PODCAST · news
Radio Atlantic
by The Atlantic
The Atlantic has long been known as an ideas-driven magazine. Now we’re bringing that same ethos to audio. Like the magazine, the show will “road test” the big ideas that both drive the news and shape our culture. Through conversations—and sometimes sharp debates—with the most insightful thinkers and writers on topics of the day, Radio Atlantic will complicate overly simplistic views. It will cut through the noise with clarifying, personal narratives. It will, hopefully, help listeners make up their own mind about certain ideas. The national conversation right now can be chaotic, reckless, and stuck. Radio Atlantic aims to bring some order to our thinking—and encourage listeners to be purposeful about how they unstick their mind.
Episodes
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Have We Reached Peak Testosterone?
Politics has seemed obsessed recently with performing masculinity. If there’s one factor that animated Donald Trump’s reelection and continues to animate the political right in general, it’s “masculinism,” a movement to fight back against the advances of feminism and reassert the primacy of men…
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Musk, Bezos, and the New Space Race
Who really controls America’s next era in space: NASA or two billionaire rivals? It might be some combination of the three. On this episode of Radio Atlantic, Adam Harris talks with Atlantic staff writer Josh Tyrangiel about SpaceX’s dominance in satellite launches, Blue Origin’s struggle to…
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How Far Is Kash Patel Willing to Go for Trump?
The Atlantic staff writer Sarah Fitzpatrick discusses her recent story, “Is There Anything Kash Patel Won’t Do for Trump Before the Midterms?” She explains what agents and other sources are telling her about how the mission of the FBI has changed, how resources have been diverted to exploration…
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The 2026 Midterms Must-Watch List
During this nail-biting midterm season, tight Congressional races are popping up all over the map. Most immediate, what happens in November could shift the balance of power in Washington. But if Democrats can pull off upsets in some of these tough-to-win races, the repercussions could reverberate...
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Min Jin Lee’s Underdog Morality
The world has waited almost a decade for a new novel by Min Jin Lee. In 2017, she published the best-selling historical epic “Pachinko,” which became a National Book Award finalist and was named one of The New York Times’ 100 best books of the 21st century. Her new book, “American Hagwon,” is out...
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Republicans Are Running From Trump. Will It Work?
As some Republicans back away from President Trump over Iran, diesel prices, and affordability, something unusual is happening: Trump is not getting mad at them. Is this what his lame-duck status will look like, or is Trump just a savvier political actor now? And will all the…
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Egypt Warned Israel Before October 7
Less than two weeks before the October 7 attack, Egypt’s top spy flew to Israel with a warning about Gaza. In this special episode of Radio Atlantic, host Adam Harris talks to the Atlantic staff writer Vivian Salama about her reporting. - - - Get more from your favorite Atlantic voices when you...
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What the 'Godfather of AI' Thinks Humanity Should Do
Since he left Google in 2023, Geoffrey Hinton, a Nobel laureate commonly known as the “Godfather of AI,” pops up in the press now and again to issue dire warnings, for example, that there is a 10 to 20 percent chance that artificial intelligence could lead to the extinction of humanity. Hinton...
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Trump Battles Against an Economy of His Making
Chinese President Xi Jinping is coming to Washington this week amid a rapidly shifting global order. Entrenched wars, raging oil markets, and AI regulation will hang over the proceedings, as both the United States and China face economic headwinds. President Trump will also be huddling this week...
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The Dark Side of Meditation
A psychologist wanted to conduct a study showing the benefits of meditation. But the results—and some of her own unsettling experiences—turned everything she thought she knew about the practice upside down. Read Olga Khazan’s story “The Dark Side of Mindfulness.” - - - Get more from your favorite...
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‘The Canadians Have Had Enough of This Nonsense’
President Trump insisted last week that Canada is “dying to make a deal” on tariffs with the United States. But dealmaking hasn’t been working out well for him lately. And even though many of AI’s chief architects are warning that something needs to be done about the technology, Trump doesn’t…
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Sarah Longwell's Playbook for Defeating MAGA
Despite his message at the first-ever Republican midterm convention this week, President Trump’s brand is weak. His approval rating is hanging at about 35 percent, and even die-hard MAGA Republicans are frustrated by his war with Iran, gas prices, and tariffs. There’s an opportunity here for...
