Today's Liberal News

Isabel Fattal

College Sports Are Changing

This is an edition of The Wonder Reader, a newsletter in which our editors recommend a set of stories to spark your curiosity and fill you with delight. Sign up here to get it every Saturday morning.
College athletics were once casual and fun, more like a club sport than a serious endeavor. But “over the past 75 years, NCAA sports has become ever more professionalized,” Marc Novicoff wrote recently.

The Pull—And the Risks—Of Intensive Parenting

This is an edition of The Wonder Reader, a newsletter in which our editors recommend a set of stories to spark your curiosity and fill you with delight. Sign up here to get it every Saturday morning.
In 2024, Russell Shaw made the case for the Lighthouse Parent. “A Lighthouse Parent stands as a steady, reliable guide,” Shaw writes, “providing safety and clarity without controlling every aspect of their child’s journey.

The Pull—And the Risks—Of Intensive Parenting

This is an edition of The Wonder Reader, a newsletter in which our editors recommend a set of stories to spark your curiosity and fill you with delight. Sign up here to get it every Saturday morning.
In 2024, Russell Shaw made the case for the Lighthouse Parent. “A Lighthouse Parent stands as a steady, reliable guide,” Shaw writes, “providing safety and clarity without controlling every aspect of their child’s journey.

What Happened When Canada Gave Citizens the Right to Die

This is an edition of The Atlantic Daily, a newsletter that guides you through the biggest stories of the day, helps you discover new ideas, and recommends the best in culture. Sign up for it here.
Nine years after Canada legalized assisted death—known formally as Medical Assistance in Dying, or MAID—doctors are struggling to keep up with demand, Elaina Plott Calabro reports in a feature for our September issue.

A Beach Read Can Be Anything You Want It to Be

This is an edition of The Wonder Reader, a newsletter in which our editors recommend a set of stories to spark your curiosity and fill you with delight. Sign up here to get it every Saturday morning.
Conventional wisdom says that a beach read ought to be light and fun—a book with a pastel cover. But the beach read can be anything you want it to be. Vacation might feel like the perfect moment to escape into frivolity, or to dive into something dense that you finally have the mental space for.

What’s Really Driving Netanyahu’s Decisions

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Overnight, Israel’s security cabinet approved a proposal from Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to occupy Gaza City, a plan that neither the Israeli security establishment nor the majority of the Israeli public supports.

The Powerful Consistency of Mail Delivery

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After losing his corporate marketing job during the pandemic, Stephen Starring Grant decided to move back home and become a rural mail-carrier associate in Blacksburg, Virginia.

The Pleasures of Reading Outside

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“Reading has been unfairly maligned as an indoor activity for far too long,” Bekah Waalkes wrote this past spring. “As a child, when nice weather came around, I was told to put down my book and go play outside.

The Limits of the Family Vacation

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A family vacation can seem like the solution to all of life’s tensions: You’ll spend time together, bond, and experience a new place. But travel isn’t a panacea.

The Limits of the Family Vacation

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A family vacation can seem like the solution to all of life’s tensions: You’ll spend time together, bond, and experience a new place. But travel isn’t a panacea.

How to Decide What to Watch

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It’s become an adage of the modern age to say that the more streaming options there are, the harder it is to decide what to watch.

The One Place Where Nuclear War Isn’t Abstract

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Japan is the one place in the world that has felt, and personally mourned, the staggering damage of nuclear warfare. The tragedies of Hiroshima and Nagasaki have turned the country into a longtime proponent of nuclear disarmament. But that national identity is starting to shift.

What Moving Your Body Can Mean

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Although exercise has clear benefits for both physical and mental health, for many people, “those are side effects of the aesthetic goal,” Xochitl Gonzalez wrote in 2023.

