Radio Atlantic

With all the noise around Donald Trump’s nominees, it’s easy to lose sight of his administration’s bigger plan: placing people who are unfailingly loyal to Trump in key positions, so that the real power lies with the White House. The Atlantic staff writer Tom Nichols explains why Trump’s picks to oversee the military and intelligence community could be two of the most consequential—and dangerous.

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We hash out the “Democrats are too woke” theory with New York Rep. Ritchie Torres, who tweeted the day after the election: “The far left is a gift to Donald Trump.” Torres, who represents a district that is over 50 percent Latino, explains why he believes Democrats need to shift their position on immigration if they don’t want urban working class neighborhoods to keep shifting to the right. 

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In the last few months of his campaign, Trump was free and open with his dictatorial impulses, as he talked about punishing “enemies from within.” Now that he’s won, have we crossed the line into a different kind of country? 

Staff writers Anne Applebaum and McKay Coppins help us learn how to find the line. Does this resounding win mean the electorate gave Trump a mandate to act on all his impulses? Will he make good on his campaign threats? And how will we know? 

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One thing tomorrow’s election will test is Americans’ appetite for chaos, particularly the kind that Donald Trump has been exhibiting in the last few months of his campaign. After weeks of running a disciplined campaign, Trump’s advisers lost control of their candidate, the Atlantic staff writer Tim Alberta reported this week. Trump grew restless and bored and drifted off script in his campaign appearances. During a summer interview with the National Association of Black Journalists, for example, he mused aloud about Kamala Harris, “I don’t know. Is she Indian or is she Black?” From the perspective of his advisers, Trump’s string of offensive public statements needlessly alienated potential voters. Members of Trump’s campaign staff told Alberta that they became disillusioned about their ability to rein in their candidate and left the campaign.

Will this unleashed version of Trump affect the election outcome? In this week’s episode of Radio Atlantic, we talk with Alberta and another Atlantic staff writer, Mark Leibovich, about how candidate Trump transformed over the summer, how Kamala Harris’s campaign reacted, where each campaign stands now, and what it means for the election. Alberta and Leibovich also offer tips on how to manage your inner chaos while watching the election results.

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On the campaign trail, Donald Trump has mused, a few times, about throwing reporters in jail if they refuse to leak their sources and taking away broadcast licenses of networks he’s deemed unfriendly. 

These last couple of weeks, we’ve had clear signals that maybe his threats are having an impact when both The Washington Post and the Los Angeles Times pulled their endorsements of Kamala Harris. 

We talk to Jeffrey Goldberg, editor in chief of The Atlantic, about navigating both pressures from owners and threats from the administration. And we discuss the urgent question of whether the media, pummeled and discredited for years by Trump, is ready for a second Trump administration.

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The way Donald Trump talks about January 6 has evolved over time. Directly after the insurrection, he condemned the rioters, although he added that they were “very special.” For the next few years, he played around with different themes, implying the protests were peaceful or that the people jailed for their actions that day were “political prisoners.” 

But these descriptions are mild compared to the outrageous ways he’s been talking about January 6 in these weeks leading up to the election. Recently, he described the day as “love and peace” and upped the metaphor from political prisoners to Japanese Americans in internment camps during World War II. Why is he leaning so hard into the political revisionism? And what exactly should we be afraid of?

In this episode of Radio Atlantic, we talk to Representative Jamie Raskin of Maryland, who has a unique view of that day. Raskin explains what January 6, 2025, might look like and what is historically unique about Trump’s claims. And I ask Raskin the question I’ve been wondering: When might it be appropriate to let January 6 go?

Listen to We Live Here Now, a new podcast series from The Atlantic hosted by Lauren Ober and Hanna Rosin: https://www.theatlantic.com/podcasts/we-live-here-now/

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Autocrats often dare their followers to believe absurd claims, as a kind of loyalty test, because “humor and fear can be quite close together sometimes,” says Peter Pomerantsev, a Soviet-born British journalist and co-host of Autocracy in America, an Atlantic podcast series.   

In this episode of Radio Atlantic, we talk to Pomerantsev and Atlantic staff writer and co-host Anne Applebaum about how to detect the signs of autocracy, because, as they say, if you can’t spot them, you won’t be able to root them out. We also analyze the events of the upcoming election through their eyes and talk about how large swaths of a population come to believe lies, what that means, and how it might be undone. 

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North Carolina has voted for a Democratic president only once since the 1970s. But the party’s dream to flip the state never dies—and in fact, could be realized this year. Polls show the presidential race in North Carolina is dead even, and Democrats are making a massive effort to reach more rural voters. “Doug Emhoff should just get a pied-à-terre here, at this point,” says David Graham, an Atlantic political writer who lives in Durham, North Carolina. Donald Trump can’t win without the state. And if Vice President Harris loses Wisconsin, Michigan, or Pennsylvania, she’ll need North Carolina’s 16 electoral votes.

In this week’s Radio Atlantic, we do a deep dive into North Carolina politics, culture, and scandals with Graham and Atlantic senior editor Vann Newkirk, who grew up in Rocky Mount. If the state goes for Harris, will it feel more solidly new South? And could our national election really turn on a local scandal and a tragic flood?

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The American family continuously evolves. People are marrying later, and having fewer children. Gay people get married. People can publicly swear off marriage altogether without being ostracized. But in politics the attachment to the traditionally nuclear family seems unwavering, and especially this year. 

As Republicans are losing support among women, more candidates are leaning on their wives and daughters to soften their image. So strong is the pressure that one candidate in Virginia posed with his friend’s wife and daughters and left the impression he was married. 

Why is there this enduring notion that there is just one version of the “ideal marriage”? 

We talk to Jessica Grose, a New York Times columnist and author of Screaming on the Inside. Grose pinpoints the origin of the American fixation on the nuclear family. And she explains how the candidates’ evoking of this ideal gets in the way of supporting policies that might actually help families 

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One prevailing stereotype of a political assassin is someone with strong convictions. Another stereotype conjures up James Bond, a professional with a silencer acting on higher orders. 

But Thomas Matthew Crooks and Ryan Routh, the two men who attempted to assassinate former President Donald Trump earlier this year, represent an evolution in the idea of this kind of attacker. Nothing in their backgrounds turned up consistent themes about their political beliefs. Neither left behind a manifesto or seemed to have connections to any group or movement. 

We talk with Atlantic staff writer Tom Nichols about the nature of these modern would-be assassins. Why would this era of seemingly more prevalent political violence produce an apolitical would-be assassin? What’s the difference between an individual and a government attempting an assassination? Why are assassination attempts more common in certain eras of history? And have the stereotypes about assassins simply reflected a desire to impose a taxonomy on chaotic minds?

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Rachel had a hit song. Then it became inextricably linked with a failed presidential campaign.

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Kamala Harris expertly manipulated Trump. It won her the debate. Can it win her the White House? Staff writers Elaine Godfrey and Mark Leibovich to explore the potential long term effects of Tuesday's drama.

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After successive heat waves across the country this summer, people finally found an unexpected source of relief: the neck fan. Consumer-product geniuses made the latest model look like Beats headphones, and suddenly they were on many hot, hot necks. Why did the neck fan take off? Does it actually cool you down or just make you feel cooler?

We talk with Saahil Desai, who notices new and interesting things at the intersection of technology and consumer culture. Desai brings his own beloved neck fan to the studio and answers the question: Of all wearable technology, why did this one manage to break through social norms? And what does this mean for the future of an industry that has promised a lot of innovation but struggled to introduce genuinely new wearables into people’s daily lives?

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Democrats are lately employing a strategy against Donald Trump that he has been using effectively against his opponents for years: mockery. Where did this strategy come from? Will it remain effective? And can it backfire?

We talk with the Atlantic staff writer David Graham, who was at the Democratic convention and also covers Trump. And we talk with a surprising muse for the politics of mockery: Conservative lawyer and activist George Conway has been using targeted mockery against Trump for years, with unusual success. 

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The patients had tried everything. Except ketamine.  

This is the third and final part of Scripts, a new three-part miniseries from Radio Atlantic about the pills we take for our brains and the stories we tell ourselves about them.

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Cooper thought he understood how his psych meds were affecting him. There was a lot he didn’t know.

This is part two of a new three-part miniseries from Radio Atlantic—Scripts—about the pills we take for our brains and the stories we tell ourselves about them.

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One medication could help end the opioid crisis. Why are so few people taking it?

This episode is the first in a new three-part miniseries from Radio Atlantic—Scripts—about the pills we take for our brains and the stories we tell ourselves about them.

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Liat Beinin Atzili was kidnapped on October 7 and spent more than 50 days in a Gazan home, We spoke with her in Washington, where she traveled to talk with President Joe Biden, about grief and about the war.

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After a 2018 Supreme Court decision kicked off a wave of legalization across America, sports gambling has become an integral part of how fans consume sports and how leagues make money. But with high-profile athletes caught up in betting scandals, a windfall welcomed by the sports industry also poses serious risks to it. 

Sports journalist and Atlantic contributor Jemele Hill joins guest host Adam Harris to discuss whether leagues can manage the mess of banning athletes who gamble, all while advertising sports betting. And what if any impact the spike in gambling will have on a new generation of fans.

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Joe Biden has announced he’ll no longer seek reelection. With a little over 100 days left until the vote, he’s endorsed Vice President Kamala Harris as his replacement. 

Staff writer Franklin Foer wrote a book on the Biden administration. And staff writer Elaina Plott Calabro profiled Harris for the magazine. They come together at this extraordinary moment to share their knowledge of the two politicians and talk about what happens next and what to expect from Harris as the presidential candidate.

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The Republican Party is gathered in Wisconsin to renominate Donald Trump for president. The convention follows a near-miss assassination attempt on Trump and the announcement of Ohio Senator J.D. Vance as his pick for running mate. All the while, President Biden faces calls from within the Democratic Party for him to step aside.

Staff writer Tim Alberta has chronicled his fair share of GOP campaigns, but this one is unlike any he’s seen. He joins guest host Adam Harris from the RNC convention hall to give an inside view of the party and campaign that are planning for a landslide win in November.

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America is not new to political violence, but the near-assassination of Donald Trump is an attack without comparison in 21st-century politics. How do  process it? What happens next? And how true are the claims, as President Joe Biden put it in the immediate aftermath of the shooting, that “this is not who we are?”

For this bonus episode of Radio Atlantic, guest host Adam Harris speaks with staff writer Anne Applebaum and executive editor Adrienne LaFrance. Both have written and reported extensively about political violence in America and abroad.

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After his disastrous debate performance in June, President Biden faced calls from Democratic lawmakers and power brokers to step aside. But with the president firmly committed to staying in, what recourse does the party have? How would the Democratic Party replace the presumptive nominee? Would such an extreme step be possible? And would it ultimately help against Trump? 

Guest host Adam Harris is joined by staff writers Mark Leibovich and Elaine Godfrey to discuss. 

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The prevailing narrative of remote work has often been boiled down to: Workers love it, and bosses hate it. But according to Natalia Emanuel, a labor economist at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, it may not be that simple.

Emanuel co-authored a study, looking at software engineers at an unnamed Fortune 500 company where half of the workers were functionally remote. What she found was that there were varying tradeoffs for each scenario—working remotely or working in the office—depending on an employee’s age, experience, gender, and more.

So was the Great Remote-Work Experiment a success? That’s what the first episode of The Atlantic’s Good on Paper podcast—hosted by Jerusalem Demsas—dives into.

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Parliamentary elections on July 4th look bleak for Britain’s ruling Conservative Party. The Tories will almost certainly lose power for the first time in 14 years. And lose big. Polls show they could see the largest swing between the main parties in modern history. Rishi Sunak could possibly become the first sitting prime minister to lose their own seat in a general election.

So what have Conservatives done wrong? What has Labour done right? And as 2024 repeats 2016 with another pair of pivotal U.K. and U.S. votes, what can Americans look to learn from Britain?

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For years now, the fanciest places in air travel keep getting fancier. Airport lounges have become bigger, nicer, and far more ubiquitous than only a few years ago. They’ve gone from a nice place to wait between flights to full-blown luxury hideaways complete with free spa treatments. What happened?

Amanda Mull, former Atlantic staff writer and explainer of all things consumer culture, tells the curious history behind the airport lounge and why—even if you never set foot in one—you’re still paying for them.

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Humanity’s transition to life online is disorienting, but perhaps not without comparison. According to the researcher danah boyd, people faced similar challenges in the transition to city life, meaning that the history of urbanization can offer lessons for humankind’s more recent mass digital migration. And if the rules and ways of cities have become clearer over the years, maybe there’s hope that the same can be said for life online.

Boyd’s work is the focus of a recent episode of The Atlantic’s podcast How to Know What’s Real, with co-hosts Megan Garber and Andrea Valdez. This week, Radio Atlantic is showcasing that episode, with an introduction by host Hanna Rosin.

Listen and subscribe to How to Know What's Real at any of these links: 

Apple Podcasts | Spotify | YouTube | Pocket Casts

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Later this summer, the Supreme Court will rule on City of Grants Pass v. Johnson, one of the most important cases on homelessness to come up in a long time. The court will rule on whether someone can be fined, jailed, or ticketed for sleeping or camping in a public space when they’re homeless and have nowhere else to go.

We talk to Atlantic writer and Good on Paper host Jerusalem Demsas about the case and what it may or may not solve. Homelessness has exploded since the 1980s, mostly in cities where housing costs have gone up. Criminalizing—or not criminalizing—people sleeping in public does not change the fact that many people have no other option, and that people who do have places to sleep can’t help but notice their cities have a huge homelessness problem.

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Sasha Velour won RuPaul's Drag Race with her spectacular rose-petal lip sync. She wrote and illustrated The Big Reveal: An Illustrated Manifesto of Drag, drew a New Yorker cover, and sells out almost every show of her New York revue, NightGowns. So why is she taking her act down to Murfreesboro, Tennessee, and Bartlesville, Oklahoma? We talk to Velour about this season of her HBO reality show, We're Here.

