Tag: real time
The Power of a Failed Revolt
When we write history, it tends to be tidy and led by great men. In real time, it’s messy but still astonishing. Last weekend, Yevgeny Prigozhin, who leads a private army called the Wagner Group, attempted what many have called a coup against Russian President Vladimir Putin. Technically, it failed. He landed in the Russian city of Rostov-on-Don, pledged to march to Moscow, and then turned around. Nothing about this series of events suggests expert planning or high competence. Prigozhin
Milk Is an Evolutionary Marvel
If an alien life form landed on Earth tomorrow and called up some of the planet’s foremost experts on lactation, it would have a heck of time figuring out what, exactly, humans and other mammals are feeding their kids.
The trouble is, no one can really describe what milk is—least of all the people who think most often about it. They can describe, mostly, who makes it: mammals (though arguably also some other animals that feed their young secretions
Joe Rogan, RFK Jr., and the Debates Worth Having
Welcome to Up for Debate. Each week, Conor Friedersdorf rounds up timely conversations and solicits reader responses to one thought-provoking question. Later, he publishes some thoughtful replies. Sign up for the newsletter here.
Question of the Week
If you could set up a debate between any two figures on any subject––and could be guaranteed that tens of millions of Americans would watch––what proposition would you want debated and who would argue each side?
The podcast host Joe Rogan made news
The Rise and Fall of Chris Licht and CNN
The Atlantic’s Tim Alberta spent long stretches of the past year talking to CNN’s then-CEO Chris Licht about his grand experiment to reset the cable giant as a venue more welcoming to Republicans. In a major profile of Licht, Alberta documented the many disasters along the way, culminating in Licht’s ouster from the network this week.
In this episode of Radio Atlantic, host Hanna Rosin talks to Alberta about the rise and fall of Licht, and what it means
The Problem With Comparing Social Media to Big Tobacco
Last month, the surgeon general released a lengthy advisory calling attention to social media and its effects on the mental health of teenagers. Historically, a warning from the surgeon general pointed a big neon sign at an issue that we might not be sure how much to worry about: cigarettes, AIDS, drunk driving. But people are already worried about social media—and they’re acting on those concerns. School districts are suing social-media companies for “knowingly” harming children. Legislators are grilling tech-company
The 35 Best Podcasts of 2022
Widespread remote work may have changed where people listened to podcasts, but many are back to their prior routines and hitting “Play” like it’s 2019. Fittingly, certain trends from yesteryear have stuck around for this resurgence: The audio space is still packed with true crime, which is often entertaining yet rarely remarkable. Shows about right-wing extremists and conspiracy theories are still popular. (Now, though, we’re finally hearing about the left’s fringe, too.) But a lot of what’s emerging in 2022
What It Feels Like When Fascism Starts
Among the many Holocaust anecdotes I heard again and again as a child—my grandparents were the kind of survivors who liked to talk—certain stories took on the force of fables. And none was more common than the tale of the brother who stayed and the brother who left. Different versions of this basic narrative abounded, set in 1933, in 1938, in 1941. One brother couldn’t bear to abandon his small shop or his parents or his homeland, while another
What’s at Stake for Election Workers
Poll workers serve an essential, if usually uncelebrated, role in American democracy. Organizing and tabulating is the basic business of elections. Or, it was until 2020.
When then–President Trump refused to accept his loss and spread falsehoods about a stolen election, vote-counters were among the first people to face blowback. Poll workers endured combative protestors, threats, and harassment while completing their work. In the two years since, the Big Lie has only grown more central to the Republican brand. In
Computers May Have Cracked the Code to Diagnosing Sepsis
This article was originally published in Undark Magazine.
Ten years ago, 12-year-old Rory Staunton dove for a ball in gym class and scraped his arm. He woke up the next day with a 104-degree Fahrenheit fever, so his parents took him to the pediatrician and eventually the emergency room. It was just the stomach flu, they were told. Three days later, Rory died of sepsis after bacteria from the scrape infiltrated his blood and triggered organ failure.
“How does that
Are Latinos Really Realigning Toward Republicans?
Once the backbone of the Democratic base, working-class white voters have been migrating toward the Republican Party since the 1960s, largely out of alienation from the Democrats’ liberal stands on cultural and racial issues. Half a century later, those working-class white voters—usually defined as having less than a four-year college education—have become the indisputable foundation of the Republican coalition, especially in the era of Donald Trump.
Now a chorus of centrist and right-leaning political analysts are claiming that the