Inside a Hospital’s Abortion Committee

From The Atlantic. 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…

The Sound of Cruelty

From The Atlantic. 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…

The Lost Boys of Big Tech

From The Atlantic. 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…

Can We Keep Time?

From The Atlantic. It can be tough to face our own mortality. Keeping diaries, posting to social media, and taking photos are all tools that can help to minimize the discomfort that comes with realizing we have limited time on Earth. But how exactly does documenting our lives impact how we live and remember them?…

Maybe You Should Quit Therapy

From The Atlantic. 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,…

What If Your Best Friend Is Your Soulmate?

From The Atlantic. 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…

Time Tips From the Universe

From The Atlantic. Time can feel like a subjective experience—different at different points in our lives. It’s also a real, measurable thing. The universe may be too big to fully comprehend, but what we do know could help inform the ways we approach our understanding of ourselves, our purpose, and our time. Theoretical physicist and…

The Rise of Techno-Authoritarianism

From The Atlantic. 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. Want to share unlimited access to The Atlantic with your loved ones? Give a…

The ‘Coward of Broward’ Re-Examined

From The Atlantic. 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…

How to Rest

From The Atlantic. Between making time for work, family, friends, exercise, chores, shopping—the list goes on and on—it can feel like a huge accomplishment to just take a few minutes to read a book or watch TV before bed. All that busyness can lead to poor sleep quality when we finally do get to put…

The Last Days of the Barcode

From The Atlantic. Once upon a time, a restless cashier would eye each and every item you, the consumer, purchased and key it into the register. This took skill but also time—and proved to be an imperfect way to keep track of inventory. Then one day, a group of grocery executives and inventors came up…

Why a Good Economy Feels Like a Bad One

From The Atlantic. 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…

How to Leave Work Time at Work

From The Atlantic. Before laptops allowed us to take the office home and smartphones could light up with notifications at any hour, work time and “life” time had clearer boundaries. Today, work is not done exclusively in the workplace, and that makes it harder to leave work at work. Co-hosts Becca Rashid and Ian Bogost…

Don’t Buy That Sweater

From The Atlantic. 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…

How to Look Busy

From The Atlantic. Many of us complain about being too busy—and about not having enough time to do the things we really want to do. But has busyness become an excuse for our inability to focus on what matters? According to Neeru Paharia, a marketing professor at Arizona State University, time is a sort of…

A Military Loyal to Trump

From The Atlantic. 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…

How Trump Has Transformed Evangelicals

From The Atlantic. 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…

Lonnie Bunch, Miguel Cardona, and More on Narrowing Opportunity Gaps | The Atlantic’s Equity Review

From The Atlantic. How can we address gaps in wealth, education, environment, and representation, and create a more equitable nation? Join Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution Lonnie G. Bunch III, Secretary of Education Miguel Cardona, White House Environmental Justice Advisory Council Member Jade Begay, Deputy Director of the White House Office of Gun Violence Prevention…

How to Waste Time

From The Atlantic. Co-hosts Becca Rashid and Ian Bogost explore our relationship with time and how to reclaim it. Why is it so important to be productive? Why can it feel like there’s never enough time in a day? Why are so many of us conditioned to believe that being more productive makes us better…

How to Have a Healthy Argument

From The Atlantic. This episode was published November 23, 2023. 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…

Introducing: How to Keep Time

From The Atlantic. Why can it feel like there’s never enough time in a day, and why are so many of us conditioned to believe that being more productive makes us better people? On How to Keep Time, co-hosts Becca Rashid and the Atlantic contributing writer Ian Bogost talk with social scientists, authors, philosophers, and…

How Can Tackling Local Challenges Unlock National Solutions? | State of Our Union: Mississippi

From The Atlantic. Join Mississippi Lieutenant Governor Delbert Hosemann, UNC Chapel Hill’s Tressie McMillan Cottom, The 19th’s Errin Haines, The New York Times’ Dean Baquet, and many more local leaders, policy makers, and journalists for in-depth conversations on the regional issues influencing the national dialogue, and the importance of local journalism. The Atlantic, in partnership…

Peter Thiel Is Taking a Break From Democracy

From The Atlantic. Tech evangelist. Libertarian dreamer. Republican megadonor. Peter Thiel is many things. As Atlantic staff writer Barton Gellman puts it in , 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…