At a moment when drag is both beloved and reviled, a powerful cultural force and a target, we ask Velour what exactly she's looking for in those places, and what essential truth about drag is hidden in the show's title.

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After months of struggle with little movement, the war in Ukraine may be nearing a crucial point. With American aid stalled for months, the fight has not been going well for Ukraine. Weapons and ammunition are once again on the way after the long-delayed package passed last month. But will it be enough in time? Russia has broken through the lines around Ukraine’s second-largest city and appears ready to threaten a wider offensive.

Atlantic staff writer Anne Applebaum joins to discuss the state of the war and how the fight extends well beyond the battlefield itself. Her June cover story in The Atlantic chronicles the “new propaganda war” that Russia, China, and other illiberal states are waging on the democratic world, and how that war can shape the fate of Ukraine.

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Researchers have been hard at work on a number of male contraceptives that could hit the market in the next couple of decades. Options include a hormone-free birth control pill, an injection that accomplishes the same thing as a vasectomy but is easily reversible, and a topical gel men can rub on their shoulders that doesn’t affect mood or libido. 

There is a recurring theme in the research on male contraceptives: easy, convenient, minimal side effects. Which is very much not the focus of women’s contraceptive options. What changes in a future in which male contraceptives are readily available, and a routine part of men’s health care? We talk to staff writer Katie Wu.

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What happens when voices can be copied so well they can fool friends, family… and voters?

Staff writer Charlie Warzel has followed the explosion of AI technology with a mix of fascination and fear. DALL-E, Midjourney, Chat-GPT. New leaps in AI tech seem to happen every month now. Recently, he narrowed in on AI voice cloning for a feature for The Atlantic.

He and host Hanna Rosin cloned their voices and tested it out before a live audience at the Cascade PBS Ideas Festival. What are the promises of the technology? And what are the perils?

Related Atlantic Podcast: How to Know What's Real 

Subscribe here: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | YouTube | | Pocket Casts

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Staff writer Zoë Schlanger is the proud owner of a petunia that glows in the dark. But she doesn’t just appreciate the novelty houseplant as work of science. Zoë sees its glow as a way to help us appreciate plants as more alive, more vital, and more complex than we humans typically do. Because in recent years, some scientists have reopened a provocative debate: Are plants intelligent?

They’ve devised  experiments that break down elements of this big broad question: Can plants be said to hear? Sense touch? Communicate? Make decisions? Recognize kin? 

Schlanger is the author of the upcoming book: The Light Eaters: How the Unseen World of Plant Intelligence Offers a New Understanding of Life in Earth. How could a thing without a brain be considered intelligent? Schlanger has spoken with dozens of botanists, from the most renegade to the most cautious, and she reports back on the state of the revolution in thinking. 

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Writer Gary Shteyngart set sail on the inaugural voyage of the biggest cruise ship ever built—the Icon of the Seas—in search of the "real" America. (And maybe to throw a great suite party along the way.) What he found instead, like many a great novelist before him, was a far more isolating experience. Shteyngart recounts his "seven agonizing nights" aboard a giant floating mall full of memorable characters, bad entertainment, even worse food—and the ever-present desire to keep up.

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The Stormy Daniels case may have a less serious fact pattern. But it might turn out to be the one chance to hold Donald Trump accountable for election interference. Atlantic staff writer David Graham explains the importance of the case and how Trump might actually be enjoying this new form of courtroom campaigning.

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Is having a Birkin bag ... a right? Earlier this year, two California residents filed a class-action lawsuit against the French luxury design company Hermès. Their grievance was that although they could afford a coveted Birkin bag made by the company, they could not buy one.

We talk to Atlantic staff writer Amanda Mull about the lawsuit and the current state of the luxury market. What do we actually want from luxury these days? Is there even such a thing anymore as a rare luxury good? And what handbag is Amanda carrying?

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Where were you for the 2017 total eclipse? Where will you be this year? And where will you be for the next one in 2045? Hanna talks to Atlantic staff writer Marina Koren about the eclipse as a peculiar event: a beautiful if not slightly unsettling moment that is also a strange marker of time.

And we hear from retired astrophysicist Fred Espenak who's seen more than 20 total eclipses in his life and wonders which eclipse might end up being his last.

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Atlantic political reporter John Hendrickson has had a stutter since he was a kid. Recently he heard Donald Trump make fun of Joe Biden’s stutter, and he noticed that the audience laughed.

Hendrickson’s working theory has been that disability is apolitical, and he wondered what Trump supporters actually feel about him making fun of people with disabilities. We go to a Trump rally in Dayton, Ohio and poll the crowd. 

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Hanna talks to her child Jacob about the thing they've argued the most about: being on their phone.

Then, Hanna sits down with social psychologist Jonathan Haidt. In his new book, The Anxious Generation: How the Great Rewiring of Childhood Is Causing an Epidemic of Mental Illness, Haidt argues there is a direct tie between the wide distribution of smartphones and a rise in depression, anxiety, and loneliness among young people.

After which, Hanna asks Jacob: Did I ruin your life?

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Sarah Osmundson knows how to talk about abortion. She’s learned over the course of her career as a maternal-fetal medicine doctor that some patients are comfortable with the option, and others would never consider it. 

Osmundson is a physician in Tennessee, a state with one of the strictest abortion bans in the country following the Supreme Court’s 2022 Dobbs decision. The procedure is illegal at any stage of pregnancy, with limited exceptions to protect the life and health of the mother. 

But which cases meet those exceptions? The risks and outcomes of pregnancy aren’t easy to predict, especially for the types of patients Osmundson treats. After Dobbs, her hospital—and others around the country—formed what’s informally known as an “abortion committee” to decide if a patient meets the state’s exceptions. In this episode, Osmundson brings us the rare view inside these deliberations.

Further Reading:

“Their States Banned Abortion. Doctors Now Say They Can’t Give Women Potentially Lifesaving Care” by Kavitha Surana

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We talk to Oscar-nominated sound designer Johnnie Burn about how he created the soundscape of horrors for The Zone of Interest. Burn explains how he collected real sounds from the streets of Europe and mixed them into a soundscape of cruelty happening just out of view. We also do a close analysis of key scenes from the film. "You can shut your eyes, but you can't shut your ears," Burn says.

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The original “Burn Book” from Mean Girls was used to spread rumors and gossip about other girls (and some boys) at North Shore High School. Kara Swisher’s new memoir, Burn Book, tells true stories about men (and some women) who ruled Silicon Valley. 

Swisher recounts some of the most cringey moments of the early dot-com boom, including the strange antics at parties she never really wanted to go to. But mostly she traces how the idiosyncrasies, blind spots, and enthusiasms of these tech titans have created the world we live in now.

Get more from your favorite Atlantic voices when you subscribe. You’ll enjoy unlimited access to Pulitzer-winning journalism, from clear-eyed analysis and insight on breaking news to fascinating explorations of our world. Subscribe today at TheAtlantic.com/podsub.

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Dr. Richard Friedman has been teaching and seeing patients for more than 35 years. Recently, he wrote about the idea that, if therapy has become less of a targeted intervention and more of a weekly upkeep, it might be time to quit. In this episode, Friedman discusses the benefits of quitting therapy, and why it might be hard for some people to contemplate doing just that.

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How would life be different if we centered it on our friends? In her new book, The Other Significant Others, Rhaina Cohen visits the extremes of friendship, where pairs describe each other as “soulmates” and make major life decisions in tandem with a friend. We talk to Cohen about the lost history of friendship and why she cringes when couples at the altar describe each other as their “best friend.”

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In this week’s episode of Radio Atlantic, Adrienne LaFrance, the executive editor of The Atlantic, names and explains the political ideology of the unelected leaders of Silicon Valley. They are “leading an antidemocratic, illiberal movement” she calls: techno-authoritarianism. 

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After the deadliest high school shooting in U.S. history, in 2018, a video circulated showing the school resource officer taking cover behind the wall. He became known as the “Coward of Broward,” and was tried for child neglect. We talk to police reporter Jamie Thompson about what became of him. And what we are leaving out when we reduce school shootings to stories of courage or cowardice. 

Get more from your favorite Atlantic voices when you subscribe. You’ll enjoy unlimited access to Pulitzer-winning journalism, from clear-eyed analysis and insight on breaking news to fascinating explorations of our world. Subscribe today at TheAtlantic.com/podsub.

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This episode originally aired August 2023.

Many people, especially those dealing with long COVID, suffer from fatigue. But not common, everyday tiredness—it’s more like a total body crash that can be triggered by the smallest exertion, something as simple as taking a shower. It’s serious, and yet many doctors have a hard time taking it seriously.

Ed Yong, a former staff writer at The Atlantic whose reporting on COVID won a Pulitzer Prize, explains how people with fatigue can feel, and what experts actually know about the condition and how to treat it.

Read Ed's story on fatigue, long COVID, and ME / CFS here: "Fatigue Can Shatter a Person"

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Editor Saahil Desai walks us through the surprising history of the barcode, from its origins in the grocery business to its role in remaking our consumer habits and appetites. The bar code allowed grocers to stock infinite varieties of everything, which led us to expect infinite varieties and made us the shoppers we are today. Both the grocery shelves, and our inner selves, would be unrecognizable to the grocery magnates of the ‘70’s. 

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Donald Trump has an “overwhelming lead” in the Iowa caucus but he is not the sure winner. There is still a narrow window to change the course of the election, although that window is only open for about a month more. I talk to political reporters Elaine Godfrey—who is headed to Iowa—and Mark Leibovich about the genuine possibility of something surprising happening in Iowa and in the Republican primaries in the month ahead. We discuss the path, “more like a deer trail,” says Godfrey, for Nikki Haley to win the nomination. And we discuss what the near future looks like if she does, or doesn’t.

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The illusion persists, despite all evidence. Americans are pessimistic about the economic future. They feel worse off than their parent’s generation. Poll after poll shows that at best, only twenty percent of Americans say the economy is doing better than it was a year ago. 

More than twenty percent of Americans are doing better than they were a year ago, by many measures. Unemployment is lower, wages are growing, inflation is declining. This is true for Americans across ages and classes. These are tangible improvements in household income that should be cheering people up. They are not. Why? What trick is our minds playing on us that we can’t feel hopeful?

Gilad Edelman, a senior editor at The Atlantic who covers the economy, answers the mystery.

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For the holiday, Radio Atlantic is sharing the first episode of the Atlantic podcast How to Keep Time. Co-hosts Becca Rashid and the Atlantic contributing writer Ian Bogost examine our relationship with time and what we can do to reclaim it.

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We’re in the coldest season. We’re in the shopping season. We’re in the season of hygge. All the cues point to buying yourself a new cozy sweater. Don’t do it, until you hear what Atlantic staff writer Amanda Mull has to say about the cratering quality of knitwear. For years I’ve wondered why my sweaters pilled so quickly, or why they suffocated me, or smelled like tires. And then I read Mull’s recent story, “Your Sweaters Are Garbage.” It turns out that international trade agreements, greedy entrepreneurs, and my own lack of willpower have conspired to erode my satisfaction.

In this episode, Hanna talks with Amanda Mull—who writes the Atlantic column “Material World”—about why so many consumer goods have declined in quality over the last two decades. As always, Mull illuminates the stories the fashion world works hard to obscure, about the quality of fabrics, the nature of working conditions, and about how to subvert a system that wants you to keep buying more. “I have but one human body,” she says. “I can only wear so many sweaters.”

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How easily could a reelected President Trump bend the military to his will? We talk to Tom Nichols, a staff writer at The Atlantic who taught military officers for 25 years, about this dangerous step in establishing a dictatorship. He explains how close Trump came to achieving these goals in his last term and how surprisingly few effective checks are in place. And Nichols talks about his personal nightmare scenario. 

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How did evangelical Christians shift from being reluctant supporters of Trump to among his most passionate defenders? How did some evangelicals, historically suspicious of politicians, develop a “fanatical cult-like attachment” to Donald Trump? And what happened to the evangelical movement,  as some bought into Trump’s vision of America and others recoiled?

A few weeks before the Iowa caucuses we talk to Tim Alberta, a staff writer at the Atlantic and author of the new book The Kingdom, the Power and the Glory: American Evangelicals in an Age of Extremism.

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The story of a real-life miracle. 

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Thanksgiving is often a time of disagreements big and small. In this episode we talk to Amanda Ripley (author of High Conflict: Why We Get Trapped and How We Get Out) and Utah Governor Spencer Cox. They explain that conflict shouldn’t be avoided—and that there’s a way to fight with partners and political opponents that’s actually good for us.

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Hollywood is getting back on its feet now that the Screen Actors Guild and Writers Guild of America strikes are over. But they've revealed that, once again, Hollywood is going through an identity crisis.

The streaming revolution is looking untenable. Many studios are losing money and viewers are overwhelmed. What were the hard truths revealed by the strike? And what will the next year of entertainment look like?

Hanna Rosin talks with Atlantic writers David Sims and Shirley Li about the coming realignment in Hollywood and what we should all expect.

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Tech evangelist. Libertarian dreamer. Republican megadonor. Peter Thiel is many things. As Atlantic staff writer Barton Gellman puts it in his new profile of Thiel, he is “the purest distillation of Silicon Valley’s reigning ethos.”

Across several interviews, Gellman learned what’s driven Thiel, even through what he sees as his many disappointments. There are no floating cities. Humans can’t live forever. And Donald Trump did not turn out to be the revolutionary Thiel had hoped he might be.

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Marwan Bardawil’s job is to provide water in Gaza. This is difficult in normal times, nearly impossible now, and yet critical. Without enough clean water, people get dehydrated, hygiene deteriorates, sewage backs up, and deadly diseases can spike. In a series of phone calls over a critical week, we track how this water engineer tries to keep his community, and his family from tipping further into disaster.

