Those living on the fringe of the left and the right share more in common than you might think.

For years, fears about the disruptive potential of automation and artificial intelligence have centered on repetitive labor: Perhaps machines could replace humans who do secretarial work, accounting, burger-flipping. Doctors, software engineers, auth

These days in Hollywood, scale seems to be one of the easiest things to achieve on-screen. Breakthroughs in visual-effects technology mean that audiences get to watch one epic battle after another, and are accustomed to seeing dozens of superheroes z

One hundred forty-seven Republicans voted to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election. Almost all of them are still in office.

This is a special edition of our Books Briefing newsletter. Expect to hear from us again, as usual, on Friday. End-of-year lists are by nature subjective, and selecting books in this way can be particularly hard. Tens of thousands of titles are publi

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. The pretense that the seditionists in the GOP are li

In her two decades as a genital morphologist, Patricia Brennan has looked at a lot of animal clitorises. She’s seen female lizards’ two spike-studded protrusions, which are almost identical to their counterparts on males. She’s glimpsed the prominent

Editor’s Note: Find all of The Atlantic’s “Best of 2022” coverage here. End-of-year lists are by nature subjective, and selecting books in this way can be particularly hard. Tens of thousands of titles are published annually in the U.S., and a reade

My father was a registered independent for most of my childhood because he resented having to choose. But choosing was not hard for my mother. She was an MSNBC devotee, a liberal Pennsylvania transplant who took her adopted role as an Iowa Democrat s

Vladimir Putin is pushing humanity toward an era of war that might be worse than anything we have seen before. It could threaten the very survival of our species.

Commemorations of the dearly departed are a licensed form of popular feeling that can make them dangerous moments for the Communist authorities.

Lindsey Konchar has known her best friend, Caroline, since Caroline was born. Their mothers have been best friends since the seventh grade, so even though Konchar is two years older than Caroline, and the two attended different schools in their homet

Even for a show that has seemed dubious about human nature, Season 2 ended on a cynical note.

The world of cryptocurrency is rich with eccentric characters and anonymous Twitter personalities. So perhaps it shouldn’t be a surprise that one of the early figures who called attention to the problems with Sam Bankman-Fried’s cryptocurrency exchan

Tomorrow, the U.S. Department of Energy is expected to announce that the era of fusion power is finally upon us: Scientists at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, in California, have generated energy with a controlled nuclear fusion reaction.

This is an edition of Up for Debate, a newsletter by Conor Friedersdorf. On Wednesdays, he rounds up timely conversations and solicits reader responses to one thought-provoking question. Later, he publishes some thoughtful replies. Sign up for the ne

“It’s going to be fascinating to see how people incorporate this second brain into their job,” Derek Thompson says.

Jenisha Watts’s culture picks include a dramatic reality-TV moment, Viola Davis, and the young-adult writer Jason Reynolds.

Updated at 2:37 p.m. ET on December 11, 2022 If you want to send people to the moon, you have to be able to bring them home safely. And if you want to bring them home, you must send them hurtling through Earth’s atmosphere in a wash of heat and fire.

The plan was relatively straightforward: Take two comedic legends, each with a rich history on Saturday Night Live and a working partnership spanning decades, and invite them to co-host. Steve Martin and Martin Short had even previously shared the SN

This week, Paul Whelan’s sister watched as politicians and pundits weaponized the imprisoned American’s plight.

If there’s one tweet that will tell you everything you need to know about Elon Musk, it’s this one from early this morning: My pronouns are Prosecute/Fauci In five words, Musk manages to mock transgender and nonbinary people, signal his disdain for p

I don’t actually care who wins the World Cup, but I do call myself a fan. Even though I know little about soccer, I love the complex and ardent interplay of bodies. I am a choreographer by trade, and the game, with its rules about proximity, time, an

The human capacity to transcend the past and even the present is powerful. Three years after a devastating coronavirus pandemic took hold, nearly every country has dropped restrictions and mostly resumed normal life. The one country where COVID has n

The anthropologist and famed love expert Helen Fisher seemed ready to dash into oncoming traffic. We were on a sidewalk in Manhattan, opposite the American Museum of Natural History, and nowhere near a safe place to cross the street. She wanted me to

A lie can go halfway around the world, according to the adage, before the truth has managed to get its trousers on. Last weekend provided one case in point, strangely appropriate to a saying about getting properly dressed before going out. Last weeke

The Oxford Word of the Year tells a concise story about how many of us are doing these days.

The Whale aims for noble sentimentality, but Darren Aronofsky can’t stop turning pain into spectacle.

For three years, China’s leader, Xi Jinping, fought a remorseless battle against COVID-19. He called it a “people’s war”—a national struggle to defeat an unseen foe and save lives. The contest locked families in their homes for weeks, strangled the e

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. “I don’t like to shop, but I do like to buy,” Fran