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President Joe Biden is abroad this week, commemorating the 80th anniversary of D-Day with a warning about the risks to democracy around the world. His trip comes at a crucial time for the U.S., as he is dealt challenges from China, Russia, and Iran.
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 pop culture, questions of inheritance take on dramatic, often nasty proportions. Watching Succession, you’d be forgiven for thinking that in all wealthy families, the specter of death elicits insults, infighting, and betrayal.
For many years, I assumed that the appeal of a short story was that it was, well, short. Instead of slowly reading a novel over weeks, the reader of these bite-size plots can experience character development, crisis, and conclusion in just a few thousand words. But intentionally reading more short stories made me realize that I’d underestimated the form. These works aren’t just compressed novels: They offer an entirely different experience.
The government SUV is a white dot on the vast volcanic landscape. Beneath the open rear hatch, the geologists Jim Skinner and Alexandra Huff are bent over a map, glancing up at corresponding landmarks. To the west looms the giant lip of a volcano that flooded the area with scorching liquified rock tens of thousands of years ago. To the south, the triangular points of the San Francisco Peaks and, beyond them, the city of Flagstaff, Arizona. Grasses blanket the hills.
In April, a group of people in a red Tesla driving through the Moroccan desert were glued to the odometer on the car’s giant touch screen. “Two million, Hans! Two million,” exclaimed the front-seat passenger to the owner and driver, Hansjörg von Gemmingen-Hornberg. His 2014 Model S had become likely the first electric vehicle to drive 2 million kilometers, or more than 1.2 million miles. The car could have traveled from the Earth to the moon and back, twice, then circled the equator 11 times.
The Biden administration is in court defending a federal law it argues protects emergency abortions. In practice, the statute has offered only limited help.
Democrats hope Republicans who voted against the legislation pay a political price in November.
Advisers to the Food and Drug Administration said using ecstasy to boost therapy for people with post-traumatic stress disorder was not effective.
Lawmakers and the VA hope ecstasy can help treat veterans with PTSD, but there’s reason for doubt.
The government’s former top infectious disease official said he didn’t suppress the debate over the coronavirus’ origin.
The president is getting more micro in his economic sales pitch as the landscape loses its luster.
Friday’s government report showed that last month’s hiring gain was down sharply from the blockbuster increase of 315,000 in March.
Biden and Trump are both campaigning on warped economic statistics, cherry-picking weird data from the Covid crisis.
We speak with Congressmember Jamaal Bowman of New York, one of the top targets for pro-Israel groups seeking to oust lawmakers who have led calls for a ceasefire in Gaza. Bowman is a former Bronx middle school principal who won his seat in 2020 before becoming a member of the so-called Squad of progressives in Congress.
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For something so small and hollow, the drinking straw has become quite a potent symbol over the years.
This is Atlantic Intelligence, a limited-run series in which our writers help you wrap your mind around artificial intelligence and a new machine age. Sign up here.
Presidential elections in the United States are prolonged, chaotic, and torturous. (Please, not another election needle …) But they don’t come close to rivaling what happens in India.
Friday’s good jobs numbers may be a boost. But boosts haven’t yet materialized into political benefits.
This is an edition of the Books Briefing, our editors’ weekly guide to the best in books. Sign up for it here.
There were moments in Adam Higginbotham’s new book Challenger that made me gasp and flip to the endnotes. I wasn’t looking to find the story’s denouement—I already knew what happened on the morning of January 28, 1986: The space shuttle Challenger broke apart just over a minute into its voyage, killing all seven astronauts aboard.
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In the fall of 2005, Johann Hari, then a young columnist for The Independent who was struggling with his weight, described a trip he said he’d taken to a wellness spa in the foothills of the Carinthian Alps. After spending just four days there on a cleansing diet that consisted almost entirely of drinking tea—Hari could not bear to stay a moment longer—he’d lost seven pounds.
Tech evangelists like to say that AI will eat the world—a reference to a famous line about software from the venture capitalist Marc Andreessen. In the past few weeks, we’ve finally gotten a sense of what they mean.
This spring, tech companies have made clear that AI will be a defining feature of online life, whether people want it to be or not. First, Meta surprised users with an AI chatbot that lives in the search bar on Instagram and Facebook.
Democracy Now! speaks with the creators of a new arts campaign grounded in Black women’s stories. VOICES: a sacred sisterscape is an audio play directed by award-winning poet aja monet weaving together Black feminist poems and perspectives. “Art is an invitation to expand our participation in the world and the ways that we see the world,” says monet, who hopes the project inspires action beyond aesthetics.
As we enter the month of June, scorching temperatures are already making deadly heat waves around the world. Data confirmed last month was the hottest May on record, putting the Earth on a 12-month streak of record-breaking temperatures. On Wednesday, the World Meteorological Organization announced there is an 80% chance the average global temperature will exceed 1.5 degrees Celsius above preindustrial levels for at least one of the next five years.
Israeli forces have illegally dropped white phosphorus munitions on densely populated residential areas in southern Lebanon, according to a new report by Human Rights Watch. White phosphorus, which poses a high risk of excruciating burns and lifelong suffering, was dropped by Israel over at least 17 municipalities in Lebanon since October 2023.
Democrats hope Republicans who voted against the legislation pay a political price in November.
Advisers to the Food and Drug Administration said using ecstasy to boost therapy for people with post-traumatic stress disorder was not effective.
Lawmakers and the VA hope ecstasy can help treat veterans with PTSD, but there’s reason for doubt.
The government’s former top infectious disease official said he didn’t suppress the debate over the coronavirus’ origin.
The president is getting more micro in his economic sales pitch as the landscape loses its luster.
Friday’s government report showed that last month’s hiring gain was down sharply from the blockbuster increase of 315,000 in March.
Biden and Trump are both campaigning on warped economic statistics, cherry-picking weird data from the Covid crisis.