Updated with new questions at 5:10 p.m. ET on October 22, 2025.
In the 1950s, the TV quiz show Twenty-One stumbled upon a viewership-boosting strategy that for a brief period of time would be all the rage: cheating. The program fixed winners and losers, coached contestants, and generally dabbled in malfeasance. Other shows followed suit, scandal ensued, and Congress—Congress!—got involved.
According to Sam Altman, your web browser is outdated. “AI represents a rare, once-a-decade opportunity to rethink what a browser can be,” OpenAI’s CEO said yesterday when announcing the company’s latest product: ChatGPT Atlas.
In this new AI-powered browser, ChatGPT becomes the central mechanism for surfing the internet. From any webpage in Atlas, you can click an “Ask ChatGPT” button to open a side conversation with the chatbot.
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On this episode of The David Frum Show, The Atlantic’s David Frum opens with an urgent warning about TikTok’s looming deal with Trump-aligned insiders—a move David calls the “biggest giveaway since the days of the railway grants.” He argues that the American media landscape has been quietly transformed, and political power has shifted from legacy outlets to algorithmic platforms loyal to the president.
In recent weeks, the United States has conducted several deadly airstrikes on alleged drug boats in the Caribbean Sea, which the Trump administration has claimed, without providing evidence, were being used to traffic drugs. A group of United Nations experts said U.S. strikes targeting boats in the Caribbean off the coast of Venezuela amount to “extrajudicial executions.
Tensions are escalating between Colombia and the United States as President Trump conducts deadly airstrikes on supposed “drug boats” in the Caribbean. Colombian President Gustavo Petro accused the U.S. of committing murder for killing a Colombian fisherman in one attack in mid-September and just recalled the country’s ambassador, Daniel García-Peña.
Virginia Roberts Giuffre’s posthumous memoir has just been released, detailing how she was groomed by Jeffrey Epstein and his co-conspirator Ghislaine Maxwell, whom she met at Donald Trump’s Mar-A-Lago resort. In Nobody’s Girl: A Memoir of Surviving Abuse and Fighting for Justice, she writes that she was forced to have sex with Prince Andrew three times, beginning when she was 17, and was beaten and raped by a “well-known prime minister.
Two queer religion geeks move to San Francisco. And Easter communion gets real in the age of AIDS.
Are the “cockroaches” Jamie Dimon spoke of really a private credit problem or are they a bit closer to home?
It may only be the beginning of a wider crackdown for the Wolverine State’s marijuana industry.
Next week’s rain might be the start of a sinkhole near you.
Bot-made listings are forcing homebuyers and professionals to ask themselves if this is a straight-up deceptive practice.
“Deserves to be called out,” says the president of the United States about a fawning magazine cover.
Despite the Covid experience, nations aren’t proving more willing to help each other or to dig deep to help poor countries.
Jeffrey Tucker, who elevated Covid contrarians now working for the health secretary, is building support for Kennedy’s Make America Healthy Again agenda.
The moves, to lower the cost of a drug prescribed to women going through IVF and boost employer coverage, follow Trump’s campaign promise to make fertility care more accessible.
States are worried Congress missed its opportunity to extend enhanced ACA subsidies and lower premiums before consumers start picking plans in a few weeks.
Troy Perry starts the gay/lesbian Metropolitan Community Church. A young lesbian is a regular at the San Francisco congregation when her friend gets sick.
Rescued archival audio takes listeners into the heart of an LGBTQ+ church during the height of the AIDS epidemic in 1980s and ’90s San Francisco.
The Waves also discusses the Riverside Church controversy and the case of Sarah Milov.
What we say matters, especially depending on whom we say it to.
Trump’s strength with Republicans on the economy could prove to be a boon for the GOP.
A survey from the liberal-leaning group Somos Votantes shows Latino voters are souring on the president.
Privately, aides concede voters remain uneasy about prices but argue their policies are beginning to turn things around.
Immigrant rights and labor icon Dolores Huerta, now 95 years old, is continuing her lifelong activism as immigration raids intensify across the country. She addressed the No Kings rally in Watsonville, California, this weekend to speak out against the Trump administration’s mass deportation agenda. “This is ethnic cleansing,” Huerta tells Democracy Now! “We have never seen such horrific, horrific attacks on our people.
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Everything is in “the cloud” now, except the cloud is a real place, and it’s in Northern Virginia.
For most of its short life, my Tesla Model 3 has aged beautifully. Since I bought the car, in 2019, it has received a number of new features simply by updating its software. My navigation system no longer just directs me to EV chargers along my route—it also shows me, in real time, how many plugs are free. With the push of a button, I can activate “Car Wash Mode,” and the Tesla will put itself in neutral and disable the windshield wipers.
Updated with new questions at 3:45 p.m. ET on October 21, 2025.
In the 1950s, the TV quiz show Twenty-One stumbled upon a viewership-boosting strategy that for a brief period of time would be all the rage: cheating. The program fixed winners and losers, coached contestants, and generally dabbled in malfeasance. Other shows followed suit, scandal ensued, and Congress—Congress!—got involved.
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On a road in Aurora, Colorado, lined with used-car dealers and pawnshops sits a tan, low-rise building called Mango House. Inside, among international-food stalls and ethnic-clothing shops, is a family-medicine clinic that serves a largely refugee and immigrant community.
Editor’s Note: Is anything ailing, torturing, or nagging at you? Are you beset by existential worries? Every Tuesday, James Parker tackles readers’ questions. Tell him about your lifelong or in-the-moment problems at dearjames@theatlantic.com.
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Dear James,
I’m a stepdad who wants nothing more than to be a good father to my stepson.
