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Two US cities could soon ban one of the world’s most controversial foods
In November, voters in Washington, DC, and Denver will cast their ballots to decide whether their cities’ restaurants and grocery stores can continue to sell one of the world’s more controversial foods: foie gras.
How housing victories in San Diego, Austin, and Atlanta could spread nationwide
As rents and homelessness climbed in San Diego over the last decade, leaders watched in frustration as affordable housing projects took months to get approved. The longer a project dragged on, the more expensive it became.
To save democracy, you might want to go to church
To the average observer concerned with the future of American democracy, it might be easy to conclude that religion has been part of the problem — particularly over the last few years. Right-wing religious leaders, including the leading Southern Baptist televangelist Robert Jeffress, have endorsed “Christian nationalism”; other evangelical pastors and conservative Catholic intellectuals have been openly pondering if America should become more of a theocracy; Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, who once called for an “
Why the right turned on Indian Americans
In early October, Vivek Ramaswamy, the Republican candidate for governor of Ohio, went for a classic “politician on the stump” move: He picked up a kid. Or at least he tried to. Ramaswamy fumbled the boy a bit, producing a clip that quickly went viral on social media.
The man who will likely be the next House speaker, explained
Barring a catastrophic midterm polling miss, Democrats are on track to win a majority in the House of Representatives next month. Come the new Congress in January, that will mean a new House speaker — and if all goes to plan, that will be current House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries.
The liver transplant system tried to fix its sex bias. Did it work?
In theory, getting a donor liver in the United States when you need one should be an extremely equitable process: The sickest patients with the greatest chance to benefit from a donated organ should jump to the front of the line regardless of their gender, race, or other factors.
Your kid wants to go vegan. Should you let them?
Hi readers! Shayla Love here, science journalist and longtime fan of Your Mileage May Vary. I’m honored to be subbing for Sigal Samuel while she’s out on parental leave. I’m diving into your questions as a way to help understand human nature and our choices through multiple lenses: philosophical, psychological, and beyond. Please send in any emotional, body/brain, sociological, perceptual, or other kind of life quandaries you might have.
The company behind Skittles might be to blame for your big vet bills
Whenever I have dinner with friends, the conversation always ends up on one of three topics: how hard dating is, the hunt for affordable housing, or an update on everyone’s pets. The last on that list includes cute photos and veterinarian updates. I love hearing about my friends’ cats and dogs. But I also have to admit that I just don’t get it. I don’t have a pet. I never have. (We won’t discuss the ill
The “grim” state of free speech in the US
On his first day back in office in January 2025, President Donald Trump signed an executive order “restoring freedom of speech and ending federal censorship.” More than a year and a half later, his administration is instead busy using government power to go after speech it dislikes.
Why Francesca Hong is still on the campaign trail
The Wisconsin gubernatorial race was one of the most closely watched Democratic primaries in the country this year, pitting a democratic socialist, state Rep. Francesca Hong, against Milwaukee Democrat David Crowley, who received the endorsement of the state’s sitting Democratic governor, Tony Evers.
The Trump administration plans a public killing
This story appeared in The Logoff, a daily newsletter that helps you stay informed about the Trump administration without letting political news take over your life. Subscribe here. Welcome to The Logoff: The Trump administration is planning a public killing. What’s happening? On Thursday, the Pentagon announced that it would execute Nidal Hasan, a former Army major sentenced to death for a 2009 mass shooting on a military base, publicly and on livestream. The execution, if it happens, would be unprecedented: The last widely reported publ
America’s good hurricane luck is about to run out
This story appeared in Today, Explained, a daily newsletter that helps you understand the most compelling news and stories of the day. Subscribe here.
Who are the violent Israeli settlers in the West Bank?
In the weeks and months following Hamas’s brutal October 7, 2023, attack on Israel, and Israel’s devastating campaign in Gaza that followed, the world’s attention turned away from the West Bank.
Antarctica’s penguins are sending us a distress signal
This story was originally published by The Guardian and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration.
No one wants to be “Data Center Dave”
This story appeared in Today, Explained, a daily newsletter that helps you understand the most compelling news and stories of the day. Subscribe here.
Is this the cure for Alzheimer’s?
The videos are astonishing. In one scene, a senior Chinese woman appears lost in the wilderness of dementia, unable to answer basic questions; in the next, she seems to be lucidly chatting and shucking beans for dinner. By all appearances, years of cognitive decline had been rapidly reversed after the patient underwent an experimental new surgery.
