Radio Atlantic

Radio 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

Welcome to the Vaccine Free-for-All

September 4, 2025 • 29 mins
As Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. works to dismantle the national vaccine infrastructure, states have started going their own way. Governors in California, Washington State, and Oregon said they intend to coordinate on vaccine policies. Florida’s surgeon general went in the opposite direction, announcing a plan to end all state vaccine mandates, which he compared to “slavery.” We talk to the Atlantic scie...
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A Blueprint for Military Takeovers

August 28, 2025 • 35 mins
President Donald Trump recently deployed the National Guard to Washington, D.C., and has talked about federalizing the Guard in other cities across the country. In this episode of Radio Atlantic we talk to Atlantic staff writers Quinta Jurecic and Nick Miroff about which legal barriers might hinder Trump from using the military this way, how he might try to push past the courts, and what role immigration enforcement is playing in t...
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Peace in Ukraine Is Not a Real-Estate Deal

August 21, 2025 • 33 mins
There was so much symbolism in President Donald Trump’s two most recent international summits—in Alaska last week with Russian President Vladimir Putin, and then at the White House this week with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. In this episode, we talk with Anne Applebaum, who has been studying Ukraine and Russia for decades and understands their leaders’ underlying motivations. And we speak with politics and national-secur...
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No Easy Fix | 3. A Golden Opportunity

August 14, 2025 • 38 mins
In July, President Donald Trump issued an executive order calling for an expansion of involuntary commitment—forcing people into treatment facilities—in response to the homelessness crisis. San Francisco has been attempting such an expansion for the past 19 months. What can the rest of the country learn from California?  This is the final episode in a three-part series from Radio Atlantic, No Easy Fix, about homelessness and add...
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No Easy Fix | 2. Tolerance

August 7, 2025 • 35 mins
At the onset of the AIDS crisis in the early 1980s, U.S. cities began trying new ways to stop the spread of infection among drug users. Ideas that were first seen as radical, such as needle exchanges, quickly caught on—because they worked. San Francisco is one of the first places where such programs took root. Now it’s one of the places questioning whether they should still exist. This is the second episode of a new three-part min...
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No Easy Fix | 1. Vanishing Point

July 31, 2025 • 33 mins
For the past five years, American cities have tried—and often failed—to meaningfully address worsening homelessness and addiction.  In San Francisco, a city that has become emblematic of these crises, a new mayor has pledged to prioritize the problem. And one man, living on the street and struggling with addiction, is ready to make a change. This is the first episode of a new three-part miniseries from Radio Atlantic, No Easy Fix...
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A New Kind of Family Separation

July 24, 2025 • 27 mins
The Trump administration is again going after undocumented minors—but their approach is different than it was during his first presidency.  – – – Read more from Nick Miroff. Read Stephanie McCrummen’s story: The Message Is ‘We Can Take Your Children’ – – – Get more from your favorite Atlantic voices when you subscribe. You’ll enjoy unlimited access to Pulitzer-winning journalism, from clear-eyed analysis and insight on breakin...
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Epstein Conspiracy, or Epstein Conspiracy Theory?

July 17, 2025 • 28 mins
Donald Trump and his Department of Justice kicked the conspiracy-theory beehive last week when they rescinded previous promises to make public the government’s secret files on Jeffrey Epstein, the billionaire financier and convicted sex offender charged with the sex trafficking of minors. The Atlantic’s executive editor, Adrienne LaFrance, speaks with the journalist who broke the Epstein story in 2018. Julie K. Brown is an investig...
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Should You Be Having More Babies?

July 10, 2025 • 31 mins
In the United States and many other Western countries, the decision to have children or not is sometimes framed as a political affiliation: You’re either in league with conservative pronatalists, or you’re making the ultimate personal sacrifice to reduce your carbon footprint. But the declining global birth rate is a fact that defies politics. Dean Spears, a co-author of the new book After the Spike: Population, Progress, and the C...
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The Patriotic Punk

July 3, 2025 • 28 mins
The Atlantic’s editor in chief Jeffrey Goldberg talks to Ken Casey, frontman for the Celtic punk band Dropkick Murphys, about the time he called out a fan in the audience who was wearing a MAGA shirt. The band has been around for three decades and has its working-class roots in Quincy, Massachusetts. At concerts, the band often dedicates its song “First Class Loser” to Donald Trump, and it sells T-shirts that say “Fighting Nazis si...
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Who Could Rule Iran Next?

