After Donald Trump was banned from Twitter in 2021, Donald Trump Jr. made a public appeal to Elon Musk for help. “Wanted to come up with something to deal with some of this nonsense and the censorship that’s going on right now, obviously only targeted one way,” he said in a video that was posted to Instagram. “Why doesn’t Elon Musk create a social-media platform?” (The video was titled “Here’s How Elon Musk Could Save Free Speech.”)A little more than a year later, Musk was promising not an entirely new site, but a hostile takeover of a familiar one. And he explicitly presented this action as a corrective to right-wing grievances about “shadowbanning” and censorship. He promised to use his new platform to combat the “woke mind virus” sweeping the nation and said he wanted to save free speech. (His supposed devotion to unfettered expression, it’s worth noting, sometimes comes second to his personal feuds.)

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The Most Memorable Advice of 2023

In a year when global temperatures reached a record high, artificial-intelligence advancements sparked questions around work and human interaction, and wars raged in Europe and in the Middle East, Atlantic writers and other experts offered pragmatic wisdom on navigating everyday experiences with friendship, family, and work.Their words point to the virtues of finding wonder in mundane moments, navigating grief with a spirit of acceptance, and prioritizing human connection.

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Why does alcohol make my poo go weird?

As we enter the festive season it’s a good time to think about what all those celebratory alcoholic drinks can do to your gut. Alcohol can interfere with the time it takes for food to go through your gut (also known as the “transit time”). In particular, it can affect the muscles of the stomach and the small bowel (also known as the small intestine).

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Sniffing Women's Tears May Reduce Aggression in Men, Study Finds

The findings, which may extend to all humans, suggest emotional tears might serve an evolutionary purposeTears often spur feelings of empathy between people. But a recent study shows they may bring about this effect in more ways than one: Sniffing women’s tears may reduce aggression in men, suggesting a protective purpose for the emotional response.

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Watch sand defy gravity and flow uphill thanks to "negative friction"

We intuitively understand that the sand pouring through an hourglass, for example, forms a neat roughly pyramid-shaped pile at the bottom, in which the grains near the surface flow over an underlying base of stationary particles. Avalanches and sand dunes exhibit similar dynamics. But scientists at Lehigh University in Pennsylvania have discovered that applying a magnetic torque can actually cause sand-like particles to collectively flow uphill in seeming defiance of gravity, according to a September paper published in the journal Nature Communications.

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More doubts raised over exomoon candidates

In 2017, the astronomy world was abuzz at the announcement that exoplanet Kepler-1625b potentially had its own moon—an exomoon. This was the first hint anyone had seen of an exomoon, and was followed five years later by another candidate around the planet Kepler-1708b.

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Half-watched TV and part-heard radio: summer Test cricket is steeped in nostalgia, but these 'traditions' have short histories

As the old year passes and a new one arrives, three notable sport events occupy the languid vacation hours. Melbourne’s Boxing Day and Sydney’s New Year’s Test matches are spliced by the Sydney to Hobart Yacht Race.Unlike the race, a set-piece seasonal spectacle notable mainly for its Rolex-sponsored affluence, picturesque helicopter shots, and (seemingly) AI-generated reporting, the cricket stirs strong emotions.

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Why the "father of the hydrogen bomb" hated Carl Sagan

It was a contempt that burned late into the legendary physicist’s life, even after Sagan tragically passed away at the tender age of 62 from complications linked to bone marrow cancer in 1996.“Who was he?” The 90-year-old Teller remarked when asked about Sagan in 1998. “He was a nobody!”

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'Jedi Survivor' Devs Address a Huge 'Jedi 3' Theory: "It's Kind of All There"

Star Wars Jedi: Survivor is The Empire Strikes Back of video games, a sequel with plenty of high-stakes and bombastic action, but, more importantly, an emotional story to tell. The second step of Cal Kestis’ journey is a deeply personal tale that feels poignant and relatable, despite taking place in a galaxy far, far away. And while there’s no shortage of great Star Wars video games, the follow-up title from Respawn Entertainment stands neatly at the top of the pile because of how effortlessly it meshes its gripping narrative with the fantasy of being a Jedi.“When I was a kid, I didn’t think I’d be able to play a game where I was a Jedi and really feel like it, not just from the storytelling but being able to wield a Lightsaber and hear that quintessential sound, or force push someone,” lead writer Danny Homan tells Inverse. “There’s just something that works for the Jedi franchise, between gameplay and story, that people just keep coming back for more, myself included.”