What if making your neighborhood safer means breaking the rules?
Jonathan Hale was ready to lay down his paint rollers. Hale, a law student turned viral road safety advocate, had run into legal trouble for painting his own DIY crosswalks across some of Los Angeles’s most dangerous intersections. In a meeting with LA Mayor Karen Bass earlier this year, he told her that if the city could commit to making its own streets safer for pedestrians, then he would stop his own vigilante activism.
The rise of gas station opioids
They have fun names like Feel Free, Smurphs, and Hazy Tabz. They come in colorful packages and in gummy form. They’re widely available at gas stations, corner stores, and smoke shops across the country.
Black Democrats are facing a crossroads
Welcome to The Midterms, Actually. Every week I’ll be writing about two things: one big idea or trend I see forming across the 2026 primaries, and one thing I’m hearing from a voice on the ground. You can sign up here to get it in your inbox every week. Let’s get into it.
How October 7 changed everything
This story appeared in Today, Explained, a daily newsletter that helps you understand the most compelling news and stories of the day. Subscribe here. Jewish communities in Israel and around the world are currently marking the third anniversary of the October 7 attacks that killed 1,200 people and triggered the war in Gaza. Memorials for the victims of the attacks have been held at homes,
Why humans are so good at feeling bad
What can an economist teach us about misery? I had that question in mind while reading the new book The Opposite of Happiness: How Bad Feelings Make and Break Us, by eminent researcher George Loewenstein. The field is not exactly known for its facility with human emotions, but Loewenstein is a co-founder of behavioral economics, the subdiscipline that studies the many ways that people depart from the ideal of the perfectly rational actor.
Could the future of AI be determined by Florida Republicans?
If President Donald Trump had his way, the Republican Party would be top-to-bottom the party of AI — or, in his preferred branding, “super intelligence.”
The cruelty of a beloved American pastime
This story is part of a series supported by Animal Charity Evaluators, which received a grant from EarthShare.
Will Trump’s diesel order do anything?
This story appeared in The Logoff, a daily newsletter that helps you stay informed about the Trump administration without letting political news take over your life. Subscribe here. Welcome to The Logoff: Donald Trump is trying to fix the diesel crisis he caused. What’s happening? On Monday evening, Trump signed an executive order intended to lower diesel prices by temporarily expanding access to red-dye diesel. Wha
Democrats are poised to take the House. Then what?
With 28 days until the midterms, polling suggests that Democrats have an excellent chance of taking back the House in November. Flipping the Senate, once considered a long shot, is starting to look realistic. Come November, the party may have majorities in both chambers that will give it far more
Movies may soon get more boring
This story appeared in Today, Explained, a daily newsletter that helps you understand the most compelling news and stories of the day. Subscribe here. The Trumpy tech billionaire Larry Ellison has wrapped his tentacles around the US branch of TikTok, an entire Hawaiian island — and now, officially, a very large share of the world’s news and entertainment production. On Tuesday, the media behemoth Paramount — which is headed by Ellison’s
Redwoods are natural magic kingdoms. Extreme heat is breaking their spell
A grove of coast redwood trees is a forest of forests. Individual trees can live for thousands of years, and as they grow, their canopies develop mats of soils and ferns, creating something like a second forest floor hundreds of feet above the ground.
Trump’s plan to buy votes, briefly explained
This story appeared in The Logoff, a daily newsletter that helps you stay informed about the Trump administration without letting political news take over your life. Subscribe here. Welcome to The Logoff: Donald Trump is trying to bribe his way out of a midterm disaster. What’s happening? Over the weekend, Trump announced a plan to send $90 payments to more than 20 million Americans 65 years and older, drawing from a pool of money called the Medicare Improvement
What you should know about the Russian “plague lab”
This story appeared in Today, Explained, a daily newsletter that helps you understand the most compelling news and stories of the day. Subscribe here. The death of a 28-year-old lab tech halfway around the world is not typically the sort of thing the White House monitors. But when that tech dies of severe pneumonia…while working at a Siberian plague research lab…foreign governments (and pretty much everyone in my timeline) tend to pay more attention. The World Health Organization says that there’s
The Supreme Court is looking for a way to kill climate lawsuits
Inside Chief Justice John Roberts are two wolves. The first wolf is a staunch conservative who spent much of his career litigating on behalf of corporate interests. This wolf looks at a series of climate change lawsuits that could potentially cost the oil industry billions of dollars or more, and recoils in horror. The second wolf is a judge tasked with following the law wherever it leads.
