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As speculation over whom Kamala Harris will name as her running mate continues, Donald Trump is under fire this week for his controversial remarks to the National Association of Black Journalists about the vice president’s race.
This article was originally published by Knowable Magazine.
In the summers of 2018 and 2019, the ecologist James Ryalls and his colleagues would go out to a field near Reading, in southern England, to stare at the insects buzzing around black-mustard plants. Each time a bee, a hoverfly, a moth, a butterfly, or another insect tried to get at the pollen or nectar in the small yellow flowers, the scientists would make a note.
It was part of an unusual experiment.
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.
My colleague Gisela Salim-Peyer put it bluntly last weekend: “Many women love sports, but I am not one of them. I don’t want to play any sports, and I certainly don’t want to watch.” I’m personally quite aligned with Gisela here, but this year, I’m finding myself invested in the Olympics.
In February—two months after The Atlantic reported on a Hawaii murder case that sent an innocent man to prison for 23 years—Barry Scheck, the defense-bar legend and a co-founder of the Innocence Project in New York, contacted a former FBI lawyer named Stephen Kramer to ask him for help finally solving the murder.
Burned-out managers are an “industry-agnostic” problem.
Do charms and trinkets help you stand out in a materialistic monoculture?
It works if you’re vegetarian, too.
Germany is having a heated debate about it.
Advocates are seeking to block referendums in Arizona, Arkansas, Florida, Montana and South Dakota.
The position aligns with President Joe Biden but clashes with some abortion-rights activists championing her White House bid.
Parents’ stories about how their children were exploited and bullied online are resonating in Congress.
Stanley Goldfarb and his group, Do No Harm, say Republicans need new advisers because major medical groups have embraced progressive ideology.
Heading into the final day of the Republican Party’s first national gathering since the Supreme Court’s landmark decision, the issue has barely received a passing mention.
Though hiring remains strong, voters blame President Joe Biden for persistent high prices.
The president has a compelling antimonopoly record. But he doesn’t always lean into it. And voters don’t really know of it. The debate could change that.
Friday’s good jobs numbers may be a boost. But boosts haven’t yet materialized into political benefits.
We look at a new Washington Post investigation titled “Money War” that traces the effects of U.S. sanctions under the last four presidents: Bush, Obama, Trump and Biden. According to the report, the U.S government has instituted, in some form or another, sanctions against a third of all other countries around the world, despite no clear evidence that they are effective in influencing target nations’ politics, and in fact may often entrench the power of ruling parties.
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.
Vice-presidential candidates are highly scrutinized, but Donald Trump recently said that they have no impact on a race. Is he right?
First, here are three new stories from The Atlantic:
David A. Graham: Trump is suddenly running scared.
Sign up for The Decision, a newsletter featuring our 2024 election coverage.
The 2024 presidential election was already like none in living memory: a matchup between the sitting president and a former president.
Then it got even more historically unusual.
Molly Darlington / Reuters
The sport of Kayak Cross makes its Olympic debut in Paris this year. At the beginning of a run, four kayakers drop about 15 feet from a ramp into the water below, then begin paddling as fast as they can down a white-water obstacle course, battling one another along the way. Here, Amir Rezanejad Hassanjani, originally from Iran and now part of the Refugee Olympic Team, drops in at the start of his time-trial run in Vaires-sur-Marne, France.
This is Atlantic Intelligence, a newsletter in which our writers help you wrap your mind around artificial intelligence and a new machine age. Sign up here.
For the past two years, the biggest tech firms have begun spending historic amounts of money to develop generative-AI products and spread them across the web. The build-out may demand a trillion dollars or more of investment across the economy this decade—more than the Apollo missions or the interstate-highway system.
This is an edition of the Books Briefing, our editors’ weekly guide to the best in books. Sign up for it here.
James Baldwin—the playwright, activist, orator, and novelist—was born 100 years ago today. It is no fringe opinion that his work changed American letters forever. (Earlier this year, for example, The Atlantic named Giovanni’s Room one of the greatest American novels of the past century.) Today, Vann R.
We speak with The Nation’s Katrina vanden Heuvel about the prisoner swap between Russia, the United States and several other countries on Thursday that saw the release of 24 people, with 16 prisoners in Russia traded for eight Russian nationals held in the U.S., Germany and elsewhere. It was the biggest exchange of prisoners between Russia and the West since the Cold War era. Among those released are Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich, former U.S.
Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro is reportedly at the top of the list of potential running mates for Vice President Kamala Harris in her bid for the White House. But many progressives have raised alarm about Shapiro’s record, including his support for corporate tax breaks and school vouchers, his relationship with oil and gas companies, and his demonization of pro-Palestinian protesters.
We speak with journalist Marc Lamont Hill amid Donald Trump’s ongoing attacks on the racial identity of Vice President Kamala Harris. The Republican presidential nominee was interviewed this week at the annual convention of the National Association of Black Journalists, where he claimed Harris “happened to turn Black” for political expediency, even though she has always been open about her Jamaican and Indian American parents and identifies as both Black and South Asian.
Do charms and trinkets help you stand out in a materialistic monoculture?
It works if you’re vegetarian, too.
Germany is having a heated debate about it.
