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 year, I asked The Atlantic’s writers and editors to name a perfect episode of TV, but a perfect finale is especially hard to pull off—and nothing invokes the wrath of fans quite like a bad ending. Here are eight shows that make the most out of their last minutes.
This has been a terrific year for movie theaters. Cinemas are on course for their best financial year since before the coronavirus pandemic, powered by large-scale hits such as The Odyssey and surprise small-budget smashes, particularly Obsession and Backrooms. Fears about the decline of the big-screen experience amid the rise of at-home streaming seem to have begun dissipating.
This is an edition of the Books Briefing, our editors’ weekly guide to the best in books. Sign up for it here.
Before his latest book, Marlon James hadn’t written a novel set in Jamaica in more than a decade. In the years following his Booker Prize–winning A Brief History of Seven Killings, the author focused on his Dark Star Trilogy, set in a fantasy universe.
Lintao Zhang / Getty
Szabo Sopov Kristof of Hungary practices ahead of the 2026 IWWF World Cable Wakeboard & Wakeskate Championships at Shunyi Olympic Cable Park on August 9, 2026, in Beijing, China.Nick Wass / AP
Washington Nationals’ Dylan Crews slides into home plate to score on a single by Daylen Lile during the sixth inning of a game against the Cincinnati Reds on August 8, 2026, in Washington, D.C.
The new documentary American Doctor tells the story of how the besieged hospitals of Gaza have continued to treat the sick and wounded throughout Israel’s genocidal war on the Palestinian territory, with local medical staff risking their own lives in the process. According to Palestinian officials, Israeli attacks have killed about 1,700 healthcare workers in Gaza since October 2023. The documentary follows three U.S. doctors as they volunteer in Gaza hospitals.
One of the biggest upsets from Democratic primary elections this month was Donavan McKinney’s defeat of two-term Congressmember Shri Thanedar in the House primary to represent parts of Detroit and Wayne County in Michigan’s 13th District. McKinney, a democratic socialist state lawmaker, won on a platform to get corporate money out of politics, support Medicare for All and end military aid to Israel, among other issues.
We speak with Tennessee lawmaker Justin J. Pearson, who just won the Democratic primary to represent part of Memphis in the state’s 9th Congressional District. Pearson’s campaign focused in part on opposing large artificial intelligence data centers, particularly Elon Musk’s Colossus 1 and Colossus 2, which are in the Memphis area.
“People don’t want toxic data centers polluting the air that they breathe,” says Pearson.
America’s favorite new sweet treat is a glaring recession indicator.
A live chat with Felix Salmon and Lee Buchheit hosted by the Library of Mistakes.
Leopold Aschenbrenner’s A.I.-focused portfolio was plummeting before Ken Griffin snapped up most of it.
Cyclosporiasis’ rebranding as “explosive diarrhea” has brought our collective attention to food safety concerns and the MAGA-cultivated Taylor Farms.
Beth Gardiner explains how we ended up holding the (plastic) bag for Big Oil’s wastefulness.
Jay Bhattacharya’s interview ended up similar in tone to the one with Robert F. Kennedy Jr. last week on CNN.
Several conservative states will require proof from people who say they’re too sick to work.
The parasite, which spreads via fresh produce and can cause explosive diarrhea, has sickened thousands of Americans in this summer’s record outbreak.
The Kentucky senator and nemesis of America’s Covid czar says he’s taking his case straight to the attorney general.
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.
From London, we revisit the Gaza Tribunal, an independent, nongovernmental inquiry into the United Kingdom’s complicity in the Israeli genocide of Palestinians in Gaza. The tribunal, held nearly one year ago, was chaired by our three guests: former Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn, Israeli professor of human rights law Neve Gordon and Palestinian legal scholar Shahd Hammouri. Their new book is titled The Gaza Tribunal: Britain’s Complicity in Genocide.
How to describe President Trump’s Freedom 250 Patriot Games? The contest, which took place earlier this week, brought students ages 14 to 17 together from across America to answer the question: What if your high-school gym teacher walked headfirst into a pole and was then asked to throw an Olympics with a budget of exactly $6 and three weeks’ notice?
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 January, the Trump administration attempted to fundamentally change the way the United States handles childhood immunizations. Following a memo from the Department of Health and Human Services, the CDC updated its vaccine schedule to recommend that some shots no longer be given to all children.
This is an edition of Time-Travel Thursdays, a journey through The Atlantic’s archives to contextualize the present. Sign up here.
Historians are generally better off interpreting the past than predicting the future. By training, we’re meant to read sources, not tea leaves. In the fall of 1973, during the middle acts of Watergate’s Shakespearean drama, Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr. tried to do a little bit of both.
Donald Trump just won’t let go of his plans for the Kennedy Center.
Less than three months after a federal judge ordered the president’s name stripped from the national arts center, Trump’s handpicked trustees have found a new way to try to put him back on the building. During a board meeting today, they voted in favor of a resolution that would return the president’s name to the building’s facade. It would read:
The John F.
The Trump administration alleges that some hospitals are incorrectly billing for gender-affirming care.
The semiquincentennial events that President Trump has personally directed have been a celebration of his very particular version of America. The bloody UFC fight on the White House lawn was followed by the sparsely attended Great American State Fair and a world-record-breaking July 4 fireworks show held alongside a dangerous lightning storm. Next weekend will bring a high-speed car race through the museum-lined streets of Washington.
We speak with Timnit Gebru, a leader in the field of AI ethics, about how artificial intelligence is entrenching societal biases and inequality. Gebru is the founder and executive director of the Distributed Artificial Intelligence Research Institute, a group of academics, activists and engineers who produce research rooted in the belief that technology should benefit everyone.