What color is a tennis ball?
A while back, I was at physical therapy, and the topic of tennis came up. Someone said something about yellow tennis balls, and I was like… “What? They’re green.” And then someone else chimed in, “No, they’re yellow!” And then someone across the room hollered, “No, they’re obviously green.”
The messy bargain that could bring down your power bill
There’s no place like Kansas, a state whose howling winds are so fierce that in the 1800s, the roaring soundscape drove local farmers into madness. It is so windy in Kansas that every so often, trains get swept off their tracks or trampolines get hurled into the air and flung into neighbors’ trees.
When does trying to have a healthier baby become eugenics-y?
Editor’s note, October 4, 8 am ET: We’re bringing you some of our best-loved Your Mileage May Vary columns while Sigal Samuel is on parental leave. The one below was originally published last year.
Can thrift shops save us from Shein?
Think about what you’re wearing right now. Did you pick it out? Or was it chosen for you by an algorithm you haven’t even considered?
How did the Cornell rape case go so wrong?
In October 2024, students at Cornell University received a campus crime alert about a reported sexual assault. At the time, it was just a campus story. Nearly two years later, on September 16, the victim, known only as “Jane Doe,” filed a civil lawsuit that brought national attention to her story. People across the country are asking what happened and why criminal charges never followed.
Anthropic vs. the pope
This story appeared in Today, Explained, a daily newsletter that helps you understand the most compelling news and stories of the day. Subscribe here.
The Cornell case, explained
“In what world,” New York Gov. Kathy Hochul asked on Friday, “would the police learn from a victim that she’d been literally gang raped while she was intoxicated by five men in a fraternity house and not elevate those allegations to the district attorney?”
More kids are using AI for companionship — and it’s making them lonely
There’s a lot to be anxious about as AI agents and bots get more integrated into every aspect of our lives. Meta, which recently agreed to pay over $17 billion to settle a lawsuit related to harming kids, now wants you to hand over all your online accounts to an inexplicably cute “agent” named Muse that might give a stranger your home address. OpenAI just introduced little blobs called Dots that can supposedly automate routine tasks, like planning dinner and ordering it from your favorite neighborhood spot.
A guide for raising boys to be resilient men
In 1995, gender studies researcher Judy Chu found herself chauffeuring around her 13-year-old brother and his friend. The boys’ curiosity got the better of them, and they asked what she was learning: adolescent girls’ development, she told them.
Trump’s “Most EXCLUSIVE DINNER IN THE WORLD”
This story appeared in The Logoff, a daily newsletter that helps you stay informed about the Trump administration without letting political news take over your life. Subscribe here. Welcome to The Logoff: Donald Trump is once again selling access to the highest bidder(s). What’s happening? On Thursday, the Washington Sun’s Jeff Stein reported that Trump will reprise his 2025 “crypto dinner” later this year, hosting some of the top investors in the
How both parties have changed since 2024
This story appeared in Today, Explained, a daily newsletter that helps you understand the most compelling news and stories of the day. Subscribe here.
The two athletes in every horse race
Horse racing can be an unusually dangerous profession for both the jockey and the horse: Riding a half-ton animal at nearly 40 miles per hour means your fate depends on the health and performance of both athletes. And the horse can be at risk of catastrophic injury if the jockey doesn’t have the required physical fitness to maintain proper technique and lightning-quick reflexes.
Disney World solved a problem that could save America billions every year
Buried beneath every American city is a mysterious jumble of cables, pipes, and gas lines, entangled like a pair of wired headphones the moment you pull them out of your pocket. Every time a contractor sticks a shovel in the asphalt, they embark on a high-risk excavate-by-dots obstacle course, dodging color-coded clusters of spaghetti-like power lines, gas mains, sewers, and fiber-optic cables. A line of blue spray paint means water. Red means power. Yellow is gas. Orange is telecom. About
The Democrats who bet wrong on ICE
Welcome to The Midterms, Actually. Every week I’ll be writing about two things: one big idea or trend I see forming across the 2026 primaries, and one thing I’m hearing from a voice on the ground. You can sign up here to get it in your inbox every week. Let’s get into it.
What Democrats are still getting wrong about voters
With the 2026 midterm elections fast approaching, polling increasingly suggests that the GOP is in for a bad time. As the Iran war drives up inflation and fuel prices, Republicans are on the back foot not just in swing states like Michigan, but in redder parts of the map: Iowa, Texas, and maybe even Kansas, among others. (Not to mention Georgia and North Carolina.)
