Podcast
Radio Atlantic
Hosted by The Atlantic · EN
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 their own mind about certain ideas.
The national conversation right now can be chaotic, reckless, and stuck. Radio Atlantic aims to bring some order to our thinking—and encourage listeners to be purposeful about how they unstick their mind.
88episodes
Episodes
Newest firstAll episodes
What Will Happen to Birthright Citizenship?
2d ago00:20:59Summary readyThe Supreme Court will soon decide whether the Trump administration’s executive order limiting who can be born an American is constitutional, and whether “all persons born or naturalized in the United States”—save for those who are here under unique circumstances, such as children of foreign dignitaries—are citizens of the union. This week on Radio Atlantic, Adam Harris is joined by Atlantic staff writer Adam Serwer to explore birthright citizenship and what it means to be an American. 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 subscriber audio in Apple Podcasts. Subscribe today at TheAtlantic.com/Listener. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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Live: Nancy Pelosi on the Midterms
6d ago00:25:13Summary readyThroughout her career, Nancy Pelosi has known how to get things done: whipping up votes, negotiating bills, and, in what is probably her crowning achievement, pushing through the Affordable Care Act as speaker of the House. At the end of her current term, she plans to retire, after nearly 40 years in Congress. Hanna Rosin recently sat down with Pelosi at the Cascade PBS Ideas Festival, in Seattle, to talk about the midterms, if Democrats could take back Congress, and what exactly she was thinking when she ripped up a speech at the State of the Union. Also, a special announcement about Radio Atlantic. - - - 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 subscriber audio in Apple Podcasts. Subscribe today at TheAtlantic.com/Listener. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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When Both Parties Try to Out-Macho Each Other
2w ago00:25:53Summary readyThe MAGA movement has fully embraced masculinism, which The Atlantic’s staff writer Helen Lewis defines in her cover story this month as “a movement to fight back against the advances of feminism and reassert the primacy of men.” Democrats have a more complicated relationship with it. After the last presidential election, when Donald Trump made inroads with young men, even those of color, some Democrats began wondering whether their party did indeed have a man problem. This campaign season, one Democrat who seems to have answered that call is Graham Platner, who won the primary in Maine this week and may be key to the party’s chances of winning the Senate. But several women described “toxic” relationships with Platner, including one who said he “could be rough with her.” Platner’s campaign disputed any claims of physical intimidation or altercations. In Texas’s U.S. Senate race, manliness has become even more explicit. Republican attacks on the Democratic nominee James Talarico rely on all manner of terms that effectively mean “unmanly”: low-T, transgender, secretly a woman, gay, man-child, and—God forbid—vegan. Democrats responded to these attacks with a photo of Talarico eating a turkey leg. This week, Lewis discusses how masculinism is playing out in American politics. - - - 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 subscriber audio in Apple Podcasts. Subscribe today at TheAtlantic.com/Listener. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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Is the GOP Starting to Defy Trump?
3w ago00:27:36Summary readyFor most of his second term, Donald Trump has successfully conveyed the message that defiance is not an option. Republicans who ignored that message generally wound up out of office, so they largely toed the line. Lately, though, that seems to be changing. Republicans recently pushed back against the president’s proposed “Anti-Weaponization Fund,” and the administration ultimately scrapped it. Trump asked for nearly $1 billion in security funding for his ballroom, and Senate Republicans forced him to abandon that plan as well. Perhaps most stunning, some House Republicans this week broke ranks to rebuke Trump’s war in Iran, directing him to withdraw U.S. forces or win approval from Congress. The seeds of mutiny are detectable. But also the president still has the strength and support to suppress them. So who is willing to take the risk, and who isn’t? On this week’s “Radio Atlantic”: Indiana State Senator Jim Buck, a pro-Trump Republican who did not vote for his state’s redistricting plan and faced an onslaught of what he calls “lies” and threats as a result; also the Atlantic staff writer Russell Berman on the dueling forces of Trump’s revenge campaign and growing party defiance. - - - 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 subscriber audio in Apple Podcasts. Subscribe today at TheAtlantic.com/Listener. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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Is Cuba Next?
