How Cable News Fails Viewers
“Too much of our political coverage is meta-analysis... it's a look at how things are going to look,” argues Jon Lovett, former Obama speechwriter turned podcaster, at the 2017 Aspen Ideas Festival....
View ArticleHate Groups Are Growing Under Trump
According to research by the Southern Poverty Law Center, the number of hate groups has been increasing rapidly since 2000. Heidi Beirich, director of the Center’s Intelligence Project, links the rise...
View ArticleGenetic Testing Is Recreating Bonds Broken by Slavery
“These tests at their best allow new forms of connection that might not have been otherwise possible,” says Alondra Nelson, president-elect of the Social Science Research Council. Though African...
View ArticleKhizr Khan on the Constitution
“Liberty requires vigilance and sacrifice so we remain standing in defense of our Constitution and its values,” says Khizr Khan. The lawyer and Gold Star father of Captain Humayun Khan, a...
View ArticleHow Just Six Words Can Spark Conversation About Race in America
“We clearly are not post-racial,” Michele Norris, the celebrated former host of NPR’s All Things Considered, claims in this interview filmed at the 2017 Aspen Ideas Festival. That’s why she created...
View ArticleDoes Technology Need to Be Ethical?
“The average citizen is starting to feel more and more like, ‘I’m not sure that I feel good about the way technology is interacting with my life,’” says Anil Dash, an entrepreneur, activist, and the...
View ArticleHow Stores Trick You Into Buying More Things
How do consumers decide what to buy? The truth is that stores know you better than you do—both online and offline. The Atlantic writer Derek Thompson reveals how retailers consistently manipulate...
View ArticleHow Russia Hacked America—And Why It Will Happen Again
During the 2016 presidential campaign, Russian hackers attacked the U.S. on two fronts: the psychological and the technical. Hackers used classic propaganda techniques to influence American voters,...
View ArticleWhy Are So Many Women Dying From Pregnancy in D.C.?
Maternity Desert, a new documentary from The Atlantic, follows Amber Pierre, a 24-year-old African-American woman living in southeast D.C. Pierre is pregnant with her second child. After two previous...
View ArticleJohn Legend and Jesse Williams on Art and Activism
The Atlantic's Adrienne Green sat down with Jesse Williams and John Legend for the MLK special edition of the magazine to discuss their stances on racial injustice, the struggle for civil rights, and...
View ArticleWhat a Picture From the Sky Reveals About Oppression
In honor of the MLK Special Issue, The Atlantic commissioned artist and photographer LaToya Ruby Frazier to photograph Chicago, Baltimore, and Memphis from the air. In her aerial photography, Frazier...
View ArticleJustice Stevens: Roe Will Be Overturned If Kennedy Retires
In a recent interview at the Aspen Ideas Festival, The Atlantic contributing editor Jeffrey Rosen reveals that before Justice Stevens retired, “[Stevens] told me...he thought Roe would be overturned...
View ArticleHow the Trade War with China Will Affect the U.S.
With the onset of Trump’s trade war, diplomatic relations between the U.S. and China—the world’s largest and second-largest economies, respectively—have reached a crisis point. Yasheng Huang, a...
View ArticleFear and Anxiety at Refugee Road
There are roughly 3,000 immigrants from Mauritania in Columbus, Ohio. They came to America fleeing persecution and slavery in the West African country. For years, ICE allowed even those with failed...
View ArticleOn the Trail of Missing American Indian Women
On a Friday morning in May, Lissa Yellowbird-Chase woke up to more Facebook messages than she could hope to answer. Her inbox was full of friends, acquaintances, and strangers asking for her help...
View ArticleThe Amateur Sleuth Who Hunts Down the Missing
“If you’re just out there somewhere on the land, dead, and nobody’s looking for you—that’s the worst thing in the world,” says Lissa Yellowbird-Chase in Vanished, a new documentary from The Atlantic....
View Article#MeToo Is Changing How Sex Is Simulated on Set
In 2007, the actor Maria Schneider revealed something disturbing that had occurred while filming what became one of her most lauded performances, in the 1972 movie Last Tango in Paris. Schneider...
View Article‘We’re the Workaholics of the World’
Should a job provide a paycheck or a purpose? For Americans, the edict is both. “Work has become the centerpiece of our identity, the focal point of our lives, and the organizing principle of...
View ArticleThe Rat Apocalypse in New Zealand
Updated at 6:05pm ET on September 12, 2019. New Zealand has a rat problem. The non-native rodent, which originally hitched a ride to the island on ships in the 13th century, has proliferated to such...
View ArticleThe Hidden Dangers in Your Phone Number
Identity theft isn’t usually something that keeps people up at night. It should, argues the former Atlantic writer Taylor Lorenz: “You don’t ever worry about it until it happens to you.” In a new...
View ArticleThe Millennial Booze Fatigue Syndrome
“I’m sick of finding meaning in alcohol,” says 24-year-old Connor Hunter-Kysor from Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. He’s not alone—many Millennials are similarly disenchanted with America’s culture around...
View ArticleAll Great Civilizations Fall. Is America Next?
At its height, in the year A.D. 177, the Roman Empire seemed all but invincible. It was the most expansive political and social structure in Western civilization. Then it fell, in a manner so...
View ArticleThe Death and Afterlife of the Mall
The shopping mall has had a dramatic fall from grace. Once the veritable town square and a cornerstone of American consumerism, malls have aged into oblivion, replaced by cheaper and more convenient...
View ArticleThe Climate Hellscape Is Coming, and Capitalism Can't Save Us
In her 2007 book, The Shock Doctrine, Naomi Klein coined the term disaster capitalism, which refers to the tendency of free markets and governments to respond opportunistically to catastrophic events....
View ArticleWhy Dating Is Hard for Millennials
The landscape of modern romance is peppered with dating apps. It’s how most new couples meet. In the latest episode of The Idea File, staff writer Ashley Fetters explains the social implications of...
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