Today's Liberal News

Isabel Fattal

Why Roger Ebert Wanted You to Go to the Movies

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 1980, the film critic Roger Ebert attended a conference filled with discussion about “new home video entertainment centers.” When he left, he was disturbed.

Israel’s Avalanche

Israel’s democracy is still intact, but the country has already lost something essential.First, here are three new stories from The Atlantic:
Fatigue can shatter a person.
“I saw the movie ‘they’ don’t want you to see.”
American family life should not be this volatile.
Utter CollapseAs Israel nears the end of a week of turmoil, its democracy remains intact.

Why Elite-College Admissions Matter

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.Attendance at an elite college increases a student’s chances of joining America’s most elite ranks, according to a new study.

What Really Changes in Older Age

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.Among the many negative stereotypes that exist about older adults is the idea that they’re not capable of change, my colleague Faith Hill noted recently. In fact, many psychologists used to believe that after young adulthood, people tend to settle into their personality.

The Wild-Card Candidates

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.A Trump-Biden rematch is inevitable in 2024, even though polling has shown that most Americans wish it weren’t (and even though the former president is possibly facing a third indictment).

How Hollywood’s Businessmen Got It So Wrong

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.Last week, the roughly 160,000 members of SAG-AFTRA went on strike, joining the Writers Guild of America, which has been on strike since May. As my colleague Xochitl Gonzalez put it, “The Hollywood machine … has officially ground to a halt.

The Joy and the Drama of Weddings

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.“Weddings are funny affairs—tense, expensive, fraught with emotion,” writes Xochitl Gonzalez, an Atlantic staff writer who was once a luxury-wedding planner. “They are revisited—by the couple, by the family, by the person paying the bills—time and again.

What Trump’s Court Filing Could Mean for 2024

This week, Donald Trump’s lawyers submitted a court filing that confirmed a theory that Trump critics have been spreading for years. I called my colleague David Graham to talk about the surprises of the latest filing, and how Trump is scrambling the traditional relationship between law and politics.First, here are four new stories from The Atlantic:
New Mark Zuckerberg dropped.
The curious personality changes of older age
Google’s new search tool could eat the internet alive.

The Taylor Swift–Joan Didion Effect

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 Atlantic staff writer Elaina Plott Calabro.

The Art of Puzzling

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.I’ll admit right off the bat that I’m not much of a puzzler. Growing up, I always preferred the quick satisfaction of a book or a movie to the more frustrating challenge lurking in the Sunday paper.

The Best Background-Noise TV

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 Atlantic contributing writer Ian Bogost, who is also the director of the film-and-media-studies program at Washington University in St.

Friendship Advice That Might Surprise You

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.Say you have dinner plans with a friend on Friday night. You’ve already chosen a spot and made the reservation. Just as you’re about to head out to meet them, they text you to cancel, saying that they’re exhausted from the week.

What Russia’s Whirlwind Crisis Could Mean for Putin

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.“A short recap of the past 24 hours in Russia reads like the backstory for a fanciful episode of Madam Secretary or The West Wing,” my colleague Tom Nichols wrote yesterday.

Finding Common Cultural Ground With Your Kids

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.Good morning. Before we turn to the Sunday culture edition of this newsletter, here are some of our writers’ most recent stories to help you make sense of the situation in Russia.
Why didn’t the Wagner coup succeed?
Prigozhin planned this.
The coup is over, but Putin is in trouble.

How Obligations Can Fuel Happiness

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.Today, the hosts of our podcast How to Talk to People offer advice on making small talk, finding connection, and prioritizing friendships in a world that doesn’t always put non-romantic relationships first.

Is the Beach Actually Any Fun?

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.For centuries, human beings feared the sea. “Any 17th-century European pirate could tell you terrifying tales of sea monsters dwelling in the dark waters,” Adee Braun wrote in 2013. “A pirate was about as likely to swim in the sea as a pilot is to jump out of his plane.

How We Watch TV

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 2018, Daniel H. Pink wrote that he organizes his TV diet into “couch shows” and “phone shows.” Couch shows are streamed in a specified place, on a comparably large screen.

An Interview With Tim Alberta on CNN’s Turmoil

Last Friday, The Atlantic published Tim Alberta’s profile of then–CNN CEO Chris Licht. Yesterday, Licht was ousted from the network. Below, in selected excerpts from today’s episode of our podcast Radio Atlantic, Alberta reflects on how Licht’s attempts to save the network went so wrong.

The Northeast Gets a Taste of Fire 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.This FirstThis morning, five days after The Atlantic published a profile of then–CNN CEO Chris Licht by staff writer Tim Alberta, the CEO of Warner Bros. Discovery announced that Licht would be leaving CNN immediately. Read the profile here.

Wild, Wondrous Food Findings

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 we’re deciding what to eat (and what not to eat), human beings tend to rely on conventional wisdom. Junk food is bad for you. Eating too quickly is bad for you. And tasting an apple that’s been sitting alone in an office for at least 438 days? Really bad for you.

What Trump’s Recording Could Reveal

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, news outlets reported the existence of a recording in which Donald Trump discusses his possession of classified documents. The recording could prove legally damaging, but its existence also reveals something important about how the former president operates.

The Culture War Within the Debt Debate

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.Over the weekend, President Joe Biden and House Speaker Kevin McCarthy agreed on a bill to raise the debt ceiling. If the bill passes the House Rules Committee vote today, then House Republicans will vote on it later this week.

The Art of Paying Attention

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.“Attention is the beginning of devotion,” the poet Mary Oliver wrote in her final collection of essays. In 2021, the poet Leila Chatti took up Oliver’s words, reflecting on the challenge of them: “All day, the world makes its demands.

A New Way to Unstick Your Mind

Today we relaunched The Atlantic’s flagship podcast, Radio Atlantic, with a new host: senior editor Hanna Rosin, a former Atlantic writer who went on to become the editorial director for audio at New York magazine. “There’s this phrase someone said to me recently: road-testing ideas, like you would road-test a car,” Hanna says in the trailer for the new podcast. “You run them through the dirt, see if they can stand up to actual real-world conditions.

The New Lines of the Gun-Reform Battle

A 2022 Supreme Court ruling changed the boundaries of America’s fight over guns. The latest mass-shooting tragedies raise the question: Where does gun reform go next?First, here are three new stories from The Atlantic:
Clarence Thomas’s billionaire friend is no Nazi.
Elon Musk’s free-speech charade is over.

Abortion Opponents’ Next Push

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.On Friday evening, a federal judge in Texas ruled to block access to the abortion drug mifepristone; this afternoon, the Justice Department appealed the decision. This case is about more than abortion pills: It also signals a potential new strategy for anti-abortion activists across the country.

How Trends Are Made

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’s mom wouldn’t let her buy high heels in high school, she got an after-school job and bought them herself.

The Power of Low-Stakes Humor

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 internet was not exactly built to accommodate April Fools’ Day. As my colleague Megan Garber put it in 2015, our digital platforms don’t tend “to distinguish between stories and facts, between the earnest and the satirical.

The Emotional Range of Tattoos

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.Tattoos were once a sign of outsider status. But that’s changed in the 21st century: “My doctor has both of his arms totally sleeved. I have a friend that’s a corporate lawyer, and she’s working on her body suit,” a tattoo artist told the editor Adrienne Green in 2016.

Our Photo Editor’s Must-See Images

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.My colleague Alan Taylor has published thousands of photo essays in his time at The Atlantic. I spoke with him about the art of telling a visual story and which photos have stuck with him over the years.But first, here are three new stories from The Atlantic.