America leaves Iraq, again
This story appeared in Today, Explained, a daily newsletter that helps you understand the most compelling news and stories of the day. Subscribe here.
Why diesel prices are an economic time bomb
Everyone knows how much gasoline prices matter. The recent spike in gas prices triggered by the war with Iran has fueled deep pessimism about the economy and weighed heavily on President Donald Trump’s approval ratings. But diesel fuel — the lifeblood of shipping, agriculture, and heavy industry — usually flies under the radar. Its price has surged too, and while truckers and farmers are feeling the initial blow, the rest of the country won’t be far behind. “Most products in America are shipped along the road via trucks,”
How can we create more Indianapolises and fewer San Franciscos?
The Soviet Union famously churned out tens of thousands of new apartment buildings in the 1960s, ’70s, and ’80s — some assembled in as little as 12 days — together comprising tens of millions of individual apartments. Such speed is not unique to communist command economies, or even to grim concrete mega-blocks. In Sweden and Japan today, modern, high-quality new homes can be factory-built and assembled in a matter of weeks using the same basic method — prefabrication — as the Soviets.
A crisis that goes far beyond Cornell
This story appeared in Today, Explained, a daily newsletter that helps you understand the most compelling news and stories of the day. Subscribe here.
What China wants from AI
The national conversation about AI in the US is full of fear: fear about AI’s potential to end humanity, fear of data centers moving in, fear that government officials will do absolutely nothing even as the industry pleads for regulation, you name it.
The next generation of Republican justices will be even more partisan
The Supreme Court ruled on Friday that Missouri may not use a newly drawn Republican gerrymander during the 2026 congressional election. This decision should surprise no one because, about two weeks ago, the Supreme Court ruled that Missouri may not use a newly drawn Republican gerrymander during the 2026 congressional election.
Live auctions are turning shopping into gambling
If you haven’t heard of “live shopping,” you might soon. Livestream shopping is already a staple of e-commerce in China, where consumers log onto apps like Douyin and Taobao to buy products from a livestreamer — think QVC. Now, a new app is trying to bring it to the United States.
Trump’s taxpayer-funded propaganda blitz
This story appeared in The Logoff, a daily newsletter that helps you stay informed about the Trump administration without letting political news take over your life. Subscribe here. Welcome to The Logoff: Donald Trump is spending taxpayer money on propaganda ads. What’s happening? Over the weekend, the Trump administration aired a 30-second spot of Trump promising to “demolish the deep state, expel the warmongers from our government,
Trump’s China reversal
This story appeared in Today, Explained, a daily newsletter that helps you understand the most compelling news and stories of the day. Subscribe here.
Welcome to the October issue of The Highlight
Vegan and vegetarian dining options might be more common than ever, but around the country, vegan restaurants are closing at a quicker rate than their non-vegan peers. In this month’s Highlight cover story, Marina Bolotnikova investigates what’s happening to those restaurants as her own favorite vegan establishment closes its doors. And she tries to answer the bigger questions about the closures: What’s lost for the vegan community as restaurants disappear, and what does it tell us about the future of the plant-based movement?
Flock cameras are creepy. They might still be worth it
To no small extent, Americans have grown accustomed to being watched. For more than a decade, CCTV cameras have recorded a hefty portion of many people’s public movements, while ubiquitous smartphones have made us all perpetually vulnerable to unsolicited documentation (if not, social media notoriety). Until recently, however, technical limitations constrained the reach of government surveillance (at least, in the physical realm). Police may have been swimming in CCTV footage.
Wait, what are the rules around cellphone etiquette now?
Recently, while taking the metro to work, I encountered something that shocked me. The train was pulling up, just as the man in front of me tapped to pay to go through the gate, and a woman pushed past me to cut me in line. I still made the train (after I briefly considered acting in a way that would have made us both late for work), but as I passed each stop I got angrier and angrier. Why did she think her commute was more important than someone else’s?
This weather threat costs us billions. And it’s about to get worse
This story was originally published by High Country News and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk Collaboration.
Why Democrats stopped talking about climate
William Lawrence is a Democrat running to represent Michigan’s Lansing-area Seventh Congressional District with a campaign that largely focuses on data centers and affordability. It’s not an unusual story in 2026 — but not long ago, Lawrence was cutting his teeth in progressive politics as a co-founder of the Sunrise Movement, primarily focused on organizing around the climate crisis.
