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In his 2022 essay on how to want less, Arthur C. Brooks recalls a line from Ralph Waldo Emerson about the dangers of thinking that a new place or shiny thing will fix life’s problems.
Two hundred years ago, on July 4, 1826, Thomas Jefferson and John Adams died within hours of each other. Today, this is usually recalled, when it’s recalled at all, as trivia. But it was far from trivial when it happened. Americans were stunned that the two men most responsible for the Declaration of Independence—Jefferson its author, Adams its chief advocate—died on the same day, and that this day was the Fourth of July, and that this Fourth of July was the 50th anniversary of the Declaration.
George Washington, this nation’s first general, its inaugural president, the eponym of its capital city, left one of his most indelible marks on America from afar. Not one for a grand speech, Washington printed his Farewell Address in Philadelphia’s American Daily Advertiser on September 19, 1796, the same day he announced that he would voluntarily relinquish his power, departing the then-seat of government for his homestead at Mount Vernon.
Earlier this year, President Trump claimed a new area of expertise: election law. “I have searched the depths of Legal Arguments not yet articulated or vetted on this subject,” Trump wrote on social media, and found an “irrefutable one” that he would soon present.
The A.I. boom and the Iran war are driving demand for chips to unprecedented levels—leading to bigger price tags for your gadgets.
Alan Greenspan died this week at the age of 100, but his legacy lives on with the Fed’s current chairman.
In the face of a financial quagmire, why not throw up a few glow sticks?
Fans spend thousands planning once-in-a-lifetime trips to see their favorite teams—only for those plans to be spoiled by ticket resellers.
Insurers are embracing the health secretary’s Make America Healthy Again movement as the GOP looks to cut health care costs.
The POLITICO Poll shows that the Make America Healthy Again umbrella includes people with opposing ideologies and different politics.
Chris Klomp, a 45-year-old tech entrepreneur, gained the president’s confidence when he negotiated price cuts with drug companies.
A bipartisan bill to implement a $35 cap on out-of-pocket insulin costs is gaining steam among Republicans, but big hurdles remain to get the legislation through Congress.
In at least two battleground states, voters will decide in the midterms whether to protect a right to the procedure.
Outward’s hosts sit down with the host and co-creator of When We All Get to Heaven.
The neighborhood changes, the church moves, people forget and remember “the AIDS years,” but AIDS isn’t over.
The AIDS cocktail opens new possibilities. And MCC San Francisco tries to use the experience of AIDS to make bigger social change.
The church’s minister gets sick and everyone knows it.
The church’s “it couple” faces AIDS, caregiving, and loss as part of a pair, part of families, and part of a community.
Ahead of the July Fourth holiday and the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, we speak with the acclaimed scholar Robin D. G. Kelley, who examines how Black radicals have interpreted the document throughout U.S. history in a new essay for Hammer & Hope. Although the declaration famously asserts that “all men are created equal,” Kelley says that clearly did not extend to Indigenous or enslaved Black people.
In a 6-3 ruling this week that overturned nine decades of precedent, the Supreme Court granted President Donald Trump the power to fire and replace officials at independent government agencies like the Federal Trade Commission. But in a separate 5-4 decision, the justices ruled that Federal Reserve Governor Lisa Cook can stay in her job as she challenges Trump’s efforts to fire her.
Comcast splits from NBCUniversal as media companies realize bigger isn’t better.
Comcast splits from NBCUniversal as media companies realize bigger isn’t better.
On the eve of the United States’ 250th birthday, in the nation’s capital, people were sweating through their shirts, and tourists were pressing electric fans directly to their foreheads. The record-breaking heat wave that roasted the Midwest earlier this week has turned Washington, D.C., into hell. Temperatures peaked at 102 degrees Fahrenheit, with a heat index of 117. The sky was cloudless, and the humidity was encouraging me to lie down and cry. It was difficult to believe that D.C.
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Elon Musk isn’t just the world’s richest man—he’s one of the most influential people alive. His companies have transformed industries, his wealth has shattered records, and his politics now shape governments and public debate.
Who is responsible for American independence? The most common answer invokes a short list of familiar names: Washington, Jefferson, Adams. Despite their mistakes and biases, these men deserve the credit they’re typically given. But by focusing so much on the Founders, the conventional telling of America’s origin story leaves out perhaps its greatest heroes.
This is an edition of the Books Briefing, our editors’ weekly guide to the best in books. Sign up for it here.
This week in The Atlantic, Michael O’Donnell took aim at a film critic who is himself notorious for takedowns. Point by point, O’Donnell debunks the arguments in A Sudden Flicker of Light, David Thomson’s new book about how cinema has harmed society.
“Heaven created all persons in the same rut.” This is how one early Japanese translation of the Declaration of Independence rendered the self-evident truth mentioned in its most celebrated sentence. To many Americans, this may sound like an eccentric misunderstanding of “all men are created equal.” After all, the egalitarian arithmetic of the Declaration’s claim seems clear enough: Every person carries the same weight.
As part of our July Fourth special broadcast, we continue our extended interview with Karen Hao, author of Empire of AI: Dreams and Nightmares in Sam Altman’s OpenAI. The book documents the rise of OpenAI and how the AI industry is leading to a new form of colonialism. “One of the things that you really have to understand about AI development today is that there are what I call quasi-religious movements that have developed within Silicon Valley,” says Hao.
In our July Fourth special broadcast, we revisit our interview with longtime technology reporter Karen Hao, author of Empire of AI, which unveils the accruing political and economic power of artificial intelligence companies — especially Sam Altman’s OpenAI. Her reporting uncovered the exploitation of workers in Kenya, attempts to take massive amounts of freshwater from communities in Chile, along with numerous accounts of the technology’s detrimental impact on the environment.
We begin our July Fourth special broadcast with the words of Frederick Douglass. Born into slavery around 1818, Douglass became a key leader of the abolitionist movement. On July 5, 1852, in Rochester, New York, Douglass gave one of his most famous speeches, “What to the Slave Is the Fourth of July?” He was addressing the Rochester Ladies’ Anti-Slavery Society.