Our Writers’ Boldest Opinions About Food

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Atlantic writers have never been afraid to make bold claims about beloved foods and beverages. Hard seltzer? Pretty bad, Amanda Mull argued in 2022. Wraps? The worst kind of sandwich, Ellen Cushing argued this week. Others have stood up for oft-maligned cuisine, like milk chocolate and candy corn.

How Sleeping Less Became an American Value

This is an edition of Time-Travel Thursdays, a journey through The Atlantic’s archives to contextualize the present. Sign up here.
In some corners of American culture, one rule applies: The less you sleep, the more impressive you are. Tech CEOs and influencers love to tout their morning routines that begin at 5 a.m. or 4 a.m. or 3 a.m. (though at a certain point we really ought to just call them “night routines”).

How to Deal With Insults

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Being offended can make a person feel powerless. Someone says (or posts) something hurtful, and the sting comes fast. It doesn’t dissipate just because you tell it to.
But there are some ways to control our experience when we feel insulted.

How Air-Conditioning Built Our Reality

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Before the air conditioner was invented, human beings were at a loss for how to cool themselves.

Why Skepticism About College Is Hard to Shake

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College-graduation ceremonies are expressions of joy, but also of relief. As photos are taken, tassels turned, hugs exchanged, the hope is that all of the hard work, and the money, will have been worth it.
But many Americans aren’t convinced that it is.

When College Graduates Face Reality

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“History found you.” In 2020, Caitlin Flanagan told recent college graduates that their dreams were interrupted in much the same way her father’s dreams had once been interrupted. In 1941, he was a new student at Amherst College, “and he thought it was paradise,” Caitlin wrote.

An Atlantic Reading List on Consciousness

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People in a vegetative state may be far more aware than was once thought, Sarah Zhang reports in a recent feature. “In some extraordinary patients, the line between conscious and unconscious is more permeable than one might expect,” she writes.

What We Inherit From Our Parents

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Many of us spend our teenage years working tirelessly to avoid becoming our parents. But sooner or later, we discover that we didn’t stray quite as far as we thought.

Nostalgia for the Early Days of Parenting

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Older parents are constantly telling those in the early days to cherish it: It goes by in a flash. But that can be very hard advice to follow when you’re in the thick of it, as Stephanie H. Murray wrote in 2022.

The Link Between Happiness and Social Connection

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Think back to a good time you recently had with a loved one: an hours-long conversation with a friend or a perfect night of watching TV on the couch with family. I’d venture to guess you still feel a little surge of warmth when you recall it.

How to Find Inspiration in New Places

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“I am a battery that needs to be often recharged,” Randolph S. Bourne wrote in The Atlantic in 1912. His language of “recharging” foretold modern-day conversations about what is now called “self-care.

Grandparenting Is Changing

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American grandparents in earlier generations had many identities, but caregiver was not first among them. Now, “America is in an age of peak grandparenting—particularly grandmothering,” my colleague Faith Hill wrote recently.

How Choosing Which Oil to Buy Got So Complicated

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Seed oils—think canola, soybean, corn—have long been “maligned by both the crunchy left and the MAHA right,” Rachel Sugar wrote yesterday. Many consider them to be unhealthy, despite no scientific evidence to back up that claim. (Just don’t use a black plastic spatula to spread oil around.

Trump’s Tariff Plan Is Going to Hurt

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“We’re going to start being smart, and we’re going to start being very wealthy again,” President Donald Trump announced today as he laid out a plan that risks derailing America’s economy.

How to Really Rest

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Trying to get better at relaxing might sound silly. Isn’t the point of relaxing to not work at all? But as Arthur C. Brooks points out in a recent article, “doing leisure well will generate the sort of growth in our well-being that work cannot provide.

The Beauty and Weirdness of the E-bike

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E-bikes can add a layer of richness to your life—especially if you name them. “On a chilly morning last October, my 8-year-old daughter and I took our new e-bike, which she had named Toby, on its maiden voyage to school,” Elizabeth Endicott writes.

The Dating Dilemmas Young People Can’t Escape

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Dating has never been easy.