Best of The Atlantic
The Earthquake That Could Shatter Netanyahu's Coalition
Yair Rosenberg
The most controversial Israeli comedy sketch of the current war is just 88 seconds long. Aired in February on Eretz Nehederet, Israel's equivalent of Saturday Night Live, it opens with two ashen-faced officers knocking on the door of a nondescript apartment, ready to deliver devastating news to the inhabitants. The officers are greeted by an ultra-Orthodox Jewish man who is similarly stricken when he sees them."I've been terrified of this knock," he says. "Ever since the war began, I knew it woul...
Putin's 'Rabble of Thin-Necked Henchmen'
Anna Nemtsova
Not even the most passionate supporters of Vladimir Putin are pretending that the results of this weekend's election are in doubt: Putin, Russia's longest-serving leader since Joseph Stalin, is about to embark on his sixth term. And so, with no electoral politics to debate, both pro-Putin and liberal Kremlinologists in the Russian-language mediasphere have been focusing instead on changes at the very top of Russia's power pyramid: the new elite that is coming to replace the old Putin cronies, the...
A Civil-War Movie With No One Worth Cheering
David Sims
In Alex Garland's new film, Civil War, the United States has fallen into an internecine conflict pitting the government against separatist forces--a narrative with uncomfortable resonance in these politically polarized times. Unlike in our own world, it's never really clear in the movie why the nation is fighting itself. We kick off with vague talk of "western forces" and an implausible-sounding alliance between Texas and California, but there isn't much more explanatory world-building. All we know is that America is a battleground;...
They Ate at My Table, Then Ignored My People
Reem Kassis
The first dinner I ever hosted in the United States was the spontaneous act of a homesick college freshman. I had nowhere to go during spring break, so I cooked maqlubeh (spiced rice, eggplant, and chicken) and, true to my culture, made enough to feed any student left behind in the dorm. For many of my impromptu guests, I was the first and only Palestinian they knew, and they showed a genuine interest in understanding Palestinian history, and even empathy for our occupation and forceful displacem...
How Long Should a Species Stay on Life Support?
Katherine J. Wu
Updated at 6:50 p.m. ET on March 15, 2024At about 3:30 a.m., four hours into our drive, Travis Livieri's phone began to thrum. "I've got a ferret for you," a voice crackled through the static. The animal in question was one of North America's most endangered mammals, for which the next hour might be the strangest of her life; for Livieri, the wildlife biologist tasked with saving her, it would be one of thousands of interventions he's made to prevent her kind from permanently vanishing. Over the ...
End the Phone-Based Childhood Now
Jonathan Haidt
Photographs by Maggie ShannonThis article was featured in the One Story to Read Today newsletter. Sign up for it here.Something went suddenly and horribly wrong for adolescents in the early 2010s. By now you've likely seen the statistics: Rates of depression and anxiety in the United States--fairly stable in the 2000s--rose by more than 50 percent in many studies from 2010 to 2019. The suicide rate rose 48 percent for adolescents ages 10 to 19. For girls ages 10 to 14, it rose 131 percent.The probl...
The TV Shows That Don't Solve Their Mysteries
Tom Nichols
This is an edition of The Atlantic Daily, a newsletter that guides you through the biggest stories of the day, helps you discover new ideas, and recommends the best in culture. Sign up for it here.It's Friday, and we've probably all had enough of political news, so instead I'm going to gripe about the decline of my favorite kind of television: "mystery box" shows that center on a secret or a conspiracy. The conceit has gotten out of control.First, here are three new stories from The Atlantic:
Th...
Crows Are the New Pigeons
Tove Danovich
Every night as dusk falls in Portland, Oregon, the sky fills with birds. While workers make their way from the city center toward their homes, crows leave the suburban lawns where they've spent the day picking for grubs to fly downtown. They swirl across the river in large groups, cawing as they go. A community science project recently recorded 22,370 crows spread out downtown--about twice as many as the number of people who lay their heads in that neighborhood.Across North America, crow populatio...
How to Teach the Thrill of Reading
Isabel Fattal
This is an edition of The Wonder Reader, a newsletter in which our editors recommend a set of stories to spark your curiosity and fill you with delight. Sign up here to get it every Saturday morning.This week, The Atlantic published its list of the 136 most significant American novels of the past century. "Our goal was to single out those classics that stand the test of time, but also to make the case for the unexpected, the unfairly forgotten, and the recently published works that already feel i...
D.C.'s Crime Problem Is a Democracy Problem
Harry Jaffe
Matthew Graves is not shy about promoting his success in prosecuting those who stormed the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021. By his count, Graves, the U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia, has charged more than 1,358 individuals, spread across nearly all 50 states and Washington, D.C., for assaulting police, destroying federal property, and other crimes. He issues a press release for most cases, and he held a rare news conference this past January to tout his achievements.But Graves's record...
The Persistent Mystery of Protein Intake
Andrea Valdez
This is an edition of Time-Travel Thursdays, a journey through The Atlantic's archives to contextualize the present and surface delightful treasures. Sign up here.If nutritional information were a slice of bread, we'd be living in a world full of dense 24-grain-and-seed loaves. The internet is stuffed with listicles, tips, and tricks for consuming the right ratio of "macros" (fats, carbs, and proteins). Rows and rows of vitamins and supplements fill pharmacy aisles. Calorie-counting apps track ev...
