Original documentaries, interviews, explainers, animations, and much more.
From The Atlantic. On this week’s “Galaxy Brain,” host Charlie Warzel dives into the state of the music industry, where streaming economics, algorithmic discovery, and generative AI are reshaping how music is distributed, as well as what it means to make music in this environment. The episode traces how playlists and opaque recommendation systems have…
From The Atlantic. When Ilia Malinin reaches the apex of a vertical leap, he is spinning at 350 revolutions per minute—about the same as a kitchen stand mixer or the marine engine of an oil tanker, Sally Jenkins reports. Jenkins spoke with Malinin ahead of the Winter Olympics to learn more about how the 21-year-old…
From The Atlantic. The writer-director Jafar Panahi’s new film, It Was Just an Accident, is the second Iranian film ever nominated for multiple Oscars. Panahi is in the United States for the awards season, but soon after, he plans to return to Iran, where he may well be arrested. His co-writer on the film was…
From The Atlantic. On this week’s episode of “The David Frum Show,” David opens with his reaction to the racist AI video of Barack and Michelle Obama that was posted and quickly deleted by President Trump’s Truth Social account. He argues that when the president engages in this behavior, it undermines his administration’s other actions…
From The Atlantic. The courts are “one of the bulwarks against anything that might happen in the 2026 election” process, Stephen Richer, former Arizona election official, tells David Frum.
From The Atlantic. For most of his Super Bowl performance, Bad Bunny “had been mugging merrily to the camera, flaring his eyes and making hammy gestures to illustrate his words,” Spencer Kornhaber writes. But as exploding power lines evoked the electrical outages that have plagued Puerto Rico in recent years, anger seemed to twitch in…
From The Atlantic. “The first thing they destroyed was the institutions, and now they’re trying to destroy the rest of us and themselves,” Aidan Walker tells Charlie Warzel about the cultural and political forces behind the “looks-maxxing” trend. Watch the full episode:
From The Atlantic. For the past half century, the U.S. has tried to deploy foreign aid wherever it is needed most—but under the Trump administration, humanitarian projects are being evaluated by a different measure, Hana Kiros reports. The administration’s approach to foreign aid emphasizes dealmaking and transactions over charity. The strategy may gain more resources…
From The Atlantic. The Melania movie is pitched as a documentary following the first lady of the United States in the lead-up to her husband’s second inauguration. But it’s missing all the hallmarks of a journalistic, biographical film. What you get instead is a series of aphorisms that clang loudly against the reality being shaped…
From The Atlantic. “The U.S. Supreme Court said that you could detain people based on their race, their accent, or the language they spoke … There is nothing to preclude ICE from doing that while you’re standing in line getting ready to cast a ballot,” Stacey Abrams tells Anne Applebaum. Listen to the episode:
From The Atlantic. On this week’s *Galaxy Brain*, Charlie Warzel takes listeners deep into the internet’s fever swamps to examine how figures who once would’ve stayed on the fringes now dominate mainstream feeds. The episode charts the rise of Clavicular, a young livestreamer who’s gone from an absurdist curiosity to a fixture in the manosphere…
From The Atlantic. In Kyiv’s Independence Square, a makeshift memorial dedicated to those killed in Russia’s war against Ukraine has grown as the casualty numbers have climbed, Simon Shuster reports. “This is made by the people who stood side by side from day one,” one veteran tells Shuster at the memorial. Read more of Shuster’s…
From The Atlantic. The Trump White House is changing the rules of our political system through intimidation, the distortion of information, financial corruption, and the dismantling of government offices. In the final episode of this season, we examine whether the administration is also trying to change the rules of our elections. Dawn Baldwin Gibson, a…
From The Atlantic. When heavily armed agents of the federal government arrived in Minneapolis, the people of the Twin Cities responded with surprising strength. In this episode, residents describe what drove them to act, and host Anne Applebaum speaks with Atlantic contributing writer Robert Worth about what he learned when he observed the tactics of…
From The Atlantic. “One thing that Jeff Bezos knows probably better than anyone else is that digital industries tend to focus around one big winner”—but The Washington Post isn’t the digital-newspaper version of Amazon, Joshua Benton tells Hanna Rosin. Listen to the episode:
From The Atlantic. As near-freezing temperatures reached southern Florida, cold-stunned iguanas dropped from the trees, unable to handle the chill.