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X Is Elon Musk's Lonely Party Now

This is an edition of The Atlantic Daily, a newsletter that guides you through the biggest stories of the day, helps you discover new ideas, and recommends the best in culture. Sign up for it here.As we close out the year, it’s official: The Twitter we once knew is long gone. Elon Musk’s reinvention of the platform, from its name down to its core features, has rendered it nearly unrecognizable to users. The lead writers of this newsletter, Tom Nichols and Lora Kelley, have each spent time thinking and writing about X, as well as posting and lurking on the platform. I chatted with them recently about Musk’s murky logic and the new internet era he’s accidentally ushered in.

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Valentine

The deer in the snow turned away from my flashlight and kettle to let me fight with the ice alone. I was thinking of you then, of your sleeping head, of your maskless mouth. I used to think your heart was like an old waterway always locking and filling up, but it’s not just one thing —it could be this kettle. It could be the steam in the dark. The light bouncing around the branches at midnight. Mine might be an ancient furnace. The bunny tracks running up from the bramble to the catalpa. That tree will bloom in June. White clouds tacked on a knotty frame. Broad leaves with no teeth or lobes. I’ll remember then, the bunnies living in its roots, the furnace resting beyond the green crawl-space doors, and I’ll reach for your radiant hand before supper because that’s when we say grace.

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Minnesota Reveals New State Flag Design

After sifting through more than 2,600 submissions, Minnesota’s State Emblems Redesign Commission has decided on a new state flag. The left side of the design features a North Star on a navy blue background resembling the state’s K-shape, while the right side is a solid light blue.The final design is a simplified version of one submitted by 24-year-old Minnesotan Andrew Prekker. It will replace an older flag widely criticized for its complicated composition and offensive imagery.

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Tagwalk Takes on the Hemline Index

Fashion is an emphatically subjective industry. “Pink is the navy blue of India” (Diana Vreeland). “There is a famine of beauty, honey” (André Leon Talley). “Sweatpants are a sign of defeat” (Karl Lagerfeld). “An evening dress that reveals a woman’s ankles while walking is the most disgusting thing I have ever seen” (Valentino). A whim or a feeling can seal the fate of a cerulean sweater, a smoky eye, or a mutton sleeve.Yet, just as sabermetrics transformed baseball, data is coming for fashion, supplementing the hemline index—the theory that skirt lengths rise and fall with the stock market—with data lakes, traffic-share analyses, and lots of graphs. The other day, Alexandra Van Houtte, the Bill James of the catwalk, was sitting in a conference room in the Ninth Arrondissement of Paris. Her company, Tagwalk, is known as “Google for fashion.” But, instead of typing “weird rash” or “post office hours” into its free search engine, you can search every runway look by season, city, designer, color, model, and trend. “People are always scared of data, but data is inspiring to creativity,” Van Houtte said.

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5 under-appreciated crime novels you should read

It’s hard for writers to break into the crime fiction market. It’s especially hard for authors who write in languages other than English or write on the anglophone periphery. Unless they are the big names of Nordic noir, translated crime novels are rarely advertised or placed in prominent positions in bookshops.This is a shame because there is a lot of great crime writing going on around the world. Below we offer a list of five novels by writers from Italy, Japan, Israel, New Zealand and Finland. They might have passed you by, but are well worth reading.

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What Actually Helps Seasonal Depression? Probably Not What You Think

Regardless of why or when it occurs, seasonal depression manifests in similar ways and often falls on a spectrum.As the winter approaches, days get shorter, the weather turns colder, and the world seems just a little bleaker. While some people embrace this season — or even thrive in it — many others experience a corresponding change in mood. And for some, this can result in Seasonal Affective Disorder, or SAD, which can significantly affect our daily lives.

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The 25 Best Podcasts of 2023

If art imitates life, it’s no wonder many of this year’s podcasts contained a dash of doom. During a year of planetary uncertainty, in which fears about the climate crisis and AI encroaching on the workforce intensified, the audio space reflected our impulse to decode mysteries: Series zeroed in on deception, premiering plenty of heist and con-artist content. Podcasters reexamined the justice system, from parole boards to the FBI. Three separate shows tried to solve the puzzle of the perplexing ailment known as Havana syndrome. Like many of us, producers searched for any answers they could get.But the biggest podcasting trend I noticed in 2023 was, by far, the predominance of women as protagonists, hosts, and subjects. Traditionally male archetypes were served up with a feminine twist: Creators explored female adultery, espionage, scamming, and wanderlust. Although podcasts about delinquent doctors continued to draw in audiences, this year, they seemed to focus on misconduct in obstetrics—not too surprising, considering last year’s overturn of Roe v. Wade.

