Radio Atlantic

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A weekly flagship podcast from The Atlantic hosted by Jeffrey Goldberg (Editor-in-Chief, The Atlantic), Matt Thompson (Deputy Editor, The Atlantic), and Alex Wagner (Co-host, CBS This Morning: Saturday; Contributing Editor, The Atlantic). We're living in historic times. Who better than a 160-year-old magazine to help you make sense of them? Each week, The Atlantic's top editors sit down with leading voices to explore what's happening in the world, how things became the way they are, and where they're going next.

A weekly flagship podcast from The Atlantic hosted by Jeffrey Goldberg (Editor-in-Chief, The Atlantic), Matt Thompson (Deputy Editor, The Atlantic), and Alex Wagner (Co-host, CBS This Morning: Saturday; Contributing Editor, The Atlantic). We're living in historic times. Who better than a 160-year-old magazine to help you make sense of them? Each week, The Atlantic's top editors sit down with leading voices to explore what's happening in the world, how things became the way they are, and where they're going next.

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United States

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News & Politics Podcasts

World News

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Language:

English

Email:

radio@theatlantic.com

Episodes

Being Black in America Can Be Hazardous to Your Health

6/14/2018

Nationwide, black Americans live three years less than white Americans. In places with a history of segregation, that life-expectancy gap can be as much as twenty years. Staff writer Olga Khazan joins Matt Thompson, Alex Wagner, and Vann Newkirk to share the story of Kiarra Boulware, a young black woman from Baltimore whose struggles shed a light on how people living only a few miles apart have such disparate health prospects. Links - “Being Black in America Can Be Hazardous to Your...

Duration:00:46:20

The North Korea Summit

6/7/2018

Two of the world’s most volatile heads of state—Kim Jong Un and Donald Trump—have moved in the span of a year from trading insults to trading fawning letters. Now, they're days away from the first meeting between a sitting U.S. president and a North Korean leader. Between Kim's nuclear ambitions and Trump's political pressures, the stakes of this exchange couldn’t be higher. Are we headed toward the world’s most unlikely match? Or its worst diplomatic divorce? Links - “The Threat to Kim...

Duration:00:36:22

A White House Troll ‘Owning the Libs’

5/31/2018

A new generation of political activists have grown up more interested in provoking outrage from their fellow citizens than in winning them over. Among the most influential exemplars of the genre is Stephen Miller, a senior policy adviser to President Trump. What happens when the trolls run politics? What happens when they run the White House? Links - “Trump’s Right-Hand Troll” (McKay Coppins, May 28, 2018) - “How an Aspiring It-Girl Tricked New York's Party People - and Its Biggest...

Duration:00:51:52

Is the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict Past Solving?

5/24/2018

The decades-old dispute between Israelis and Palestinians seems to be at a new low these days. Two American-born writers – an Israeli author and a Muslim journalist – join editor-in-chief Jeffrey Goldberg and global editor Kathy Gilsinan to grapple with the bleak state of affairs. Yossi Klein Halevi is the author of the new book Letters to My Palestinian Neighbor. Wajahat Ali recently traveled to the West Bank to write “A Muslim Among Israeli Settlers” for the June 2018 issue of The...

Duration:00:55:12

Happy Mueller-versary

5/17/2018

Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation has been the focus of headlines and cable news for a full year now. Despite his seemingly leak-proof team, speculation and anxiety swirl around the inquiry. What do we actually know about the investigation? How much deeper does the iceberg go? And where is it heading next? Links - "The Lingering Mysteries of a Trump-Russia Conspiracy" (Natasha Bertrand, May 16, 2018) - "Trump Finally Fesses Up to Reimbursing Michael Cohen" (David A. Graham,...

Duration:00:49:22

Introducing Crazy/Genius: Why Can't Facebook Tell the Truth?

5/10/2018

This week's Radio Atlantic brings you the first episode of our new show Crazy/Genius, hosted by Atlantic staff writer (and past Radio Atlantic guest) Derek Thompson. In this episode, two guests debate whether Facebook is fixable, or whether its business model is designed to sell us lies. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Duration:00:22:49

Is Politics Ruining Pop Culture?

5/3/2018

Some Americans who grew up identifying with Roseanne have found themselves alienated by Roseanne Barr’s outspoken devotion to President Trump. Many of Kanye West’s fans revolted after he tweeted out an image of himself wearing a “Make America Great Again” hat. Pop culture will probably always mirror the divides playing out in society. But when social divides are more massive than they’ve been in generations, does all our entertainment become a litmus test for our political...

Duration:00:55:39

Is the Presidency Broken?

4/26/2018

“We are a president-obsessed nation, so much so that we undermine the very idea of our constitutional democracy,” writes John Dickerson in his May cover story in The Atlantic. “No one man—or woman—can possibly represent the varied, competing interests of 327 million citizens.” Have we heaped so much upon the president that the job has become impossible? Is Trump testing the office in valuable ways? And if the presidency is broken, how do we fix it? Links - "The Hardest Job in the World"...

Duration:00:50:56

The Syria Disaster, Seven Years In

4/19/2018

Long the crossroads of civilizations, Syria has now spent seven years as the proxy warzone of great powers. With over half a million dead and millions more displaced, the conflict is now “arguably the world’s largest humanitarian disaster since World War II,” writes Andrew Tabler in The Atlantic. “The Syrian Civil War now threatens to morph into the Syria War—a regional conflagration which seems likely to burn for a generation. And civilians are cursed to live it, and die in it, every...