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After Jordan Peele directed the movie Get Out in 2017, he unlocked the genre of Black horror, which mixed classic horror with the modern Black experience. In a conversation with Peele and best selling sci-fi writer N.K. Jemisin, we talk about the purpose of horror and what happens when Black writers and directors get to create the monster. Jemisin wrote the first story in Peele's new collection Out There Screaming: An Anthology of New Black Horror.

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Nearly two weeks after the Hamas attack on Israel, Atlantic staff writer Graeme Wood is on the ground in Jerusalem. We talk to Graeme about what he’s hearing from people— namely a combination of anger, fear, mourning, and a desire for revenge. And we talk to him about what happens when a nation makes wartime decisions in this state of mind, and where the conflict will go from here. 

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Israeli journalist Amir Tibon and his family live along the Israel-Gaza border. He told Radio Atlantic the dramatic story of how his family hid out from Hamas terrorists. And how they were unexpectedly rescued.

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The Biden administration has had some monumental successes: a complicated vaccine rollout, a significant infrastructure investment, and the lowest unemployment rate in 50 years. But polls show that none of those wins are penetrating the public consciousness. Radio Atlantic host Hanna Rosin and staff writers Elaina Plott Calabro and Franklin Foer explore why we, the voters, just can’t seem to hear our politicians.

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Ozempic and other drugs like it are being heralded as game changers for weight loss. Radio Atlantic host Hanna Rosin talks to Atlantic staff writer Olga Khazan about what it means that this medical intervention has arrived at a time when our society seems to be easing away from fat shaming and moving toward celebrating all body types. 

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 When Jenisha Watts, a senior editor at The Atlantic, went home to Kentucky to interview her family, she was “looking to get rid of the shame.” She had a son now, and she wanted to be able to tell him the truth about her upbringing—both the good and the bad. But she was not quite prepared for what Jenisha the journalist would dig up about Jenisha from Kentucky.

This episode of Radio Atlantic was produced by Jocelyn Frank and edited by Claudine Ebeid. It was engineered by Rob Smierciak and fact checked by Michelle Ciarrocca. The managing editor of Atlantic Audio is Andrea Valdez. 

If you or someone you know are looking for support please call the National Sexual Assault Hotline at 1-800-656-4673

The Atlantic's September 2023 cover story "I Never Called Her Momma," was written by Jenisha Watts.

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Making small talk can be hard—especially when you’re not sure whether you’re doing it well. But conversations are a central part of relationship-building. Radio Atlantic is pleased to share this episode of How to Talk to People.

The social scientist Ty Tashiro and the hairstylists Erin Derosa and Mimi Craft help describe what it means to integrate awkwardness into our pursuit of relationships.

This episode is hosted by Julie Beck, produced by Rebecca Rashid, and edited by Jocelyn Frank and Claudine Ebeid. Fact-check by Ena Alvarado. Engineering by Rob Smierciak.

Music by Tellsonic (“The Whistle Funk”), Ryan James Carr (“Botanist Boogie Breakdown”), and Arthur Benson (“Organized Chaos,” “She Is Whimsical”). Click here to listen to additional seasons of The Atlantic’s How To series.

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All of a sudden it seems like everyone knows someone who has tested positive for COVID. Are we back in a wave? How bad could it get? How effective will the new vaccine be? What do we actually know about COVID now that we didn’t before, and will it protect us? We talk to Atlantic science writers Katie Wu and Sarah Zhang about all the questions you are trying to avoid about Covid this summer and fall. 

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This week Texas will join the 20 or so other states that have passed laws restricting access to medical therapies and procedures for transgender children. But there are thousands of young people in Texas who identify as transgender. We talk to one teenager who describes herself as just a “normal semi-popular girl,” about her and her family’s decision to leave Texas as a result of the government’s actions. 

Also: If you have any comments or suggestions about the show, submit feedback at theatlantic.com/listener-survey. We'd love to hear from you.

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The front-runner for the Republican nomination did not show up at the debate, but in the sharp exchanges between the leftovers, a lot was revealed about the future of the party.

Atlantic staff writers McKay Coppins, reporting from the debate, and Elaine Godfrey talk about why newcomer Vivek Ramaswamy pops, why Ron DeSantis doesn’t, and why Nikki Haley, despite coming across as a reasonable truth-teller, doesn’t stand a chance.

Also: If you have any comments or suggestions about the show, submit feedback at theatlantic.com/listener-survey. We'd love to hear from you.

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Megan Rapinoe speaks with Atlantic staff writer Frank Foer. The retiring soccer star discusses her detractors, the U.S. team’s role in the global game, and taking penalty kicks.

Also: If you have any comments or suggestions about the show, submit feedback at theatlantic.com/listener-survey. We'd love to hear from you.

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Many people, especially those dealing with long COVID, suffer from fatigue. But not common, everyday tiredness—it’s more like a total body crash that can be triggered by the smallest exertion, something as simple as taking a shower. It’s serious, and yet many doctors have a hard time taking it seriously.

Ed Yong, a former staff writer at The Atlantic whose reporting on COVID won a Pulitzer Prize, explains how people with fatigue can feel, and what experts actually know about the condition and how to treat it.

Read Ed's story on fatigue, long COVID, and ME / CFS here: "Fatigue Can Shatter a Person"

If you have any comments or suggestions about the show, submit feedback at theatlantic.com/listener-survey

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Michael spent years fighting isolation, depression, and despair. Then he met Sam. 

If you’re having thoughts of suicide, please reach out to the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 988 or the Crisis Text Line. For that, text TALK to 741741.

This episode of Radio Atlantic was reported and produced by Ethan Brooks and edited by Theo Balcomb and Jocelyn Frank. It was mixed by Rob Smierciak and fact-checked by Yvonne Kim. The executive producer of Audio is Claudine Ebeid. The managing editor of Audio is Andrea Valdez.

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The U.S. women’s team has been the dominant force in soccer for a decade, although you wouldn't necessarily know it from their performance in the Women’s World Cup so far. As fans, we want them to win. But there’s no drama in dominance. For women's soccer to truly become a global sensation, the U.S. needs worthy rivals. In this episode we talk to Tobin Heath and Christen Press, both members of the most recent U.S. World Cup teams, about whether it would be better for global women’s soccer for the U.S. to lose.

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A lot of people are plagued by the feeling that society used to be better, that neighbors were more helpful, that strangers once talked to you. Some people channel that belief into political action, as in the Make America Great Again movement. A new study explains why the sense that people and the culture have gotten worse is a psychological illusion.

This special episode features Julie Beck, the host of How to Talk to People. Subscribe and discover a full season of great episodes waiting for you!

This episode was produced by Becca Rashid. Editing by Jocelyn Frank. Fact checked by Isabel Cristo. Engineering is by Rob Smierciak. The executive producer of Audio is Claudine Ebeid. The managing editor of Audio is Andrea Valdez.

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Marriages today are much more flexible than they used to be. Women’s roles have changed. Gay marriage is legal. More and more people aren’t choosing marriage at all. And yet the American wedding has hardly changed at all. If anything, it keeps getting more elaborate, more luxe, more wedding-like. In this episode, we talk to Xochitl Gonzalez, who wrote a confessional for The Atlantic about her years as a luxury wedding planner, about why we keep perfecting on what is essentially a nineteenth- century artifact.

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For months, more than a thousand researchers and technology experts involved in creating artificial intelligence have been warning us that they’ve created something that may be dangerous. Something that might eventually lead humanity to become extinct. In this Radio Atlantic episode, The Atlantic’s executive editor, Adrienne LaFrance, and staff writer Charlie Warzel talk about how seriously we should take these warnings, and what else we might consider worrying about.

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A heat dome in Texas. Wildfire smoke polluting the air in the East and Midwest. The signs are everywhere that our children’s summers will look nothing like our own. In this episode we talk to the climate writer Emma Pattee about how hot is too hot to go outside, and what summer camps of the future will look like.

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Yevgeny Prigozhin, who leads a private army called the Wagner Group, attempted what many have called a coup against Russian President Vladimir Putin. Technically, it failed. But the fact that he managed to challenge Putin and leave the leader shaken and panicky is profound. Atlantic staff writers Anne Applebaum and Tom Nichols explain this week’s wild turn of events in Russia and the door those events opened. 

Further Reading:

Tom Nichols: The Coup Is Over, but Putin Is in Trouble

Anne Applebaum: Putin Is Caught in His Own Trap

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Are we just too impatient for America’s famously leisurely national pastime? Hanna Rosin asks staff writer Mark Leibovich whether the changes MLB is making to baseball this summer could help him, and the rest of us, fall in love with baseball all over again.

Interested in the changes baseball’s making? Read Mark’s article on how Moneyball broke baseball—and how the same people who broke it are back, trying to save it.

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The Supreme Court is about to issue a set of rulings on affirmative action in higher education. If it goes as expected, universities will no longer be allowed to consider race in admissions. In this episode of Radio Atlantic, host Hanna Rosin talks to Adam Harris, an Atlantic staff writer, who covers the issue and has written about the cases. They talk about how the backlash against affirmative action began almost as soon as the effort started.

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The Atlantic’s Tim Alberta spent long stretches of the past year talking to CNN’s then-CEO Chris Licht about his grand experiment to reset the cable giant as a venue more welcoming to Republicans. In a major profile of Licht, Alberta documented the many disasters along the way, culminating in Licht’s ouster from the network this week. 

In this episode of Radio Atlantic, host Hanna Rosin talks to Alberta about the rise and fall of Licht, and what it means for the media.

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Politicians, pundits, and even the surgeon general have been highlighting the risks that social media poses to young people’s mental health. The problem is real—but is it as serious as those caused by cigarettes or drunk driving, and what can be done about it? Host Hanna Rosin talks to the Atlantic tech reporter Kaitlyn Tiffany about what the research actually shows regarding teens and social media. 

“It creates this frustrating moment where legislators want to do something now. And I bet the surgeon general’s report will make that more intense. But the research isn’t quite caught up. In order to know what to do, you have to know more precisely what the problem is.”

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Host Hanna Rosin talks to Atlantic editor in chief Jeffrey Goldberg and staff writer Anne Applebaum about their trip to Ukraine, their interview with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, why continued American support is necessary, and why flagging attention doesn’t matter. 

Applebaum, who has covered the war from start, clarifies the confusing but potentially critical recent developments.

Background:

Read Goldberg and Applebaum's latest article The Counteroffensive and see the battlefield drones and drone workshops they talk about in this episode.

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The Atlantic has long been known as an ideas-driven magazine. Now, we’re bringing that same ethos to audio. Today we’re introducing Radio Atlantic, The Atlantic’s flagship podcast, with a new host: senior editor Hanna Rosin. 

Like the magazine, the show will “road test” the big ideas that both drive the news and shape our culture. Through conversations—and sometimes sharp debates—with the most insightful thinkers and writers on topics of the day, Radio Atlantic will complicate overly simplistic views. It will cut through the noise using clarifying, personal narratives. It will, hopefully, help listeners make up their own mind about how they think about certain ideas. 

The national conversation right now can be chaotic, reckless, and stuck. Radio Atlantic aims to bring some order to our thinking—and help listeners be purposeful about how they unstick their minds.

New episodes come out Thursdays starting May 25, wherever you find your podcasts.

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What can memorials to tragedy in one country tell Americans about how to remember the legacy of slavery in the U.S.?

Staff writer Clint Smith traveled to Germany to understand how Germany memorializes the Holocaust. He discusses what he saw and the perspectives he encountered with fellow staff writer Caitlin Dickerson, and explains why his experience of several German memorials makes the daunting task of memorializing slavery in the United States seem achievable.

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The first episode of a new podcast from The Atlantic about a revolution undone.

Subscribe to Holy Week: theatlantic.com/holyweek

Apple Podcasts | Stitcher | Google Podcasts | Spotify

The story of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s assassination on April 4, 1968, is often recounted as a conclusion to a powerful era of civil rights in America, but how did this hero’s murder come to be the stitching used to tie together a narrative of victory? The week that followed his killing was one of the most fiery, disruptive, and revolutionary, and is nearly forgotten.

Over the course of eight episodes, Holy Week brings forward the stories of the activists who turned heartbreak into action, families scorched by chaos, and politicians who worked to contain the grief. Seven days diverted the course of a social revolution and set the stage for modern clashes over voting rights, redlining, critical race theory, and the role of racial unrest in today’s post–George Floyd reckoning.

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Holy Week: The story of a revolution undone.

The assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. on April 4, 1968, is often recounted as a conclusion to a powerful era of civil rights in America, but how did this hero’s murder come to be the stitching used to tie together a narrative of victory? The week that followed his killing was one of the most fiery, disruptive, and revolutionary, and is nearly forgotten. Over the course of eight episodes, Holy Week brings forward the stories of the activists who turned heartbreak into action, families scorched by chaos, and politicians who worked to contain the grief. Seven days diverted the course of a social revolution and set the stage for modern clashes over voting rights, redlining, critical race theory, and the role of racial unrest in today’s post–George Floyd reckoning.

Subscribe and listen to all 8 episodes coming March 14: theatlantic.com/holyweek

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With Google and Microsoft releasing new AI tools, it feels like the future is now with artificial intelligence. But how transformative are products like ChatGPT? Should we be worried about their impact? Are they a new Skynet or just a new Clippy?

Staff writers Charlie Warzel and Amanda Mull discuss.

Charlie’s piece: Is This The Week AI Changed Everything?

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The Atlantic’s editor in chief Jeffrey Goldberg interviews Secretary of State Antony Blinken as part of our live conversation series, The Big Story. A year into the Russian invasion of Ukraine, they discuss the Biden administration’s relationship with Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky, the nuances of comparing our current era with that of the Cold War, and diplomatic efforts to prevent the use of nuclear weapons.For more conversations like this one, visit theatlantic.com/live

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It’s been a year since Russia invaded Ukraine, and the war continues. Staff writer Tom Nichols, an expert on nuclear weapons and the Cold War, counsels Americans how to think about what comes next?

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Humans last set foot on the Moon 50 years ago. Now we’re going back, but the way we explore space—and our relationship to it—has gone through some big changes.