From The Atlantic. “The modern attention-span crisis is not limited to the written word,” Rose Horowitch reports. “Now professors are finding that they can’t even get students—film students—to sit through movies”: Read the full story at theatlantic.com. 🎨: The Atlantic. Sources: bilalulker / Getty; FilmPublicityArchive / United Archives / Getty; Julian Stratenschulte / Picture Alliance…
From The Atlantic. In a dismal morning Zoom call on Wednesday, the Washington Post’s Executive Editor Matt Murray announced that they were laying off roughly a third of its already diminished staff. We talk to Joshua Benton, founder of and senior writer at the Nieman Journalism Lab at Harvard University about how the Post reached…
From The Atlantic. On this week’s episode of “The David Frum Show,” David opens with his thoughts on the reported $500 million-dollar deal between World Liberty Financial, a Trump-family business venture, and the United Arab Emirates, as reported by “The Wall Street Journal.” David discusses the helplessness we feel as we are bombarded with stories…
From The Atlantic. Annie Joy Williams was raised in Murfreesboro, Tennessee, near Nashville, “where the accents grow stronger with each mile you travel from the city,” she writes. “My dad has always had a southern accent: His words fall out of his mouth the way molasses would sound if it could speak, thick and slow.”…
From The Atlantic. With the last significant nuclear-arms-control treaty about to expire, "the world is about to get a little more dangerous this week," Tom Nichols argues.
From The Atlantic. Annie Joy Williams was raised in Murfreesboro, Tennessee, near Nashville, “where the accents grow stronger with each mile you travel from the city,” she writes. “My dad has always had a southern accent: His words fall out of his mouth the way molasses would sound if it could speak, thick and slow.”…
From The Atlantic. “Until recently, I resisted using the F-word to describe President Trump,” Jonathan Rauch argues. “For one thing, there were too many elements of classical fascism that didn’t seem to fit. For another, the term has been overused to the point of meaninglessness, especially by left-leaning types who call you a fascist if…
From The Atlantic. Throughout the new documentary “Melania,” the camera seems desperate to find action—and although there is little, Sophie Gilbert argues, the film’s existence does reveal something about the entertainment industry. https://theatln.tc/7GrPg8mz The film received a $40 million bid from Amazon, which was reported to include a roughly $28 million personal fee for Melania…
From The Atlantic. “I don’t think we’re ever going back to a pre-Trump presidency,” contributing writer David Brooks tells David Frum. “We could be walking into an age where presidential power is ramped up and congressional power continues to deteriorate.” Listen here:
From The Atlantic. Kathleen Walters worked at the IRS for nearly 20 years before resigning over an order to share data on immigrants that her legal team said would actually break the law. “If you lose a job, you can get another job,” she says. “But if you lose your integrity, it is very hard…
From The Atlantic. "I think they hate this because this is a state that works. And that assault will come to your state soon," Minnesota Governor Tim Walz told Isaac Stanley-Becker. Listen to the episode:
From The Atlantic. “One of my favorite questions to ask politicians of any age, but especially the older ones, is ‘Tell me about what side of the internet you are on.’” The digital political strategist Amanda Litman discusses with Charlie Warzel how politicians can develop a credible online presence. Listen to the episode:
From The Atlantic. On this week’s “Galaxy Brain,” Charlie Warzel opens with what it means to live in 2026, when our phones can drop us into graphic, real-time violence without warning—and when documenting that violence can be both traumatizing and politically consequential. Using recent footage out of Minneapolis as a lens, he explores the uneasy…
From The Atlantic. Kathleen Walters was only 23 days away from qualifying for early retirement at the IRS when she decided to quit, rather than acquiesce to a Trump-administration request that she break the law and compromise millions of people’s privacy. She’s one of hundreds of thousands of civil servants who have left or been…
From The Atlantic. “I keep hearing from the White House that we need to cooperate,” Minnesota Governor Tim Walz tells Isaac Stanley-Becker. “I don’t know what you want me to say about cooperating with a force who clearly was doing everything wrong.” Listen here:
From The Atlantic. Autocrats don’t just attack educational institutions; they seek to turn them into “a place that breeds the values of authoritarianism, suspicion, hostility,” Ruth Ben-Ghiat tells Anne Applebaum. Listen to the full episode of “Autocracy in America”:
From The Atlantic. The Minnesota governor warns of a national unraveling and shares the view from his state. “ The way you win this is through nonviolence, that you cannot do violence,” Governor Tim Walz told the Atlantic staff writer Isaac Stanley-Becker in Minneapolis on Wednesday (https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/2026/01/tim-walz-fort-sumter-minneapolis-ice/685801/) . “And I know my constituents are mad at…
From The Atlantic. People are risking their lives in Minneapolis to document the actions of federal agents, Charlie Warzel argues: “If the truth is ever going to win out over propaganda, it can only do so in the face of overwhelming evidence.”