Duration:00:48:59

Becoming White in America

4/13/2018

In her new book Futureface, Alex Wagner writes that “immigration raises into relief some of our most basic existential questions: Who am I? Where do I belong? And in that way, it’s inextricably tied to an exploration of American identity.” In the book, Alex explores her own American identity – daughter of a Burmese immigrant mother and a small-town Irish Catholic father – and asks how true the stories we grow up with really are. Along with co-hosts Matt and Jeff, Alex is joined by The...

Duration:00:51:49

News Update: Who Could Tame Facebook?

4/12/2018

As Atlantic staff writer Robinson Meyer recently wrote, Facebook “is currently embroiled in the worst crisis of trust in its 14-year history.” This week, the company’s CEO Mark Zuckerberg testified before the U.S. Congress for the first time. It’s not clear whether Congress will seek to exert more regulatory control over the company, even after revelations that as many as 87 million people unwittingly had their Facebook data given to the political firm Cambridge Analytica, which may have...

Duration:00:43:50

Trumpocracy

4/5/2018

“Trump gambled that Americans resent each other’s differences more than they cherish their shared democracy. So far that gamble has paid off,” writes David Frum in his new book Trumpocracy. Along with The Atlantic's Global Editor Kathy Gilsinan, David joins to explain how President Trump has undermined our most important institutions. What does democracy around the world look like when the leader of the free world is less interested in it himself? Links - Trumpocracy (David Frum,...

Duration:00:48:16

King Remembered

3/29/2018

In his last speech, known to history as “I’ve Been to the Mountaintop,” Martin Luther King Jr. began by remarking on the introduction he’d been given by his friend, Ralph Abernathy. “As I listened to ... his eloquent and generous introduction and then thought about myself,” King said modestly, “I wondered who he was talking about.” The facsimile of King that America would fashion after his assassination—saintly pacifist, stranger to controversy, beloved by all—might have provoked...

Duration:00:55:34

The Family Unit in a Divided Era

3/22/2018

The family is where the forces that are driving Americans farther apart—political polarization, generational divides, class stratification, Facebook fights—literally hit home. Economic, ideological, and technological shifts pose uncertain consequences for what Daniel Patrick Moynihan called “the basic social unit of American life.” And not even a burgeoning industry of experts can tell parents what to do. “Parents are now more anxious than ever about their children,” writes Paula Fass in...

Duration:00:45:51

Does America Have a Monopoly Problem?

3/15/2018

“Politicians from both parties publicly worship the solemn dignity of entrepreneurship and small businesses. But by the numbers, America has become the land of the big and the home of the consolidated,” writes The Atlantic’s Derek Thompson. In a time when Americans have lost faith in their institutions, the nation seems to now look to corporations for positive action. Can big business be a force for good or only a force for profit? Does their very size pose a threat? If corporations can...

Duration:00:46:27

If We Could Learn From History

3/9/2018

Discarding the limits on a leader's time in office is a classic autocrat's move. So when Xi Jinping began to clear a path for an indefinite term as China's president, he dimmed many once-bright hopes that he would speed the nation's path toward a new era of openness and reform. For James Fallows,The Atlantic's national correspondent, it was a sad vindication of a warning he issued two years ago in the magazine, of “China’s Great Leap Backward.” As the 15th anniversary of the U.S. invasion...

Duration:00:49:17

Goodbye Black History Month, Hello Black Future

3/2/2018

Moviegoers across America are filling theaters to see, as The Atlantic’s Adam Serwer describes it, “a high-tech utopia that is a fictive manifestation of African potential unfettered by slavery and colonialism.” Wakanda, the setting of Marvel’s blockbuster film Black Panther, is suddenly everywhere, which means people the world over are seeing something that’s never had this widespread an audience: Afrofuturism. “Blockbusters rarely challenge consensus, and Disney blockbusters even less...

Duration:00:52:01

How Innocence Becomes Irrelevant (No Way Out, Part III)

2/23/2018

After Rick Magnis, a Texas judge, reviewed the evidence in Benjamine Spencer’s case, he recommended a new trial for Spencer “on the grounds of actual innocence.” But Texas’s highest criminal court took the rare step of rejecting the judge’s ruling. Why? Because Spencer did not meet the state’s “Herculean” standard of unassailable proof, such as DNA, that would remove all doubts of his innocence. According to the judge who wrote the opinion denying Spencer a new trial, this standard has...

Duration:00:56:42

Who Killed Jeffrey Young? (No Way Out, Part II)

2/20/2018

In part one of our three-part series "No Way Out," Barbara Bradley Hagerty told the story of how Benjamine Spencer was convicted for the murder of Jeffrey Young, and how much of the evidence that led to that conviction has fallen apart under scrutiny. But if Spencer did not kill him, who else could have? And if the evidence does point to another assailant, is that enough to free Spencer? In this episode, part two of three, Barbara explores an alternate theory of the crime. She talks with...

Duration:00:24:47

From 'I, Tonya' to 'Cat Person,' Is 'Based On a True Story' Better?

2/9/2018

Conor Friedersdorf recently argued in The Atlantic that in this moment, when the truth is bitterly contested, fiction presents us an opportunity. It allows us to step into another person’s perspective and talk about gray areas without the problems of detailing an actual person’s private moments. But does blurring the lines between truth and fiction undermine the messy complexities of the real world? David Sims and Megan Garber join to discuss the spate of recent pop culture that aims to...

Duration:00:50:00