“Space is a vacation now… a status symbol,” Marina Koren explains to Adam Harris. The two staff writers discuss this new age of commercial space flight and the changes it’s bringing to how we see our place in the universe. 

Today’s spaceflight has taken a wider variety of people, billionaires or not,beyond Earth’s gravity. As people with diverse perspectives take the journey, will that complicate how we as a species think about space? 

Koren also spoke with William Shatner about his trip at age 90 and he reflects on why his experience ran counter to that of his most famed character: Star Trek’s intrepid optimist, Captain Kirk.

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The GOP is in a strange place. After falling short of expectations in the midterms, some Republicans blame Donald Trump, and some want to anoint a challenger for 2024. But with Trump already announced and a GOP-controlled House set to spend two years investigating Joe Biden, is the party at all likely to move on from Trump?

The Atlantic staff writers Mark Leibovich and Elaina Plott consider that question, as well as the ascent of Marjorie Taylor Greene as Congress prepares for its 2023 session, on this week’s episode of Radio Atlantic.

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December is here and with it comes the third winter of the pandemic. With the holiday travel and indoor family gatherings, the season has brought tragic spikes in COVID cases the last two years. Are we in for more of the same, or will this winter be different?

Deputy editor Paul Bisceglio talks with staff writer Katherine Wu about what to expect. Will a new variant accelerate infections like Omicron did a year ago? What does a massive wave of other viruses mean for the season? And after years of vaccines, masking, and testing, how can we help those who are most at risk this year?

Further reading:

• Will Flu and RSV Always Be This Bad?
• Will We Get Omicron'd Again?
• Annual COVID Shots Mean We Can Stop Counting
• The Worst Pediatric-Care Crisis in Decades

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Part of the appeal of the World Cup is watching a country’s finest soccer players represent their nations. For many fans, though, it doesn’t have to just be root-root-root for the home team. Atlantic staff writer Clint Smith will be cheering for the U.S., but he will also have his eye on Senegal. 

Smith’s attachment to the game is personal, stretching back to when he first started soccer playing as a little boy. In this episode of Radio Atlantic, Smith talks about the joy of soccer, the overt racism in the game, and why he’ll be cheering for the team of a small country in West Africa.

Tape in this episode comes from FIFA, UEFA, ESPN, and TRT.

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The Atlantic staff writers Franklin Foer and Clint Smith talk about who they're rooting for and why in World Cup 2022. And Franklin Foer takes us on a journey through the history the beautiful and ugly side of his beloved Brazilian team.

Sign up for The Atlantic's World Cup newsletter "The Great Game"

Tape in this episode comes from: FIFA, Banda Folia Brasileira, Le Huffington Post, KFC, and Neymar's TikTok (with music from DJ Dubay: Vota Vota E CONFIRMA 22 É BOLSONARO)

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Mark Leibovich talks with Tim Alberta about the often-overlooked group of people crucial to American voting. With election denialism plaguing the process, poll workers have faced threats and harassment. What can we expect in the midterms next week?

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When Taliban forces seized control of Kabul last year, many Afghans faced life-changing choices. One family's decision led to a harrowing journey for a young woman and her sister.

Related Links

• Bushra Seddique wrote about her escape from the Taliban for the September 2022 issue
• And she's reported on "What Afghans Want the Rest of the World to Know"

This episode was hosted by Claudine Ebeid and produced by Kevin Townsend with editing from Theo Balcomb. Art by Sally Deng. Fact check by Stephanie Hayes. The managing editor is Andrea Valdez and the executive editor for The Atlantic is Adrienne LaFrance

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Can an island that keeps getting pummeled by hurricanes ever be free?

Executive Producer Claudine Ebeid speaks with Atlantic contributors Jaquira Díaz and Robinson Meyer about what the island's status as a commonwealth means for recovery and modernizing its power grid.

Background Reading

• Why Jaquira Díaz believes “Puerto Rico Needs Independence, Not Statehood.”
• Imani Perry on natural disasters and colonialism
• Why Puerto Rico's problems go beyond its debt crisis

This episode was hosted by Claudine Ebeid, and produced by A.C. Valdez with help from Kevin Townsend. Fact check by Isabel Cristo. The managing editor is Andrea Valdez and the executive editor for The Atlantic is Adrienne LaFrance

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Atlantic fellow Bushra Seddique tells the story of the moment everything changed for her in Kabul, and The Atlantic's Editor-in-Chief Jeffrey Goldberg talks to retired General David Petraeus about the war in Afghanistan and the mistakes made both during his time in command and as the U.S. military withdrew.

Background reading:

• Here is how Bushra Seddique escaped Aghanistan.
• David Petraeus believes there was another path the U.S. could have taken.
• A marine and an army veteran make a case that Afghanistan was lost long before the U.S. left.

Show credits: in this episode you heard music from Ahmad Zahir and news tape from Al Jazeera.

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The Atlantic’s editor in chief Jeffrey Goldberg and staff writer Anne Applebaum traveled to Kyiv in April to meet Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. Their wide-ranging conversation with Zelensky is a window into how he is living, what shapes his thinking, and what it looks like when an unlikely political figure like Zelensky goes from “Larry David to Winston Churchill overnight,” as Goldberg put it.

Also: The October 2022 issue of The Atlantic magazine focuses on Ukraine. Read Anne Applebaum's story here.

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The Atlantic's editor in chief Jeffrey Goldberg talks with staff writer Caitlin Dickerson about her recent piece, "An American Catastrophe," a comprehensive investigation of the Trump administration’s policy of separating migrant children from their families.

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The Atlantic's Executive Editor Adrienne LaFrance discusses a post-Roe America with two contributing writers. Legal historian Mary Ziegler and constitutional law scholar David French answer questions about what happens now that Roe v. Wade has been overturned. How will abortion bans be enforced? What will come of the legal and legislative battle moving to the states? And what other rights could the Court revoke?

This conversation was recorded as part of an Atlantic live event. Learn more about live events and sign up to join at theatlantic.com/newsletters.

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This week, Politico published a leaked draft opinion, written by Justice Samuel Alito, in the case of Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization. Claudine Ebeid, Executive Producer of podcasts at The Atlantic, discusses the reactions of three Atlantic contributors.

Molly Jong-Fast’s most recent article is “My Mother Was Wrong About Roe v. Wade.” She also writes the newsletter Wait, What?

Mary Ziegler’s is “The Conservatives Aren’t Just Ending Roe, They’re Delighting In It” and she has a forthcoming book Dollars for Life: The Anti-Abortion Movement and the Fall of the Republican Establishment.

David French’s most recent article is “What Alito’s Opinion Got Right,” he writes the newsletter The Third Rail.

This episode of Radio Atlantic was produced by Claudine Ebeid, A.C. Valdez, and Kevin Townsend, thanks as well to executive editor Adrienne LaFrance. We used tape from C-SPAN, Igor Volsky, Willy Lowry, WSB-TV, and BBC.

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Disinformation is the story of our age. We see it used as a tactic of war and to further embolden autocrats.. The very tools that once helped pro-democracy movements are now being used to disseminate falsehoods—misleading the public and threatening the strength of democracies around the globe. 

Former President Barack Obama and editor in chief Jeffrey Goldberg talk about disinformation—how to define it, how to combat it, why it threatens democratic stability around the world, and how future generations can uphold truth.

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After years of threats, Russian forces invaded Ukraine—culminating in the largest attack against one European state by another since the Second World War. Global leaders, including U.S. President Joe Biden, widely condemned Russia’s actions and announced unprecedented sanctions aimed at a number of the country’s financial institutions and the Russian elite. What happens now?

Join staff writer Anne Applebaum and contributing writer Tom Nichols in conversation with editor in chief Jeffrey Goldberg as they examine the global reaction to Russia’s military campaign, the effectiveness of sanctions, and how the free world should address the rise of authoritarianism and ongoing threats to democracy.

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On The Review, The Atlantic's writers and guests discuss how we entertain ourselves and how that shapes the way we understand the world. Subscribe and enjoy!

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Hello Ticket listeners. We'd like to introduce you to a new show, How to Build a Happy Life.

In this series, host Arthur Brooks digs into research and offers tools to help you live more joyfully. Join us for deep conversations with psychologists, experts, and friends of The Atlantic's Chief Happiness Correspondent. For more info, visit www.theatlantic.com/happy, or search for How to Build a Happy Life on your podcast app.

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A new podcast from The Atlantic and WNYC Studios, The Experiment, tells stories from our unfinished country. On the first episode, host Julia Longoria tells the story of the “zone of death,” where a legal glitch could short-circuit the Constitution—a place where, technically, you could get away with murder. At a time when we’re surrounded by preventable deaths, we document one journey to avert disaster.

Listen and subscribe to The Experiment: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Stitcher | Google Podcasts

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Isaac Dovere reflects on the inauguration of President Joe Biden, the path through an election year like no other, and what the momentous changes of 2020 mean for our politics.

You’ll also notice a change in this podcast feed. With the 2020 campaign closing on Inauguration Day, The Ticket will, for now, be ending. We’re working on new podcasts here at The Atlantic though and on February 4th, we launch our new show The Experiment, examining the contradictions and ideals at the heart of the American experiment. You’ll find the first episode here on this feed, so stay subscribed. And, as always, thanks for listening. 

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John Bresnahan has covered Congress for decades, recently as Politico’s Capitol Hill bureau chief and now as co-founder of Punchbowl News. He describes what he saw from inside the building as a pro-Trump mob stormed the Capitol this week — and what implications the searing event could have going forward.

Support this show and all of The Atlantic's journalism by subscribing at: theatlantic.com/supportus

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The House majority whip from South Carolina gave Joe Biden the key endorsement of his candidacy. What does the civil rights veteran want to see from his party — and the President-elect — in 2021? How will Democrats bridge the divide between progressives advocating for change and Biden preaching a ‘return to normalcy?’ And with Clyburn chairing the new president’s inauguration committee, what does he expect from a very unusual transfer of power?

This interview was recorded as part of an Atlantic Live event on December 17th, 2020.

Support this show and all of The Atlantic's journalism by subscribing at: theatlantic.com/supportus

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As conspiracy theories about the Georgia vote count have escalated into threats, a state election official rebuked President Trump and blamed him for the environment voting administrators now face. 

Despite being a lifelong Republican, Gabe Sterling worries about where he finds his party. The president and Georgia’s elected Republicans seem to be in open war with one another. How far could the dangerous rhetoric take things? And what does it mean for Georgia's run-off elections in January to decide control of the Senate?

Support this show and all of The Atlantic’s journalism by becoming a subscriber at www.theatlantic.com/supportus

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A quarter-million Americans have now died of COVID-19. The spread of the virus is as bad as it’s ever been. And it’s almost certainly going to get much worse. But with the president abdicating responsibility and refusing to begin a transition, it feels as if we’re headed into unthinkable danger without any sense of who’s in charge.

Staff writer Ed Yong wrote about America’s unpreparedness for a pandemic in 2018 and his reporting has led the conversation about the coronavirus for months now. He joins the show to explain how the country got to this point, what he thinks a Biden administration could do come January, and why he’s more hopeful about a society sticking together in a disease than he was two years ago.

Support this show and all of The Atlantic’s journalism by becoming a subscriber at www.theatlantic.com/supportus

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The Virginia Congresswoman shares her concerns over President Trump’s post-election actions and what she considers the lessons of 2020 for her fellow Democrats.

Before coming to Congress as part of the Democratic wave in 2018, Spanberger spent her career as an undercover operative in the CIA. She talks about what it was like going from a false alias to a congressional seat, why she ran in the first place, and what she thinks when people compare her group of friends in Congress to the ‘Squad.’

Support this show and all of The Atlantic’s journalism by becoming a subscriber at theatlantic.com/supportus

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Between the pandemic and President Trump, election night this year will be unlike any other. As usual, television news networks are the narrators of our democracy, but what will they do if the president claims an unconfirmed victory? With the stakes so high, will they apply the lessons they learned these past four years?

CNN’s Brian Stelter shares his thoughts on broadcasting the president’s words live, how important the Fox News alternate universe will be, and what television news’s future is in a Biden presidency or a Trump second term.

Support this show and all of The Atlantic’s journalism by becoming a subscriber at www.theatlantic.com/supportus

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The man who wrote The Art of the Deal reflects on Donald Trump, his presidency, and what the coming weeks could bring. 

Schwartz says Trump’s “primary motivation is dominance” and “there is nothing Trump fears more than failure.” And with the election little more than a week away, Schwartz thinks Trump believes he’s going to lose, “probably even more than he did four years ago.”

Support this show and all of The Atlantic’s journalism by becoming a subscriber at theatlantic.com/supportus

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The former Secretary of State and 2016 Democratic nominee discusses President Trump, the pandemic, and election disinformation.

Support this show and all of The Atlantic’s journalism by becoming a subscriber at theatlantic.com/supportus

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With the election only weeks away, President Trump is down in the polls, sowing doubt about the integrity of the vote, and refusing to commit to a peaceful transfer of power. When he accepted his party’s nomination at the Republican National Convention on August 24th, Trump summarized his position: “The only way they can take this election away from us is if this is a rigged election.”

What happens if a president loses reelection, but won’t accept the outcome? Staff writer Barton Gellman tried to answer that question in the cover story of this month’s Atlantic. He joins Edward-Isaac Dovere to explain what he found.

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In 2016, the Green Party won more votes in Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin than Donald Trump’s margins for victory. As a result, many Democrats blamed the progressive party for Clinton’s electoral college loss and have worked this year to keep the party from competing in key states. Following Democrats’ challenges over paperwork issues, courts in Wisconsin and Pennsylvania removed Green Party names from presidential ballots this week.

Howie Hawkins, the Green Party’s nominee for president and a co-founder of the party, joins Isaac Dovere to discuss his candidacy. Is the Green Party being used as a spoiler? What does he make of Kanye West’s presidential campaign? And does he fear his party may again face accusations that they put Donald Trump in the White House?