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How the Government Wastes Our Time
Long DMV lines, endless tax forms, and paperwork-heavy safety-net programs aren’t just annoyances—they’re “time taxes,” the administrative burdens that waste people’s time and can keep eligible families from getting help. On this episode of “Radio Atlantic,” Atlantic staff writer Annie Lowrey…
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Creating the Perfect Female Monster
The breakout crime drama “Furious,” which had its series finale this week, centers around a female serial killer who is exacting revenge on the men who abused her. We talk with the Atlantic staff writer Sophie Gilbert about what the show reveals about society in the post-MeToo era, and with the...
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Trump’s Economy Goes to the Polls
Midterm elections are almost always referendums on the policies of the party in power; President Trump is hoping that Republicans steer into the skid. Last week, my colleagues reported that the president—dogged by the war in Iran, the trade war with Canada, and an economy that has Americans…
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Bill Gates on the Dangers of AI
Bill Gates has generally been an AI optimist. Three years ago, he wrote that AI had downsides, but the risks were “manageable.” This week, Gates wrote a new memo, headlined: “The Turbulent AI Era Is Here. The Choices We Make Now Are Critical.” He joins the show to raise the alarm about the…
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Where Do America’s Colleges Go From Here?
This back-to-school season, higher education finds itself at a crossroads. Amid rising costs, pressures from the Trump administration over admissions and ideological diversity, and AI, a debate is raging about what college is actually for. Radio Atlantic host Adam Harris speaks with Jack…
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Secrets of a Jeopardy Champion
What does it take to win Jeopardy? Drew Goins—an Atlantic staff writer, a Jeopardy champion, and the creator of The Atlantic’s new trivia game, Rabbithole—shares his secrets on winning at Jeopardy and cultivating a very particular brand of curiosity. - - - Get more from your favorite Atlantic...
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The Trump Administration Wanted Her Expertise, Just Not Her
In 2013, Julia Curlee became the first CIA officer to transition openly and keep serving the agency.She felt more effective at her job living as the person she always believed she was—and years ago she wrote about her experience under a pseudonym in The Atlantic. Her performance proved her...
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Longing for a Time Before Smartphones
Gen Z has romanticized the technology of the ’90s—or the era’s lack of it. Young long for a time when people were looking at each other instead of their phones. But could that nostalgia for a smartphone-free society actually help guide the future? That’s one of the driving questions from the…
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Never Trump, Still a Republican
Radio Atlantic host Adam Harris speaks with former Republican U.S. Senator and former U.S. Ambassador Jeff Flake about his recent endorsement of Democratic Senator Jon Ossoff in the Georgia Senate race and why character in politics still matters. --- Get more from your favorite Atlantic voices…
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The Death of Romance
We’ve entered the era of the great romance slump. Fewer people are moving in together and getting married, and a shrinking number of young adults say they have experience in a committed relationship—all this despite people saying that they want to find love. So why aren’t they getting it? The...
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What ‘America First’ Means for Global Health
Ebola is ravaging the eastern region of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, in what may soon become the worst outbreak of the disease ever recorded. This particularly deadly strain is spreading amid a weakened global-health infrastructure, including the Trump administration’s cuts to USAID. ---...
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The Town That Wants a Data Center Next Door
Opposition to data-center construction is the bipartisan issue of the moment—70 percent of Americans are against construction in their communities. Recently, New York passed the country’s first statewide data-center-construction moratorium. Maine was supposed to have been the first. For this…
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Can a Progressive Win a Purple State?
Nationwide attention and endorsements are flooding into Michigan as voters get ready to pick their Senate candidates Aug. 4. Why is everybody from President Trump to Bernie Sanders so interested? The path to win the Senate runs straight through this purple state, and that has Democrats battling...
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Is the Age of Reading Over?