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30 Years Later, Mark Hamill Says 'Mask of the Phantasm' Is "One of the Best Batman Movies Ever Made"

Here’s a sentence that will instantly date me as a millennial: I watched Batman: Mask of the Phantasm so many times as a kid that I wore out the VHS tape.Released in theaters on Christmas Day 1993, Mask of the Phantasm represents the pinnacle of Batman storytelling. Starring Kevin Conroy as Bruce Wayne/Batman and Mark Hamill as the Joker, it’s a beautifully crafted tale of crime, corruption, and doomed romance that manages to squeeze in a Joker subplot and a retelling of the Dark Knight’s origin story in just 76 minutes. It was also a total flop, making just $5.6 million at the box office on a budget of $6 million, before finding success in the form of VHS and, eventually, DVD and Blu-ray.

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Yes, we have free will. No, we absolutely do not.

You’re thirsty so you reach for a glass of water. It’s either a freely chosen action or the inevitable result of the laws of nature, depending on who you ask. Do we have free will? The question is ancient—and vexing. Everyone seems to have pondered it, and many seem quite certain of the answer, which is typically either “yes” or “absolutely not.”One scientist in the “absolutely not” camp is Robert Sapolsky. In his new book, Determined: A Science of Life Without Free Will, the primatologist and Stanford professor of neurology spells out why we can’t possibly have free will. Why do we behave one way and not another? Why do we choose Brand A over Brand B, or vote for Candidate X over Candidate Y? Not because we have free will, but because every act and thought are the product of “cumulative biological and environmental luck.”

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Condolence

After the store-bought Christmas dinner was ordered purchased picked up by me and presented on ceramic dinner plates becauseit is Christmas after all After dietary preferences were accommodated wine of both colors was opened poured and drunk and the bottles were hauled by me in a large wicker basket in the dark to the recycling bin After the leftover food was scraped by me into the trash the bowls rinsed under water that scalded my hands After the dishwasher was unloaded and carefully re- loaded by me with the knives facing up in order to get clean After wiping down all visible surfaces After receiving a call from an unknown number confirming burial and not cremation After reheating two pies of mysterious interior— After telling the man on the phone to give me whatever— After stacking the pies on wire racks to cool After cutting and presenting a slice to each member of this family who arrived like kings to feast before the funeral After repeating the time and location the location and time After procuring phone chargers pens gum matches After realizing my mother was gone for hours in her bedroom After the stomach lurch of not one bite or sip of anything crossing my lips all night my uncle as I bent to gather his pie-crusted plate said to me I can’t believe after allI am the last one of my familyalive and he looked toward my eyes but looked unseeing through me twenty-eight years old and woman and invisible But my fatherIt’s my father I want to say but do not sayMy father is dead the wrong idea of it oozing into the air around me which my uncle and the rest of them chose not to see—and for which they will not be forgiven

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What Causes Red Wine Headaches? A Wine Chemist May Finally Know

Despite the fact that the red wine headache has been known about for decades, researchers are still debating the exact cause of the malady.For many, wine is a way to kick back and relax after a long day. But for some, wine — and red wine in particular — can be a pain, literally.

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Why Your Strategy Isn't Working

You've used all the best practices and gone to all the right conferences. Yet, you're still struggling to get traction. But it's not for the reasons you think.

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We Are the Music, We Are the Spark: Pioneering Biologist Ernest Everett Just on What Makes Life Alive

“Life is exquisitely a time-thing, like music.”

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4 must-read books from east Africa in 2023: from Tanzanian masters to Ugandan queens

East African literature continues to grow and reshape itself in exciting new ways – and 2023 was no exception. The world really did take notice of the region when Tanzanian-British author Abdulrazak Gurnah won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2021. Interest in Gurnah’s work continued last year when he made a homecoming to east Africa. But it is in Tanzania that Gurnah made a proper homecoming in 2023 – through the first ever Kiswahili translation of Paradise, now out as Peponi.

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How an Employee Financial Wellness Program Can Pay Off for Your Business

Financially stressed employees can't build a healthy business. Here's why your new year's resolutions should include a financial wellness program.