Support this show and all of The Atlantic’s journalism by becoming a subscriber at: theatlantic.com/supportus

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Elected at 31, Wisconsin’s Lieutenant Governor is a young Black progressive and the face of a new Democratic party in the Midwest. With the nation’s attention on the shooting of Jacob Blake in Kenosha, Barnes joins Isaac Dovere to discuss President Trump, the Milwaukee Bucks, and what he thinks Democrats need to do to win in November.

Support this show and all of The Atlantic’s journalism by becoming a subscriber at theatlantic.com/supportus

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Only a few years ago, Chad Mayes was the Republican leader in the California Assembly. Now, he’s out of the party. Ahead of next week’s Republican convention, he joins Isaac Dovere to discuss the state of the GOP, running an independent, and the long impact of Donald Trump.

“California really was the canary in the coal mine. If you go back to the 1990s, where California was then—it's what the country is going to be 20 years from now. I've tried to tell my colleagues across the country that if you think that somehow this is a winning strategy today, the brand, the toxicity that will come of this is going to last not just for five years or ten years. It's going to last for generations to come.”

Support this show and all of The Atlantic’s journalism by becoming a subscriber at theatlantic.com/supportus

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Susan Rice, the former U.N. Ambassador and National Security Advisor for the Obama administration, is considered a leading candidate to become Joe Biden's running mate. She joins to discuss statehood for DC, racism and sexism in American politics, and the formative experiences that made her who she is today — a person who may be the first Black woman on a national ticket.

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Florida congresswoman Donna Shalala was one of many first-time candidates in 2018. But unlike other freshman Democrats that flipped a district, she’d already had a decades-long career in public life. At age 77, she became the second-oldest person ever to win a seat in Congress.

Besides serving as an early Peace Corps volunteer and co-founding EMILY’s List, Shalala was also the longest-serving Secretary of Health & Human Services in U.S. history. She discusses what the federal government should be doing, working in Congress with John Lewis, and naming her new rescue dog “Fauci.”

Support the show by subscribing to The Atlantic: theatlantic.com/supportus

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The Alabama senator discusses the coronavirus outbreak in the South, new efforts to grapple with its Confederate legacy, and his hopes that this time of crisis leads to systemic change.

Support this show and all of The Atlantic's journalism by subscribing at: theatlantic.com/supportus

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The 2016 Republican presidential candidate announces her intention to vote for Joe Biden, and the concerns about the country that led to her decision.

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The second-highest elected official in New York City is a progressive activist who’s worked to change policing for years. He thinks this moment could be different, if Americans are willing to have an honest conversation.

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The mayor of Dayton, Ohio, on how badly America's cities need a bailout—and how painful the impact could be if they don't get one.

Support this show and all of The Atlantic's journalism by subscribing at: theatlantic.com/supportus

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Senator (and doctor) Bill Cassidy discusses the coronavirus response, vaccines, and how states like his own Louisiana hope to reopen.

Support this show and all of The Atlantic's journalism by subscribing at: theatlantic.com/supportus

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The governor of one of the hardest-hit states discusses the coronavirus response, how he thinks about reopening New Jersey, and his conversations with President Trump. (In fact, the president called him during taping.)

Support this show and all of The Atlantic's journalism by subscribing at: theatlantic.com/supportus

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The former presidential candidate discusses universal basic income, coronavirus-linked bigotry against Asian Americans, and how the pandemic has accelerated the automation trends he's long worried about.

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Georgia politician and voting rights activist Stacey Abrams discusses elections in a pandemic, vice presidential aspirations, and Star Trek.

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Sherrilyn Ifill of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund discusses Wisconsin’s election debacle and how the coronavirus has become a new tool of voter suppression. Ifill says Wisconsin legislators “created a perfect storm where it didn't have to exist” and that the Supreme Court’s “terrible decision” allowing the election to proceed “consigned people to have to choose between their health and their right as citizens to participate and vote.”

She describes how the current partisan debate around voter suppression obscures its roots as a tool of white supremacy, and she talks about what worries her (and what makes her hopeful) as we look to the election in November.

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Governor Gretchen Whitmer joins to discuss Michigan’s coronavirus response and her relationship with President Trump. Elected in the state’s 2018 wave election, the popular young governor is considered a potential running mate for Joe Biden.

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Grace Meng represents New York in Congress. Her Queens district is at the center of the U.S. coronavirus outbreak, where its hospitals face an ‘apocalyptic’ situation. She spent the day flying to and from Washington to pass the $2 trillion stimulus package. After landing back home, she spoke with Isaac Dovere about her constituents fighting against the coronavirus, having to risk exposure flying to Washington for the vote, and how politicians using the phrase ‘Chinese virus’ has impacted the people she represents.

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Arnold Schwarzenegger has asked everyone to stay home. He's issued PSA videos, with his mini donkey and mini horse, and from his jacuzzi, urging people to socially distance.

Besides his celebrity, he of course also spent seven years governing California—a state that's no stranger to disaster. He calls Isaac Dovere to share his thoughts on this bonus episode of The Ticket: Politics from The Atlantic.

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Senator Sherrod Brown discusses the Trump administration's response to the pandemic and what he thinks Congress needs to do now. The progressive Ohio senator believes that, as Americans rely on expanded social insurance programs to weather this crisis, they'll value government taking on a bigger role in society.

"I think you'll see the kind of structural change in our society that most of the country wants," he tells Isaac Dovere. "I think the public overwhelmingly agrees and sees more clearly now the role of government, and how government is a positive force in people's lives."

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Vann Newkirk joins Isaac Dovere to discuss Floodlines—the new Atlantic podcast about Hurricane Katrina—and what lessons the disaster response in 2005 has for the coronavirus crisis in 2020.

(After their conversation, listen for the full first episode of Floodlines.)

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The campaign manager behind Obama’s 2008 election breaks down the state of the Democratic party. What do Bernie Sanders and Joe Biden each need to do to win the nomination? And for an election Plouffe says has probably “the biggest stakes the country's ever known,” what do Democrats have to do to defeat President Trump?

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Former Clinton aide Jennifer Palmieri discusses the South Carolina primary, how 2020 is different than 2016, and how sexism still shapes American politics.

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As Democrats slugged it out in Nevada this week, the president undermined the Justice Department in Washington. News anchor Katy Tur—and everyone else covering politics—has had to constantly switch gears between two stories: a crowded primary of challengers working to overtake one another, and a post-impeachment White House emboldened to break yet more democratic norms. But when the general election arrives, and the two stories merge, will the news media be up to the task?

Tur grew up around television news and covered the Trump campaign. Now an anchor on MSNBC, she joins Isaac Dovere to discuss 2020 coverage. They sat down on NBC’s set in Las Vegas, where the network hosted this week’s Democratic debate ahead of the Nevada caucuses.

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On Thursday, Congresswoman Jennifer Wexton presided over debate on a bill to advance the Equal Rights Amendment. After the bill passed, she sat down in her office with Isaac Dovere to discuss the historic ERA vote and how she thinks Congress can take action on gun violence.

Also on the show: thoughts on New Hampshire and an exclusive exchange with Andrew Yang, recorded as he prepared to announce the end of his candidacy.

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After the chaos of Iowa, New Hampshire is set to deliver the first clear results of the 2020 presidential race. And on the show to preview the first primary vote is New Hampshire Congressman Chris Pappas.

The freshman Democrat is new to Washington, but he's been around Granite State politics his entire life. He was elected state representative at 22, but has been meeting presidential candidates since he was 7. His family's Manchester restaurant has been a waypoint on the trail to the White House for decades.

He discusses New Hampshire politics, his state's fight against the opioid crisis, and his choice next Tuesday (both who he's voting for, and whether to do a ballot selfie.)

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Isaac Dovere previews the Iowa caucuses with congressional candidate J.D. Scholten. A former baseball player running to represent the state’s most rural district, Scholten offers an on-the-ground view as Iowans gather to pick a president.

He discusses his race against Rep. Steve King (who he nearly unseated in 2018), what Iowans care about as they go to the caucuses, and whether the state should keep its first-in-the-nation vote.

Like many of his fellow Iowans, he’s had presidential candidates personally courting him for months — enough so that, during taping, his phone buzzed with a call from Sen. Elizabeth Warren. (He sent her to voicemail.)

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On Thursday, Radio Atlantic is becoming The Ticket: Politics from The Atlantic.

As the 2020 voting begins, this show will relaunch with a new name and new look — but you’ll still get the same important conversations each week. Keep listening for interviews with the people defining this incredible moment in American history.

Same show. Same feed. New name.

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The new mayor of Chicago, Lori Lightfoot, won all fifty of Chicago’s wards in a landslide last year. A lawyer with experience in government oversight, Lightfoot ran on an anti-corruption and police reform platform. She campaigned as a political outsider in a city long run by dynasties. And she represents a lot of firsts: the first African-American woman to lead the city, its first openly gay mayor, and for her, the first time running for higher office.

Lightfoot came into the job with a big opportunity to remake America’s third largest city. She joins the show to talk about her upbringing, her motivation to enter politics, and what she hopes Chicago can show the rest of the country.

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The governator discusses the Republican party, his commitment to the environment, and the Democratic candidates (his review: "such bad actors").

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Ruben Gallego says President Trump doesn’t understand war, but the situation with Iran could soon escalate to one. Gallego is a progressive congressman from Arizona and a combat veteran who served in Iraq — stationed at one point at one of the bases struck by Iranian missiles this week. He discusses his experience of war, his insights on the developing crisis, and what he worries about most.

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On the day President Trump is impeached, Isaac Dovere visits the Nixon Library with Tom Steyer. The billionaire presidential candidate has spent two years (and millions of dollars) to keep impeachment in the headlines. As the House of Representatives prepares for the historic vote, they reflect on Nixon's legacy, Trump's future, and Steyer's unique family history.

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Steve Chabot, a House Republican who helped lead his party's impeachment fight against Bill Clinton, explains why he’s unconvinced by the Democrats’ case against Trump.

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Donald Trump wasn’t the only election surprise of 2016. Three months before he won the presidency, the United Kingdom also shocked observers by voting to leave the European Union. Ever since, Brexit has dominated British politics. 

But while Americans may have to wait another eleven months to see Trump’s name back on the ballot, British elections arrive much faster (and of late, much more frequently). Britain may not be terribly enthusiastic about heading back to the polls, but the stakes couldn’t be higher. Will the UK have another referendum? Will it endorse a ‘hard’ Brexit? And how are British voters actually making up their minds?

Staff writer Helen Lewis joins Isaac Dovere from London to preview the election.

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During an impeachment hearing this week, President Trump's former top Russia adviser accused Republicans of peddling Russian propaganda.

Anne Applebaum is a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and historian who will join The Atlantic as a staff writer in January. As one of the world’s leading experts on pre- and post-Communist Europe, disinformation and propaganda, and the future of democracy, she joins Isaac Dovere to discuss impeachment through a global lens.

How did a conspiracy theory concocted by Russian intelligence officers become a Republican defense of President Trump? And what future does Applebaum see for NATO and Western democracy if the president is in office for another four years?

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The special December issue of The Atlantic focuses on a single theme: “How to Stop a Civil War.” Two contributors to the issue, Harvard professor Danielle Allen and staff writer Adam Serwer, join Editor-in-Chief Jeffrey Goldberg to discuss their arguments in the magazine.

Allen’s piece, “The Road From Serfdom,” asserts that unity must be made a priority again and offers prescriptive steps for how it can be achieved. In “Against Reconciliation,” Serwer argues that the nation’s pursuits of compromise have often led it to abandon its promises of freedom and equality for all its citizens—that Americans have been content to sacrifice civil rights for civil discourse.

The three sat down to discuss where they agree, where they disagree, and how optimistic they are that world’s oldest democracy can survive its bitter divisions.

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Senator Tim Kaine discusses Democrats' historic win in Virginia and what it means for 2020.

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Mayor Pete Buttigieg discusses his unlikely presidential run.

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James Fallows spent decades covering national politics for The Atlantic. For the last four years though, he’s traveled the parts of America typically left out of the national conversation. And he comes back with good news.

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The fourth Democratic debate this week highlighted Elizabeth Warren’s new front-runner status. It also marked the return to public events for Bernie Sanders, who showcased his energy following a heart attack and touted a key new endorsement from Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. The two progressive candidates haven’t gone after each other thus far. How much longer will that last? And where does the race go from here?

Joining Isaac Dovere this week is Elaine Godfrey, who reports on progressive politics for The Atlantic.

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Staff writer Mike Giglio has been reporting on ISIS since before Americans knew what to call it. He documents his five years in the region for a new book, Shatter the Nations: ISIS and the War for the Caliphate.

He joins Isaac Dovere to discuss the abrupt changes happening in Syria. How did a phone call upend American policy towards its Kurdish allies? What’s happening on the ground now? And where will this new cycle of violence lead?

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As a CIA officer detailed to the White House, Congresswoman Elissa Slotkin is one of the few people to have done the same work as the whistle-blower.

She joins Isaac Dovere to discuss that experience, how it led her to play a key role in starting the impeachment inquiry, and how she’s now explaining that decision of conscience to the pro-Trump district she represents.

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As impeachment news comes in by the minute, The Atlantic hosts its annual festival in our nation’s capital. Minnesota senator and presidential candidate Amy Klobuchar joins Isaac Dovere on stage for a live taping of Radio Atlantic.

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The Montana governor talks about his presidential campaign, his personal connection to the gun control debate, and why running his home state has uniquely prepared him to run a divided country.

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Begun with a gold-rush brothel in the Yukon, the Trump empire has long been passed down through generations. Donald Trump inherited a business from his father, who inherited it from his father.

Now following in those footsteps are Donald Trump Jr, Ivanka Trump, and Eric Trump — all brought into the family business, whatever that happened to be at the moment. When it was real estate, they worked at the Trump Organization. When it became television, they were in the cast of The Apprentice. And with politics the new family business, they’ve acted as key figures in his administration and campaign.

