Up to date with new questions at 4:20 p.m. ET on October 23, 2025.
Within the Nineteen Fifties, the TV quiz present Twenty-One stumbled upon a viewership-boosting technique that for a short time frame could be all the craze: dishonest. This system fastened winners and losers, coached contestants, and customarily dabbled in malfeasance. Different exhibits adopted go well with, scandal ensued, and Congress—Congress!—bought concerned.
I’m relieved to say that this quiz operates past the revisions to the Communications Act of 1934, so I’ll fortunately provide you with all of the solutions: They’re proper there in The Atlantic.
Discover final week’s questions right hereand to get Atlantic Trivia in your inbox daily, join The Atlantic Every day.
Thursday, October 23, 2025
- Within the first quantity of Philip Pullman’s His Darkish Supplies trilogy, the protagonist is ready to learn an “alethiometer”—a magical machine that, per the ebook’s title, is a sort of what extra widespread device?
— From Lev Grossman’s “Philip Pullman’s Anti-Escapist Fantasy” - What disparaging (and rhyming) nickname for televisions that first appeared within the Nineteen Fifties combines a dated slang phrase for “idiot” with a phrase for one among early TVs’ technical components?
— From Ian Bogost’s “You’re Getting ‘Display screen Time’ Improper” - To show to his spouse, Penelope, after years of journey that he was the person he had as soon as been, what hero of Greek delusion had to make use of his outdated bow to shoot an arrow by way of a dozen perforated axe heads?
— From Nicholas Thompson’s “Why I Run”
And by the best way, do you know that there’s a volcano whose caldera perennially bubbles with lava and whose vent spews gold into the air? It exists not in Pullman’s fantasy world, however someplace presumably even wilder: Antarctica.
Mount Erebus has been lava-filled since at the very least 1972, and every day it blows out about 80 grams of gold flecks, price 1000’s of {dollars}. Good work if you may get it—simply don’t overlook your mittens.
See you tomorrow!
Solutions:
- Compass. With the ultimate ebook of Pullman’s follow-up trilogy out immediately—three a long time after The Golden Compass was first printed—Grossman evaluations the brand new ebook and appears again on the universe Pullman constructed. It’s a guide not for escaping to a different world, he writes, however studying to like this one. Learn extra.
- Boob tube. We’ve been fretting about “display time” for many years, Bogost says, however now it’s not a discrete chunk to reduce; it’s the truth we stay in. It’s at all times already display time. Learn extra.
- Odysseus. What archery did for the person of many units, operating did for Nicholas, he writes in an excerpt from his memoir. After a bout with most cancers, he wanted a marathon to show himself to himself, and it’s nonetheless what’s protecting his life on monitor. Learn extra.
How did you do? Come again tomorrow for extra questions, scroll down for extra, or click on right here for final week’s. And for those who suppose up an amazing query after studying an Atlantic story—or just wish to share a scintillating truth—ship it my method at (electronic mail protected).
Wednesday, October 22, 2025
From the version of The Atlantic Every day by David A. Graham:
- In keeping with the army adage, there aren’t any atheists in what defensive combating place?
— From Missy Ryan’s “Holy Warrior” - What federal company that lately supplied a $50,000 bonus to new recruits is, alas, struggling to get these recruits to go a 1.5-mile-run requirement?
— From Nick Miroff’s “(REDACTED)’s ‘Athletically Allergic’ Recruits” - Florida’s Brightline is simply the second high-speed prepare in the USA—the primary being the Amtrak-operated line within the Northeast Hall identified by what identify?
— From Kaitlyn Tiffany’s “A ‘Demise Practice’ Is Haunting South Florida”
And by the best way, do you know that in Edvard Munch’s The Screamit isn’t the face-clutching determine who’s hollering, however relatively the entire remainder of the world round him? The person is attempting to cowl his ears to block out that common yell—what Munch referred to as in a single inscription “the good scream all through nature.” Subsequent up for reappraisal: 😱
Solutions:
- Foxholes. For all of the supplication down within the trenches, Missy writes, not often have commanders dictated non secular phrases to their troops; Protection Secretary Pete Hegseth—and the rising Christian-nationalist church from which he seems to have gotten a lot of his concepts—are altering that. Learn extra.
