Shows / Radio Atlantic
Radio Atlantic
The Atlantic has long been known as an ideas-driven magazine. Now we’re bringing that same ethos to audio. Like the magazine, the show will “road test” the big ideas that both drive the news and shape our culture. Through conversations—and sometimes sharp debates—with the most insightful thinkers and writers on topics of the day, Radio Atlantic will complicate overly simplistic views. It will cut through the noise with clarifying, personal narratives. It will, hopefully, help listeners make up…
Episodes
Radio AtlanticNews Update: Who Could Tame Facebook?
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…
Radio AtlanticTrumpocracy
“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…
Radio AtlanticKing Remembered
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…
Radio AtlanticThe Family Unit in a Divided Era
The family is where the forces that are driving Americans farther apart—political polarization, generational divides, class stratification, Facebook…
Radio AtlanticDoes America Have a Monopoly Problem?
“Politicians from both parties publicly worship the solemn dignity of entrepreneurship and small businesses. But by the numbers, America has become the land of…
Radio AtlanticIf We Could Learn From History
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…
Radio AtlanticGoodbye Black History Month, Hello Black Future
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…
Radio AtlanticHow Innocence Becomes Irrelevant (No Way Out, Part III)
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…
Radio AtlanticWho Killed Jeffrey Young? (No Way Out, Part II)
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…
Radio AtlanticNo Way Out, Part I
In 1987, Jeffrey Young was robbed and killed, and his body was left on a street in the poor neighborhood of West Dallas. Benjamine Spencer was tried and…
Radio AtlanticFrom 'I, Tonya' to 'Cat Person,' Is 'Based On a True Story' Better?
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…
Radio AtlanticPaul Manafort and How the Swamp Was Made
“Conventional wisdom suggests that the temptations of Washington, D.C., corrupt all the idealists, naïfs, and ingenues who settle there," Franklin Foer writes…
Radio AtlanticWho Gets to be American?
Once again, immigration is at the top of America's legislative agenda, as it has been, seemingly every generation, for much of the nation's history. But while…
Radio AtlanticBricks, Clicks, and the Future of Shopping
The 'retail apocalypse' is upon us, they say. In the United States, 2017 saw emptied malls, shuttered department stores, and once-iconic brands falling into…
Radio AtlanticThe Presidential Fitness Challenge
As the anniversary of his inauguration nears, a new book filled with salacious claims about the Trump administration has become a bestseller. Faced with…
Radio AtlanticHow Has America Changed Since 1968?
As 2018 begins, tensions and tumult in America are high. But before the end of 1968, Conor Friedersdorf reminded us in The Atlantic, "Martin Luther King Jr…
Radio AtlanticIdeas of the Year, 2017 Edition
Every year is impossible to synthesize. Yet 2017 was not just another year. To help us wrangle the chaotic, extraordinary events of the last 12 months into…
Radio AtlanticPutin, Russia, and the End of History
Vladimir Putin just announced, to the surprise of no one, that he will run for reelection as President of Russia. In her January/February 2018 Atlantic cover…
Radio AtlanticThe Manifest Destiny of Mike Pence
That Pence is the vice president of the United States is "a loaves-and-fishes miracle," writes McKay Coppins in the latest issue of The Atlantic. It's…
Radio AtlanticThe Great Recession, One Decade Later
In December 2007, the U.S. marked the beginning of its longest recession since World War II. Now the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, an agency born in…
Radio AtlanticJohn Wayne, Donald Trump, and the American Man
For generations, Hollywood has defined what masculinity means in the U.S., with iconic screen figures such as John Wayne. But Wayne's stoic, taciturn image was…
Radio AtlanticHow an American Neo-Nazi Was Made
Andrew Anglin spent his formative years flirting with hippie progressivism, then tried his hand at becoming a tribal hunter-gatherer. But he only achieved…
Radio AtlanticThe Press and the Election of 2016: One Year Later
It’s a year after Donald Trump's upset election victory. Before and after the 2016 election, President Trump referred to journalists as enemies to himself and…
Radio AtlanticKhizr Khan on What Patriotism Requires
Since the 2016 election heightened America's deep political divides, the mantle of patriotism has become fodder for a bitter tug-of-war. Is it patriotic to…
Radio AtlanticReporting on Open Secrets, with Jodi Kantor and Katie Benner
Allegations of sexual harassment (and more) by powerful men in numerous industries have been leading news reports across America. On-the-record accounts of…
Radio AtlanticWhy Do Happy People Cheat?
"Infidelity," Esther Perel writes in the October issue of The Atlantic, "happens in bad marriages and in good marriages. It happens even in open relationships…
Radio AtlanticDerek Thompson and the Moonshot Factory
Few journalists have gotten a peek inside X, the secretive lab run by Google's parent company Alphabet. Its scientists are researching cold fusion, hover…
Radio AtlanticThe Miseducation of Ta-Nehisi Coates
In his new book, We Were Eight Years in Power, The Atlantic's national correspondent Ta-Nehisi Coates writes about the past eight years of his career—his…
Radio AtlanticRussia! Live with Julia Ioffe and Eliot A. Cohen
According to the U.S. intelligence community, this much is settled fact: Russia intervened in the 2016 presidential election in favor of Donald Trump. But…
Radio AtlanticWhat Are Public Schools For?
The idea that public schools are failing is one of the most commonly heard complaints in American society. But what are they failing to do? Surveys of American…
Radio AtlanticWill America's Institutions Survive President Trump?
Eight months into the Trump administration, we're taking stock: What is shaping up to be President Trump's effect on America’s institutions? Will subsequent…
Radio AtlanticA Memo to the Huddled Masses
Immigrants flock to the U.S. in pursuit of the American Dream. But does the end of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program mean a wake-up call for…
Radio AtlanticNews Update: The Questions After Harvey
If history is any guide, the biggest problems for residents of the Houston area will come into focus only after the nation's attention has already turned…
Radio AtlanticWhat Game of Thrones Has Taught Us About Politics
"Winter is coming," they warned us, and the seventh season of Game of Thrones might have proved them right. But no one mentioned that winter in Westeros would…
Radio AtlanticAre Smartphones Harming Our Kids?
It's been ten years since the iPhone came out, and now the first generation to grow up with smartphones is coming of age. Jean Twenge, a psychologist who has…
Radio AtlanticTa-Nehisi Coates and Yoni Appelbaum on Charlottesville's Aftermath
After white supremacists and neo-Nazis rallied in Virginia, resulting in the deaths of three Americans, President Trump's equivocating responses shocked…
Radio AtlanticKurt Andersen on How America Lost Its Mind
When did the reality-based community start losing to reality show celebrity? Why are "alternative facts" and fake news suddenly ubiquitous features of the…
Radio AtlanticNews Update: Mark Bowden on North Korea
Given new revelations about North Korea's nuclear capabilities—and newly harsh rhetoric from President Trump—Jeffrey Goldberg and Matt Thompson talk with Mark…
Radio AtlanticAsk Not What Your Robots Can Do For You
Our increasingly smart machines aren’t just changing the workforce, they’re changing us. Already, algorithms are directing human activity in all sorts of ways…
Radio AtlanticOne Nation Under God?
America prides itself on pluralism and tolerance, but how far does that tolerance extend when it comes to religious expression? Could faith in general be on…
Radio Atlantic'Mine Eyes Have Seen the Glory'
The Atlantic was founded on the eve of the Civil War to advance the American idea. But as we approach the magazine's 160th anniversary, has that idea taken an…
Radio AtlanticTrailer
Coming July 21: A weekly conversation about what's happening in our world, how things got the way they are, and where they're heading next. Don't miss this…