The question of which Trump will succeed their father is no longer just a family matter though. Having remade the Republican Party in his image, the president has given his eventual successor a key role in shaping the future of American politics.In his October cover story, McKay Coppins tells the story of how the next generation of Trumps have competed for power — and how the move from midtown Manhattan to 1600 Pennsylvania may have established an unexpected frontrunner.

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This week, Beto O'Rourke took a bus out of New York. Not a campaign bus, just a regular old bus. Isaac Dovere joined for the trip and they talked about how the presidential candidate has been changed by the recent mass shootings in West Texas.

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In December, Defense Secretary James Mattis resigned in protest after President Trump announced plans to withdraw troops from Syria. As the last "adult in the room" at the White House, critics worried his departure would loosen the president’s behavior even further. Days after the news broke though, Christmas and the government shutdown pushed Mattis’ resignation into the background. 

Now, nine months later, he’s beginning to speak publicly again. For the latest issue of the magazine, Editor-in-Chief Jeffrey Goldberg had a series of conversations with Mattis following his resignation. He re-joins Radio Atlantic with host Edward-Isaac Dovere.

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This week showed increasing signs that a recession could be on the horizon. Manufacturing is shrinking. Job growth is slowing. The markets are spooked — and now so is the president. But what exactly is happening?

Annie Lowrey joins Isaac Dovere to make sense of the recession news. (What exactly is the yield curve and why does it matter?) They discuss what a downturn would do to the 2020 race. And they explore why many voters don’t feel economically secure despite record growth.

This June marked the longest economic expansion in U.S. history, but also the one decade anniversary of the Great Recession ending. How did that experience remake the political landscape? Have most Americans really recovered? And what would a new recession mean for them?

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Andrew Yang joins Isaac Dovere on the trail in Iowa. Yang’s campaign started as a long-shot from a first-time politician, but he’s found a following. His message about the bleak future technology’s bringing to America (and his plan to give everyone $1000 a month) has led to an enormous online fandom — one that’s actually translating into poll numbers and dollars.

Unlike many more traditional candidates, he’s already qualified for the next Democratic debates. So, what does his campaign say about today’s politics? Is it fatalistic or just realistic? And what does success look like for him?

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On Wednesday, Senator Cory Booker gave a speech on gun violence and white nationalism at the Emanuel AME Church in Charleston, South Carolina, the same church that lost nine of its members to a white supremacist gunman four years ago.

Following his speech, the presidential hopeful sat down with Isaac Dovere in the pastor's office to discuss his plans for ending gun violence in America and why he believes that "we can't let these conversations devolve into the impotent simplicity of who is or isn't a racist."

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While in Detroit covering the Democratic debates, Isaac Dovere sits down with Dana Nessel, Michigan’s new Democratic attorney general and the state’s first openly gay statewide officeholder.

Last year, Nessel was part of an all-women executive slate that many said couldn’t win. But every single woman candidate did and Nessel now holds a job that Republican men had controlled for 16 years.

What lessons does Nessel’s victory have for Democrats trying to retake Michigan and other crucial states in the industrial midwest? The candidates on stage in Detroit argued over a choice between appealing to progressives or moderates to win. But is that a false choice? And is Joe Biden the safe bet many voters think he is?

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Seth Moulton, the Massachusetts congressman and presidential candidate, joins Isaac Dovere this week. Moulton shares his thoughts on Nancy Pelosi, ‘the squad,’ and the direction of the Democratic Party. Speaking soon after Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s hearings on Capitol Hill, Moulton gives his reaction as an early proponent of impeachment. And the decorated Marine veteran discusses his campaign’s focus on national security issues and why the current commander-in-chief is “putting American lives at risk.”

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On Sunday, President Trump told four members of Congress to “go back” to the countries “from which they came.”

Journalists have spent the week working through how to discuss what is a textbook racist statement aimed at four congresswomen who—besides all being American citizens—are all women of color.

Newsrooms faced hard questions: Do you call the president a racist? How do you not call the president a racist? Do you give him the attention he wants, and how do you modulate that, contextualize it, explain it?

Margaret Brennan, moderator of CBS’s Face the Nation, joins Isaac Dovere on this week’s Radio Atlantic to discuss how journalists are faring with these questions and what we can expect going into 2020.

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This week, the British ambassador to the United States resigned after private cables leaked with his frank assessment of the White House and its occupant. Sir Kim Darroch described the administration as “clumsy” and "inept" and said President Trump "radiates insecurity." In response, the president called Darroch “wacky,” a “very stupid guy,” and a “pompous fool.”

The episode is another in a long string of public feuds for Trump. But the departure of the ambassador from America's closest ally is no small matter—and one that ripples far outside Washington. So, what consequences could this have for the country and the world? And how do diplomats deal with this president when, as a current ambassador told the Times, "it could have been any one of us?" 

To discuss, Isaac Dovere is joined by Thomas Pickering, a Career Ambassador for the United States whose seven ambassadorships span decades of Republican and Democratic administrations.

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Former Massachusetts Governor Bill Weld has experience taking down a Republican president. He began his career in politics as one of the first lawyers hired to investigate Watergate for the House.

Working alongside another low-level staffer named Hillary Clinton, his job was to define what constituted an impeachable offense for a president. Now, he’s one of the rare Republicans who thinks Donald Trump’s actions have met that definition. He’s called for the president to be impeached, and even to resign his office.

He joined Isaac Dovere on this week’s Radio Atlantic to discuss his time investigating Watergate, the state of the Republican Party, and why he thinks his candidacy isn’t such a longshot.

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On Wednesday—for the first time in a decade—Congress held a hearing on reparations for slavery. It was a crystallizing moment for an issue that has gained prominence since Ta-Nehisi Coates’s 2014 Atlantic essay.

Coates and others testified before a House committee on June 19th—Juneteenth—a day the nation celebrates emancipation from slavery. Every year, Atlantic staff writer Vann R. Newkirk II writes a Juneteenth essay. He joins Isaac Dovere to discuss the history of the holiday, the importance of the hearing, and where the fight for reparations stands now.

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The 2020 race is on. Staff writer Edward-Isaac Dovere, who covers Democratic politics, was in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, for the unofficial kick-off of the fight to replace Donald Trump. Elaina Plott, who covers the White House, will be in Orlando on Tuesday when the president officially announces his re-election campaign.

On this week’s Radio Atlantic: two reporters inhabiting two very different universes discuss what the coming months have in store. 

Who does President Trump want to face? Who has the best shot of beating him? And now that he’s running as President of the United States, what will be different this time around?

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In the coming days, the Supreme Court will announce its decisions on two cases that ask the same basic question: how far should partisan politics go?

One will determine whether a citizenship question will appear on the 2020 census. The other asks whether partisan gerrymandering is constitutional.

With these decisions imminent, that same question about partisanship in non-partisan institutions hangs over the court itself. Still wounded by Justice Brett Kavanaugh’s confirmation battle, the nation’s highest court has a “virus of illegitimacy.” And with Democratic candidates endorsing proposals to pack the court, that virus could remake the third branch of American government.

On this week’s Radio Atlantic, Isaac Dovere discusses the court with lawyer and Slate writer Mark Joseph Stern.

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Recent weeks have seen unprecedented anti-abortion bills pass in states across the country. In Alabama, abortion is now banned under state law, without any exceptions for rape or incest. Georgia, Ohio, and Kentucky have all passed so-called ‘heartbeat’ bills making abortion illegal six to eight weeks into pregnancy.

On Wednesday, Louisiana's legislature passed its own heartbeat bill without any exceptions for rape or incest. In Missouri, abortion has been outlawed after eight weeks. And on Friday, it may become the first state without any access to abortion, as a clinic may be pressured to close.

These bills have been challenged in court as conflicting with Roe v. Wade, but of course, that conflict is the point. Will a conservative Supreme Court use one of these state laws to overturn Roe? And will this new attention to abortion change how Americans vote in 2020?

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Privacy is now the most important idea on the internet—so what exactly is it? And if we care about our privacy, why aren’t we willing to pay to keep it?

This week’s Radio Atlantic is a preview of the new season of Crazy/Genius, The Atlantic’s podcast about technology and culture. Staff writer Derek Thompson joins Isaac Dovere to discuss Season 3, which kicks off with an episode about privacy.

Subscribe to Crazy/Genius: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Stitcher | Google Play

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Trump isn’t like most Republican presidents, but his views on trade have been an unusually firm departure from his party. Despite long championing free trade, the GOP is now led by a man who seems deeply skeptical of it. Last week, he upended trade negotiations with China by levying tariffs on $200 billion in Chinese goods, carrying out a threat he’d issued just before a Chinese delegation visited the White House. On Monday, China retaliated with tariffs on $60 billion in U.S. goods.

A trade war between the world’s two largest economies seems to be here. And the risks are dire. Financial institutions have warned that "a trade war could cause a global recession," but, as the president infamously tweeted last year, he thinks “trade wars are good, and easy to win.”

On this week’s Radio Atlantic, staff writer Isaac Dovere sits down with Colin Grabow, a trade expert from the libertarian Cato Institute, to discuss the two trade battles at hand: one between the U.S. and China, and the other within the Republican party.

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Franklin Foer joins Isaac Dovere to discuss his story in the June issue of The Atlantic about Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán. Orbán described his vision of Hungary as an "alternative to liberal democracy," and, in recent years, cemented his power by undermining civil society.

When Orbán’s party won a majority last year, it rewrote parts of the constitution, redrew parliamentary districts, and stacked courts. Foer details how one of the last independent institutions—a university in Budapest founded by George Soros—has fought back on Orbán’s efforts to expel it from Hungary.

These efforts have not been met with condemnation from the Trump administration. To the contrary, when he spoke with Foer, the U.S. Ambassador to Hungary said: "I can tell you, knowing the president for a good 25 or 30 years, that he would love to have the situation that Viktor Orbán has."

Next week, President Trump will welcome Orbán to the White House.

How has Hungary found itself losing its democracy? What does it mean for the future of Europe? And what role does the U.S. have in all of this?

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Last weekend’s White House Correspondents’ Dinner was the first one in years without a comedian. In the Trump era, comedians have struggled to adjust — are things too serious? Too biased? Too absurd? Is any of it funny anymore?

Jordan Klepper has been on three very different political comedy shows in three years. He was a fake news correspondent on The Daily Show, then a parody conspiracy theorist on The Opposition, to now playing himself in a new documentary series called simply: Klepper. He joins staff writer Isaac Dovere to discuss the state of political comedy (and why he went from parodying Alex Jones to getting strip-searched in Georgia).

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Atlantic Ideas Editor Yoni Appelbaum and Vox editor-at-large Ezra Klein have both deeply researched the question of impeachment — and each came to a different conclusion.

Appelbaum argued in The Atlantic’s March cover story that the House of Representatives “must immediately open a formal impeachment inquiry into President Trump, and bring the debate out of the court of public opinion and into Congress, where it belongs.”

Klein argues that “impeachment will be a partisan war over the president’s removal, and anyone who thinks otherwise is fooling themselves. The fact-finding potential within the process will be overwhelmed by the question of whether impeachment is merited.”

With that question pressing in the wake of the Mueller report, they sit down with Isaac Dovere to discuss the history of impeachment and make their cases: should Congress move ahead with impeachment?

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On Tuesday, Attorney General William Barr ordered immigration judges to stop releasing asylum seekers on bail. The move signals an even fiercer immigration policy that could include the return of family separations. A few weeks ago, the president threatened to close the southern border. Days later, he fired his Homeland Security chief, who reportedly lost out to hardliners in the White House.

Isaac Dovere interviews Taylor Levy, the Legal Coordinator at Annunciation House, a Catholic charity based in El Paso that provides shelter to immigrants on both sides of the southern border. El Paso has emerged as a hot spot for migration recently. It’s drawn national attention for the number of people crossing there and for the conditions in which those people have been held. Levy shares the harrowing stories of migrants she works with every day.

What are these families escaping when they seek asylum in the U.S.? Why are they being held outside under bridges? And does the Trump administration’s new “Remain in Mexico” policy endanger them?

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The crowded race for the Democratic nomination includes both frontrunners and long-shots, but how do we know which is which? Some big names have trailed in fundraising and polls. And some written off early have found surprising support.

On this week’s Radio Atlantic, Isaac Dovere is joined by one of the biggest long-shot successes in recent Democratic politics: Howard Dean. The former Vermont governor was an unlikely frontrunner for the presidency, but for a time in the 2004 race, he was the man to beat.

Dean talks about what it was like to go from long-shot to frontrunner—and what it’s like to have it all fall apart. He recalls how his 2004 campaign was animated (and perhaps limited) by anger at President Bush. Now, Dean warns Democrats against falling into the same trap with Donald Trump.

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In recent days, three women have accused former Vice President Joe Biden of inappropriate contact. On Wednesday, Biden announced in a video that he is going to be “mindful” about personal space going forward, that he hears what these women are saying, and that he "gets it."

While a number of prominent women have come to Biden's defense, there are plenty of critics who have said he has no place representing a diverse, empowered, progressive electorate in the coming presidential race. When it comes to gender, have the politics of the Democratic party passed Joe Biden by? What happens now to the Biden proto-candidacy? And what does it mean for the Democratic party of 2020?

Alex Wagner sits down with Jennifer Palmieri, former Communications Director for Hillary Clinton's 2016 campaign and for the Obama White House from 2013 to 2015.

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Last week, the special counsel submitted his report to Attorney General Bill Barr. And this week, Barr shared his brief summary of the big conclusions: there was no collusion between Russia and the Trump campaign. As for obstruction of justice, Mueller left that question unresolved. In his letter, Barr said the DOJ had decided the evidence presented didn’t merit criminal charges.

More could change with the release of the actual report. In fact, six House committee chairs have demanded it by next Tuesday. But the Mueller chapter of this presidency is now essentially closed. 

What does the post-Mueller landscape look like? Does the end of his investigation — with no bombshells detonated as yet — hurt Democrats in 2020? Or might it actually help them? Staff writers McKay Coppins and Isaac Dovere join Alex Wagner to discuss.

