Atlantic Trivia reaches Week 3, which is by definition the most trivial of all: The word trivia originally referred to places where three (tri-) roads (-via) met in a crossing. If those slouch Romans had been more industrious builders, we might be playing quintivia or even septivia today.
That three-way intersection semantically drifted to mean “an open place,” which morphed into “public,” which turned into “commonplace”—hence, trivial. Read on for questions that are anything but.

Restlessness is deeply rooted in American mythology. We are a country of pilgrims, engaged in a lifelong search for what Ralph Waldo Emerson called an “original relation to the universe”—a unique understanding of the world that doesn’t rely on the traditions or teachings of past generations. Those who internalize this expectation will walk, trek, and seek—anything to shed an inherited skin and find an undiscovered self they can inhabit. If only skin, inherited or not, were so easy to shed.

Editor’s Note: Is anything ailing, torturing, or nagging at you? Are you beset by existential worries? Every Tuesday, James Parker tackles readers’ questions. Tell him about your lifelong or in-the-moment problems at dearjames@theatlantic.com.
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Dear James,
Every Thursday for the past decade, I’ve sat with the same group of guys for a beer after work. I don’t think any of them has changed a bit in 10 years. Nothing.

It was a strange weekend for employees of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, to say the least. On Friday, hundreds of workers at the agency, many of whom have been furloughed since the federal government shut down on October 1, found out they were being fired as part of widespread layoffs across federal agencies. Less than a day later, a curt follow-up email landed in many of their inboxes informing them that they weren’t being let go after all. No explanation, no apology.

Today at 9:30 a.m., Air Force One made a low pass over Tel Aviv on its way into Ben Gurion Airport. The flight had more in common with an astronomical portent—a medieval comet, say, and all the swings in mood that might entail among the public—than a mere act of aviation. Israelis had stayed up for days in hopes that hostages would be released. The sight of the 747 meant: This is really happening. Within a few hours, it had happened.