If this cold and flu season seem especially sneezy-coughy-fevery to you, it is not your imagination. Flu is surging in 45 states and outpatient doctor visits for flu-like symptoms are the highest they’ve been since we started keeping track of the data.  It’s not like the flu is new: Literally every year we have to […]

America’s most impassioned Democrats and Republicans don’t agree on much. Ask the inhabitants of Bluesky and Truth Social whether a fetus is a person, or undocumented immigrants are a scourge, or trans women are women, or climate change is a crisis, or Covid vaccines are toxic, or taxes are too high, or welfare spending is […]

Your Mileage May Vary is an advice column offering you a unique framework for thinking through your moral dilemmas. It’s based on value pluralism — the idea that each of us has multiple values that are equally valid but that often conflict with each other. To submit a question, fill out this anonymous form. Here’s this week’s question from a […]

This past month I, like many Americans, flew back home for the holidays. On the first leg of that trip, from New York to Los Angeles, a dog in a “service dog” vest barked at me at the gate. The dog (not its given name), looked to be a stout French bulldog, paced back and […]

According to the French music streaming service Deezer, there are about 50,000 fully AI-generated songs uploaded to its platform every day. Many of these songs won’t reach a wide audience, but over the past year, a few have gained millions of listens.  Which raises the question: If our future is going to be filled with […]