Today's Liberal News

Isabel Fattal

How We Talk

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.Gathering with family can be a chance to observe up close how multiple generations live their lives. One fascinating instance I’ve been thinking about lately: the way people interact with their phones.

A Better Way to Make New Year’s Resolutions

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.Early in 2023, my colleague Caroline Mimbs Nyce chatted with the writer Oliver Burkeman about New Year’s resolutions. Burkeman is an expert on productivity, but he’s arguably also an expert on getting real about the time human beings have on Earth.

A Better Way to Make New Year’s Resolutions

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.Early in 2023, my colleague Caroline Mimbs Nyce chatted with the writer Oliver Burkeman about New Year’s resolutions. Burkeman is an expert on productivity, but he’s arguably also an expert on getting real about the time human beings have on Earth.

A Better Way to Make New Year’s Resolutions

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.Early in 2023, my colleague Caroline Mimbs Nyce chatted with the writer Oliver Burkeman about New Year’s resolutions. Burkeman is an expert on productivity, but he’s arguably also an expert on getting real about the time human beings have on Earth.

What Comes Next in Gaza and Israel?

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.Nearly three months into the Israel-Hamas war, our writers think through the possible futures that await the region.First, here are three new stories from The Atlantic:
81 things that blew our minds in 2023
Political accountability isn’t dead yet.

X Is Elon Musk’s Lonely Party Now

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.As we close out the year, it’s official: The Twitter we once knew is long gone. Elon Musk’s reinvention of the platform, from its name down to its core features, has rendered it nearly unrecognizable to users.

Why the Holiday Movie Endures

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.The question “What is a Christmas movie?” might seem straightforward. But there’s one film that has scrambled the logic of the holiday movie for years now—at least for those who probably spend too much time online.

The Fate of Your Holiday-Season Returns

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.When my colleague Amanda Mull “ventured into the belly of the holiday-returns beast,” she learned that somewhere in the midst of a complex system of transporters, warehousers, and resellers, a guy named Michael has to sniff the sweatpants.

How to Love Winter a Little More

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 January 2021, a time when many of us were returning from halfhearted outdoor hangouts with freezing fingers, my colleague Marina Koren revealed herself as a lover of winter. Well, within reason: “I do not ski.

What the Act of Crying Can Offer

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.“When I decided to attend seminary … I told people it was to ‘find myself,’” Benjamin Perry wrote earlier this year. “That frame suggests that I yearned to forge a new identity and discover my future.

The Joys of Carole Lombard, Zadie Smith, and High-School Movies

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.Welcome back to The Daily’s Sunday culture edition, in which one Atlantic writer reveals what’s keeping them entertained. Today’s special guest is Jennifer Senior, a staff writer at The Atlantic and the winner of the 2022 Pulitzer Prize for Feature Writing.

Walton Goggins, Zadie Smith, and Lauryn Hill

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.Welcome back to The Daily’s Sunday culture edition, in which one Atlantic writer reveals what’s keeping them entertained. Today’s special guest is Conor Friedersdorf, a staff writer and the author of our Up for Debate newsletter.

What Humans and Nature Get From Each Other

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.Those of us who live in cities are inclined to avoid some of nature’s less-than-appealing creatures. “My aversion to pigeons, rats, and cockroaches is somewhat justifiable, given their cultural associations with dirtiness and disease,” Hannah Seo writes in a recent article.

A Cathartic Watch

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.Welcome back to The Daily’s Sunday culture edition, in which one Atlantic writer reveals what’s keeping them entertained. Today’s special guest is Elizabeth Bruenig, a staff writer at The Atlantic who covers politics, culture, and religion.

What We Do With Our Faces

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 2016, my colleague Olga Khazan saw a cultural difference playing out on the faces of those around her. “Here’s something that has always puzzled me, growing up in the U.S. as a child of Russian parents,” she wrote.

An Album About Fatherhood and Healing

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.Welcome back to The Daily’s Sunday culture edition, in which one Atlantic writer reveals what’s keeping them entertained. Today’s special guest is Vann R. Newkirk II, a senior editor and the host of the podcasts Floodlines and Holy Week.

What Really Happens When You’re Sick

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.When you’re suffering from a cold, the situation might seem perfectly clear—your nose is stuffed. But the truth about what’s happening to you is a little more complicated.

The Old-Fashioned Charm of The Golden Bachelor

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.Welcome back to The Daily’s Sunday culture edition, in which one Atlantic writer reveals what’s keeping them entertained. Today’s special guest is our Science editor Sarah Laskow. Sarah recently investigated whether salsa is gazpacho—and whether gazpacho is salsa.

A Halloween Reading List for Adults

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.“I believe in chasing the ghost of my former lighthearted self,” my colleague Faith Hill wrote last year. And “if there’s one day when I might almost catch up, it’s Halloween: the most ridiculous, inherently childish holiday, and perhaps the one grown-ups need most.

The Perfect Book for Spooky Season

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.Welcome back to The Daily’s Sunday culture edition, in which one Atlantic writer reveals what’s keeping them entertained. Today’s special guest is our supervisory senior associate editor Rachel Gutman-Wei, who works on our Science, Technology, and Health team.

A Masterpiece of Cringe

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.Welcome back to The Daily’s Sunday culture edition, in which one Atlantic writer reveals what’s keeping them entertained. Today’s special guest is our associate editor Kate Cray.

“The Month of Painted Leaves”

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.In the October 1862 issue of The Atlantic, Henry David Thoreau argued that foliage was not getting the attention it deserved. “The autumnal change of our woods has not made a deep impression on our own literature yet,” he wrote. “October has hardly tinged our poetry.

Hamas’s Attack Confounds Middle East Experts

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.Israel is at war, and has ordered a complete siege of Gaza after Hamas’s surprise attack on Saturday. Hamas is holding at least 150 hostages, and more than 900 Israelis and more than 600 Palestinians have been killed.

Five Observations About the War in Israel

Yesterday, Hamas launched a multifront attack that shocked Israel, infiltrating the Gaza border by land, sea, and air. The attack took place on the Jewish holiday of Simchat Torah, nearly 50 years to the day after an Arab coalition’s surprise attack on Israel—the last assault of this scale—spurred the Yom Kippur War in 1973.More than 600 Israelis have been killed, according to local reports.

Biden’s New Student-Debt Strategy

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.Yesterday, President Joe Biden announced an additional $9 billion in student-loan forgiveness.

A ’90s Blockbuster That Holds Up

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.Welcome back to The Daily’s Sunday culture edition, in which one Atlantic writer reveals what’s keeping them entertained. Today’s special guest is our staff writer Olga Khazan.

Low Stakes, High Drama

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.Saturn is the best planet. Hard seltzer is an abomination. Milk chocolate is better than dark. The “fun fact” should die.My colleagues at The Atlantic are skilled in the art of making a bold, well-researched argument.

A Dark and Paranoid American Fable

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.Welcome back to The Daily’s Sunday culture edition, in which one Atlantic writer reveals what’s keeping them entertained. Today’s special guest is our staff writer Ross Andersen.

When Kitchen Appliances Feel Stuck in Time

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.“The microwave is a baffling contradiction: a universal, time-saving appliance that also seems trapped in time,” Jacob Sweet wrote this week.

Mozart’s Most Metal Moment

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.Welcome back to The Daily’s Sunday culture edition, in which one Atlantic writer reveals what’s keeping them entertained. Today’s special guest is staff writer Annie Lowrey, who covers economic policy, housing, and other related topics.