News Above the Noise—Week of October 25, 2026
1. In San Francisco, the A.I. Boom Has Families With Good Salaries Struggling to Get By
There’s no shared curriculum across schools, says sexual medicine specialist Rachel Rubin, and no reliable way to know what any one student has learned. In this Sunday Paper guest op-ed, her mentee Grace Hauer explains why patients can end up stranded between specialties, with no one owning the problem. Read more here.
2. From Near Silence to Talks With the Kremlin: Melania Trump’s Unexpected Turn
The first lady says she personally negotiated a limited pause in fighting around Oleshky, a Russian-held Ukrainian town, with a start date of October 29 and Newsmax tapped to document it. The news came just after her husband told an Iowa rally she was becoming a modern echo of the FDR-era first lady who famously circled the globe. Author Kate Brower, who has spent years studying the role, weighs how the two women’s styles stack up and what a flurry of headlines can and can’t tell us. Read more here.
3. The Lessons in Christina Applegate’s MS Misdiagnosis
The actor shared the unsettling update on her podcast, saying new testing led a doctor to rethink what she had been told in 2021 and that she’s now “back at square one” on figuring out what’s behind her symptoms. Experts explain that no single test can confirm multiple sclerosis, so doctors piece together a picture from symptoms, scans, and ruling out look-alike conditions. They also describe what can prompt a physician to take a second look. Read more here.
4. 15 Mindset Shifts for Aging With Fewer Regrets
Who are you when your job title goes away? That question anchors this reflective essay on growing older, which also weighs money against contentment, the urge to feel fully ready before taking a leap, and the people in your family you may want to know better while there’s time. It ends with a few prompts worth sitting with tonight. Read more here.
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