A young Chicago couple—one is an undocumented immigrant from Poland, and the other is a U.S. citizen—face a choice: stay in the place they’ve called home—or give up on the place that doesn’t seem to want them anymore. --- 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 of our world. Subscribe today at TheAtlantic.com/listener . Learn more...
Dec 11, 2025•39 min•Ep. 159
Australia is about to become the first country in the world to ban kids under 16 from having social-media accounts. Other countries have attempted partial restrictions, but Australia’s Online Safety Amendment is the first real ban, and it comes with heavy fines for social-media companies that fail to comply. In this episode, we hear from the woman in charge of enforcing the policy, the teens who will be affected by it starting next week, and a researcher who doesn’t think Australia’s plan is the...
Dec 04, 2025•30 min•Ep. 158
In Alison Roman’s newest cookbook, “Something From Nothing,” her pantry is her primary inspiration. In this live conversation, we talk with Roman about her family Thanksgiving, why she makes her own baby food, and why simple really is better. We also discuss food trends, and what life is like for her as a solo creator. Then, we put the cookbook’s philosophy of simplicity to the test with an onstage game in which Alison must choose three pantry ingredients from a bag and come up with a delicious ...
Nov 27, 2025•33 min•Ep. 157
When the Trump administration promised a mass deportation campaign they initially relied on Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Disappointed with ICE’s pace and tactics, the White House turned to the Border Patrol for more sweeping, military-style enforcement. Commander-at-large Gregory Bovino has brought his green-uniformed agents (and his film crew) to Los Angeles, Chicago, now North Carolina, and perhaps soon New York City. Staff writer Nick Miroff on what happens when an agency trained for ...
Nov 20, 2025•40 min•Ep. 156
The money keeps coming. Global spending on artificial intelligence is projected to hit $375 billion this year. In 2026, the figure is supposed to approach half a trillion dollars. The sums invested already are so staggering that the United States is beginning to look like an “ Nvidia-state ,” where the tech boom is fueling a great majority of economic growth. But lately, tech watchers have started to ask the obvious question: Is this boom in fact a bubble? We talk to the Atlantic staff writer Ch...
Nov 13, 2025•28 min•Ep. 155
Go ahead, Democrats. Enjoy your victory parties. But after that, brace yourselves, because Republicans may not be playing by the same rules a year from now. Since President Donald Trump took office for his second term—indeed, since his loss in 2020—he has shown his willingness to subvert the rules of free and fair elections. In various ways, he’s used his power to intimidate potential opponents, Democratic donors, and even voters who might oppose him. We talk to the Atlantic staff writer David A...
Nov 06, 2025•27 min•Ep. 154
So far, the U.S. has blown up 14 boats in the Caribbean and the Pacific, killing at least 57 people. In the two months since the strikes began, the administration has consistently offered the same explanation: The U.S. has a fentanyl overdose problem, and these boats are a source of that drug. The federal government has stuck to that line despite the Drug Enforcement Administration and Department of Homeland Security saying most of the fentanyl brought into this country comes from Mexico, not th...
Oct 30, 2025•25 min•Ep. 153
In Kathryn Bigelow’s new movie, A House of Dynamite , the clock is ticking. The film’s fictional president of the United States has less than 20 minutes and very little information to decide whether or not to retaliate against a nuclear missile, launched at the United States, from an unknown source. As with Bigelow’s other war movies, the story is disturbingly plausible. During the Cold War, the likely scenario was a war with the Soviet Union. Now there are nine nuclear powers, which makes the p...
Oct 23, 2025•35 min•Ep. 152
This week, the Supreme Court heard oral arguments about the last remaining section of the Voting Rights Act, a civil rights law designed to ensure that states could not get in the way of nonwhite citizens voting. We talk to Stacey Abrams, voting rights activist and former candidate for Georgia governor, and Atlantic staff writer Vann Newkirk about the case and a world without the Voting Rights Act. Get more from your favorite Atlantic voices when you subscribe. You’ll enjoy unlimited access to P...
Oct 16, 2025•35 min•Ep. 151
The Riyadh Comedy Festival in Saudi Arabia concludes this week, but the outrage (from comedians who didn’t go) and self-justification (from comedians who did) continues. The festival is one small piece of Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman’s grand vision to remake the kingdom for the 21st century and simultaneously draw global attention away from human-rights violations like the 2018 murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi. In this episode, we talk to the Atlantic staff writers Vivian Salama and Hele...
