When Victoria Gray was still a baby, she started howling so inconsolably during a bath that she was rushed to the emergency room. The diagnosis was sickle-cell disease, a genetic condition that causes bouts of excruciating pain—“worse than a broken leg, worse than childbirth,” one doctor told me. Like lightning crackling in her body is how Gray, now 38, has described the pain.
To my grandmother, who has lived her entire life in Italy, gluten-free pasta is “una follia”—nonsense, madness. A twirl of spaghetti or forkful of rigatoni should provide a familiar textural delight: a noodle that is both elastic and firm, holding a distinct, springy shape that your teeth can sink into with some, but not too much, resistance. That is all because of the gluten in wheat.
Frank Zappa was an unruly figure of 1960s rock, a free-speech advocate and devout parodist defined by his opposition to authority. His albums assembled the bones of rock and roll into an idiosyncratic style coursing with disbelief at just about every aspect of the American zeitgeist: hippies, cars, college, drugs, California, and, eventually, yuppies.
With Israel and Palestine experiencing the worst violence in decades, we speak with two co-founders of Combatants for Peace, a group composed of people from both sides of the conflict who have committed to nonviolence and peaceful coexistence. Avner Wishnitzer is a former member of Sayeret Matkal, one of the Israel Defense Forces’ elite commando units, and Sulaiman Khatib spent more than 10 years in prison after being arrested as a teenager for an attack on Israeli soldiers.
With a four-day truce between Israel and Hamas set to expire after Monday, we look at who has been released and the growing pressure to extend the pause in fighting that has given Gaza residents small respite from Israel’s relentless bombardment and allowed humanitarian aid to reach people inside the territory.
A bipartisan group of lawmakers is increasingly concerned that insurance companies are preying on seniors.
Some employers are dropping coverage of Ozempic and Wegovy. Connecticut is taking a different approach.
The GOP-controlled House has proposed a deep cut to the former president’s AIDS-fighting program.
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?
The new strategy UAW President Shawn Fain announced Friday signaled the strike could start having broader implications for the economy.
In this special broadcast, we air excerpts from a recent event organized by the Palestine Festival of Literature at the Union Theological Seminary here in New York. The event featured a discussion between the acclaimed writer Ta-Nehisi Coates and Columbia University professor Rashid Khalidi. Coates won the National Book Award for his book Between the World and Me. Rashid Khalidi is the Edward Said professor of modern Arab studies at Columbia.
“But We Must Speak: On Palestine and the Mandates of Conscience.” That was the name of a recent event organized by the Palestine Festival of Literature here in New York, where leading writers and academics came together to speak out against Israel’s bombardment of Gaza. Speakers included Yasmin El-Rifae of PalFest and the civil rights attorney Michelle Alexander, author of The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness.
We speak with Josh Paul, a former State Department official, about his decision to resign from his position in protest of U.S. arms sales to Israel amid its recent bombardment of Gaza. Paul tells Democracy Now!, “I decided to resign for three reasons, the first and most pressing of which is the very, I believe, uncontroversial fact that U.S.-provided arms should not be used to massacre civilians, should not be used to result in massive civilian casualties.
Hear from Craig Mokhiber, a longtime international human rights lawyer, who previously served as director of the New York Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, on why he left his post while decrying U.N. inaction over what he calls a “text-book case of genocide” unfolding in Gaza. Mokhiber’s letter of resignation went viral last month. He spoke to Democracy Now! shortly after.
Lakota historian Nick Estes talks about the violent origins of Thanksgiving and his book Our History Is the Future. “This history … is a continuing history of genocide, of settler colonialism and, basically, the founding myths of this country,” says Estes, who is a co-founder of the Indigenous resistance group The Red Nation and a citizen of the Lower Brule Sioux Tribe.
The clip damns the GOP with the Arkansas Republican governor’s own words.
The former GOP presidential nominee says there are two members of his own party he can’t support.
People are being advised to wear masks.
“Intolerance toward anyone encourages intolerance toward everyone,” Christie told CNN’s Dana Bash.
Thousands die from hepatitis C every year, even though we have a nearly foolproof cure. A new plan would change that.
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.Welcome back to The Daily’s Sunday culture edition, in which one Atlantic writer reveals what’s keeping them entertained. Today’s special guest is Jennifer Senior, a staff writer at The Atlantic and the winner of the 2022 Pulitzer Prize for Feature Writing.
after Riding Over the Brooklyn Bridge, by Robert Wood Lynn
I dissolved into unemployment and I cherished
the worst of it. Dollar Pizza’s nails in my stomach
and the long mountains of Pennsylvania’s
rain in my midnight’s future: New York was over.
Or at least invisible to my desire, which was not, it turns out,
a reliable strategy for survival.
Earlier this year, I moved from San Francisco to New York with my dogs, kids, and husband. My family rented an apartment. And once we figured out that we liked it here and wanted to stay, we looked to buy a place.For roughly 11 minutes, before realizing that literally any other activity would be a better use of our time. Brooklyn has 1.1 million housing units. Just a dozen of them seemed to fit our requirements and were sitting on the market. All of the options were too expensive.
In May 2022, an air-traffic controller in Florida received a frantic call. The pilot of a single-engine Cessna 208 had collapsed, leaving the sole passenger—with no experience at all flying a plane—to fend for himself in the cockpit. Remarkably, the controller was able to direct the passenger to take the controls, reach an airport, and safely land.The story went viral for several days, perhaps in part because we can all imagine ourselves in that nightmare come true.
Democrats and Republicans agree that the primary care system needs an overhaul. They’re encouraging nurses to do more and embracing virtual care.
Dylan Longton really knows how to flip an egg. A 33-year-old line cook at an unassuming diner just outside Albany, New York, Longton can make an omelet do a backflip and land it smoothly right back into its pan cradle. And people love him for it. Not just people in Albany, or people in New York. People all around the world, sometimes more than a thousand at once, tune in on TikTok to watch Longton flip eggs, and reheat bacon and homefries on the grill.
A bipartisan group of lawmakers is increasingly concerned that insurance companies are preying on seniors.
Some employers are dropping coverage of Ozempic and Wegovy. Connecticut is taking a different approach.