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The 8 Most Epic Space Fails of 2023

Space travel is hard. From building the rockets to braving the vacuum, surviving the radiation, and safely returning to terra firma, there are few things about it that don’t have a high potential to fail spectacularly.And yet when everything goes as planned — like when Curiosity touches down on Mars, the James Webb Space Telescope launches, or a spaceship grabs a sample of a hard-to-reach asteroid — space travel can seem easy, if not miraculous. But despite the best efforts of humans, the natural entropy of the space environment and the persnickety nature of rockets and software code still occasionally prevail. One in 25 NASA rockets have failed historically. In 2023, we’re not doing much better. Engineering bloopers abound: Some 50 percent of Space X’s Starship rockets blew up (but, hey, 50 percent didn’t!); researchers kept contact with Voyager 2 for the better part of 46 years (until that dropped call), and only one asteroid retrieval failed to deliver thanks to a canister that was screwed on just a bit too tight.

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How Boxing Day evolved from giving Christmas leftovers to servants to a retail frenzy

Every year on December 26 news outlets invariably feature stories about excited shoppers queuing up at the major department stores hoping to score bargains and heavily discounted products. While such reports portray the day’s sales as a time-honoured tradition, they are only a recent ritual.The origins of Boxing Day date back to the Middle Ages, when English masters gave their servants a day off after the Christmas celebrations. The servants would be given a box containing leftover food and treats to share with their families. In 1871 the day was formally recognised as a public holiday in the United Kingdom. Australian colonies later followed suit.

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Pediatricians See an Alarming Number of Noodle-Soup Burns

When the weather turns frigid, there is only one thing to do: make a pot of chicken-noodle soup. On the first cold afternoon in early December, I simmered a whole rotisserie chicken with fennel, dill, and orzo, then ladled it into bowls for a cozy family meal. Just as I thought we’d reached peak hygge, my five-month-old son suddenly grabbed my steaming bowl and tipped the soup all over himself. Piercing screams and a frenzied taxi ride to the pediatric emergency room ensued.My husband and I waited in the ER with our pantsless, crying child, racked with guilt. But when we told doctors and nurses what had happened, they seemed unperturbed. As they bandaged my son’s blistering skin, they explained that children get burned by soup—especially noodle soup—all the time. “Welcome to parenthood,” a nurse said, as we boarded an ambulance that transferred us to a nearby burn unit.

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Use Reflective Writing to Distill the Lessons of the Past Year

This form of journaling can give you profound insights into your professional and personal life.

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Psilocybin Could Significantly Help This Much-Understudied Condition

Psychedelic research has surged in recent years, sparking enthusiasm among clinicians, investors, and the general public. Clinical trials are indicating transformative outcomes for people struggling with mental illnesses like depression, post-traumatic stress disorder, and end-of-life anxiety.Recently, the spotlight is turning to eating disorders (ED), a group of severe and difficult-to-treat conditions. A survey revealed that 70 percent of people view psychedelic medicine as a promising avenue for EDs, and numerous reports depict positive results.

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The WW1 Christmas Truce: 'The war, for that moment, came to a standstill'

On Christmas Eve 1914, Rifleman Graham Williams, of the 5th London Rifle Brigade, stood out on sentry duty staring out anxiously across the wasteland of no man's land to the German trenches. He had already endured months of the brutal violence, bloodshed and destruction that would come to characterise World War One, when something remarkable happened."All of a sudden, lights appeared along the German trench. And I thought this is a funny thing. And then the Germans started singing 'Stille Nacht, heilige Nacht'. And I woke up, and all the sentries did the same thing, all woke up the other people to come along and see this and what the Earth is going on," he recalled, in the BBC radio show Witness History.More like this:- When the King announced his abdication to the nation- The moment that reshaped Europe- The 'alien invasion' that fooled the US

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A Hunt for Sterile Neutrinos Could Unlock Deep Cosmic Secrets

The Short-Baseline Neutrino Program will try to determine once and for all whether sterile neutrinos are realThe neutrino is perhaps the most fascinating inhabitant of the subatomic world. Nearly massless, this fundamental particle experiences only the weak nuclear force and the much fainter force of gravity. With no more than these feeble connections to other forms of matter, a neutrino can pass through the entire Earth with just a tiny chance of hitting an atom. Ghosts, who are said to be able to pass through walls, have nothing on neutrinos.

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Rift over N95 Use Puts Health Workers at Risk Again

Critics push back on proposed CDC guidelines that they say leave health care facilities free to cut corners on N95 masks and other measures that protect workers against airborne diseases such as COVIDA member of the medical staff listens as Montefiore Medical Center nurses call for N95 masks and other critical PPE to handle the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic on April 1, 2020 in New York.