Inside a quest to learn about the ocean’s mysterious “deep reefs”
This story was originally published in The Highlight. To get access to member-exclusive stories like this every month, become a Vox Member today.
Why Democratic Senate hopes are rising
This story appeared in Today, Explained, a daily newsletter that helps you understand the most compelling news and stories of the day. Subscribe here.
The online “burnerverse” trying to ruin young women’s lives
Maddie Kowalski is a student at the University of Florida. Last November, someone found nonconsensual intimate images and videos of her, stitched them together, and uploaded them to X, where they were viewed millions of times.
Can you spend your way out of loneliness?
Over the years, Julianne Holt-Lunstad has fielded many requests from startups looking for her help. These entrepreneurs came to the Brigham Young University professor with the well-meaning goal of “solving” loneliness; they believed their app or company could help consumers build genuine connections, and wanted Holt-Lunstad’s opinion on this feature or that business tactic.
Alzheimer’s treatment is advancing rapidly — and there’s one thing all of us can do to help
This story was originally published in The Highlight. To get access to member-exclusive stories like this every month, become a Vox Member today. Every day it seems scientists are making breakthroughs in Alzheimer’s disease. New treatments that actually slow the disease’s progression — lecanemab and donanemab —
Why red states are rejecting Trump’s AI vision for schools
Six months ago, first lady Melania Trump walked into a White House education summit next to a faceless robot powered by artificial intelligence, which she said could one day give children personalized instruction. “Imagine a humanoid educator named ‘Plato,’” she said. “Access to the classical studies is now instantaneous…humanity’s entire corpus of information is available in the comfort of your home.”
There’s a global plan to save humans from AI. Can it actually work?
When the AI apocalypse becomes regular dinner-table conversation, you know we’ve reached the freakout stage. Rogue AI agents are hacking into competitors. Former Big Tech employees are posting Skynet-style warnings on social media. CEOs are crying for help in ways that have made this once-wonky tech issue a frontline political fight. I still think many of the concerns outlined by the AI leaders themselves are massively self-serving — especially
Trump’s short-lived press ban
This story appeared in The Logoff, a daily newsletter that helps you stay informed about the Trump administration without letting political news take over your life. Subscribe here. Welcome to The Logoff: The media outlets President Donald Trump banned from the White House last week are back. What happened? Early on Thursday morning, a federal district court ruled that the White House had to immediately restore press credentials for CNN, Politico, and MS NOW and allow
Why Americans are warming to China
This story appeared in Today, Explained, a daily newsletter that helps you understand the most compelling news and stories of the day. Subscribe here.
A sinkhole swallowed Nicolas Cage’s driveway. Yours might be next
There is a kind of terror-tinged embarrassment that comes from dozing off on your beach towel on the sand, only to find a rising tide intrude upon your mid-nap bliss, lapping at your toes and sweeping away your sunglasses.
Is it truly important to have a sense of self?
Hi readers! Shayla Love here, science journalist and longtime fan of Your Mileage May Vary. I’m honored to be subbing for Sigal Samuel while she’s out on parental leave. I’m diving into your questions as a way to help understand human nature and our choices through multiple lenses: philosophical, psychological, and beyond. Please send in any emotional, body/brain, sociological, perceptual, or other kind of life quandaries you might have.
How Latinos became America’s biggest swing vote
Welcome to The Midterms, Actually. Every week I’ll be writing about two things: one big idea or trend I see forming across the 2026 primaries, and one thing I’m hearing from a voice on the ground. Let’s get into it. You can sign up here to get it in your inbox every week. Let’s get into it.
Trump is bracing to lose his latest fight with the press
This story appeared in Today, Explained, a daily newsletter that helps you understand the most compelling news and stories of the day. Subscribe here.
Can AI actually save lives?
If there’s one thing that Americans can unite behind, it’s anxieties over artificial intelligence. According to a recent NBC News/Decision Desk poll, 70 percent of adults say they are personally more worried than excited about the technology; it’s basically underwater in every area of society with one notable exception: its use in scientific research and medicine. According to Dr. Dhruv Khullar, a physician at Weill Cornell Medicine and writer at the New Yorker, that optimism is well-founded.
