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 doing better than they were a year ago, by many measures. Unemployment is lower, wages are growing, inflation is declining. This is true for Americans across ages and classes. These a...
Jan 04, 2024•29 min•Ep 53•Transcript available on Metacast For the holiday, Radio Atlantic is sharing the first episode of the Atlantic podcast How to Keep Time. Co-hosts Becca Rashid and the Atlantic contributing writer Ian Bogost examine our relationship with time and what we can do to reclaim it. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Dec 28, 2023•37 min•Ep 52•Transcript available on Metacast 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 why my sweaters pilled so quickly, or why they suffocated me, or smelled like tires. And then I read Mull’s recent story, “Your Sweaters Are Garbage.” It turns out that international trade agreements, greedy en...
Dec 21, 2023•27 min•Ep 51•Transcript available on Metacast 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 term and how surprisingly few effective checks are in place. And Nichols talks about his personal nightmare scenario. Want to share unlimited access to The Atlantic with your loved ones? Give a gift...
Dec 14, 2023•26 min•Ep 50•Transcript available on Metacast 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 few weeks before the Iowa caucuses we talk to Tim Alberta, a staff writer at the Atlantic and author of the new book The Kingdom, the Power...
Dec 07, 2023•40 min•Ep 49•Transcript available on Metacast The story of a real-life miracle. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Nov 30, 2023•34 min•Ep 48•Transcript available on Metacast Thanksgiving is often a time of disagreements big and small. 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 actually good for us. Want to share unlimited access to The Atlantic with your loved ones? Give a gift today at theatlantic.com/podgift. For a limited time, select new subscript...
Nov 23, 2023•29 min•Ep 47•Transcript available on Metacast Hollywood is getting back on its feet now that the Screen Actors Guild and Writers Guild of America strikes are over. But they've revealed that, once again, Hollywood is going through an identity crisis. The streaming revolution is looking untenable. Many studios are losing money and viewers are overwhelmed. What were the hard truths revealed by the strike? And what will the next year of entertainment look like? Hanna Rosin talks with Atlantic writers David Sims and Shirley Li about the coming r...
Nov 16, 2023•30 min•Ep 46•Transcript available on Metacast Tech evangelist. Libertarian dreamer. Republican megadonor. Peter Thiel is many things. As Atlantic staff writer Barton Gellman puts it in his new profile of Thiel, 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 cities. Humans can’t live forever. And Donald Trump did not turn out to be the revolutionary Thiel had hoped he might be. Lear...
Nov 09, 2023•32 min•Ep 45•Transcript available on Metacast Marwan Bardawil’s job is to provide water in Gaza. This is difficult in normal times, nearly impossible now, and yet critical. Without enough clean water, people get dehydrated, hygiene deteriorates, sewage backs up, and deadly diseases can spike. In a series of phone calls over a critical week, we track how this water engineer tries to keep his community, and his family from tipping further into disaster. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Nov 02, 2023•24 min•Ep 44•Transcript available on Metacast After Jordan Peele directed the movie Get Out in 2017, he unlocked the genre of Black horror, which mixed classic horror with the modern Black experience. In a conversation with Peele and best selling sci-fi writer N.K. Jemisin, we talk about the purpose of horror and what happens when Black writers and directors get to create the monster. Jemisin wrote the first story in Peele's new collection Out There Screaming: An Anthology of New Black Horror. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megapho...
