Up to date with new questions at 5:15 p.m. ET on December 2, 2025.
I’ve a lot extolled right here the worth of recent information. Allow us to now hear a counterargument: Some months after Yale gave Mark Twain an honorary diploma in 1888, the author’s schedule cleared up sufficient for him to drag collectively a speech advising that the great individuals of the school be taught much less.
“I discovered the astronomer of the college gadding round after comets and different such odds and ends,” he wrote. “I instructed him it was no economic system to go on piling up and piling up uncooked materials in the way in which of recent stars and comets and asteroids that we couldn’t ever have any use for until we had labored off the previous inventory.”
Greek must go “as a result of it’s so laborious to spell with, and so inconceivable to learn after you get it spelled,” and analysis in math “was not suited to the dignity of a school, which ought to deal in details, not guesses and suppositions.”
Yale didn’t heed the recommendation, and I don’t assume Twain would actually have needed you to, both. So please—guess and suppose away.
Discover final week’s questions right here, and to get Atlantic Trivia in your inbox day-after-day, join The Atlantic Every day.
Tuesday, December 2, 2025
- Minoxidil is the energetic ingredient in lots of merchandise that deal with what frequent situation, recognized scientifically as alopecia?
— From Yasmin Tayag’s “America Refuses to Go [REDACTED]” - The corporate Lifetouch is the biggest U.S. supplier of what product usually provided as soon as a tutorial yr, in early fall?
— From Annie Midori Atherton’s “What’s the Level of [REDACTED] Anymore?” - What hard-boiled detective sported a well-known two-way wrist radio throughout America’s mid-century comedian strips?
— From Ian Bogost’s “Get Your Child a Watch”
And by the way in which, do you know that Garry Trudeau, the creator of Doonesbury, received the 1975 Pulitzer Prize for Editorial Cartooning for his work with the cartoon? Gerald Ford, who was then president, stated that yr that “there are solely three main autos to maintain us knowledgeable as to what’s going on in Washington: the digital media, the print media, and Doonesbury, not essentially in that order.”
Just one different cartoon—known as Bloom County—has received the Pulitzer Prize; Garfield goes to should convey some actual nuance to his ideas about Mondays if he’s ever going to compete.
See you tomorrow!
Solutions:
- Hair loss. Yasmin studies on how the hair-loss-prevention business, which has lengthy centered on thinning in males, is able to welcome the various Millennial ladies who’re warming as much as the thought of Rogaine. However there’s nonetheless an enormous stigma round searching for remedy. Learn extra.
- Faculty photographs. The Picture Day custom appears foolish contemplating that each guardian has a digital camera of their pocket now, however households nonetheless shell out for the (typically ludicrously costly) faculty photographs, Atherton writes. They’re kitschy and awkward—however that is perhaps the purpose. Learn extra.
- Dick Tracy. Ian, who not too long ago bought a smartwatch for his youngest daughter, writes that the low finish of the kid-watch market is stuffed with ineffective “Dick Tracy novelties.” So he went full Apple, and he has discovered that the watch is the proper coaching “cellphone” for his child. Learn extra.
How did you do? Come again tomorrow for extra questions, or click on right here for final week’s. And in the event you assume up an amazing query after studying an Atlantic story—or just need to share a formidable truth—ship it my method at [email protected].
Monday, December 1, 2025
From the version of The Atlantic Every day by David A. Graham:
- William Shakespeare’s solely son, who died at age 11, had what identify—only a letter off from one of many bard’s most well-known tragic heroes?
— From James Shapiro’s “The Lengthy Historical past of the [REDACTED] Fable” - In AI-safety discussions, the probability that synthetic intelligence causes world cataclysm is popularly expressed as what statistical time period?
— From Charlie Warzel’s “The World Nonetheless Hasn’t Made Sense of ChatGPT” - Germans generally name their nation “Das Land der Dichter und Denker,” or the land of what two vocations—the previous of which might apply to, say, Rilke, Schiller, and Goethe, and the latter to Hegel, Heidegger, and Arendt (otherwise you proper now)?
— From Isaac Stanley-Becker’s “The New German Struggle Machine”
And by the way in which, do you know that Shakespeare’s grave doesn’t bear his identify? What it does bear is a curse. The engraving warns would-be tamperers, “Good pal for Jesus sake forbeare, / To dig the mud enclosed right here. / Blessed be the person that spares these stones, / And cursed be he that strikes my bones.”
Proof means that the curse didn’t keep at bay everybody; ground-penetrating radar revealed in 2016 that Shakespeare’s cranium is nearly definitely lacking. After all, researchers might have opened the grave to verify—however would you are taking that danger?
Solutions:
- Hamnet. The parable that Hamnet’s demise begot the tragedy of Hamlet has endured for hundreds of years, Shapiro writes, however the truth that it’s compelling—see Chloé Zhao’s new film, Hamnet—doesn’t imply that it’s true. Learn extra.
- p(doom). Whether or not or not you utilize the time period, you’ve most likely thought of the chance of AI-occasioned doom, Charlie writes as ChatGPT turns three. In actual fact, that psychological precarity is already an enormous chunk of AI’s legacy, he argues, and the tech’s ever-evolving nature heightens the nervousness. Learn extra.
- Poets and thinkers. To various levels over the a long time, this self-conception has been about each taking delight in Germany’s mental custom and renouncing the nation’s militarism. As Isaac studies, this makes for a fraught transition as Germany step by step abandons pacifism and rearms in opposition to a destabilized world. Learn extra.