It’s not your imagination — dating has gotten way more combative lately
Lisa Marie Wilson matched with a man on a dating app who claimed to be 5-foot-10 and to live on the beach. Lisa Marie Wilson matched with a man on a dating app who claimed to be 5-foot-10 and to live on the beach. Only one of those facts turned out to be true. When she showed up to the date, Wilson observed that she and her date were the same height — and she isn’t 5-foot-10. She wasn’t planning to mention it, but her date did: “He told me I wasn’t really 5 ‘9”,” Wilson, a 51-year-old author, told Vox.
Trump gets a Greenland deal
This story appeared in The Logoff, a daily newsletter that helps you stay informed about the Trump administration without letting political news take over your life. Subscribe here. Welcom
The psychology behind Trump’s obsession with DC renovations
Since President Donald Trump returned to office, he has moved aggressively to leave his mark. Many of his most visible legacy projects are not pieces of legislation, though. They’re part of a campaign to reshape Washington, DC, itself. Last year, Trump knocked down the East Wing of the White House to make way for his massive new ballroom. He tried renovating the Reflecting Pool, which did not turn out well. He regilded four large statues near the National Mall, paved the White House Rose Garden, and drenched the Oval Office in gold
The uncomfortable truth about aquariums
This story appeared in Today, Explained, a daily newsletter that helps you understand the most compelling news and stories of the day. Subscribe here.
Soldiers can refuse to commit war crimes. Can AI?
Who gets to tell the military “no”? That question has become even more important after the Pentagon pushed AI companies to loosen limits on how their technology may be used in war — including how much human control must remain over autonomous weapons. When Anthropic said no, it lost a major government deal. OpenAI stepped in, embracing the Pentagon’s more flexible standard instead. Now, thanks to new reporting from The Intercept, we’re getting a better look at what those negotiations actually entailed.
Trump’s new arch plan: snipers and drones
This story appeared in The Logoff, a daily newsletter that helps you stay informed about the Trump administration without letting political news take over your life. Subscribe here. Welcome to The Logoff: President Donald Trump’s proposed triumphal arch is going in a new direction: drone port and sniper platform. What’s happening? Trump has been pushing to build a
The United Nations looks broken. Is it?
This story appeared in Today, Explained, a daily newsletter that helps you understand the most compelling news and stories of the day. Subscribe here. It’s time for yet another United Nations General Assembly meeting in Manhattan — just one year after President Donald Trump appeared at it and asked, bluntly: “What is the purpose of the United Nations?” Every year around this time, roughly 130 leaders from around the world convene at the UN to deliver speeches, hold diplomatic meetings, and debate issues like AI, climate
Obsessing about being a good person can backfire. There’s a better way
Editor’s note, September 20, 8 am ET: We’re bringing you some of our best-loved Your Mileage May Vary columns while Sigal Samuel is on parental leave. The one below was originally published last September.
Why we should all be partying more
We are in the midst of a loneliness epidemic: More than half of Americans say they feel isolated, and we’re getting together less and less. In 2023, only about 4 percent of adults said they went to a party on a weekend or holiday.
Why Trump’s Latino voters are fleeing him
In 2024, Donald Trump’s victory was powered in large part by massive gains with Latino voters. He won 48 percent of those voters that year, up from 36 percent in 2020 and 28 percent in 2016. But now, that support is plummeting; Trump’s approval rating among Latinos who voted for him recently fell from 93 percent to 66 percent, where it was at the beginning of his second term. Why? It has a lot to do, as with everything these days, with the economy.
The AI threat keeping scientists up at night
AI will be the death of me. And you. And everyone we know. At least, this is what a growing number of technologists and policymakers fear. Last week, a lead researcher at Anthropic declared that there was a greater than 10 percent chance of AI “killing all humans” within the next decade. This nerve-racking forecast, combined with recent AI-initiated cyberattacks, have fueled calls for slowing the progress of artificial intelligence — a proposal that Anthropic and OpenAI subsequently embraced.
Trump’s new press ban
This story appeared in The Logoff, a daily newsletter that helps you stay informed about the Trump administration without letting political news take over your life. Subscribe here. Welcome to The Logoff: Donald Trump is escalating his fight with the media. What happened? Trump announced he was banning three media organizations — CNN, MS NOW, and Politico — from the White House, “effective immediately.” In a Truth Social post Friday afternoon, Trump wrote
Your questions about the AI apocalypse, answered
This story appeared in Today, Explained, a daily newsletter that helps you understand the most compelling news and stories of the day. Subscribe here. Hi readers, happy Friday! We’re talking AI again today. Earlier this week, my colleague Caitlin Dewey asked for your questions about artificial intelligence and, well, whether it’s going to kill us all. We asked Jasmine Sun, who writes about the culture and politics of AI on her Sub
An Israeli documentary about Gaza is sweeping the world – and Israelis are furious
At the Venice Film Festival earlier this month, the documentary NAZA received a 25-minute standing ovation. In Israel, it’s all anyone’s talking about, even though few have actually seen it.
