Elon Musk’s Luck Runs Out

From The Atlantic. For a while, it seemed as if DOGE Elon and Tesla Elon could exist in the same space-time continuum. One of them carried out Donald Trump’s ruthless cost-cutting mission while the other pitched cars that appealed most to people who were highly likely to oppose that mission, or even rage against it.…

Would You Give PornHub Your ID?

From The Atlantic. What happened when states tried to stop kids from watching porn? Search traffic to the major website that complied with new laws plummeted, while search traffic to a site that didn’t comply rose. Researcher Zeve Sanderson talks to Jerusalem Demsas about the unintended consequences of the law—and why he isn’t resigned to…

Minority Rule in America

From The Atlantic. The Framers of the U.S. Constitution designed a government that they hoped would be impervious to tyranny of the majority. What they didn’t spend much time worrying about was the reverse: a tyranny of the minority. The political scientist Steve Teles explains how very small minorities have come to dominate government and…

Teens Are Forgoing a Classic Rite of Passage

From The Atlantic. Research indicates that the number of teens experiencing romantic relationships has dropped. In one 2023 poll, 56 percent of Gen Z adults said they’d been in a romantic relationship at any point in their teen years, compared with 76 percent of Gen Xers and 78 percent of Baby Boomers. A whole lot…

How to Fuel Up

From The Atlantic. Food trends are constantly changing, so can people commit to a long-term nutrition practice? Kera Nyemb-Diop says yes. She is a nutrition scientist focused on breaking down the “rules” of what people think they should eat and focusing instead on being responsive to how our needs change over the course of a…

Sarah McBride Is Used to the Hate

From The Atlantic. Sarah McBride made models of the White House when she was 6. Her childhood dream, as a Delawarean, was to meet Joe Biden. Then last November, one of her ambitions came true when was elected to the House of Representatives. She became the first openly trans member of Congress, a historic achievement…

Ontario Premier Doug Ford: Canadians ‘Are At a Fever Pitch Right Now.’

From The Atlantic. “Canadians—40 millions Canadians—are at a fever pitch right now.” On “The David Frum Show,” Ontario Premier Doug Ford discusses Canadian reactions to the sudden economic and rhetorical attacks from their American neighbor. Subscribe now for tomorrow’s episode: https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLDamP-pfOskNgMNI1eg0pajQfRu-q3NUO&si=zrYSeQNPQWb8QLz6

Can We Stop Kids From Watching Porn?

From The Atlantic. States are cracking down on online porn—but is it working? The researcher Zeve Sanderson explains how age-verification laws backfire, why teens outsmart them, and what that means for the future of internet regulation.  Further reading:  “Do Age-Verification Bills Change Search Behavior? A Pre-Registered Synthetic Control Multiverse, (https://csmapnyu.org/research/academic-research/do-age-verification-bills-change-search-behavior-a-pre-registered-synthetic-control-multiverse) ” by David Lang, Zeve…

How to Wish You Were 66 Instead of 35

From The Atlantic. We don’t often talk about the benefits of aging. Dr.Karen Adams has a different perspective. From new beginnings to menopausal zest, the director of the Stanford Program in Menopause & Healthy Aging discusses what women can look forward to as they age up.  How do you think about aging? Please leave us…

Bonus: Goldberg on Signalgate

From The Atlantic. Anne Applebaum speaks with The Atlantic’s editor-in-chief Jeffrey Goldberg about the consequences of the Signal breach. This conversation was recorded live from The New Orleans Book Festival at Tulane University. 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…

Tariffs Are Paused. Uncertainty Isn’t.

From The Atlantic. The stock market has been tanking since President Donald Trump announced sweeping tariffs a week ago. Then Wednesday mid-afternoon—after Trump reversed course on global tariffs—the market experienced one of its biggest single-day jumps ever. So … what exactly happened? And if the U.S. economy continues to be this unpredictable, what does that…

David From Show Episode 1

From The Atlantic. “The president is not only destroying America’s hard power, its soft power, but the credibility of the American brand,” Ambassador Rahm Emanuel tells David Frum. Watch their full discussion on the premiere episode of “The David Frum Show”: Subscribe to The Atlantic on YouTube: http://bit.ly/subAtlanticYT