People may be reading now more than ever (emails, texts, social-media posts). But fewer and fewer people are reading actual books. The Atlantic’s staff writer Rose Horowitch, who wrote the August cover story, “The End of Reading Is Here,” explains what might be lost in a “postliterate” age—and…
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What We Know About the Recent ICE Killings
The fatal shootings of two men in Texas and Maine by immigration officers have put the Department of Homeland Security back under renewed scrutiny. Host Hanna Rosin is joined by Atlantic staff writer Nick Miroff to discuss the recent killings and what role traffic stops played in them. --- Get…
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The Election Deniers Are in Charge Now
Today’s episode is a dispatch from Georgia, where election skeptics run elections. Lately, the president has gone into an election frenzy, trying to spread the idea that elections are rife with fraud. He seems to be laying the groundwork for the argument that if Republicans lose the midterms, it...
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The War Trump Can't Control
Though President Trump has said he would not enter any “forever wars,” America seems to find itself headed toward one. With the latest cease-fire “over,” is there a way out of the conflict with Iran? Host Adam Harris is joined by Tom Nichols and Nancy Youssef, who cover the military and diplomacy...
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Another Fatal ICE Shooting
This week saw the first fatal ICE shooting since Minnesota. In Houston, an ICE officer shot and killed Lorenzo Salgado Araujo. It’s been six months since the deaths of Renee Good and Alex Pretti, and the federal government hasn’t properly investigated either one. And it has stood in the way of...
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The Black Patriots Pushing for a Better American Future
The military has historically been a powerful force for integration in America—even as its top ranks have been slow to reflect the racial makeup of the country. Host Adam Harris speaks with the Atlantic staff writer Clint Smith, who wrote in the July issue of the magazine about what it means that...
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American History as Rorschach Test
The Florida Department of Education recently announced an alternative to the Advanced Placement history course that it described in a press release as “free from ideological bias or indoctrination.” For its new curriculum, Florida recommends one textbook: Land of Hope: An Invitation to the Great...
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Trump’s Battle for Washington
The drama around the algal bloom in the Reflecting Pool may seem like a shallow issue. But it’s part of a much broader pattern as President Trump tries to “beautify” Washington, D.C., and cement his legacy. Host Adam Harris talks to the Atlantic staff writer David Graham about Trump’s attempts to...
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How the World Cup Explains the World
In his classic book How Soccer Explains the World, the Atlantic staff writer Franklin Foer theorized that the sport was a mirror of the world, particularly in its shift from tribalism to interdependence. More than two decades after the book came out, the world is different in many ways, but he…
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What Will Happen to Birthright Citizenship?
The Supreme Court will soon decide whether the Trump administration’s executive order limiting who can be born an American is constitutional, and whether “all persons born or naturalized in the United States”—save for those who are here under unique circumstances, such as children of foreign...
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Live: Nancy Pelosi on the Midterms
Throughout her career, Nancy Pelosi has known how to get things done: whipping up votes, negotiating bills, and, in what is probably her crowning achievement, pushing through the Affordable Care Act as speaker of the House. At the end of her current term, she plans to retire, after nearly 40…
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When Both Parties Try to Out-Macho Each Other
The MAGA movement has fully embraced masculinism, which The Atlantic’s staff writer Helen Lewis defines in her cover story this month as “a movement to fight back against the advances of feminism and reassert the primacy of men.” Democrats have a more complicated relationship with it. After the...
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Is the GOP Starting to Defy Trump?
For most of his second term, Donald Trump has successfully conveyed the message that defiance is not an option. Republicans who ignored that message generally wound up out of office, so they largely toed the line. Lately, though, that seems to be changing. Republicans recently pushed back against...
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Is Cuba Next?
Not long after U.S. commandos swiftly extracted Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro and flew him to the United States, Donald Trump set his sights on the next target: Cuba. Some administration officials seem interested in Cuba’s nickel and cobalt deposits. Secretary of State Marco Rubio shares…
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Higher Education’s Identity Crisis
Universities tried to be all things to all people. That model may not be working anymore. Adam Harris is joined by Ian Bogost, Atlantic contributing writer and a professor at Washington University in St. Louis, to discuss the state of higher education. On campuses across the country, students are...
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The Gerrymandering Wars
There is an ongoing battle for House seats. And it’s playing out not so much in elections but in congressional maps. The Atlantic staff writers Russell Berman, who’s been covering the redistricting wars for the past several months, and Vann R. Newkirk II, who’s long followed the Voting Rights Act...
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The Tragedy of the Tradwife
The author Caro Claire Burke discusses her debut novel, Yesteryear, about a tradwife influencer suddenly transported back to 1855 and faced with the harsh realities of actual pioneer life. The book is a No. 1 New York Times best seller, and its film rights have already been sold and Anne Hathaway...