Oct 26, 2023•18 min•Ep 43•Transcript available on Metacast Nearly two weeks after the Hamas attack on Israel, Atlantic staff writer Graeme Wood is on the ground in Jerusalem. We talk to Graeme about what he’s hearing from people— namely a combination of anger, fear, mourning, and a desire for revenge. And we talk to him about what happens when a nation makes wartime decisions in this state of mind, and where the conflict will go from here. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Oct 18, 2023•26 min•Ep 42•Transcript available on Metacast Israeli journalist Amir Tibon and his family live along the Israel-Gaza border. He told Radio Atlantic the dramatic story of how his family hid out from Hamas terrorists. And how they were unexpectedly rescued. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Oct 10, 2023•14 min•Ep 41•Transcript available on Metacast The Biden administration has had some monumental successes: a complicated vaccine rollout, a significant infrastructure investment, and the lowest unemployment rate in 50 years. But polls show that none of those wins are penetrating the public consciousness. Radio Atlantic host Hanna Rosin and staff writers Elaina Plott Calabro and Franklin Foer explore why we, the voters, just can’t seem to hear our politicians. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Oct 05, 2023•26 min•Ep 40•Transcript available on Metacast Ozempic and other drugs like it are being heralded as game changers for weight loss. Radio Atlantic host Hanna Rosin talks to Atlantic staff writer Olga Khazan about what it means that this medical intervention has arrived at a time when our society seems to be easing away from fat shaming and moving toward celebrating all body types. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Sep 28, 2023•24 min•Ep 39•Transcript available on Metacast When Jenisha Watts, a senior editor at The Atlantic, went home to Kentucky to interview her family, she was “looking to get rid of the shame.” She had a son now, and she wanted to be able to tell him the truth about her upbringing—both the good and the bad. But she was not quite prepared for what Jenisha the journalist would dig up about Jenisha from Kentucky. This episode of Radio Atlantic was produced by Jocelyn Frank and edited by Claudine Ebeid. It was engineered by Rob Smierciak and fact ch...
Sep 21, 2023•35 min•Ep 38•Transcript available on Metacast Making small talk can be hard—especially when you’re not sure whether you’re doing it well. But conversations are a central part of relationship-building. Radio Atlantic is pleased to share this episode of How to Talk to People. The social scientist Ty Tashiro and the hairstylists Erin Derosa and Mimi Craft help describe what it means to integrate awkwardness into our pursuit of relationships. This episode is hosted by Julie Beck, produced by Rebecca Rashid, and edited by Jocelyn Frank and Claud...
Sep 14, 2023•42 min•Ep 37•Transcript available on Metacast All of a sudden it seems like everyone knows someone who has tested positive for COVID. Are we back in a wave? How bad could it get? How effective will the new vaccine be? What do we actually know about COVID now that we didn’t before, and will it protect us? We talk to Atlantic science writers Katie Wu and Sarah Zhang about all the questions you are trying to avoid about Covid this summer and fall. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Sep 07, 2023•28 min•Ep 36•Transcript available on Metacast This week Texas will join the 20 or so other states that have passed laws restricting access to medical therapies and procedures for transgender children. But there are thousands of young people in Texas who identify as transgender. We talk to one teenager who describes herself as just a “normal semi-popular girl,” about her and her family’s decision to leave Texas as a result of the government’s actions. Also: If you have any comments or suggestions about the show, submit feedback at theatlanti...
Aug 31, 2023•29 min•Ep 35•Transcript available on Metacast The front-runner for the Republican nomination did not show up at the debate, but in the sharp exchanges between the leftovers, a lot was revealed about the future of the party. Atlantic staff writers McKay Coppins, reporting from the debate, and Elaine Godfrey talk about why newcomer Vivek Ramaswamy pops, why Ron DeSantis doesn’t, and why Nikki Haley, despite coming across as a reasonable truth-teller, doesn’t stand a chance. Also: If you have any comments or suggestions about the show, submit ...
Aug 24, 2023•34 min•Ep 34•Transcript available on Metacast Megan Rapinoe speaks with Atlantic staff writer Frank Foer. The retiring soccer star discusses her detractors, the U.S. team’s role in the global game, and taking penalty kicks. Also: If you have any comments or suggestions about the show, submit feedback at theatlantic.com/listener-survey. We'd love to hear from you. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Aug 22, 2023•32 min•Ep 34•Transcript available on Metacast Many people, especially those dealing with long COVID, suffer from fatigue. But not common, everyday tiredness—it’s more like a total body crash that can be triggered by the smallest exertion, something as simple as taking a shower. It’s serious, and yet many doctors have a hard time taking it seriously. Ed Yong, a former staff writer at The Atlantic whose reporting on COVID won a Pulitzer Prize, explains how people with fatigue can feel, and what experts actually know about the condition and ho...