Rahm Emanuel and Trump’s Tariff Chaos | The David Frum Show

From The Atlantic. In the premiere episode of The David Frum Show, The Atlantic’s David Frum lays out his case for a new kind of political conversation—one that rejects the radicalized rhetoric dominating major podcasts. He then details why Donald Trump’s tariffs wrecked world financial markets. David takes apart the excuses offered by tariff defenders,…

How Baby-Led Weaning Almost Ruined My Life

From The Atlantic. A method called “baby-led weaning” has recently caught on among many parents, Olga Khazan writes. Its proponents claim that infants don’t need to be spoon-fed baby food—in fact, they don’t need to be spoon-fed anything. But as Khazan spoke with baby-feeding experts—and tried baby-led weaning with her then-six-month-old son—she learned that the…

Did Busing Turn Kids Into Democrats?

From The Atlantic. In the summer of 1975, white schoolchildren at some Louisville, Kentucky, public schools were faced with a choice: stay in the school system and undergo busing to integrate the schools, or leave the system entirely. A remarkable new study by the economist Ethan Kaplan shows that for students who stayed, busing had…

How to Defy Death

From The Atlantic. Humans have always tried to prolong life and battle mortality, but what do the current influx of biohackers reveal about this era of individual responsibility?  Timothy Caulfield, a professor and the research director at the Health Law Institute at the University of Alberta, studies how health and science are represented in the…

Why Trump Wants to Control Universities

From The Atlantic. If the Trump administration’s actions and rhetoric against universities sound vaguely familiar, that may be because they’ve already happened elsewhere. Over the years, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán has dismantled his country’s higher-education system; cracked down on diversity, dissent, and critical thinking; and cast academic institutions as dangerous. So what does that…

Introducing: The David Frum Show

From The Atlantic. To preserve democracy, one has to believe in it. To believe in democracy, one has to understand it. Where it came from. How it works. What’s true. What’s not. What others did before you. How it could be better. How to make a difference. Each week, The David Frum Show digs deep…

In Search of 100-Year-Old Paper Trails

From The Atlantic. Researchers have suggested that lifestyle choices explain the remarkably high number of very old people living healthy lives in regions of the world known as “blue zones.” That research has spawned cookbooks, docuseries, and diets and turned blue zones into a household name. Today’s episode is a conversation with Dr. Saul Newman,…

Jeffrey Goldberg and Anne Applebaum discuss the Signal group chat | New Orleans Book Festival

From The Atlantic. The Atlantic kicks off opening night at the NOLA Book Festival with a dynamic conversation reflecting on the Signal breach and weighing its national-security implications. Featuring editor in chief Jeffrey Goldberg, this special event brings him into conversation with Anne Applebaum as they survey the landscape of democracy. Subscribe to The Atlantic…

Here Are the Attack Plans That Trump’s Advisers Shared on Signal

From The Atlantic. On Monday, The Atlantic published a story detailing how editor in chief Jeffrey Goldberg had been inadvertently added to a Signal group chat of Trump-administration officials discussing attack plans on Houthi targets in Yemen. After the story’s publication, a reporter asked the secretary of defense, Pete Hegseth, why he had shared plans…

Classified, or Not Classified?

From The Atlantic. The Atlantic’s editor in chief, Jeffrey Goldberg, and staff writer Shane Harris published more details (https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2025/03/signal-group-chat-attack-plans-hegseth-goldberg/682176/) from a Signal chat between President Donald Trump’s top advisers that included sensitive details (https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2025/03/trump-administration-accidentally-texted-me-its-war-plans/682151/) about a military strike in Yemen. In screenshots published by The Atlantic, the defense secretary messaged information about strike targets and…

Politicians Think Voters Are Dumb. Are They Right?