From The Atlantic. Ahead of ICE coming to his home state, staff writer Tyler Austin Harper made the decision to stop carrying his personal handgun that he keeps under his shirt most days “in full compliance with Maine’s concealed-carry laws,” because the past few weeks in Minneapolis “have made it apparent that ICE and Border…
From The Atlantic. On this week’s episode of “The David Frum Show,” David opens with his reflections on the recent shootings in Minneapolis. He argues that these killings, alongside ICE’s warrantless home raids and mistaken detentions, and the reports of deaths in custody, are not isolated abuses but signs of a rapidly deepening crisis in…
From The Atlantic. The statements from congressional Republicans expressing concern after Saturday’s shooting of Alex Pretti were relatively mild. But as Donald Trump watched the situation unfold from the White House, he grew uneasy with the pushback from his party—and with the National Rifle Association’s criticism of comments from a law-enforcement official, Jonathan Lemire report.…
From The Atlantic. “Behind the violence in Minneapolis—captured in so many chilling photographs in recent weeks—is a different reality: a meticulous urban choreography of civic protest,” Robert Worth reports from the city. At times, Worth was reminded of his coverage of the Arab Spring in 2011, in which a series of street clashes between protesters…
From The Atlantic. “The only reason we know that this happened the way it happened was because so many people in that neighborhood were also prepared to witness,” Adam Serwer tells Hanna Rosin from Minneapolis. Listen to more on "Radio Atlantic":
From The Atlantic. A second American was shot and killed by federal agents. The Atlantic staff writer Adam Serwer joins from Minneapolis to describe what he’s seen there in recent days, describing it as a form of activism America’s not seen since the 1960s—perhaps even earlier. Serwer spent last week in Minneapolis talking to protesters.…
From The Atlantic. Come on a journey with the Atlantic staff writer Alexandra Petri as she paints a portrait of Oscar Wilde (and a bird!) while discussing sip-n-paints, how she became a humor writer, and her lifetime of pun-making. This is “Behind the Byline,” a series from The Atlantic that lets you get to know…
From The Atlantic. The Minneapolis protests are less online-based than many other modern protests, Ryan Broderick tells Charlie Warzel: “To compare that to the other side, which is extremely online, is a total inversion of everything I’ve seen in my career.” Listen to the episode:
From The Atlantic. In this episode of “Galaxy Brain,” host Charlie Warzel speaks with the reporter Ryan Broderick about how the internet’s fragmentation of attention and facts has bled into real-world political violence in Minneapolis this month. From the viral spread of a right-wing video about day-care fraud in Minnesota to the aggressive ICE activity…
From The Atlantic. Joan Brugge has worked for nearly 50 years as a cancer scientist, studying the earliest signs that someone might become sick. Then the Trump administration canceled her lab’s funding. The administration’s attacks on medicine, culture, and education—which include funding cuts and verbal threats—are about more than just budgeting and bravado. Our host,…
From The Atlantic. Last year, there was a mass exodus of federal workers: Some were pushed out, while others left on their own. All in all, more than 300,000 Americans left government jobs. The Atlantic staff writer Franklin Foer spent months talking to dozens of them, finding out who they were, what they did, and…
From The Atlantic. Donald Trump’s speech at the World Economic Forum “revealed what he still doesn’t understand about American power on the global stage,” David A. Graham argues.
