Today's Liberal News

The Atlantic Daily: How Science Beat the Virus

Every weekday evening, our editors guide you through the biggest stories of the day, help you discover new ideas, and surprise you with moments of delight. Subscribe to get this delivered to your inbox.Ricardo TomásScience defeated the coronavirus, my colleague Ed Yong reports in our latest cover story
This spring, thousands of researchers paused their projects in order to study the deadly disease, COVID-izing their disciplines.

The Singular Achievement of Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy

My uncle once told me about a visit he made to an English friend of his, who was going through a divorce. “Right,” said this friend, “I’ve got a bottle of whiskey and the DVD of Tinker Tailor … We’re going to stay up all night and watch the whole thing.”Not the first choice, one might think, for someone in need of a bit of cheering up.

John le Carré Knew England’s Secrets

Writing about John le Carré is intimidating. Writing an appreciation after he has died feels doubly so. In some ways, this fear says much about the England that le Carré was so masterful at capturing: the class consciousness and fear of straying beyond your place. Le Carré inhabited an England beyond my horizons, not just the cloak-and-dagger one, but the one that exists at Eton and at Oxford and in many parts of London, lands that remain foreign to most of us.

I’m Really Sorry, but Let’s Talk About That Chicken Movie

Late last month, the crew of a helicopter surveying a desolate stretch of the Utah desert came across an unexpected finding: a metal structure, tall and thin, gleaming among the matte-red rocks. Soon after, the object vanished. But people began finding similar ones, in California and Romania and the Netherlands—elongated prisms studding the earth, their provenance, for the most part, unknown.

Greta Thunberg: 5 Years After Paris Agreement, World Is “Speeding in the Wrong Direction” on Climate

Swedish activist Greta Thunberg, who launched the global Fridays for Future youth climate movement, issued a stark warning on the fifth anniversary of the Paris Climate Agreement that the world is not doing enough to keep global heating below 2 degrees Celsius — the target set in the landmark 2015 deal. “The gap between what we need to do and what is actually being done is widening by the minute.