From The Atlantic. What do politicians really think of their voters? A new study looking at 11 different democracies finds that politicians hold an unflattering view of their constituents, while voters view themselves as thoughtful, policy-oriented decision makers. The political scientist Jack Lucas explains why politicians think voters are dumb and why they might be…

The Trump Administration Accidentally Texted Our Editor Their War Plans

From The Atlantic. The Atlantic’s editor in chief, Jeffrey Goldberg, received a connection request on Signal from a “Michael Waltz,” which is the name of President Donald Trump’s national security adviser. Two days later, he was added to a group text with top administration officials created for the purpose of coordinating high-level national-security conversations about…

The Elite College Students Who Can’t Read Books

From The Atlantic. Nicholas Dames has taught Literature Humanities, Columbia University’s required great-books course, since 1998. Over the past decade, he’s noticed a change among his students: They’ve become overwhelmed by the reading. One first-year student shared with him that, at her public high school, she had never been asked to read a single book…

The Case for Brain Rot

From The Atlantic. Strange online turns of phrase—“He’s so me for this,” “No because what do you mean,” “If you even care”—have seeped into daily life. One theory about the cause of brain-rot language is that people have gotten stupider. But the people Kaitlyn Tiffany knows who speak this way “are not dumb,” she writes.…

You’ll Never Get Off the Dinner Treadmill

From The Atlantic. The thing about dinner, Rachel Sugar writes, is that you have to deal with it every single night. Figuring out what to eat every night at 6 p.m. is a pleasure until it becomes a constant low-grade grind. It’s not just cooking, but “the meal planning and the grocery shopping and the…

Derek Thompson and Ezra Klein on Abundance

From The Atlantic. Donald Trump won back the White House last year by stoking fears of scarcity. The zero-sum thinking of the right that says there aren’t enough houses or jobs to go around laid the groundwork for the forces of illiberalism currently at play in the federal government. In their new book, Abundance, Ezra…

Americans Need to Party More

From The Atlantic. Americans aren’t partying as much as they used to. This year, we should all resolve to change that, Ellen Cushing writes. “Many Americans are alone, friendless, isolated, undersexed, sick of online dating, glued to their couches, and transfixed by their phones, their mouths starting to close over from lack of use ……

Water in Not Political

From The Atlantic. How has the cease-fire changed water access in Gaza? And what does it mean when the people in charge of keeping the water flowing are displaced? Host Hanna Rosin talks with Claudine Ebeid, The Atlantic’s executive producer of audio, who reports on her visit with water worker Marwan Bardawil, who is now…

The Scientific Controversy That’s Tearing Families Apart

From The Atlantic. Shaken baby syndrome has been discredited, criticized, and even classified as “junk science” by a New Jersey judge, so why is it often being treated as settled fact in hospitals and courtrooms? The neuroscience researcher Cyrille Rossant was plunged headfirst into the controversy of shaken baby syndrome, now called “abusive head trauma,”…

Introducing: How to Age Up

From The Atlantic. Our scientific understanding of the aging process may be expanding, but is our cultural thinking about aging keeping up? In the new season of The Atlantic’s popular How To series, co-hosts Yasmin Tayag and Natalie Brennan explore the cultural gamification of aging, the obsession with defying this inevitable process, and how we…

The Mind Readers

From The Atlantic. How far would a parent go to understand their child? How much might a parent believe? A popular new podcast claims that some nonspeaking kids with autism can read people’s minds. But is it real? Or does it just come from a deep desire to connect? Read Dan Engber’s story at The…

Best of: Is Wokeness Dead?

From The Atlantic. As the second Trump administration dismantles federal DEI programs and removes trans Americans from the military, the crusade on “wokeness” seems to be a core focus of the president’s second term. In this encore episode, host Jerusalem Demsas speaks with the New York Times columnist Michelle Goldberg about the end of wokeness…

What Does a Robot With a Soul Sound Like?

From The Atlantic. The sound designer Randy Thom was faced with a challenge: What does a robot sound like? And what if that robot learns to love? 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…

The Five Eyes Have Noticed

From The Atlantic. We talk with staff writer Anne Applebaum about what she calls the “end of the post–World War II order (https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2025/02/trump-ukraine-postwar-world/681745/) .” We also talk with staff writer Shane Harris, who covers national security, about how intelligence agencies are responding to changing positions under the Trump administration. Allies that routinely share intelligence with…

The Human-Neanderthal Love-Story Mystery

From The Atlantic. If researchers could go back in time 100,000 years, they’d find at least three different types of humans walking the Earth. Today, only the dominant group, Homo sapiens, survives. The scientist Johannes Krause explains how new discoveries in paleontology and genetics help pinpoint the exact period in which human groups interbred. Understanding…

Americans Are Stuck. Who’s to Blame?