Supreme Betrayal
Laurence H. Tribe
The Supreme Court of the United States did a grave disservice to both the Constitution and the nation in Trump v. Anderson.In a stunning disfigurement of the Fourteenth Amendment, the Court impressed upon it an ahistorical misinterpretation that defies both its plain text and its original meaning. Despite disagreement within the Court that led to a 5-4 split among the justices over momentous but tangential issues that it had no need to reach in order to resolve the controversy before it, the Cour...
Don't Let Your Disgust Be Manipulated
Arthur C. Brooks
Want to stay current with Arthur's writing? Sign up to get an email every time a new column comes out.Disgust is an incredibly powerful negative emotion, capable of inducing vomiting, panic, and rage. The sound evolutionary reason for our experience of disgust is that it helped keep us alive--by making repellent the tastes, sights, smells, and other sensations associated with death, rottenness, or toxicity. So when your refrigerator smells wrong and, upon inspection, you find that the culprit is a...
The Real Lessons of the Alabama IVF Ruling
O. Carter Snead
When the Alabama Supreme Court found on February 16 that frozen embryos are protected by the state's wrongful-death law in the same way that embryos inside a mother's womb are, it set off one of those depressing and familiar 21st-century political firestorms.The court had heard a complicated civil case touching on questions about the rights of families undergoing in vitro fertilization and the responsibilities of the fertility industry--questions that have long been neglected, to the great detrime...
I'm Disabled. Please Help Me.
Michael Schuman
One cold November morning, I was on Seventh Avenue and 50th Street in Manhattan, on my way to a Dunkin' Donuts. For most people, such an excursion is not a particularly exciting part of the day. But when you are almost blind, as I am, the expedition has a certain complexity.I knew the shop was somewhere just past the northeast corner on 50th, but when I got there, I could not identify the correct storefront. The cane I walk with can prevent me from slamming into a wall or tumbling down a staircas...
The Cases Against Trump: A Guide
David A. Graham
Sign up for The Decision, a newsletter featuring our 2024 election coverage.Not long ago, the idea that a former president--or a major-party presidential nominee--would face serious legal jeopardy was nearly unthinkable. Today, merely keeping track of the many cases against Donald Trump requires a law degree, a great deal of attention, or both.In all, Trump faces 91 felony counts across two state courts and two different federal districts, any of which could potentially produce a prison sentence. H...
Choosing America's Greatest Novels
Gal Beckerman
This is an edition of the Books Briefing, our editors' weekly guide to the best in books. Sign up for it here.The idea of a settled canon, one that towers Mount Rushmore-like above us, is boring. I'll admit that some books and authors, after enough centuries have passed and their influence seems without question, should have their names etched in stone (although even The Iliad and Shakespeare can occasionally stir up a fight). But our sense of which novels matter most is otherwise always fluid--what was once tasteful is now tedious;...
Photos of the Week: Bridal Carry, Ostrich Hug, Godzilla Oscar
Alan Taylor
X-ray analysis of an 18th-century violin in France, scenes from the Academy Awards in Hollywood, a march for International Women's Day in Mexico, the launch of a SpaceX rocket in Texas, white-water canoeing in New Zealand, Ramadan prayers in Indonesia, the Crufts dog show in England, and much more
The Hidden Toll of Surviving Layoffs
Lora Kelley
This is an edition of The Atlantic Daily, a newsletter that guides you through the biggest stories of the day, helps you discover new ideas, and recommends the best in culture. Sign up for it here.Workers who keep their jobs after layoffs are considered the lucky ones. Still, dealing with the stress and guilt of a changed workplace can be harrowing for those unsure if they will be next.First, here are three new stories from The Atlantic:
The Great American Novels
The Supreme Court's supreme bet...
Winners of the British Wildlife Photography Awards 2024
Alan Taylor
Organizers of the 2024 British Wildlife Photography Awards just announced their collection of winners and runners-up. More than 14,000 images were submitted in 11 different categories, celebrating the wildlife and wild spaces found across the United Kingdom. Competition organizers were kind enough to share some of this year's amazing images below. Captions were provided by the photographers.
The Most Powerful Rocket in History Had a Good Morning
Marina Koren
SpaceX has once again launched the most powerful rocket in history into the sky, and this time, the mission seems to have passed most of its key milestones. Starship took off without a hitch this morning, separated from its booster, and cruised through space for a while before SpaceX lost contact with it. Instead of splashing down in the ocean as planned, Starship seems to have been destroyed during reentry in Earth's atmosphere.The flight was the third try in an ambitious testing campaign that b...
The Eternal Scrutiny of Kate Middleton
Hillary Kelly
Kate Middleton has been reduced to her body. By which I mean: Many weeks into her recovery from surgery, and many years into her life as a royal, the physical form of Catherine, Princess of Wales, has become a commodity that the public feels entitled to consume. Her image has been on screens and in print for the past 20 years, so scrutinized and idolized that now, while she's out of sight, newspaper columnists and intrepid TikTokers are fixated on not just where she is but also how she might look...
We're Already Living in the Post-Truth Era
Damon Beres
This is Atlantic Intelligence, a limited-run series in which our writers help you wrap your mind around artificial intelligence and a new machine age. Sign up here.For years, experts have worried that artificial intelligence will produce a new disinformation crisis on the internet. Image-, audio-, and video-generating tools allow people to rapidly create high-quality fakes to spread on social media, potentially tricking people into believing fiction is fact. But as my colleague Charlie Warzel wri...