When this week’s Saturday Night Live host, Adam Driver, explained in his opening monologue that he had a “very deep and personal relationship with Santa,” it was pretty obvious that whatever was to follow wasn’t going to be your typical holiday cheer.The Oscar-nominated actor sat down at a piano, demonstrated that he really could play it, and then started barking his wish list to the jolly man in the North Pole.
I like your eyes. Their startling weather
like the bract of the bougainvillea, a leaf
turned suddenly dawn, peach
or cloud, drawn out from the sun
and dark water. No. Your eyes are arid
and say nothing. I am looking at
you. I don’t know what I’m thinking.
You look at me—what, you say; nothing
I say. No. Tell me something.
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.Culture has a way of defining a year for even the under-rock dwellers among us: A good movie, TV show, book, or album can shape our conversations, our experiences, and even the way we think.
Good mining jobs with good benefits can counterintuitively hurt access to care.
The latest GOP presidential debate demonstrated again that Ron DeSantis and Nikki Haley are pursuing utterly inimical strategies for catching the front-runner, Donald Trump.The debate, on Wednesday evening, also showed why neither approach looks remotely sufficient to dislodge Trump from his commanding position in the race.DeSantis delivered a stronger overall debate performance than Haley.
“No one enters Slough House by the front door,” the novelist Mick Herron writes in Dead Lions, the second book in his series about an “administrative oubliette” for useless spies exiled by MI5, Britain’s domestic-intelligence agency. “Instead, via a shabby alleyway, its inmates let themselves into a grubby yard with mildewed walls, and through a door that requires a sharp kick most mornings, when damp or cold or heat have warped it.
A Texas case underscores the legal and ethical gray areas physicians have faced since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade.
The FDA approved the landmark treatment on Friday. It’s expected to cost more than $1 million.
Discussions about a compromise that would extend the program have collapsed.
The firm is deploying its artificial intelligence across the health care spectrum. Its lobbyists are smoothing the way.
Why the law could be harder to repeal in 2025 than it was in 2017.
Friday’s report from the Labor Department showed that the unemployment rate dropped from 3.9% to 3.7%, not far above a five-decade low of 3.4% in April.
Expiring Covid benefits and new limits on safety net programs threaten to hit Americans’ pocketbooks — especially among core parts of the Democratic electorate.
Top White House aides reviewed private polling showing Biden’s economic message falling flat and suggesting paths toward a turnaround.
Can Democrats overcome their college-campus branding and reclaim the working class?
Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva is calling for phasing out fossil fuels but has alarmed many climate activists as Brazil moves to join the oil producer alliance OPEC+ as an observer state. Paula Vargas, director of the Brazil program at Amazon Watch, lays out Brazil’s environmental policy under Lula and Jair Bolsonaro’s legacy of impunity for those attacking environmental defenders.
Broadcasting from COP28 in Dubai, we speak with Jacob Johns, a Hopi and Akimel O’odham environmental defender who is leading the Indigenous Wisdom Keepers delegation at COP28. This is his first interview after surviving being shot in the chest by a far-right agitator in September.
At COP28 in Dubai, protests in solidarity with Palestine have faced severe restrictions. Asad Rehman, the lead spokesperson for the Climate Justice Coalition, joined with human rights groups at an unofficial media briefing to explain how climate summit officials have threatened to debadge participants for even wearing Palestinian colors or sporting visual depictions calling for a ceasefire. “This is probably the most restrictive we’ve seen,” Rehman said.
Scholar and policy analyst Jehad Abusalim remembers his friend Refaat Alareer, the acclaimed Palestinian academic and activist who was killed by an Israeli airstrike in Gaza City earlier this week.
An Israeli airstrike in Gaza has killed the acclaimed Palestinian academic and activist Refaat Alareer, along with his brother, his sister and her four children. Alareer was just 44 years old. For more than 16 years, he worked as a professor of English literature at the Islamic University of Gaza and authored dozens of stories and poems about life under Israeli occupation in Gaza. “Whether it is my kids or any Palestinian kid or any Palestinian, no one is safe. No place is safe.
Editor’s Note: Washington Week with The Atlantic is a partnership between NewsHour Productions, WETA, and The Atlantic airing every Friday on PBS stations nationwide. Check your local listings or watch full episodes here. It’s been a difficult week for President Joe Biden. His agenda on funding Israel, Ukraine, and border security is stalled in Congress, and his approval ratings are nearing a record low.
Lisbon’s mayor called for preserving Portugal’s liberal traditions and uniting against a party riling its base with racist invective targeting a minority.
Each is getting time onstage at Dordt University in Sioux Center with U.S. Rep. Randy Feenstra and his wife, Lynette, to discuss faith, family and politics.
The House speaker is known for his work as a Christian-right operative. This is how he became the “legal go-to guy” to put creationism into public schools.
The former congressman’s rise and fall from grace is all on him, they said.
The former House Republican pointed out “the extent to which he was willing to attempt to seize power” in the past.
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 January 2021, a time when many of us were returning from halfhearted outdoor hangouts with freezing fingers, my colleague Marina Koren revealed herself as a lover of winter. Well, within reason: “I do not ski.
This article was originally published in Knowable Magazine.Thirty years ago, a botanist in Germany had a simple wish: to see the inner workings of woody plants without dissecting them. By bleaching away the pigments in plant cells, Siegfried Fink managed to create transparent wood, and he published his technique in a niche wood-technology journal. The 1992 paper remained the last word on see-through wood for more than a decade, until a researcher named Lars Berglund stumbled across it.
In the summer of 1940, when Great Britain was fighting Nazi Germany alone, Winston Churchill asked to borrow a few dozen aging American destroyers to defend the English coast from imminent invasion. Churchill wrote to Franklin D. Roosevelt: “Mr. President, with great respect, I must tell you that in the long history of the world, this is a thing to do now.”Today Ukraine is fighting Russia alone.
The protagonist of the new film Poor Things is no ordinary heroine. As played by Emma Stone, Bella Baxter is a corpse reanimated by a man who replaced her brain with that of her unborn child; she’s therefore a blend of juvenile innocence and adult promiscuity, shamelessly charting her own course through life because she’s never been conditioned to meet societal constraints.