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When elected, most presidents either sell their assets or put them in a blind trust. Isolating a president’s financial interests from their time in office has been a norm for decades: from Jimmy Carter giving up his peanut farm to Barack Obama liquidating his assets.

But Donald Trump is not like most presidents. He’s said he won’t divest from his businesses, even though his real estate deals around the world open up countless opportunities for conflicts of interest. His unprecedented decision may violate the “emoluments clause” of the Constitution — a rule that’s existed longer than the American republic, but has never before faced scrutiny in the courts. On Tuesday, a panel of Fourth Circuit judges heard an emoluments case and their decision appears likely to send the fight to Supreme Court.

Alex Wagner talks to Joshua Matz, a lawyer for the plaintiffs in that case, a Georgetown law professor, and co-author of the January 2017 Atlantic story: ”Why Trump Will Violate the Foreign Emoluments Clause”

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Former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort will spend around seven years in federal prison — far less than the nineteen to twenty-four years recommended by Special Counsel Robert Mueller. The sentences prompted a backlash when a federal judge in Virginia said Manafort deserved leniency for his “otherwise blameless life.”

But it’s not just the punishment that has people talking. Manafort’s crimes only came to light after the unlikely events that led to the Mueller investigation. Manafort’s own lawyer said as much this week: “but for” the 2016 election, his client wouldn’t have been in court. The episode has renewed questions that have been asked — if not answered — since the the 2008 financial crisis: Why are white-collar criminals so rarely prosecuted? And when they are, why do they seem to get off with lighter punishment?

Alex Wagner puts those questions to attorney and former federal prosecutor Ken White. White is the person behind @popehat on Twitter and the author of the recent Atlantic article: “6 Reasons Paul Manafort Got Off So Lightly.”

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The Democratic party is in a battle with itself. After devastating losses in 2016, the party was resurgent in 2018, but the lessons from both elections remain unclear: should the Democratic party be one of progressive grassroots activism or should it try to win back suburban and moderate voters?

Dan Pfeiffer — former senior advisor to President Obama and co-host of Pod Save America — thinks the choice is a false one. He joins Alex Wagner to discuss what lessons Democrats should carry into 2020.

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On Wednesday before the House Oversight Committee, Michael Cohen called the president a racist, a conman, and a cheat. He also brought documents.

Trump’s onetime confidant testified for seven hours. He laid a trail of legal breadcrumbs that are likely to be followed by House Democrats and federal investigators, among others—long after Robert Mueller hands in his report to the Attorney General.

Fordham Law Professor Jed Shugerman joins Alex Wagner to explain the legal problems President Trump now faces.

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Last week, President Trump declared a national emergency to get funding for the wall. The move gave him elevated power to move money around, but it was immediately met with lawsuits from 16 states. What exactly is a national emergency? Why is this one different? And just how far do a president’s emergency powers really go?

Alex Wagner speaks with Liza Goitein, Co-Director of the Liberty and National Security Program at the Brennan Center. Months before the president’s announcement, Goitein looked into what powers presidents have in a national emergency.

She wrote about her research in The Atlantic magazine, describing over 100 emergency powers she said were “ripe for abuse” and that “this edifice of extraordinary powers has historically rested on the assumption that the president will act in the country’s best interest when using them.”  What could happen in the hands of a president less concerned with norms?

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Amazon founder Jeff Bezos recently accused the National Enquirer of “extortion and blackmail” over private photos of him obtained by the tabloid. In a Medium post, Bezos shared emails from the Enquirer that threaten to publish those photos unless he accedes to their demands. How did a celebrity magazine get into the rough and tumble world of extortion?

Jeffrey Toobin, New Yorker staff writer and CNN’s Chief Legal Analyst, joins Alex Wagner to share insights from his 2017 profile of the man who runs the tabloid. How did the National Enquirer become what it is today? Why does it pay to silence stories about Donald Trump? And why is it at war with Jeff Bezos?

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Recently, news broke that Virginia’s Democratic governor and attorney general both wore blackface in the 1980s. The controversy now enveloping the state has seemed all too familiar, as blackface photos of even more politicians have come out in recent years. Alex Wagner sits down with staff writers Vann R. Newkirk II and Adam Serwer to ask: how does this keep happening?

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Senator Kamala Harris has drawn criticism for beginning her 2020 campaign by pitching herself as a ‘progressive prosecutor’ despite a more mixed record.

Alex Wagner sits down with two people who have thought deeply about the power of prosecutors in America: Georgetown Law Professor Paul Butler and New York Times Magazine staff writer Emily Bazelon. What exactly is Harris’s record? How does race inform the debate about prosecutorial power? And what does it all mean for the broader conversation in 2020 about criminal justice?

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The government shutdown is now the longest in U.S. history, but President Trump seems no closer to a deal to resolve it. Why does the “master dealmaker” -- as he sold himself on the campaign trail -- seem at a loss in his first negotiation with a Democratic House?

New York Times White House Correspondent and ‘Trump whisperer’ Maggie Haberman joins Alex Wagner to explain how his business career actually predicted his performance during the shutdown.

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On Friday, the New York Times published a startling story: In 2017, days after Trump fired FBI Director James Comey, the bureau opened an inquiry into whether the president was secretly working on behalf of Russia. It was an explosive development in an already major story.

Since this news came out, it’s informed how we see two other very big new stories: On Sunday, the Washington Post reported that Trump has gone to “extraordinary lengths” to conceal details of his conversations with Vladimir Putin. And on Monday, the Times reported that Trump had discussed withdrawing the United States from NATO.

Trump claims he has been tougher on Russia “than any other President,” while also proposing that “getting along with Russia is a good thing, not a bad thing.” Over the years, people have speculated about Trump’s ties to Russia. But this week’s news raises the question very clearly: Is the President of the United States a Russian asset?

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Social media platforms once promised to connect the world. Today’s digital communities, though, often feel like forces for disunity. Anger and discord in 2018 seemed only amplified by the social media institutions that now dictate our conversations. Executive editor Matt Thompson sits down with staff writer Alexis Madrigal to find out how we got to this point and whether we can do anything to solve it.

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Observing antidemocratic ‘power grabs’ by state Republicans, Atlantic staff writer George Packer writes that “the corruption of the Republican Party in the Trump era seemed to set in with breathtaking speed. In fact, it took more than a half century to reach the point where faced with a choice between democracy and power, the party chose the latter.”

To understand how the party of Lincoln became the party of Trump, Alex Wagner spoke with Packer on this week’s episode of Radio Atlantic. Listen to hear Packer describe the three ‘insurgencies’ that explain the transformation of the GOP over the last half-century. An ideological revolution that began with Barry Goldwater became a coup for power with Newt Gingrich (A.K.A. “The Man Who Broke Politics”). Afterwards, moderate Republicans became an endangered species, the Tea Party emerged as a major force, and Trump’s brand of corrosive politics became, Packer says, “inevitable.”

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On Thursday, Maria Butina became the first Russian national convicted of seeking to influence the 2016 election. As part of Russia’s years-long effort to cozy up to the American right, Butina gained access to conservative circles through the National Rifle Association. And as the NRA is under scrutiny for ties to Russian operatives, it appears the organization illegally coordinated with the Trump campaign.

Alex Wagner catches up on the week’s developments with Atlantic staff writer Natasha Bertrand. Then, to make sense of how the NRA, Russia, and the Trump campaign connect to one another, she’s joined by Mike Spies, a staff writer for The Trace who covers the gun lobby.

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A Chinese researcher recently touched off a global controversy when he announced the birth of the world’s first genetically edited babies. The claims remain unverified, but the news shocked and dismayed scientists around the world. Atlantic staff writers Ed Yong and Sarah Zhang join Matt Thompson to discuss the news and what it means for the future of genetic editing.

Links

- The CRISPR Baby Scandal Gets Worse by the Day (Ed Yong, December 3, 2018)

- Chinese Scientists Are Outraged by Reports of Gene-Edited Babies (Sarah Zhang, November 27, 2018)

-A Reckless and Needless Use of Gene Editing on Human Embryos (Ed Yong, November 26, 2018)

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Paul Manafort’s cooperation with the Mueller probe has collapsed. In a Monday filing, the special counsel’s office said he repeatedly lied to federal investigators, nullifying the plea agreement and exposing him to new charges.

Not soon after, news stories broke reporting that Manafort had met with Julian Assange in 2016, that a meeting between Manafort and Ecuador’s then-president was under scrutiny by Mueller, and that Manafort’s lawyer was briefing Trump’s attorneys. All this comes as the investigation appears to be reaching a crescendo. What does Mueller know? What did Manafort lie about? And what will President Trump do next?

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The midterms were over a week ago, but a number of races have yet to be called. In Florida, the senate and governor elections have both come down to a recount, and accusations of vote-tampering are flying.

Alex Wagner talks with Atlantic staff writer Isaac Dovere to understand what’s going on, and then turns to two veterans of the last such debacle: Mark McKinnon, chief media adviser for George W. Bush's 2000 campaign and Jeremy Bash, national security issues director for the Gore campaign.

They discuss winning the narrative, butterfly ballots, and landing to a “cloud of chads.”

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Executive Editor Matt Thompson interviews Atlantic reporters on what lessons they drew from the midterm elections, speaking in turn with: Vann Newkirk, Emma Green, Ron Brownstein, Adam Harris, and David Graham.

Links

- “The Democrats’ Deep-South Strategy Was a Winner After All”(Vann R. Newkirk II, November 8, 2018)

- ”Tuesday Showed the Drawbacks of Trump's Electoral Bargain” (Ronald Brownstein, November 7, 2018)

- “The Year of the Woman Still Leaves Women With Terrible Representation in Government” (Emma Green, November 7, 2018)

- “The Democrats Are Back, and Ready to Take On Trump” (David A. Graham, November 7, 2018)

- “America Is Divided by Education” (Adam Harris, November 7, 2018)

- “The Georgia Governor’s Race Has Brought Voter Suppression Into Full View” (Vann R. Newkirk II, November 6, 2018)

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The upcoming midterms mark the first nationwide referendum on the Trump presidency and the GOP-led Congress. Coming amid a shocking spree of political violence and an ugly showdown over voting rights, Tuesday’s election will have massive ramifications. What conclusions can we draw from the vote?

Links

- “The Jews of Pittsburgh Bury Their Dead” (Emma Green, October 30, 2018)

- “Trump Shut Programs to Counter Violent Extremism” (Peter Beinart, October 29, 2018)

- “Trump’s Caravan Hysteria Led to This” (Adam Serwer, October 28, 2018)

- “A Broken Jewish Community” (Emma Green, October 28, 2018)

- “Voter Suppression Is the New Old Normal” (Vann R. Newkirk II, October 24, 2018)

- “The 2018 Midterms Are All About Trump” (Ronald Brownstein, October 18, 2018)

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On October 2nd, Washington Post contributing columnist Jamal Khashoggi entered the Saudi consulate in Istanbul, never to be seen again. Details of the journalist’s brutal killing and dismemberment have since emerged, prompting an international crisis for the kingdom and its de-facto ruler, crown prince Mohammed bin Salman.

This week, The Atlantic’s Editor in Chief Jeffrey Goldberg sits down with Fred Hiatt, the Washington Post’s editorial page editor and Jamal Khashoggi’s former boss, to discuss the man Khashoggi was and what justice may come after his death.

Links

- “This is the first step to recalibrating U.S.-Saudi relations” (The Editorial Board, Washington Post, October 22, 2018)

- “The U.S. Loved the Saudi Crown Prince. Not Anymore.” (Krishnadev Calamur, October 22, 2018)

- “There can be no coverup of this act of pure evil” (The Editorial Board, Washington Post, October 19, 2018)

- “Trump Sees Khashoggi’s Disappearance Mostly as a PR Problem” (David A. Graham, October 19, 2018)

- “Jamal Khashoggi: What the Arab world needs most is free expression” (Jamal Khashoggi, Washington Post, October 17, 2018)

- “Saudi Crown Prince: Iran's Supreme Leader 'Makes Hitler Look Good'” (Jeffrey Goldberg, April 2, 2018)

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Senator Elizabeth Warren recently shared results of a genetic analysis to back up her family’s story of Cherokee ancestry, hoping to blunt a favorite Republican attack line. The move backfired. A DNA result does not confer a Cherokee heritage. And in general, efforts to link our genetics with our ethnic or cultural identities have a long and sordid history. So what’s more revealing: the results of DNA tests like Warren’s? Or what we try to find in them?

Links

- “The First DNA Test as Political Stunt” (Sarah Zhang, October 15, 2018)

- “Trump, Warren, and America's Racial Essentialism” (Vann R. Newkirk II, October 16, 2018)

- “Your DNA Is Not Your Culture” (Sarah Zhang, September 25, 2018)

- “When White Nationalists Get DNA Tests That Reveal African Ancestry” (Sarah Zhang, August 17, 2017)

- "Radio Atlantic: Becoming White in America" (Kevin Townsend, April 13, 2018)

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A college education has become a key asset towards success in the American economy, but for many Americans, access to higher education—especially at a prestigious university—feels increasingly out of reach. With its capricious admissions and massive debt loads, the system is struggling. So we’re sitting down this week with two members of our Education team—editor Alia Wong and staff writer Adam Harris—to ask the question: is U.S. higher education sustainable?

Links

- “Harvard Admissions on Trial” (Alia Wong, October 5, 2018)

- “America Wakes Up From Its Dream of Free College” (Adam Harris, September 11, 2018)

- “George Washington’s Broken Dream of a National University” (Adam Harris, September 21, 2018)

- “Lotteries May Be the Fairest Way to Fix Elite-College Admissions” (Alia Wong, August 1, 2018)

- “Why the Ivy League Needs to Admit More Students” (Alia Wong, September 28, 2018)

- “Here’s How Higher Education Dies” (Adam Harris, June 5, 2018)

- “The Era of Affirmative Action May Not Last Much Longer” (Adam Harris, July 3, 2018)

- “The College-Graduation Problem All States Have” (Adam Harris, June 16, 2018)

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Four years ago, after a police officer shot and killed Michael Brown, protestors took to the streets of Ferguson, Missouri. Among them was a school administrator, always clad in a trademark blue vest. DeRay Mckesson, now a face of what became the Black Lives Matter movement, spoke in Washington this week at The Atlantic Festival. Mckesson recently authored a memoir: On the Other Side of Freedom: The Case for Hope.