From The Atlantic. Europe shoring up NATO defenses in Greenland introduces “a flip side of uncertainty” for Vladimir Putin, Fiona Hill tells David Frum. Listen to the full episode:
From The Atlantic. On this week’s episode of “The David Frum Show,” The Atlantic’s David Frum examines one of the most consequential deceptions of the Trump presidency: the insistence that grocery prices are falling when Americans know from lived experience that they are not. David explains how tariffs and trade policy are deliberately driving food…
From The Atlantic. Trump’s base isn’t abandoning him—but several groups have an interest in pushing the claim that they are, Yair Rosenberg argues.
From The Atlantic. The people and politicians around Trump must stand up to him when it comes to his threat to invade Greenland, Anne Applebaum argues.
From The Atlantic. The beautiful illustrations of “The Mitten,” the humor of “A Baby Sister for Frances,” the lessons of “Miss Rumphius”—these are some of what our editors loved from The Atlantic’s 65 essential children’s books.
From The Atlantic. “Name a tech platform,” Sophie Gilbert argues, and “it has been created because someone somewhere wanted to ogle women.” Gilbert speaks with Charlie Warzel about how the use of Grok to create AI-generated nudes is the latest manifestation of a long-running phenomenon in tech. Watch more: https://theatln.tc/na3d4vfH
From The Atlantic. “Heated Rivalry,” the Canadian ice-hockey TV series that’s become a phenomenon, “knows the value of good sex scenes,” Faith Hill argues. The series shows the scenes “not for thrills or laughs or snapshots of a fleeting moment but for illustrating how the characters’ relationship develops, touch by touch, over time. It takes…
From The Atlantic. Some crypto investors don’t understand the level of risk they’re taking—and now government regulators are backing away from new consumer protections, Molly White tells Anne Applebaum. “There were many instances where people lost their funds and they said, ‘I thought I had the same protections as a bank.’” Listen to the full…
From The Atlantic. In this episode of Galaxy Brain, Charlie Warzel confronts the growing crisis around AI-generated sexual abuse and the culture of impunity enabling it. He examines how Elon Musk’s chatbot Grok is being used to create and circulate nonconsensual sexualized images, often targeting women. Warzel lays out why this moment represents a red…
From The Atlantic. Brandon LaRoque kept his life savings in a cryptocurrency account. One morning, as he went to check his balance, he discovered that it was all missing. LaRoque is one of many victims of the unregulated crypto industry. President Donald Trump has rolled back regulation of the industry, while he and his family…
From The Atlantic. Brandon LaRoque kept his life savings in a cryptocurrency account. One morning, as he went to check his balance, he discovered that it was all missing. LaRoque is one of many victims of the unregulated crypto industry. President Donald Trump has rolled back regulation of the industry, while he and his family…
From The Atlantic. President Trump has made comments questioning the necessity of midterm elections. Arizona’s secretary of state talked about this threat earlier this week, telling Yvonne Wingett Sanchez “you can’t cancel the election.” “But here’s the problem,” he said. “The fact that we’re running through these scenarios in the first place should tell you…
From The Atlantic. Danish forces are moving to Greenland to show NATO—and Donald Trump—that they’re serious about security, Isaac Stanley-Becker reports from Copenhagen.
From The Atlantic. Tensions are high in Minneapolis this week. The Trump administration is sending more federal agents. Protesters are calling for justice for the killing of an unarmed citizen. But what could actually happen legally? Especially when the Department of Justice seems more interested in trying to open a criminal investigation into the victim’s…