From The Atlantic. Americans used to move all the time to better their lives. Then they stopped. Why? Read Yoni Appelbaum’s cover story on The Atlantic here (https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2025/03/american-geographic-social-mobility/681439/) . 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…

The Real Origins of Public Education

From The Atlantic. Why do governments educate their citizens? More than 200 years ago, Western regimes shifted the responsibility of education from the family to the state. The political scientist Agustina Paglayan argues that this transition happened not in pursuit of democratic ideals, but in the interest of social control.  Further reading:  Raised to Obey:…

The Strange, Lonely Childhood of Neko Case

From The Atlantic. In a new memoir (https://bookshop.org/p/books/the-harder-i-fight-the-more-i-love-you-a-memoir-neko-case/21517530?ean=9781538710500&next=t&affiliate=12476) , the singer-songwriter Neko Case (https://www.instagram.com/nekocaseofficial/?hl=en) recounts a childhood of poverty and neglect: a mother who left her and a father who was barely there. But there was also music. And when there was nothing else, that was, perhaps, enough. Get more from your favorite Atlantic voices…

The Great Political Sorting of American Offices

From The Atlantic. We’re often told that there’s “no room for politics at work,” and yet the workplace is one of the most politically segregated spaces in adult life. The Harvard economics researcher Sahil Chinoy explains the self-sorting happening at every stage of professional life and the trade-offs workers are willing to make in pursuit…

Purge Now, Pay Later

From The Atlantic. Parts of the federal government are being dismantled. But although the decisions from President Donald Trump and Elon Musk are unusual—perhaps even unprecedented—are they constitutional? The Atlantic staff writers Jonathan Chait (https://www.theatlantic.com/author/jonathan-chait/) and Shane Harris (https://www.theatlantic.com/author/shane-harris/) break down the administration’s latest moves and who might really end up paying for them later.…

Why Is One Chicago Neighborhood Twice as Deadly as Another?

From The Atlantic. Most gun deaths aren’t premeditated, so how can we stop gun violence before it happens? The University of Chicago economist Jens Ludwig makes the case for thinking differently about the source of America’s gun-violence problem.  Further reading:  • Unforgiving Places: The Unexpected Origins of American Gun Violence (https://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/U/bo244203115.html) , by Jens Ludwig …

Why States Took a Gamble on Sports Betting

From The Atlantic. Seven years after the Supreme Court struck down a ban on state-sanctioned sports betting, a more complete picture of the downstream effects of legalization is starting to emerge. As some states see debt delinquency and problem gambling increase, the journalist Danny Funt explains why lawmakers took a gamble on sports betting in…

The Chaos of Blanket Pardons

From The Atlantic. In a matter of hours after being sworn into office, President Donald Trump delivered on a promise in a way that even high-level Republicans didn’t see coming. Trump granted sweeping pardons for more than 1,500 January 6 defendants.  In this episode of Radio Atlantic, Hanna encounters Oath Keeper leader Stewart Rhodes, who…

Is Elon Musk Right About Big Government?

From The Atlantic. Government reform isn’t an exclusively partisan issue, so why does it seem to fall under the purview of Republicans? The researcher Jennifer Pahlka says Democrats need to “get in the game” of government reform and consider working with, instead of against, the aims of DOGE.  Get more from your favorite Atlantic voices…

January 6 and the Case for Oblivion

From The Atlantic. As Donald Trump prepares to take office again, the country is still coming to terms with what happened on January 6, 2021. But perhaps the best way to move forward is to neither forgive nor forget the past—but obliterate it.  Get more from your favorite Atlantic voices when you subscribe. You’ll enjoy…

The Scientist vs. the Machine

From The Atlantic. Amid handwringing about AI’s effect on jobs, creativity, trust, and the environment, a new study shows the technology’s profound impact on scientific productivity. Aidan Toner-Rodgers, a Ph.D. candidate at MIT, recounts his research that shows the benefits and drawbacks of using AI to discover new scientific materials.  Get more from your favorite…

Trump’s Anti-Immigrant Coalition Starts to Fracture

From The Atlantic. The MAGA alliance that helped elect Donald Trump is starting to show signs of fracturing. It recently came to a head after an important argument broke out over H-1B visas between Silicon Valley and the nativist wing. We talk with Atlantic staff writer Ali Breland, who writes about the internet, technology, and…