How bad healthcare can derail a woman’s entire life
When we think about the stakes in healthcare, we tend to think of them in terms of life and death, being sick or being healthy. The conversation is about your physical well-being and maybe your mental health — and it pretty much stops there.
How to be an AI minimalist
Even before the latest batch of alarming AI news, a lot of Americans were souring on AI. That may be for big, existential reasons — concerns about widening inequality, mass job loss, and the still-unclear environmental impact of data centers — or for very specific, personal, everyday ones, like being forced to use a worse version of Google search.
The wildfire danger we’re only just beginning to understand
Wildfires are popularly considered wild — restricted to the remote wilderness or the edge of forests, and to most, a problem for the dry and hot states of the Western US. But over the past few years, and now across the country, these fires are getting less wild and far more urban.
The adviser urging Trump to reject AI safety fears
As the heads of leading artificial intelligence companies came together last weekend to warn that runaway AI development could lead to catastrophic outcomes, momentum briefly seemed to be building for regulatory action from Washington.
Trump puts himself on the ballot
This story appeared in The Logoff, a daily newsletter that helps you stay informed about the Trump administration without letting political news take over your life. Subscribe here. Welcome to The Logoff: With fewer than 50 days until the midterm elections, President Donald Trump is hitting the campaign trail. What’s happening? Trump was in North Carolina last night for his first major post-primary season rally of the 2026
No, insulin still doesn’t cost $35
A decade ago, insulin became the poster child for America’s out-of-control drug prices. The 2017 death of Alec Smith, who was rationing his insulin before he died, and repeated price hikes for a 100-year-old medication (the patent for which was originally sold for $1 to a university to prevent it from being exploited commercially) sparked widespread outrage that a lifesaving medication could be unaffordable to the people who depend on it to survive.
The overlooked factor making everything more expensive
This story appeared in Today, Explained, a daily newsletter that helps you understand the most compelling news and stories of the day. Subscribe here.
We’re worrying about the wrong AI apocalypse
Nearly two decades ago, a group of researchers at the Idaho National Laboratory ran a secret experiment, known as the Aurora Generator Test, on a massive emerald green diesel generator. Using 30 lines of code, they hacked into the generator’s virtual backroom, corrupting safeguards and flipping switches that left it out of sync with the rest of the power grid.
These Democrats won over working-class voters. Here’s their advice for candidates
Throughout the Trump era, Democrats have wrung their hands about how they can win over working-class voters.
Trump’s failed Fed takeover
This story appeared in The Logoff, a daily newsletter that helps you stay informed about the Trump administration without letting political news take over your life. Subscribe here.
Should we be skeptical about the AI panic?
Is AI going to kill us all? In Silicon Valley, it’s not such a novel question. But after Anthropic employee Jacob Coxon quit his job last week and posted on X that AI “could kill us all by the end of the decade,” a lot more people are asking. “This is not a marketing stunt,” Coxon wrote. “If anything, many executives and senior researchers will couch their phrasing in the press to sound sensible – but I hear the same people express fear privately. No other human activity poses this level of danger.”
How Israel-Palestine broke up Sheeran-Macklemore
This story appeared in Today, Explained, a daily newsletter that helps you understand the most compelling news and stories of the day. Subscribe here.
How your pet can help you tap into a sense of spirituality
Why do I cry when I see a donkey? It’s completely involuntary. As if my heart’s defenses are swept aside by a giant wave of compassion and I’m left unnerved by the intensity of love that I feel: raw and a little foreign. I wonder about this because I’m not a big animal guy. There’s no desire in me to own a pet; I’m allergic to cats and I will actively do what I can to avoid meeting your dog. (Sorry! It’s the nonconsensual licking! The crotch jumping!
Can AI save global health? Bill Gates is betting $1 billion that it can
On stage at Davos in the Swiss Alps earlier this year, Bill Gates, before an audience of the global do-gooding elite, announced a $50 million partnership between his foundation and an unlikely new ally, OpenAI, aimed at improving healthcare in Rwanda.