4w ago00:37:14Summary readyNot long after U.S. commandos swiftly extracted Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro and flew him to the United States, Donald Trump set his sights on the next target: Cuba. Some administration officials seem interested in Cuba’s nickel and cobalt deposits. Secretary of State Marco Rubio shares the dream of many Cuban exiles for regime change on the island. Although, from the Cuban perspective, the prospect of the U.S. bringing regime change is fraught, coming after centuries of conflict and colonial extraction. On this week’s Radio Atlantic: Host Hanna Rosin speaks with the Atlantic staff writer Vivian Salama and the historian Ada Ferrer, author of the Pulitzer Prize–winning Cuba: An American History, as well as the new book Keeper of My Kin: Memoir of an Immigrant Daughter. - - -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 subscriber audio in Apple Podcasts. Subscribe today at TheAtlantic.com/Listener. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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Higher Education’s Identity Crisis
May 2100:31:35Summary readyUniversities tried to be all things to all people. That model may not be working anymore. Adam Harris is joined by Ian Bogost, Atlantic contributing writer and a professor at Washington University in St. Louis, to discuss the state of higher education. On campuses across the country, students are graduating into a job market with questions on their mind. What kind of career is stable in 2026? Will AI make it even harder to get an entry-level job? Was my education worth all the money it cost? For universities that are already facing federal funding cuts and enrollment declines, the identity crisis their graduates are facing is an extension of their own: Is the purpose of college just to get a good job, or is there more to it? Colleges have been in rough spots before, but is it finally time to start rethinking their entire model? - - - 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 subscriber audio in Apple Podcasts. Subscribe today at TheAtlantic.com/Listener. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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The Gerrymandering Wars
May 1400:35:55Summary readyThere is an ongoing battle for House seats. And it’s playing out not so much in elections but in congressional maps. The Atlantic staff writers Russell Berman, who’s been covering the redistricting wars for the past several months, and Vann R. Newkirk II, who’s long followed the Voting Rights Act (and now its demise), explain how this new era of tit-for-tat gerrymandering is different than ever before. --- 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 subscriber audio in Apple Podcasts. Subscribe today at TheAtlantic.com/Listener. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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The Tragedy of the Tradwife
May 700:31:31Summary readyThe author Caro Claire Burke discusses her debut novel, Yesteryear, about a tradwife influencer suddenly transported back to 1855 and faced with the harsh realities of actual pioneer life. The book is a No. 1 New York Times best seller, and its film rights have already been sold and Anne Hathaway is attached to star. Seen one way, the tradwife is just a social-media trend, sometimes soothing to watch, sometimes infuriating. But the fantasy that fuels the phenomenon—that women should be subservient to their husbands, staying at home and tending the hearth—reflects views in the real world, where actual policies get made. Burke talks about her novel and her own political evolution. - - - 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 subscriber audio in Apple Podcasts. Subscribe today at TheAtlantic.com/Listener. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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The 'Great Man' Presidency
Apr 3000:31:41Summary readyAlexander the Great. Julius Caesar. Napoleon Bonaparte. Donald Trump The Atlantic staff writers Ashley Parker and Michael Scherer reported this week on the president privately comparing himself to the three norm-defying, world-historical figures highlighted in the work of the German philosopher Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel. The president has also sought to make his mark across seemingly every manner of federal real estate, including national monuments and even currency and passports. If Trump’s focus is on himself as a great man of history, what is he doing—and, more notably perhaps, not doing—as president today? Read Ashley and Michael's article: “The YOLO Presidency.” - - - 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 subscriber audio in Apple Podcasts. Subscribe today at TheAtlantic.com/Listener. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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Kash Patel's FBI
Apr 2300:33:48Summary readyLast week, The Atlantic published a story about how FBI Director Kash Patel’s colleagues are alarmed by what they describe as erratic behavior and excessive drinking. Sources told staff writer Sarah Fitzpatrick that, on multiple occasions, members of his security detail had trouble waking Patel because he was seemingly intoxicated. Patel called the story a “lie” and earlier this week sued The Atlantic for defamation. Fitzpatrick joins Radio Atlantic to talk about her reporting inside the FBI, and how sources she spoke with are concerned about the agency keeping Americans safe during a time of heightened threats. And we talk to our staff writer Quinta Jurecic about the state of Trump’s Justice Department after Pam Bondi’s firing. - - -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 subscriber audio in Apple Podcasts. Subscribe today at TheAtlantic.com/Listener. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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