- ICE. Nick experiences on how push-ups, sit-ups, and that run (which should be accomplished sub–14 minutes) are standing between Donald Trump and his deportation targets. Greater than a 3rd of the brand new recruits have failed the company’s physical-fitness check, in keeping with officers. Learn extra.
- That. The Acela and the Brightline are totally different for lots of causes, together with the Florida prepare’s gloss and surpassing consolation, however essentially the most essential distinction, Kaitlyn experiences, is that the Brightline retains hitting individuals. Learn extra.
Tuesday, October 21, 2025
From the version of The Atlantic Every day by Will Gottsegen:
- Rudy Giuliani’s son and Osama bin Laden’s niece have been among the many visitor hosts of the podcast Battle Room whereas what everlasting host served 4 months in jail for refusing to cooperate with the congressional investigation into January 6?
— From Jonathan D. Karl’s “(REDACTED) and the Murderers and Hitmen Who Grew to become His ‘Besties’” - What barnyard time period is used to explain the simply generated and artistically worthless AI content material that litters the web?
— From Charlie Warzel’s “A Device That Crushes Creativity” - What’s the identify of the nationwide legislature that accommodates events together with Likud, Blue and White, and Yesh Atid?
— From Yair Rosenberg’s “Can Trump Comprise (REDACTED)’s Arduous Proper?”
And by the best way, do you know that it’s been nicely over a century since one pig did, the truth is, fly? And for 3 and a half miles, at that? Granted, this was a ride-along within the airplane of Lord John Moore-Brabazon of Kent, a peer and aviation pioneer, however contemplating that the flight occurred in November 1909, it’s nonetheless no small feat. (The pig was referred to as Icarus II, and he fared relatively higher than his eponym.)
Solutions:
- Steve Bannon. Karl seems to be into Bannon’s time in jail final 12 months—what he realized there, whom he befriended, how he managed to wield his affect over MAGA world even from behind bars. Learn extra.
- Slop. What with Donald Trump’s fondness for spammy AI movies and the proliferation of social networks devoted to soullessly generated content material, we’re residing in “the golden age of slop,” Charlie contends. “There is no such thing as a realm of life that’s unsloppable.” Learn extra.
- The Knesset. Final week, Israel’s Parliament hosted Trump for a speech celebrating the cease-fire within the conflict in Gaza, however, Yair writes, members of the legislature’s far proper really feel jilted. Trump, he says, should restrain them if he’s to convey peace to the area. Learn extra.
Monday, October 20, 2025
From the version of The Atlantic Every day by David A. Graham:
- What retailer lately introduced that it’ll carry the weight-loss drug Ozempic at a reduced worth of $499 a month—that means you may get your GLP-1, a scorching canine, and a fountain drink for $500.50?
— From Emily Oster’s “Ozempic for All” - The cultural theorist Dominic Pettman defines what modern-relationship time period as “abandonment with a recent garnish” (including, “After we got here up with texting, we additionally got here up with not texting”)?
— From Anna Holmes’s “The Nice (REDACTED) Paradox” - In the best way that runners have Strava, birders have eBird, and readers have Goodreads, what hobbyists are almost certainly to make use of the app Ravelry?
— From Tyler Austin Harper’s “The Surprising Profundity of a Film About Hen-Watching”
And by the best way, do you know—talking of hobbies—that when he wasn’t writing contributions to the Western canon, the novelist Vladimir Nabokov saved himself busy observing and even discovering new species of butterflies? His lepidoptery fieldwork impelled full-time scientists to rethink the classification of a complete genus.
That he additionally composed chess issues is thus hardly shocking. However earlier than you go beating your self up, contemplate what he didn’t do a lot of: sleep.
Solutions:
- Costco. It’s an indication that costs for these “near-miracle medicine” are falling and can hold falling, Oster writes—undercutting the argument that they’re too expensive to supply by way of Medicaid. Rising the medicine’ accessibility by way of Medicaid, she says, would save lives. Learn extra.
- Ghosting. Holmes writes that Pettman’s new ebook may supply a much less upsetting method to consider the sudden cutoff of communication, although it would require rising a thicker pores and skin. Learn extra.
- Knitters. All of those hobby-specific apps need to some extent been gamified, with progress bars, unlockable achievements, or different metrics that Tyler worries are sucking the enjoyment out of the hobbies themselves. Learn extra.