June 26, 2025 • 28 mins
We talk with the writer Arash Azizi about what kinds of seismic changes could be coming for his home country of Iran, and whether he thinks they could make things better—or much worse. Read more from Azizi at The Atlantic here. Get more from your favorite Atlantic voices when you subscribe. You’ll enjoy unlimited access to Pulitzer-winning journalism, from clear-eyed analysis and insight on breaking news to fascinating exploratio...
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Change Your Personality

June 19, 2025 • 30 mins
A few years ago, Olga Khazan, author of Me, But Better, set out to change her personality, which even she found unpleasant. After consulting with experts on personality plasticity and then setting a deadline, Khazan put herself through an intense experiment intended to make herself more likeable, to herself and others.  Khazan tested and scored herself on a range of key personality traits at the beginning and end of the experiment...
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The Real Problem With Trump's Parade

June 13, 2025 • 19 mins
In this bonus episode of Radio Atlantic, we talk with staff writer Tom Nichols about how all the pieces fit together: the military parade, the president’s speech at Fort Bragg, and the dispatching of Marines to the protests in Los Angeles. It’s not just that President Trump wants to acclimate Americans to the sight of tanks in the streets. It’s not just that Trump is signaling to governors that he will use the forces at his dispos...
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Elon and the Genius Trap

June 12, 2025 • 35 mins
Explaining how Musk tanked his reputation has many ways: First, he alienated environmentalists by teaming up with Trump, and then he alienated Trump fans by insulting their hero. Another way is clear by looking at American culture’s historical relationship with “genius,” and how it tends to go wrong.  In this episode, we talk with Helen Lewis, author of The Genius Myth: A Curious History of a Dangerous Idea, about what Musk has in...
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Mossad’s Former Chief Calls the War in Gaza ‘Useless’

June 5, 2025 • 28 mins
In April, 250 former Israeli intelligence officers signed their names to an open letter of protest asking Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu not to proceed with his plans to escalate the war on Gaza. One of them was Tamir Pardo, head of Mossad, Israel’s equivalent of the CIA, from 2011 to 2016. Pardo, with his decades of experience fighting terrorism, explains his perspective on how the war unfolded and what Netanyahu’s real motiv...
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Why Pilots Don't Get Therapy

May 29, 2025 • 29 mins
The Atlantic’s Jocelyn Frank reports on the detailed system that may be unintentionally leading pilots to avoid the mental-health care that they need, and increasing risks to passenger safety.  Get more from your favorite Atlantic voices when you subscribe. You’ll enjoy unlimited access to Pulitzer-winning journalism, from clear-eyed analysis and insight on breaking news to fascinating explorations of our world. Atlantic subscribe...
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What RFK Jr. Doesn’t Understand About Autism

May 22, 2025 • 25 mins
We talk with Eric Garcia, author of We’re Not Broken: Changing the Autism Conversation and a political reporter at the Independent, about the myths spreading about autism under Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Yes, there’s the one about how vaccines cause autism, which the scientific community has rejected. But there’s also a more fundamental one that Kennedy references often: Is there, as he repeats, an “autism epidemic”? An...
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Trump and the Crown Prince

May 15, 2025 • 24 mins
Lavender carpets. Golden swords. Arabian horses. President Trump arrived in the Gulf to a royal welcome. Both sides seem delighted about what they’re getting out of one another. So what are they getting? And what will it mean for the future of the Middle East? We talk to Hussein Ibish,  a senior resident scholar at the Arab Gulf States Institute, about this new era of chumminess between the American president and the Gulf leaders....
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The Art of the Doll

May 8, 2025 • 31 mins
Recently, Donald Trump mused that “maybe the children will have two dolls instead of 30 dolls, you know?” We talk with a doll manufacturer and a policy analyst about tariffs and Americans’ relationship with choice. Elenor Mak, founder of Jilly Bing, talks about her dream of giving Asian American kids the choice of having a doll that looks like them, and how the new tariffs might kill it. And Martha Gimbel, executive director of th...
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Why Is Trump So Into Crypto?

May 1, 2025 • 35 mins
In the past few years, Donald Trump has changed his mind about cryptocurrency. He’s gone from believing it was “based on thin air” to wanting the U.S. to become the “crypto capital of the world.” Atlantic staff writer Annie Lowrey breaks down how the president’s reversal of opinion about this notoriously volatile industry could destabilize the U.S. financial system—and lead to a crypto-induced economic crisis. Get more from your f...
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