Links

- On the Other Side of Freedom: The Case for Hope (DeRay Mckesson, 2018)

- “DeRay McKesson Talks About the Hardest Job He's Ever Had” (Lola Fadulu, June 2, 2018)

- “Hashtag Activism Isn't a Cop-Out” (Noah Berlatsky, January 7, 2015)

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After a news week that’s felt more like a news month, Matt Thompson sits down with two experienced editors to ask how people manage to make and consume news in today’s environment. Adrienne LaFrance is the editor of TheAtlantic.com. Franklin Foer is a national correspondent for The Atlantic and the author of World Without Mind.

Links

- “The Death of the Public Square” (Franklin Foer, July 6, 2018)

- “The Most Powerful Publishers in the World Don’t Give a Damn” (Adrienne LaFrance, August 8, 2018)

- “Mark Zuckerberg Doesn’t Understand Journalism” (Adrienne LaFrance, May 1, 2018)

- “The Era of Fake Video Begins” (Franklin Foer, May 2018 Issue)

- “When Silicon Valley Took Over Journalism” (Franklin Foer, September 2017 Issue)

- “It’s Time to Regulate the Internet” (Franklin Foer, March 21, 2018)

- “Social Media in 1857” (Adrienne LaFrance, November 1, 2017)

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As Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh faces assault allegations, the #MeToo movement reaches its first anniversary. Beyond a potential hearing reminiscent of the Anita Hill testimony 27 years ago, recent days have seen the head of CBS toppled, the editor of The New York Review of Books gone, and even a glacier renamed. What’s changed since the start of the #MeToo movement and what hasn’t?

Links

- “The Logical Fallacy of Christine Blasey Ford’s ‘Choice’” (Megan Garber, September 20, 2018)

- “The Phantom Reckoning” (Megan Garber, September 16, 2018)

- “Brett Kavanaugh and the Revealing Logic of ‘Boys Will Be Boys’” (Megan Garber, September 17, 2018)

- “I Believe Her” (Caitlin Flanagan, September 17, 2018)

- “Why the Les Moonves Departure Is Not Enough” (Megan Garber, September 10, 2018)

- “Shame and Survival” (Monica Lewinsky, Vanity Fair, June 2014)

- “Nanette Is a Radical, Transformative Work of Comedy” (Sophie Gilbert, June 27, 2018)

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With authoritarianism and populism on the rise around the world, The Atlantic examines the fate of democracy in its October issue. Anne Applebaum writes that Poland shows how quickly things can fall apart and Jeffrey Rosen writes that the state of American politics is one Founder’s worst nightmare. They join Jeffrey Goldberg and Alex Wagner to discuss this precarious moment in history.

Links

- “Is Democracy Dying?” (October 2018 Issue)

- “America Is Living James Madison’s Nightmare” (Jeffrey Rosen, October 2018)

- “A Warning From Europe: The Worst Is Yet to Come” (Anne Applebaum, October 2018)

- “The Threat of Tribalism” (Amy Chua and Jed Rubenfeld, October 2018)

- “Americans Aren’t Practicing Democracy Anymore” (Yoni Appelbaum, October 2018)

- “Twitter’s Flawed Solution to Political Polarization” (Christopher A. Bail, New York Times, September 8, 2018)

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Mark Leibovich has a day job covering the reality show of politics as the New York Times Magazine’s Chief National Correspondent, but he’s spent the spent the last few years reporting a book on America’s other biggest reality show: football.

The new season begins with Colin Kaepernick the face of Nike, Donald Trump the NFL’s biggest commentator, and America’s most popular sport facing a myriad of problems. How does football survive both CTE and declining ratings? Which is the bigger swamp – Washington, DC, or an NFL owner’s box?

Links

- Big Game: The NFL in Dangerous Times (Mark Leibovich, 2018)

- “The Absurdist Spectacle of the Nike Boycotts” (Hannah Giorgis, September 5, 2018)

- “Colin Kaepernick, Nike, and the Myth of Good and Bad Companies” (Joshua Hunt, September 5, 2018)

- “Taking a Blowtorch to Debate” (Alex Wagner, September 5, 2018)

- “Trump’s Divisive and Relentless Politicization of the NFL” (Ben Strauss, September 1, 2018)

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This week, the most rigorous estimate yet of deaths caused by Hurricane Maria was published, marking a grim milestone: the hurricane season of 2017 was one of the deadliest in North America in a century. A year after Puerto Rico, Houston, and other communities were devastated by storms, they’re still counting the victims and trying to rebuild. Because of climate change, these types of extreme disasters may only grow more common.

In this episode, The Atlantic’s staff writers Vann Newkirk and Elaina Plott join Matt Thompson to discuss their reporting on Puerto Rico and Houston. How are they doing a year later? And what should we learn from their recovery efforts?

Links

- “A New Death Toll for Puerto Rico After Hurricane Maria” (Vann R. Newkirk II, August 28, 2018)

- “Hurricane Harvey Is Houston’s Unending Nightmare” (Elaina Plott, August 26, 2018)

- “A Look Back at Hurricane Harvey: One Year Since Landfall” (Alan Taylor, August 26, 2018)

- “Researchers Are Still Counting the Dead From Hurricane Maria” (Vann R. Newkirk II, August 2, 2018)

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Matt and Gillian discuss Paul Manafort’s guilty verdict and Michael Cohen’s guilty plea with Franklin Foer and David A. Graham. Was Tuesday a turning point for the Trump administration?

Links

- “The Day That Everything Changed for Trump” (David A. Graham, August 22, 2018)

- “Trump’s Victory Was a Disaster for Michael Cohen and Paul Manafort” (David A. Graham, August 23, 2018)

- “Blind Confidence Couldn’t Save Paul Manafort” (Franklin Foer, August 21, 2018)

- “The Plot Against America” (Franklin Foer, March 2018 Issue)

- “Will Trump Be Meeting With His Counterpart — Or His Handler?” (Jonathan Chait, New York Magazine, July 8, 2018)

- “All Eyes on the Presidency” (Adam Serwer, August 22, 2018)

- Corruption in America (Zephyr Teachout, 2016)

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With movies like Crazy Rich Asians, BlacKkKlansman, and Sorry To Bother You out in theaters, Hollywood is trying to mute the complaint that it lacks racial and ethnic diversity, to avoid another #OscarsSoWhite. But depicting people of color onscreen was always the easy part. Next comes a harder question: how authentically are minority experiences being represented? Matt sits down with senior editor Gillian White and culture writer Hannah Giorgis to discuss.

Links

- “What Does It Mean to ‘Sound’ Black?” (Hannah Giorgis, August 15, 2018)

- “There’s Nothing Wrong With Black English” (John McWhorter, August 6, 2018)

- “With BlacKkKlansman, Spike Lee Sounds the Alarm About America’s Past and Present” (David Sims, August 8, 2018)

- “Daveed Diggs and Rafael Casal on Blindspotting and the Power of Poetry” (Hannah Giorgis, July 21, 2018)

- “Blindspotting Is a Boldly Sincere Love Letter to Oakland” (David Sims, July 20, 2018)

- “The Oscars’ Terrible Idea” (David Sims, August 9, 2018)

- “Yet Another Reason the New ‘Popular Film’ Oscar Is a Terrible Idea” (Christopher Orr, August 11, 2018)

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It’s been a year since the violence of the “Unite the Right” rally and the political turmoil of its aftermath. How did Charlottesville change the country? Has the alt-right withered under the new scrutiny or grown amidst the new visibility? And what responsibility do tech platforms have to stop the spread of hateful ideologies?

Links

- "The White Nationalists Are Winning" (Adam Serwer, August 10, 2018)

- “White threat in a browning America” (Ezra Klein, Vox,  July 30, 2018)

- “The Hate Report: The alt-right is down, but not out” (Will Carless and Aaron Sankin, Reveal, June 1, 2018)

- “The Defense That Failed White Nationalists” (Adam Serwer, May 10, 2018)

- “The Lost Boys” (Angela Nagle, December 2017 Issue)

- “The Hoods Are Off” (Matt Thompson, August 12, 2017)

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The first anniversary of Radio Atlantic this week coincides with one of the newsiest weeks of 2018. So we’ve decided to take the opportunity to lift our sights above the fog of news for a few minutes, and discuss the things that are most important to remember—the Keepers of the Year. We revisit some of the most memorable keepers of the show’s earliest months, and share reflections from our Atlantic colleagues.

Links

- “Nanette Is a Radical, Transformative Work of Comedy” (Sophie Gilbert, June 27, 2018)

- Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business (Neil Postman, 1985)

- “My Family's Slave” (Alex Tizon, June 2017 Issue)

- “Complicating the Narratives” (Amanda Ripley, Medium, June 27, 2018)

- “how to do nothing” (Jenny Odell, Medium, June 29, 2017)

- “Philip Roth's final interview: 'Life can stop on a dime'” (Charles Mcgrath, Irish Times, January 22, 2018)

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As President Trump meets with other western leaders in Europe, the spirit of democratic cooperation we’re used to in NATO summits is gone. But it’s not just Trump. Populist movements around Europe are agitating against the cooperation that has bound the continent since World War II. Where is the West headed? Is this a short-term fever brought on by unique stresses? Or does it herald a re-fracturing of the continent? Are the ‘member states’ of Europe becoming ‘nation states’ again?

Links

- “Angela Merkel, Escape Artist” (Yasmeen Serhan, July 3, 2018)

- “What If Russia Invaded the Baltics—and Donald Trump Was President?” (Uri Friedman, July 27, 2016)

- “England’s Unfamiliar Emotion: Hope” (Sophie Gilbert, July 10, 2018)

- “Why Didn't Boris Johnson Get Fired Before He Quit?” (Yasmeen Serhan, July 9, 2018)

- “The End of the Brexit Illusion” (David Frum, July 9, 2018)

- “Trump’s Plan to End Europe” (David Frum, May 2017 Issue)

- Educated (Tara Westover, 2018)

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“Humanity is now in the midst of its fastest-ever period of change,” writes Ed Yong in the July/August issue of The Atlantic. Urbanization and globalization mean pathogens can spread and become drug-resistant more quickly than ever.

Yong joins executive editor Matt Thompson and fellow science writer Sarah Zhang to discuss what vulnerabilities exist a century after the 1918 pandemic, and how our sharpest risks might be societal and psychological.

Links

- “The Next Plague Is Coming. Is America Ready?” (Ed Yong, July/August 2018 Issue)

- “VIDEO: Is Trump Ready for a Global Outbreak?” (Ed Yong, Jun 14, 2018)

- “China Is Genetically Engineering Monkeys With Brain Disorders” (Sarah Zhang,  June 8, 2018)

- “The Perfect Storm Behind This Year's Nasty Flu Season” (Sarah Zhang,  January 13, 2018)

- “Trees That Have Lived for Millennia Are Suddenly Dying” (Ed Yong, Jun 11, 2018)

- @sarahzhang on Twitter; @-mention her if you’ve read Audrey Schulman’s A Theory of Bastards

- 160 Years of Atlantic Stories

- “How Bad Is the Flu?” (Justina Hill, March 1944 Issue)

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Outrage over families separated at the border has reached a fever pitch. Social media is awash with images of undocumented migrants held in cages, sounds of children crying for their parents, and viral videos of a callous administration response. On Wednesday, President Trump caved to immense political pressure and signed an executive order meant to end family separation at the border. But what effect will it actually have?

Video producer Jeremy Raff has been in McAllen, Texas, attending "mass trials" of immigrants—many of whom have been separated from their children with no certainty on when, or if, they will be reunited. Raff shares what's happening along the border, then staff writer Priscilla Alvarez joins to discuss what the news in Washington means for separated families.

Links

- "Purgatory at the Border" (Jeremy Raff, June 19, 2018)

- "'So What? Maybe It Is a Concentration Camp'" (Jeremy Raff, February 23, 2018)

- "Extinguishing the Beacon of America" (Alex Wagner, June 15, 2018)

- "Trump Says He Will End the Family Separations He Imposed" (David A. Graham, June 20, 2018)

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Nationwide, black Americans live three years less than white Americans. In places with a history of segregation, that life-expectancy gap can be as much as twenty years. Staff writer Olga Khazan joins Matt Thompson, Alex Wagner, and Vann Newkirk to share the story of Kiarra Boulware, a young black woman from Baltimore whose struggles shed a light on how people living only a few miles apart have such disparate health prospects

Links

- “Being Black in America Can Be Hazardous to Your Health” (Olga Khazan, July/August 2018 Issue

- “The 'Horrifying' Consequence of Lead Poisoning” (Olga Khazan, November 8, 2017)

- “The Lead-Poisoned Generation in New Orleans” (Vann R. Newkirk II, May 21, 2017)

- “How Income Affects the Brain” (Olga Khazan, May 15, 2018)

- “The Obesity Cure Is Out of Reach in the Heaviest States” (Olga Khazan, May 7, 2018)

- “Trump's EPA Concludes Environmental Racism Is Real” (Vann R. Newkirk II, February 28, 2018)

- “Food Swamps Are the New Food Deserts” (Olga Khazan, December 28, 2017)

- “What the 'Crack Baby' Panic Reveals About The Opioid Epidemic” (Vann R. Newkirk II, July 16, 2017)

- “The Fight for Health Care Has Always Been About Civil Rights” (Vann R. Newkirk II, June 27, 2017)

- “VIDEO: Environmental Racism Is the New Jim Crow” (Vann R. Newkirk II, June 5, 2017)

- “When You Can't Afford Sleep” (Olga Khazan, September 15, 2014)

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