Aug 17, 2023•28 min•Ep 33•Transcript available on Metacast Michael spent years fighting isolation, depression, and despair. Then he met Sam. If you’re having thoughts of suicide, please reach out to the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 988 or the Crisis Text Line. For that, text TALK to 741741. This episode of Radio Atlantic was reported and produced by Ethan Brooks and edited by Theo Balcomb and Jocelyn Frank. It was mixed by Rob Smierciak and fact-checked by Yvonne Kim. The executive producer of Audio is Claudine Ebeid. The managing editor of A...
Aug 10, 2023•34 min•Ep 32•Transcript available on Metacast The U.S. women’s team has been the dominant force in soccer for a decade, although you wouldn't necessarily know it from their performance in the Women’s World Cup so far. As fans, we want them to win. But there’s no drama in dominance. For women's soccer to truly become a global sensation, the U.S. needs worthy rivals. In this episode we talk to Tobin Heath and Christen Press, both members of the most recent U.S. World Cup teams, about whether it would be better for global women’s soccer for th...
Aug 03, 2023•32 min•Ep 31•Transcript available on Metacast A lot of people are plagued by the feeling that society used to be better, that neighbors were more helpful, that strangers once talked to you. Some people channel that belief into political action, as in the Make America Great Again movement. A new study explains why the sense that people and the culture have gotten worse is a psychological illusion. This special episode features Julie Beck, the host of How to Talk to People. Subscribe and discover a full season of great episodes waiting for yo...
Jul 27, 2023•29 min•Ep 30•Transcript available on Metacast Marriages today are much more flexible than they used to be. Women’s roles have changed. Gay marriage is legal. More and more people aren’t choosing marriage at all. And yet the American wedding has hardly changed at all. If anything, it keeps getting more elaborate, more luxe, more wedding-like. In this episode, we talk to Xochitl Gonzalez, who wrote a confessional for The Atlantic about her years as a luxury wedding planner, about why we keep perfecting on what is essentially a nineteenth- cen...
Jul 20, 2023•31 min•Ep 29•Transcript available on Metacast For months, more than a thousand researchers and technology experts involved in creating artificial intelligence have been warning us that they’ve created something that may be dangerous. Something that might eventually lead humanity to become extinct. In this Radio Atlantic episode, The Atlantic’s executive editor, Adrienne LaFrance, and staff writer Charlie Warzel talk about how seriously we should take these warnings, and what else we might consider worrying about. Learn more about your ad ch...
Jul 13, 2023•25 min•Ep 28•Transcript available on Metacast A heat dome in Texas. Wildfire smoke polluting the air in the East and Midwest. The signs are everywhere that our children’s summers will look nothing like our own. In this episode we talk to the climate writer Emma Pattee about how hot is too hot to go outside, and what summer camps of the future will look like. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Jul 06, 2023•32 min•Ep 27•Transcript available on Metacast Yevgeny Prigozhin, who leads a private army called the Wagner Group, attempted what many have called a coup against Russian President Vladimir Putin. Technically, it failed. But the fact that he managed to challenge Putin and leave the leader shaken and panicky is profound. Atlantic staff writers Anne Applebaum and Tom Nichols explain this week’s wild turn of events in Russia and the door those events opened. Further Reading: Tom Nichols: The Coup Is Over, but Putin Is in Trouble Anne Applebaum:...
Jun 29, 2023•29 min•Ep 26•Transcript available on Metacast Are we just too impatient for America’s famously leisurely national pastime? Hanna Rosin asks staff writer Mark Leibovich whether the changes MLB is making to baseball this summer could help him, and the rest of us, fall in love with baseball all over again. Interested in the changes baseball’s making? Read Mark’s article on how Moneyball broke baseball—and how the same people who broke it are back, trying to save it. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Jun 22, 2023•26 min•Ep 25•Transcript available on Metacast 
