A short recap of the past 24 hours in Russia reads like the backstory for a fanciful episode of Madam Secretary or The West Wing. Yevgeny Prigozhin, the brutal convicted criminal who leads the Wagner mercenary group, declared war on the Russian Ministry of Defense and marched into the city of Rostov-on-Don. He then headed north for Moscow, carrying his demand for the ousting of Minister of Defense Sergei Shoigu and Chief of the General Staff Valery Gerasimov. The city went on alert.

Updated at 6:50 p.m. ET on June 24, 2023The Wagner Group, a mercenary force that is effectively an arm of the Putinist state, has been very good at meddling in the politics of countries other than Russia—and ensuring that its preferred regime either takes or stays in power.

Updated at 6:53 p.m. ET on June 24, 2023Russia is splintering. Even though Yevgeny Prigozhin just announced a surprising stand-down while en route to Moscow, it’s clear that his effort remains by far the greatest threat to Vladimir Putin since he took power in the summer of 1999. The story of the Wagner Group plot may not yet have reached its end, so it’s worth understanding how coups work: what causes them to succeed or, in this case, why they fizzle or fall short.

The sharp exchange between former President Barack Obama and two nonwhite 2024 GOP presidential candidates captures how diverging perceptions about racial inequity have emerged as a central fault line between the Republican and Democratic coalitions.In their presidential campaigns, Republican Senator Tim Scott, who is Black, and former South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley, who is Indian American, have repeatedly insisted that systemic or structural racism is no longer a problem in America.

A simmering political feud in Russia has exploded into a crisis. The head of a Russian mercenary army fighting in Ukraine alongside Moscow’s official military forces has declared war against the Russian ministry of defense, claiming that Russia’s war in Ukraine was all the result of a giant plot by defense bureaucrats to mislead Russian President Vladimir Putin into a pointless conflict.

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.Today, the hosts of our podcast How to Talk to People offer advice on making small talk, finding connection, and prioritizing friendships in a world that doesn’t always put non-romantic relationships first.

Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg, two computer geeks worth more than $300 billion put together, are posturing to fight each other in a mixed-martial-arts cage match.

“Let’s travel now to moonlit valleys blanketed with heather,” Harry Styles says to me. The pop star’s voice—just shy of songful, velvet-dry—makes it seem as if we’re at a sleepaway camp for lonely grown-ups, where he is my fetching counselor, and now it’s time for lights out.Styles’s iambic beckoning lies within a “sleep story” in the mindfulness app Calm.

This is an edition of the revamped Books Briefing, our editors’ weekly guide to the best in books. Sign up for it here.Audiobooks have never worked for me; as a rule, I don’t listen to them. I recognize this as my own failing, but while one is playing, I’m easily distracted. All it takes is one glance up at a poster on the street, or down at my phone, and I’m tuning out what I’m hearing.