The successful campaign to make a terrifying Supreme Court immigration case disappear
If you felt a gust of wind late on Friday, it came from hundreds of immigration lawyers who simultaneously exhaled after the Supreme Court announced it would not hear a case known as Genalo v. Black. That case asked whether certain immigrants could be held in immigration detention facilities indefinitely without ever receiving a bond hearing or other opportunity to seek temporary release. And if the Court had decided this case, its recent immigration decisions suggest that most of the justices may have blessed indefinite detention.
Trump’s Kennedy Center sabotage is complete
This story appeared in The Logoff, a daily newsletter that helps you stay informed about the Trump administration without letting political news take over your life. Subscribe here. Welcome to The Logoff: President Donald Trump can’t put his name on the Kennedy Center — so he’s closing it, effective immediately. What’s happening? On Tuesday, the board of the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts voted to c
6 other ways Trump is meddling in the midterms
This story appeared in Today, Explained, a daily newsletter that helps you understand the most compelling news and stories of the day. Subscribe here. The recent history of mail voting in the United States has more twists and turns than an Emmy-winning drama. But for the cause of democracy, at least, yesterday’s ending is a happy one. On Monday, the Supreme Court definitively blocked Pre
The Republican Party is all-in on Islamophobia
Anti-Muslim messaging has been on the rise among Republican elected officials for a while, and last week it took center stage at the GOP’s midterm convention in Dallas, Texas, where speakers warned that leftists and “Islamists” were joining forces.
The people who fear AI are wasting time fighting each other
Everyone is suddenly freaking out about AI. While AI researchers have been warning about their creations’ capabilities for many years, recent events have made those alarms newly tangible.
The Supreme Court has finally had it with Trump’s plan to steal the midterms
On Monday evening, the Supreme Court handed down its long-awaited decision in United States Postal Service v. California — the case involving President Donald Trump’s attempt to sabotage voting by mail in the United States. If Trump’s attack on mailed ballots had succeeded, it would have given a significant advantage to Republicans in the upcoming midterms because Democrats were much more likely to vote by mail than Republicans in the last several US election cycles. The decision is a rout.
California’s audacious plan to tax its billionaires
If there is one thing Democratic politicians can agree on right now it’s this: Rich people should pay more in taxes. New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani has made it a centerpiece of his agenda. Texas Senate candidate James Talarico is bringing it up on the stump. And Georgia Sen. Jon Ossoff’s riff on the “Epstein class” of rich guys staffing the Trump administration is one of his signature applause lines. But only in California is a billionaire tax actually o
Everyone but Trump is worried about AI
This story appeared in The Logoff, a daily newsletter that helps you stay informed about the Trump administration without letting political news take over your life. Subscribe here. Welcome to The Logoff: Everyone but President Donald Trump is freaking out about artificial intelligence. What’s happening? As policymakers and tech CEOs discuss how to put guardrails on AI development, Trump is on a posting spree. “The only contr
What an AI “slowdown” could look like
This story appeared in Today, Explained, a daily newsletter that helps you understand the most compelling news and stories of the day. Subscribe here.
The ideal time to start planning for the holidays with your family is…right now
The weather forecast might still be screaming “summer,” but the calendar betrays the truth: The holidays are going to be here before you know it. What’s usually billed as a jolly time of year can inspire dread — all the planning, all the spending, all the gathering can be exhausting, especially if you have a large family. Of course you’d like to put that off for as long as possible, right? Surely these conversations can wait until after Halloween.
The 2020 election deniers running in swing states
President Donald Trump has spent years making false claims about election fraud, including his refusal to accept that he lost the 2020 presidential election to Joe Biden. Since that election, Republicans who denied or questioned the results have taken positions on local election boards, worked inside election offices, trained poll observers, and sought to influence state election laws.
The hidden $350 surcharge on American households
This story was originally published by Grist and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration.
How to be an ethical gossip
Hi readers! Shayla Love here, science journalist and longtime fan of Your Mileage May Vary. I’m honored to be subbing for Sigal Samuel while she’s out on parental leave. I’m diving into your questions as a way to help understand human nature and our choices through multiple lenses: philosophical, psychological, and beyond. Please send in any emotional, body/brain, sociological, perceptual, or other kind of life quandaries you might have.
How to find a date in real life
If you want to hear someone complain, one of your best bets is to ask one of your single friends what the dating landscape is like right now.