What did the nation learn about the Republican candidates on Wednesday night?

First, viewers learned that the presidential contenders are delighted to take swipes at each other all night, if given the opportunity.

Second, they learned that the performance that elevated Carly Fiorina from the happy-hour debate in Cleveland to the main stage at the Reagan Library was no fluke—she’s a skilled speaker.

Third, they learned that the listless performance Jeb Bush delivered last time around was no fluke either. The wounded former frontrunner once again seemed unsure how best to handle the crowded stage or the slugfest the debate became.

What they didn’t learn was a great deal about policy. That was a result of a couple, related problems. First, the rules of the debate allowed anyone who was mentioned by a rival to offer a rebuttal. But that often just led to a sideswipe at a third rival, producing a daisy chain of rebuttals, as the topic of conversation drifted farther and farther away from the original question and toward a series of recriminations already familiar from the campaign trail. Second, and relatedly, the moderators allowed themselves to be rolled over by the candidates over and over—the inmates taking over the asylum, perhaps.

By his own lights, Daniel Patrick Moynihan, ambassador, senator, sociologist, and itinerant American intellectual, was the product of a broken home and a pathological family. He was born in 1927 in Tulsa, Oklahoma, but raised mostly in New York City. When Moynihan was 10 years old, his father, John, left the family, plunging it into poverty. Moynihan’s mother, Margaret, remarried, had another child, divorced, moved to Indiana to stay with relatives, then returned to New York, where she worked as a nurse. Moynihan’s childhood—a tangle of poverty, remarriage, relocation, and single motherhood—contrasted starkly with the idyllic American family life he would later extol.

A group of young adults shyly meet for the first time on the second floor of an empty Manhattan shopping mall. The stores are all closed for the weekend, and other than a man stopping in the lobby to read his phone, this group is the only sign of activity.

“I actually really like clubbing,” shares one guy.

The group goes silent.

“Get out of the circle,” a woman whispers.

Everyone in this group took the Meyers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI), a personality test. They all tested as the same type (one that tends to be introverted), joined an online group for others who got the same result, and decided to meet up.

Which explains why they’re meeting in an empty food court: It’s perfect for a group of people who like quietude. In this crowd of 20-something New Yorkers, the clubber is, truly, an oddball.

In 2006, i was 50—and I was falling apart.

Until then, I had always known exactly who I was: an exceptionally fortunate and happy woman, full of irrational exuberance and everyday joy.

I knew who I was professionally. When I was 16, I’d discovered cognitive science and analytic philosophy, and knew at once that I wanted the tough-minded, rigorous, intellectual life they could offer me. I’d gotten my doctorate at 25 and had gone on to become a professor of psychology and philosophy at UC Berkeley.

I knew who I was personally, too. For one thing, I liked men. I was never pretty, but the heterosexual dance of attraction and flirtation had always been an important part of my life, a background thrum that brightened and sharpened all the rest. My closest friends and colleagues had all been men.

The biggest pop star in America today is a man named Karl Martin Sandberg. The lead singer of an obscure ’80s glam-metal band, Sandberg grew up in a remote suburb of Stockholm and is now 44. Sandberg is the George Lucas, the LeBron James, the Serena Williams of American pop. He is responsible for more hits than Phil Spector, Michael Jackson, or the Beatles.

After Sandberg come the bald Norwegians, Mikkel Eriksen and Tor Hermansen, 43 and 44; Lukasz Gottwald, 42, a Sandberg protégé and collaborator who spent a decade languishing in Saturday Night Live’s house band; and another Sandberg collaborator named Esther Dean, 33, a former nurse’s aide from Oklahoma who was discovered in the audience of a Gap Band concert, singing along to “Oops Upside Your Head.” They use pseudonyms professionally, but most Americans wouldn’t recognize those, either: Max Martin, Stargate, Dr. Luke, and Ester Dean.

A bunch of us on the politics team spent the evening liveblogging (all three hours of) the second Republican presidential debate. Here’s my instant analysis of the best moments—and, of course, who the winners and losers were.

What did the nation learn about the Republican candidates on Wednesday night?

First, viewers learned that the presidential contenders are delighted to take swipes at each other all night, if given the opportunity.

Second, they learned that the performance that elevated Carly Fiorina from the happy-hour debate in Cleveland to the main stage at the Reagan Library was no fluke—she’s a skilled speaker.

Third, they learned that the listless performance Jeb Bush delivered last time around was no fluke either. The wounded former frontrunner once again seemed unsure how best to handle the crowded stage or the slugfest the debate became.

What they didn’t learn was a great deal about policy. That was a result of a couple, related problems. First, the rules of the debate allowed anyone who was mentioned by a rival to offer a rebuttal. But that often just led to a sideswipe at a third rival, producing a daisy chain of rebuttals, as the topic of conversation drifted farther and farther away from the original question and toward a series of recriminations already familiar from the campaign trail. Second, and relatedly, the moderators allowed themselves to be rolled over by the candidates over and over—the inmates taking over the asylum, perhaps.

Something strange is happening at America’s colleges and universities. A movement is arising, undirected and driven largely by students, to scrub campuses clean of words, ideas, and subjects that might cause discomfort or give offense. Last December, Jeannie Suk wrote in an online article for The New Yorker about law students asking her fellow professors at Harvard not to teach rape law—or, in one case, even use the word violate (as in “that violates the law”) lest it cause students distress. In February, Laura Kipnis, a professor at Northwestern University, wrote an essay in The Chronicle of Higher Education describing a new campus politics of sexual paranoia—and was then subjected to a long investigation after students who were offended by the article and by a tweet she’d sent filed Title IX complaints against her. In June, a professor protecting himself with a pseudonym wrote an essay for Vox describing how gingerly he now has to teach. “I’m a Liberal Professor, and My Liberal Students Terrify Me,” the headline said. A number of popular comedians, including Chris Rock, have stopped performing on college campuses (see Caitlin Flanagan’s article in this month’s issue). Jerry Seinfeld and Bill Maher have publicly condemned the oversensitivity of college students, saying too many of them can’t take a joke.

Stephen Colbert had Tim Cook on his show last night. The two talked about Siri, but also, less predictably, about corporate responsibility and Martin Luther King, Jr. and human rights.

The first section of the interview was pretty much an infomercial for Apple’s latest product, the iPhone 6s. Colbert had a prototype on-hand—in the newest color, rose gold, natch—and gave a detailed, gee-whiz-inflected preview of the device. The “3-D touch!” The “live photos”! The fact that the 6s will be charged with the same lightning cable used by recent iPhone models! (This is fortunate, because if Apple introduces another kind of charger, Colbert told Cook, “I will stab you in the neck with a fondue fork.”)

As popes frequently address large crowds in open-air settings, they—like everyone else—have to deal with capricious weather. Papal attire usually includes a skull cap (zucchetto) and small capes, either a white pellegrina or a red mozzetta—all very susceptible to gusts of wind. Over the years, photographers have captured many moments when the wind has swept away the Pope’s headgear or momentarily wrapped his mantle around his head.

What is the Islamic State?

Where did it come from, and what are its intentions? The simplicity of these questions can be deceiving, and few Western leaders seem to know the answers. In December, The New York Times published confidential comments by Major General Michael K. Nagata, the Special Operations commander for the United States in the Middle East, admitting that he had hardly begun figuring out the Islamic State’s appeal. “We have not defeated the idea,” he said. “We do not even understand the idea.” In the past year, President Obama has referred to the Islamic State, variously, as “not Islamic” and as al-Qaeda’s “jayvee team,” statements that reflected confusion about the group, and may have contributed to significant strategic errors.