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Your Age Won't Tell You Much About Your Health --

A new study suggests your biological age predicts dementia and stroke regardless of your actual age. As we journey through life, the risk of developing chronic diseases, including cancer, heart disease, and neurological disorders, increases significantly. However, while we all grow older chronologically at the same pace, biologically, our clocks can tick faster or slower. Relying solely on chronological age — the number of years since birth — is inadequate to measure the body’s internal biological age.

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People High in Emotional Intelligence Use the 'Cake Baking' Principle to Master Their Inner World and Take Charge

You can construct your emotional reality -- like you would bake a cake.

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The Top 10 MIT SMR Articles of 2023

The winter 2024 issue features a special report on sustainability, and provides insights on developing leadership skills, recognizing and addressing caste discrimination, and engaging in strategic planning and execution.The winter 2024 issue features a special report on sustainability, and provides insights on developing leadership skills, recognizing and addressing caste discrimination, and engaging in strategic planning and execution.ChatGPT debuted in November 2022 — and became the topic that no leader could ignore in 2023. What can generative AI tools like ChatGPT do and what can’t they do? Our most-read articles this year reflect the hunger among business leaders for practical advice on answering those and other AI-related questions, such as “Can you chat about business strategy with ChatGPT with productive results?” Our No. 1 article shares useful truths.

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Did Australia's boomerangs pave the way for flight?

The aircraft is one of the most significant developments of modern society, enabling people, goods and ideas to fly around the world far more efficiently than ever before. The first successful piloted flight took off in 1903 in North Carolina, but a 10,000-year-old hunting tool likely developed by Aboriginal Australians may have held the key to its lift-off. As early aviators discovered, the secret to flight is balancing the flow of air. Therefore, an aircraft's wings, tail or propeller blades are often shaped in a specially designed, curved manner called an aerofoil that lifts the plane up and allows it to drag or turn to the side as it moves through the air.

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Switching off from work has never been harder, or more necessary. Here's how to do it

In the hit dystopian TV series Severance, employees at biotech corporation Lumon Industries find it easy to separate work and home life. A computer chip is inserted in their brains to act as a “mindwipe”. They leave all thoughts of home behind while at work, and completely forget about their work when at home.While the show explores the pitfalls of such a split in consciousness, there’s no denying it’s a tantalising prospect to be able to “flick the off switch” and forget about work whenever you’re not actually supposed to be working.

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Science lives here: take a virtual tour of the Royal Institution in London

If you're a fan of science, and especially science history, no trip to London is complete without visiting the Royal Institution, browsing the extensive collection of artifacts housed in the Faraday Museum and perhaps taking in an evening lecture by one of the many esteemed scientists routinely featured—including the hugely popular annual Christmas lectures. (The lecture theater may have been overhauled to meet the needs of the 21st century but walking inside still feels a bit like stepping back through time.) So what better time than the Christmas season to offer a virtual tour of some of the highlights contained within the historic walls of 21 Albemarle Street?

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Beyond 'Die Hard': The 10 Best Christmas Action Movies, Ranked

To many, the holidays mean cuddling up around the fireplace with friends and family, snacking on eggnog and delicious cookies, and watching total carnage unfold. This December saw the long-awaited release of director John Woo’s new film, Silent Night. The Joel Kinnaman-led, dialogue-free thriller is a gnarly slice of vengeance cinema, and a bright and shiny new addition to the canon of unlikely Christmas movies. Silent Night is far from the first film to throw bullets and knives into the usual Christmas movie formula, so if you’re in the mood for a bloodier-than-usual holiday season, these are your 10 best options.

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'Doctor Who's Christmas Special Never Solved Its Biggest Mystery

When the world got their first image of Ncuti Gatwa’s 15th Doctor, he was dressed in a stunning checked suit paired with an orange shirt underneath. At the time, longtime fans noticed homages to the 2nd Doctor, the 4th Doctor, and more modern Doctors like the 10th, 11th, and 12th in this outfit. However, as revealed in Gatwa’s first full-length outing in Doctor Who —“The Church on Ruby Road” — this costume isn’t the one he debuts in. Or is it?Wrapped up in the hijinks of time-skipping goblins and the enigma of Ruby Sunday’s (Millie Gibson’s) birth parents, is also a very subtle time-travel mystery introduced very, very early on in the episode. And it’s all connected to that slick checked suit that the Doctor rocks for one — and only one — moment in this episode.

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