss this, and more.

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When the writer David Epstein had to get stitches in his head and was told to move slowly for a few days, he expected to feel annoyed. But instead, after three days of following doctors’ orders, he found that he felt happy.

One afternoon in November, just north of the small Oregon coastal town of Yachats, a juvenile humpback whale tumbled ashore. A few hours earlier, local residents had spotted it thrashing in distress half a mile out at sea, entangled in crabbing gear, with a rope bound around its pectoral fin and woven through its baleen. One resident had swum out and cut the whale free, but it didn’t turn itself around and was now lodged on sand in shallow surf.

One day last November, my dog, Forrest, sat on the cold marble steps of the Smithsonian’s natural-history museum in Washington, D.C., ready to meet Celine Halioua, a woman who may one day add a tail-wagging year or so to his life, and also the lives of millions of other dogs. In 2019, Halioua founded a company called Loyal, and in February 2025, a pill that she developed for dogs was deemed likely to be effective by the FDA.