Oct 09, 2025•29 min•Ep. 150
President Donald Trump is using the Department of Justice to try to punish his political enemies. How much can the president bend the DOJ, an institution built on norms and ethics, to his will before it breaks? In this episode, we talk to the Atlantic staff writer Quinta Jurecic, who covers legal issues, and Benjamin Wittes, editor in chief of Lawfare , about who the Trump administration might target next, what legal strategies might work, and where the judicial system contains some surprising s...
Oct 02, 2025•41 min•Ep. 149
Hanna Rosin sits down with Oklahoma State Superintendent Ryan Walters to ask him about a purity test for teachers and a nearly scandalous incident that happened days before the interview. And two Oklahoma high-school teachers take very different paths. This is the second episode of a two-part series from Radio Atlantic . (This episode has been updated from a previously published version to include additional news.) --- Get more from your favorite Atlantic voices when you subscribe. You’ll enjoy ...
Sep 25, 2025•41 min•Ep. 148
A live conversation about authoritarian forces in America with Anne Applebaum, an Atlantic staff writer, and Garry Kasparov, the former world chess champion and a lifelong democracy activist. Speaking about the upcoming midterms, Kasparov says: “If Democrats do not retake the House, 2028 will be a formality.” 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 fascin...
Sep 21, 2025•41 min
Yesterday, Jimmy Kimmel’s late-night show was suspended indefinitely. It’s a shocking moment for free speech, given the order in which events unfolded. Earlier that day, FCC Chair Brendan Carr had suggested on a conservative podcast that ABC and its affiliates consider taking steps against Kimmel, saying, “We can do this the easy way or the hard way.” As it so happened, the late-night legend David Letterman was scheduled to speak at The Atlantic Festival the next day. Letterman and The Atlantic ...
Sep 19, 2025•22 min
American public education is changing. And, in many ways, Oklahoma State Superintendent Ryan Walters is at the center of it, trying to push for Bibles in schools, new curriculum standards that include dozens of references to Christianity, and an ideology test for teachers coming from “places like California and New York.” One Oklahoma teacher finds herself at direct odds with Walters and the Department of Education. And a pair of Walters’s former students no longer recognize the teacher they onc...
Sep 18, 2025•45 min•Ep. 147
He was, after all, the eldest boy. The family drama that inspired HBO’s Succession ended this week with a settlement that ensures Rupert Murdoch’s conservative media conglomerate will pass to his oldest and most conservative son, Lachlan. The Atlantic staff writer McKay Coppins wrote about the Murdoch succession saga for The Atlantic ’s April cover story, “Growing Up Murdoch.” He joins Radio Atlantic to share insights from his months of reporting on the family and what he thinks now that the rea...
Sep 11, 2025•33 min•Ep. 146
As Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. works to dismantle the national vaccine infrastructure, states have started going their own way. Governors in California, Washington State, and Oregon said they intend to coordinate on vaccine policies . Florida’s surgeon general went in the opposite direction, announcing a plan to end all state vaccine mandates, which he compared to “slavery.” We talk to the Atlantic science writer Katie Wu about how Kennedy’s decisions are affecting ...
Sep 04, 2025•30 min•Ep. 145
President Donald Trump recently deployed the National Guard to Washington, D.C., and has talked about federalizing the Guard in other cities across the country. In this episode of Radio Atlantic we talk to Atlantic staff writers Quinta Jurecic and Nick Miroff about which legal barriers might hinder Trump from using the military this way, how he might try to push past the courts, and what role immigration enforcement is playing in the president’s plans. Get more from your favorite Atlantic voices...
Aug 28, 2025•36 min•Ep. 144
There was so much symbolism in President Donald Trump’s two most recent international summits—in Alaska last week with Russian President Vladimir Putin, and then at the White House this week with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. In this episode, we talk with Anne Applebaum, who has been studying Ukraine and Russia for decades and understands their leaders’ underlying motivations. And we speak with politics and national-security writer Vivian Salama, who knows what Trump’s limitations are ...
Aug 21, 2025•33 min•Ep. 143
In July, President Donald Trump issued an executive order calling for an expansion of involuntary commitment—forcing people into treatment facilities—in response to the homelessness crisis. San Francisco has been attempting such an expansion for the past 19 months. What can the rest of the country learn from California? This is the final episode in a three-part series from Radio Atlantic , No Easy Fix , about homelessness and addiction in San Francisco. Get more from your favorite Atlantic voice...
