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Without overdoing it, last night’s “SNL” captured something fundamental about the growing cultural resentment surroundin...
11/16/2025

Without overdoing it, last night’s “SNL” captured something fundamental about the growing cultural resentment surrounding AI, writes Michael Tedder:

For centuries, locals have claimed that an old Spanish shipwreck is the origin of the Chincoteague ponies. Now DNA from ...
11/16/2025

For centuries, locals have claimed that an old Spanish shipwreck is the origin of the Chincoteague ponies. Now DNA from an old tooth hints at where they came from, Sarah Zhang reported in 2022:
https://theatln.tc/W7HJB3oS

📸: Jim Watson / AFP / Getty

The Bowlin family knew they had a history of malformations in the brain. But they had no idea how far back it went. (Fro...
11/16/2025

The Bowlin family knew they had a history of malformations in the brain. But they had no idea how far back it went. (From 2022) https://theatln.tc/MNORe0Z8

🎨: Heritage Images / Getty ; The Atlantic

“It is my miserable fate to possess more miscellaneous information about U.S. one-cent coins than, possibly, any other p...
11/16/2025

“It is my miserable fate to possess more miscellaneous information about U.S. one-cent coins than, possibly, any other person on this planet,” Caity Weaver writes, in an investigation of what will happen to the penny now:

“A democracy whose citizens operate with fundamentally different understandings of the past and its implications cannot ...
11/16/2025

“A democracy whose citizens operate with fundamentally different understandings of the past and its implications cannot sustain itself,” ClintSmith says of his experience teaching across the country about race.
https://theatln.tc/yjmSZHLI

🎨: The Atlantic. Sources: Library Of Congress / Bettmann / Getty.

The future of America’s climate catastrophe would warrant “consternation under any administration,” Vann R. Newkirk II a...
11/16/2025

The future of America’s climate catastrophe would warrant “consternation under any administration,” Vann R. Newkirk II argues. But the Trump administration is accelerating global warming and making communities less resilient to its effects. https://theatln.tc/FcNgzCrU

Over the next 30 years or so, changes due to climate change may be short of apocalyptic. “But miles of heartbreak lie between here and the apocalypse, and the future toward which we are heading will mean heartbreak for millions,” Newkirk reports. “Many people will go in search of new homes in cooler, more predictable places. Those travelers will leave behind growing portions of America where services and comforts will be in short supply—let’s call them ‘dead zones.’”

Many of these places—in neighborhoods of Miami, among communities of color in Chicago, along America’s Tornado Alley in Alabama—preview the kinds of problems that climate change will bring to local governments and economies, “manifesting most severely in poor and minority communities, but affecting us all,” Newkirk writes.

One problem, Newkirk reports, “is who will underwrite disaster risks as they grow.” The specter of huge future premium increases or whole-state withdrawals by insurers, he continues, “adds a new level of risk for every homeowner.” Insurers lost more than $100 billion in underwriting in 2024, and “insurance deserts,” where policies are becoming impossible to find or prohibitively expensive, are growing in the South and West. But even insurers that stay in risky markets will be imperiled by unexpected payouts or from the effects of disasters that could happen in different parts of the country at once.

Unchecked, climate change will thin out and impoverish whole regions of the United States, Newkirk argues. “How do we know this? As ever, all it takes is looking around.”

Airports are in chaos as the holiday travel season approaches—and the railroad is looking pretty good by comparison, Kai...
11/16/2025

Airports are in chaos as the holiday travel season approaches—and the railroad is looking pretty good by comparison, Kaitlyn Tiffany writes.

Rosalía’s awe-inspiring new album harkens back to an older tradition of Christian art, writes Spencer Kornhaber: the sym...
11/16/2025

Rosalía’s awe-inspiring new album harkens back to an older tradition of Christian art, writes Spencer Kornhaber: the symphony written for the glory of God.

