In Marco Rubio's vision of a perfect America, there are more welders than philosophers.

During Fox Business Network's Republican presidential debate Tuesday night in Milwaukee, the Florida senator said that what makes the U.S. special is the "millions and millions of people who are not rich," but through "hard work and perseverance are able to be successful." The problem, he said, is the economy does not provide jobs that pay enough. "If I thought raising the minimum wage was the best way to help people increase their pay, I would be all for it," Rubio said. "But it isn't. In the 21st century, it's a disaster. If you raise the minimum wage, you're gonna make people more expensive than a machine and that means all this automation that is replacing jobs and people right now is only going to be accelerated."

To make the United States more friendly to business owners, Rubio said there needs to be tax and regulatory reform, the debt needs be controlled, and ObamaCare has to be repealed and replaced. He also wants easier and faster access to job training programs. "For the life of me, I don't know why we have stigmatized vocational education," he said. "Welders make more money than philosophers; we need more welders and less philosophers."

That's not necessarily true. Lydia Frank, senior editorial director at PayScale, told The Atlantic her company has heard "again and again" that employers "value creative problem solving and the ability to deal with ambiguity in their new hires, and I can't think of another major that would better prepare you with those skills than the study of of philosophy." Famous — and wealthy — philosophy majors include PayPal co-founder Peter Thiel, who majored in 20th century philosophy at Stanford; hedge fund manager George Soros, who studied under Karl Popper at the London School of Economics; investor Carl Icahn, whose 1957 thesis was titled "The Problem of Formulating an Adequate Explication of the Empiricist Criterion of Meaning"; and Rubio's own rival, former HP CEO Carly Fiorina, who was a medieval history and philosophy major at Stanford University. It looks like it might be time to finally put the tired trope "there's no money in a liberal arts education" to rest. Catherine Garcia

The U.S. Justice Department sued Volkswagen on Monday for billions of dollars in penalties over claims that the automaker installed devices meant to evade fuel emissions standards in nearly 600,000 diesel engine vehicles, ABC News reports.

The complaint the U.S. filed is civil as opposed to criminal, and doesn't carry any charges for Volkswagen executives — factors The New York Times notes may reflect poorly on an Obama administration newly committed to cracking down on corporate crime.

In September, Volkswagen admitted to using so-called defeat devices in 11 million of their vehicles worldwide. In the U.S., vehicles with the cheat devices installed were said to have emitted pollutants at up to 40 times the legal level. Julie Kliegman

The seventh row of the periodic table is now complete.

Four as-yet-unnamed chemical elements — labeled 113, 115, 117, and 118 — mark the first additions to the table since 2011. The elements, which are all classified as "superheavy" because they have more than 104 protons, were officially acknowledged by the U.S.-based International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry on Dec. 30.

"To scientists, this is of greater value than an Olympic gold medal," said Ryoji Noyori, a Nobel laureate in chemistry.

Next up, scientists say: discovering element 119. Becca Stanek

Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) criticized the armed protesters who have occupied a federal wildlife refuge building in Oregon since Saturday, NBC News reports. The group, led by two sons of Cliven Bundy, an anti-government Nevada rancher, has vowed to stay in the building until the federal government turns over the land to locals.

"Every one of us has a constitutional right to protest, to speak our minds," Cruz told reporters in Iowa on Monday. "But we don't have a constitutional right to use force and violence, and to threaten force and violence against others. So it is our hope that the protesters there will stand down peaceably, that there will not be a violent confrontation."

Many of Cruz's opponents for the Republican presidential nomination have stayed silent on the issue, but Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) also weighed in Monday, telling an Iowa radio station, "You cannot be lawless."

On Monday morning, The Washington Post reports, the FBI took over the response to the armed occupation from local and state authorities. Julie Kliegman

Ride-sharing service Lyft announced Monday that General Motors (GM) has invested $500 million in the company — roughly half of Lyft's latest $1 billion venture financing round. GM's investment in the growing company is more than just monetary. The New York Times reports that GM will be working with Lyft to develop an "autonomous on-demand network of self-driving cars," and will also set up a "series of short-term car rental hubs" where people who don't own cars can pick one up and earn money driving for Lyft. GM will also take a seat on Lyft's board.

The partnership aims to put Lyft and GM in competition with other innovative companies like Google, Tesla, and Uber, all of which are already devoting resources to developing self-driving cars.

"We see the future of personal mobility as connected, seamless, and autonomous," GM President Dan Ammann said in a statement. "With GM and Lyft working together, we believe we can successfully implement this vision more rapidly." Becca Stanek

Remember the 90s, when your snarky friends suggested you solve all of your problems by taking a "chill pill"? Atlas Obscura does, too, and they just took a fascinating look at the history of the term.

In the 1800s, multiple books featured different recipes for a "chill pill," you could make at home, suggesting it'd relieve your chills when taken multiple times per day. The wonderfully named Non-Secret Formulas included a recipe for quinine, cinchona, and oil of black pepper.

The actual chill pill, then, was intended to have the exact opposite effect on a person from what more modern users were going for with the figurative term a century later — essentially, "Cool off."

Any connection between the two uses of "chill pill" throughout history, slang lexicographer Jonathon Green told AO, is “very felicitous and a rather charming coincidence." Julie Kliegman

Donald Trump didn't always despise Megyn Kelly. Before the Fox News host drew the ire of Trump when she pressed him about past sexist remarks at Fox News' Republican presidential debate — noting that he has called women "fat pigs, dogs, slobs, and disgusting animals" — Kelly tells Vanity Fair that the real estate magnate was trying to get on her good side:

In the past, she says, "he would send me press clippings about me that he would just sign 'Donald Trump.' And he called from time to time to compliment a segment. I didn’t know why he was doing that. And then when he announced that he was running for president, it became more clear. But I can't be wooed. I was never going to love him, and I was never going to hate him." [Vanity Fair]

Read the full cover story on Kelly at Vanity Fair. Becca Stanek

North Korea leader Kim Jong Un and his predecessors reportedly buried papers and photographs underground, two anonymous North Korean sources confirmed to Daily NK, a Seoul-based news site.

"Initially they store it in a Pyongyang archive, and after some time has passed they will pick out what requires permanent storage and then transfer papers and photographs to the underground storage center in Jagang Province," one source said.

The papers, which have reportedly been stored in the guarded, temperature-controlled archives starting in 1974, apparently include detailed records on who Kim Jong Un, Kim Jong Il, and Kim Il Song have punished and killed for which crimes. Julie Kliegman