Today's Liberal News

Isabel Fattal

What the Act of Crying Can Offer

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.“When I decided to attend seminary … I told people it was to ‘find myself,’” Benjamin Perry wrote earlier this year. “That frame suggests that I yearned to forge a new identity and discover my future.

The Joys of Carole Lombard, Zadie Smith, and High-School Movies

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.Welcome back to The Daily’s Sunday culture edition, in which one Atlantic writer reveals what’s keeping them entertained. Today’s special guest is Jennifer Senior, a staff writer at The Atlantic and the winner of the 2022 Pulitzer Prize for Feature Writing.

Walton Goggins, Zadie Smith, and Lauryn Hill

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.Welcome back to The Daily’s Sunday culture edition, in which one Atlantic writer reveals what’s keeping them entertained. Today’s special guest is Conor Friedersdorf, a staff writer and the author of our Up for Debate newsletter.

What Humans and Nature Get From Each Other

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.Those of us who live in cities are inclined to avoid some of nature’s less-than-appealing creatures. “My aversion to pigeons, rats, and cockroaches is somewhat justifiable, given their cultural associations with dirtiness and disease,” Hannah Seo writes in a recent article.

A Cathartic Watch

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.Welcome back to The Daily’s Sunday culture edition, in which one Atlantic writer reveals what’s keeping them entertained. Today’s special guest is Elizabeth Bruenig, a staff writer at The Atlantic who covers politics, culture, and religion.

What We Do With Our Faces

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.In 2016, my colleague Olga Khazan saw a cultural difference playing out on the faces of those around her. “Here’s something that has always puzzled me, growing up in the U.S. as a child of Russian parents,” she wrote.

An Album About Fatherhood and Healing

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.Welcome back to The Daily’s Sunday culture edition, in which one Atlantic writer reveals what’s keeping them entertained. Today’s special guest is Vann R. Newkirk II, a senior editor and the host of the podcasts Floodlines and Holy Week.

What Really Happens When You’re Sick

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.When you’re suffering from a cold, the situation might seem perfectly clear—your nose is stuffed. But the truth about what’s happening to you is a little more complicated.

The Old-Fashioned Charm of The Golden Bachelor

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.Welcome back to The Daily’s Sunday culture edition, in which one Atlantic writer reveals what’s keeping them entertained. Today’s special guest is our Science editor Sarah Laskow. Sarah recently investigated whether salsa is gazpacho—and whether gazpacho is salsa.

A Halloween Reading List for Adults

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.“I believe in chasing the ghost of my former lighthearted self,” my colleague Faith Hill wrote last year. And “if there’s one day when I might almost catch up, it’s Halloween: the most ridiculous, inherently childish holiday, and perhaps the one grown-ups need most.

The Perfect Book for Spooky Season

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.Welcome back to The Daily’s Sunday culture edition, in which one Atlantic writer reveals what’s keeping them entertained. Today’s special guest is our supervisory senior associate editor Rachel Gutman-Wei, who works on our Science, Technology, and Health team.

A Masterpiece of Cringe

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.Welcome back to The Daily’s Sunday culture edition, in which one Atlantic writer reveals what’s keeping them entertained. Today’s special guest is our associate editor Kate Cray.

“The Month of Painted Leaves”

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.In the October 1862 issue of The Atlantic, Henry David Thoreau argued that foliage was not getting the attention it deserved. “The autumnal change of our woods has not made a deep impression on our own literature yet,” he wrote. “October has hardly tinged our poetry.

Hamas’s Attack Confounds Middle East Experts

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.Israel is at war, and has ordered a complete siege of Gaza after Hamas’s surprise attack on Saturday. Hamas is holding at least 150 hostages, and more than 900 Israelis and more than 600 Palestinians have been killed.

Five Observations About the War in Israel

Yesterday, Hamas launched a multifront attack that shocked Israel, infiltrating the Gaza border by land, sea, and air. The attack took place on the Jewish holiday of Simchat Torah, nearly 50 years to the day after an Arab coalition’s surprise attack on Israel—the last assault of this scale—spurred the Yom Kippur War in 1973.More than 600 Israelis have been killed, according to local reports.

Biden’s New Student-Debt Strategy

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.Yesterday, President Joe Biden announced an additional $9 billion in student-loan forgiveness.

A ’90s Blockbuster That Holds Up

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.Welcome back to The Daily’s Sunday culture edition, in which one Atlantic writer reveals what’s keeping them entertained. Today’s special guest is our staff writer Olga Khazan.

Low Stakes, High Drama

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.Saturn is the best planet. Hard seltzer is an abomination. Milk chocolate is better than dark. The “fun fact” should die.My colleagues at The Atlantic are skilled in the art of making a bold, well-researched argument.

A Dark and Paranoid American Fable

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.Welcome back to The Daily’s Sunday culture edition, in which one Atlantic writer reveals what’s keeping them entertained. Today’s special guest is our staff writer Ross Andersen.

When Kitchen Appliances Feel Stuck in Time

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 microwave is a baffling contradiction: a universal, time-saving appliance that also seems trapped in time,” Jacob Sweet wrote this week.

Mozart’s Most Metal Moment

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.Welcome back to The Daily’s Sunday culture edition, in which one Atlantic writer reveals what’s keeping them entertained. Today’s special guest is staff writer Annie Lowrey, who covers economic policy, housing, and other related topics.

How Siblings Shape Who We Are

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.For those of us who have siblings, these relationships will likely be the longest of our life. That fact is a basic statistical one, but it’s also an emotional one.

The Joy and the Shame of Loving Football

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.Welcome back to The Daily’s Sunday culture edition, in which one Atlantic writer reveals what’s keeping them entertained. Today’s special guest is the staff writer and author Mark Leibovich.

Why Persuading People to Give Up Meat Is So Hard

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.For many years, choosing to give up meat meant choosing to stop experiencing its taste. Vegan and vegetarian food had many merits, but tasting like meat was not one of them. In the past half decade, though, some new meat substitutes have come impressively close to the original.

Great Reads From Our Editors

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.Today, spend time with a collection of stories selected by our writers and editors.Many of the below stories have narrated versions, if you prefer to listen to them; just click the link and scroll to the audio player below the headline.

A K-Drama Without a Drop of Romance

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.Welcome back to The Daily’s Sunday culture edition, in which one Atlantic writer reveals what’s keeping them entertained.Today’s special guest is Shan Wang, The Atlantic’s programming director.

The Journey of the American Shopper

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.In 1962, an Atlantic essay called “Money Isn’t Everything” described a very optimistic future: “It is my belief,” Edward T. Chase wrote, “that in fact we in the United States are evolving beyond what J.K.

The Source of TV as We Now Know It

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.Good morning, and welcome to The Daily’s new Sunday culture edition. Every weekend, one Atlantic writer will reveal what’s keeping them entertained.Today’s special guest is senior editor Hanna Rosin, who hosts our Radio Atlantic podcast.

The Rules of Flaking on Plans

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.Over the years, my fellow Atlantic writers have published many bold arguments. But the case Ian Bogost made this month is perhaps one of the bravest in recent years: Flaking on plans is not so terrible, he argued.

A TV Drama That’s Aged Surprisingly Well

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.Welcome back to The Daily’s Sunday culture edition, in which one Atlantic writer reveals what’s keeping them entertained.Today’s special guest is Ellen Cushing, The Atlantic’s projects editor.