Amid the country’s reckoning with loneliness and isolation has come a startling truth: Americans are spending far more time alone — and, according to a new finding from the 2025 World Happiness Report, we’re also dining alone, too.  The finding, released this week, relies on data from the American Time Use Survey and shows that […]

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: Today I’m focusing on Donald Trump’s purge of Democrats from an agency responsible for policing corporate America, another attempt to eliminate lawful checks on the president’s authority. What’s […]

I have, like I suspect many readers, been in quite a bad mood for the last two months. My go-to joke explaining why — which I feel like should land with readers of this newsletter — has become: “I didn’t realize quite how much my overall optimism about the state of the world depended on […]

Humanity’s battle against tuberculosis has been one of slow and imperfect progress. The disease no longer kills one in seven people in the US, as it did in the 19th century. But look elsewhere and its burden is still terrible: TB killed more than 1.2 million people in 2023, likely making it once again the […]

The Trump administration has shuttered a number of federal agencies, and ordered another tranche closed last Friday. Among them was Voice of America — a news outlet founded to help the Allies fight the Nazis that still publishes and broadcasts today. Or did, until Saturday, when its employees found themselves unable to go to work.  […]