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The 'Great Man' Presidency
Alexander the Great. Julius Caesar. Napoleon Bonaparte. Donald Trump The Atlantic staff writers Ashley Parker and Michael Scherer reported this week on the president privately comparing himself to the three norm-defying, world-historical figures highlighted in the work of the German philosopher...
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Kash Patel's FBI
Last week, The Atlantic published a story about how FBI Director Kash Patel’s colleagues are alarmed by what they describe as erratic behavior and excessive drinking. Sources told staff writer Sarah Fitzpatrick that, on multiple occasions, members of his security detail had trouble waking Patel...
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If Hungary Can Do It
Whatever happens next in Hungary, Viktor Orbán’s stunning downfall contains obvious warnings for MAGA and Donald Trump: Propaganda has its limits. Concerns about affordability are real. True democracy can reassert itself in a single election. Reality can bend only so far. The Hungarian journalist...
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Trump Is Wishcasting Victory in Iran
Last weekend, on Easter Sunday, President Trump wrote in a post on Truth Social: “Open the Fuckin’ Strait, you crazy bastards, or you’ll be living in Hell - JUST WATCH!” On Tuesday, he posted again: “A whole civilization will die tonight, never to be brought back again.” Hours later—after ongoing...
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The Manosphere Feels Betrayed
The manosphere helped Donald Trump win the 2024 election. Now that he’s started a war with Iran and failed to keep some core campaign promises, the coalition cemented by podcast bros and Austin-area commentators is starting to crack. The Atlantic staff writer Elaine Godfrey has been tracking the...
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The Department of Homeland Security Theater
ICE at airports. TSA lines out the door. And a new boss at DHS amid its funding shutdown. After the deaths on the streets of Minneapolis, after the theatrics of Greg Bovino, after the drama of Kristi Noem, ICE may be entering a new era. Markwayne Mullin was confirmed as the new DHS head, having...
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Trump Is Kicking the Economy While It’s Down
Iran is blocking oil tankers from passing through the Strait of Hormuz. Consumers around the world are already seeing higher gas prices as a result, but the global oil supply affects so much more than just prices at the pump. Soon, shoppers could see higher prices on food, clothes, e-commerce…
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A Year as a Degenerate Sports Gambler
Gambling is ever-present in America these days. After the Supreme Court opened the floodgates to legalized sports gambling, Americans went from legally betting $4.9 billion on sports in 2017 to at least $160 billion last year. When the Atlantic staff writer McKay Coppins wanted to do a story…
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ABOUT THIS SHOW
The Atlantic has long been known as an ideas-driven magazine. Now we’re bringing that same ethos to audio. Like the magazine, the show will “road test” the big ideas that both drive the news and shape our culture. Through conversations—and sometimes sharp debates—with the most insightful thinkers and writers on topics of the day, Radio Atlantic will complicate overly simplistic views. It will cut through the noise with clarifying, personal narratives. It will, hopefully, help listeners make up their own mind about certain ideas.
The national conversation right now can be chaotic, reckless, and stuck. Radio Atlantic aims to bring some order to our thinking—and encourage listeners to be purposeful about how they unstick their mind.
HOSTED BY
The Atlantic
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Frequently Asked Questions
How many episodes does Radio Atlantic have?
Radio Atlantic currently has 396 episodes available on PodParley. New episodes are automatically indexed when they're published to the podcast feed.
What is Radio Atlantic about?
The Atlantic has long been known as an ideas-driven magazine. Now we’re bringing that same ethos to audio. Like the magazine, the show will “road test” the big ideas that both drive the news and shape our culture. Through conversations—and sometimes sharp debates—with the most insightful thinkers...
How often does Radio Atlantic release new episodes?
Radio Atlantic publishes regularly with 396 episodes available. Check the episode list for the typical release schedule.
Where can I listen to Radio Atlantic?
You can listen to Radio Atlantic on PodParley by clicking any episode. We provide an embedded audio player for direct listening, and you can also subscribe via your preferred podcast app using the RSS feed.
Who hosts Radio Atlantic?
Radio Atlantic is created and hosted by The Atlantic.
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