Aug 14, 2025•38 min•Ep. 142
At the onset of the AIDS crisis in the early 1980s, U.S. cities began trying new ways to stop the spread of infection among drug users. Ideas that were first seen as radical, such as needle exchanges, quickly caught on—because they worked. San Francisco is one of the first places where such programs took root. Now it’s one of the places questioning whether they should still exist. This is the second episode of a new three-part miniseries from Radio Atlantic , No Easy Fix , about what it takes to...
Aug 07, 2025•35 min•Ep. 141
For the past five years, American cities have tried—and often failed—to meaningfully address worsening homelessness and addiction. In San Francisco, a city that has become emblematic of these crises, a new mayor has pledged to prioritize the problem. And one man, living on the street and struggling with addiction, is ready to make a change. This is the first episode of a new three-part miniseries from Radio Atlantic , No Easy Fix , about what it takes to escape one’s demons. Get more from your f...
Jul 31, 2025•33 min•Ep. 140
The Trump administration is again going after undocumented minors—but their approach is different than it was during his first presidency. – – – Read more from Nick Miroff . Read Stephanie McCrummen’s story: The Message Is ‘We Can Take Your Children’ – – – 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 of our world. Subscribe today at Th...
Jul 24, 2025•28 min•Ep. 139
Donald Trump and his Department of Justice kicked the conspiracy-theory beehive last week when they rescinded previous promises to make public the government’s secret files on Jeffrey Epstein, the billionaire financier and convicted sex offender charged with the sex trafficking of minors. The Atlantic ’s executive editor, Adrienne LaFrance, speaks with the journalist who broke the Epstein story in 2018. Julie K. Brown is an investigative reporter for the Miami Herald and author of the book Perve...
Jul 17, 2025•29 min•Ep. 138
In the United States and many other Western countries, the decision to have children or not is sometimes framed as a political affiliation: You’re either in league with conservative pronatalists, or you’re making the ultimate personal sacrifice to reduce your carbon footprint. But the declining global birth rate is a fact that defies politics. Dean Spears, a co-author of the new book After the Spike: Population, Progress, and the Case for People , hopes to start a conversation about what a depop...
Jul 10, 2025•31 min•Ep. 137
The Atlantic’s editor in chief Jeffrey Goldberg talks to Ken Casey, frontman for the Celtic punk band Dropkick Murphys, about the time he called out a fan in the audience who was wearing a MAGA shirt. The band has been around for three decades and has its working-class roots in Quincy, Massachusetts. At concerts, the band often dedicates its song “First Class Loser” to Donald Trump, and it sells T-shirts that say “Fighting Nazis since 1996.” Goldberg speaks with Casey about watching his fans and...
Jul 03, 2025•28 min•Ep. 136
We talk with the writer Arash Azizi about what kinds of seismic changes could be coming for his home country of Iran, and whether he thinks they could make things better—or much worse. Read more from Azizi at The Atlantic here . 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 of our world. Atlantic subscribers also get access to exclusive...
Jun 26, 2025•29 min•Ep. 135
A few years ago, Olga Khazan, author of Me, But Better, set out to change her personality, which even she found unpleasant. After consulting with experts on personality plasticity and then setting a deadline, Khazan put herself through an intense experiment intended to make herself more likeable, to herself and others. Khazan tested and scored herself on a range of key personality traits at the beginning and end of the experiment. In this episode, Khazan and I talk about two of those traits: ext...
Jun 19, 2025•31 min•Ep. 134
In this bonus episode of Radio Atlantic , we talk with staff writer Tom Nichols about how all the pieces fit together: the military parade, the president’s speech at Fort Bragg, and the dispatching of Marines to the protests in Los Angeles. It’s not just that President Trump wants to acclimate Americans to the sight of tanks in the streets. It’s not just that Trump is signaling to governors that he will use the forces at his disposal to override their wishes—the real problem is how the military ...
Jun 13, 2025•20 min•Ep. 133
Explaining how Musk tanked his reputation has many ways: First, he alienated environmentalists by teaming up with Trump, and then he alienated Trump fans by insulting their hero. Another way is clear by looking at American culture’s historical relationship with “genius,” and how it tends to go wrong. In this episode, we talk with Helen Lewis, author of The Genius Myth: A Curious History of a Dangerous Idea , about what Musk has in common with Thomas Edison, how psychedelics fit into the archetyp...
Jun 12, 2025•36 min•Ep. 132