How do you make a documentary about a subject that predates the invention of photography? Ken Burns, Sarah Botstein, and...
11/16/2025

How do you make a documentary about a subject that predates the invention of photography? Ken Burns, Sarah Botstein, and David Schmidt on what it took to film “The American Revolution”:

Crushes can be a “glimmer of hope,” Faith Hill wrote in 2023. https://theatln.tc/iPLRTmfLIt’s true that they sometimes g...
11/16/2025

Crushes can be a “glimmer of hope,” Faith Hill wrote in 2023. https://theatln.tc/iPLRTmfL

It’s true that they sometimes garner suspicion. They can seem adolescent; their one-sidedness can appear a little sad, even creepy. But the experts Hill spoke with pointed out they can also “‘open the door to romantic caring’—to understanding how such love could feel, how it might be different from friendship. When you start to experience some of those big feelings yourself, it’s scary and wonderful and ‘hugely empowering.’”

One psychologist told Hill that “adolescents develop [crushes] as a way to formulate what attributes they value in others and what that says about their own identity. The same can be true for adults: Fantasizing about a crush is an exercise of the imagination.” And they are not necessarily a threat to people in relationships. In a recent study of monogamous partners, Lucia O’Sullivan, a psychologist at the University of New Brunswick, in Canada, found that about 80 percent of subjects reported having had a crush on someone other than their partner at some point in their relationship—and about 60 percent reported having a current crush. But the majority didn't expect their crushes to ever replace their current partner. “Subjects tend to describe crushes as fun and exciting, an extra twinkle of intrigue in their day,” Hill writes. Far from causing misery, crushes can actually increase self-esteem; O’Sullivan told Hill that a crush can be a “soul boost.”

Read more: https://theatln.tc/iPLRTmfL

🎨: Jared Bartman / The Atlantic. Sources: Getty; Rawpixel.

Higher education can—and should—fight the Trump administration, but universities can no longer count on any stability or...
11/16/2025

Higher education can—and should—fight the Trump administration, but universities can no longer count on any stability or predictability from the federal government moving forward, Aziz Huq argues. https://theatln.tc/JhZJKygM

On first appraisal, the nine universities that received the Trump administration’s set of demands in the so-called Compact for Academic Excellence in Higher Education earlier this year “appeared to have no real choice but to concede,” Huq writes. “Framed as a question of who is first in line for federal funding, the compact warns that nonconforming universities will have to go their own way fiscally.”

But seven of the nine universities have outright rejected the pact. “This show of strength may indicate that universities are coming to accept a painful fact,” Hug argues: “The attack on higher ed will continue, and the era of lavish government support is coming to a close.”

Universities, however, can weather this change by looking to the past: “The case for radical transformation,” Huq writes, “rests on the observation that the fiscal status quo of the late 20th century is dead and gone.”

🎨: Matteo Giuseppe Pani / The Atlantic

The key to persuasion is not beating people over the head with your better ideas—it’s listening sincerely to what they h...
11/16/2025

The key to persuasion is not beating people over the head with your better ideas—it’s listening sincerely to what they have to say, Arthur C. Brooks wrote in 2024. “If you decide to share your values as a loving gift and turn your back on hate, you will probably, at first, hear harsh words from some former allies that your new outlook is reasonless. Smile, listen, and answer them with kindness and more listening.” https://theatln.tc/61vETSye

If you succumb to rage or find lashing out all too easy, you may end up wielding your sincerely held values as a weapon: “Doing so will influence no one who doesn’t already agree with you,” Brooks continues. “Worse, it will provoke equal-but-continued angry dogmatism.” Instead, finding ways to fight your reflexive inclinations by offering your values as a gift can actually influence others to change their mind—and even follow your lead.

It’s hard not to talk about something you feel strongly about, positively or negatively. Social psychologists have found that when you share a feeling about something and someone around you agrees in both their behavior and expression, you may become more emotionally attuned to each other, leading to positive social interactions. “The emotions and opinions we share with others to build a relationship are as likely to be negative or critical as not,” Brooks wrote. “Gossip is a common way to promote trust among members of an in-group, even if it involves reckless calumnies about others.”

In the 1960s, two psychologists discovered the so-called boomerang effect: When people are insulted because of the opinions they hold, they are more likely to dig into their position against that of the insulter. “If you suspect you’ve been inflicting your views and feelings on others as though you were walloping them with what you wanted to share,” Brooks wrote, consider how to “understand and manage your own feelings, and share them more positively.” One way to do this is to focus on something that you and others agree on: “Agreement in beliefs can be quite hard to come by when all that you and those around you have been focusing on is your disagreements,” Brooks continued. “But this can be done.”

Read more about how to turn your truth into a gift at the link.

🎨: Jan Buchczik

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