This is Atlantic Intelligence, an eight-week series in which The Atlantic’s leading thinkers on AI will help you understand the complexity and opportunities of this groundbreaking technology. Sign up here.Earlier this year, The Atlantic published a story by Gary Marcus, a well-known AI expert who has agitated for the technology to be regulated, both in his Substack newsletter and before the Senate.
The first sound in Hayao Miyazaki’s new movie, The Boy and the Heron, is an air-raid siren, heard over a screen of black that quickly explodes into tumult and destruction. It’s 1943, and a firebombing has set a Tokyo hospital ablaze, killing the mother of 12-year-old Mahito Maki, the movie’s protagonist.
The FDA approved the landmark treatment on Friday. It’s expected to cost more than $1 million.
This is an edition of the Books Briefing, our editors’ weekly guide to the best in books. Sign up for it here.When the end of the year comes around, I know that I can count on taking multiple long, cross-country plane rides broken up by days’ worth of loafing on my parents’ or my in-laws’ couches. “Dead week,” as Helena Fitzgerald memorably calls the time from Christmas to New Year’s Day, is the perfect moment for aimless reading.
Friday’s report from the Labor Department showed that the unemployment rate dropped from 3.9% to 3.7%, not far above a five-decade low of 3.4% in April.
Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva is calling for phasing out fossil fuels but has alarmed many climate activists as Brazil moves to join the oil producer alliance OPEC+ as an observer state. Paula Vargas, director of the Brazil program at Amazon Watch, lays out Brazil’s environmental policy under Lula and Jair Bolsonaro’s legacy of impunity for those attacking environmental defenders.
Broadcasting from COP28 in Dubai, we speak with Jacob Johns, a Hopi and Akimel O’odham environmental defender who is leading the Indigenous Wisdom Keepers delegation at COP28. This is his first interview after surviving being shot in the chest by a far-right agitator in September.
At COP28 in Dubai, protests in solidarity with Palestine have faced severe restrictions. Asad Rehman, the lead spokesperson for the Climate Justice Coalition, joined with human rights groups at an unofficial media briefing to explain how climate summit officials have threatened to debadge participants for even wearing Palestinian colors or sporting visual depictions calling for a ceasefire. “This is probably the most restrictive we’ve seen,” Rehman said.
Scholar and policy analyst Jehad Abusalim remembers his friend Refaat Alareer, the acclaimed Palestinian academic and activist who was killed by an Israeli airstrike in Gaza City earlier this week.
An Israeli airstrike in Gaza has killed the acclaimed Palestinian academic and activist Refaat Alareer, along with his brother, his sister and her four children. Alareer was just 44 years old. For more than 16 years, he worked as a professor of English literature at the Islamic University of Gaza and authored dozens of stories and poems about life under Israeli occupation in Gaza. “Whether it is my kids or any Palestinian kid or any Palestinian, no one is safe. No place is safe.
The firm is deploying its artificial intelligence across the health care spectrum. Its lobbyists are smoothing the way.
Why the law could be harder to repeal in 2025 than it was in 2017.
Public health experts have said the pneumonia outbreak is linked to known diseases.
Expiring Covid benefits and new limits on safety net programs threaten to hit Americans’ pocketbooks — especially among core parts of the Democratic electorate.
Top White House aides reviewed private polling showing Biden’s economic message falling flat and suggesting paths toward a turnaround.
Can Democrats overcome their college-campus branding and reclaim the working class?
The new strategy UAW President Shawn Fain announced Friday signaled the strike could start having broader implications for the economy.
As Vladimir Putin arrives in Abu Dhabi but does not plan to attend the COP28 summit in Dubai, we speak with Vladimir Slivyak, co-chair for the leading Russian environmental organization Ecodefense, about the climate impact of Russia’s war on Ukraine and the renewed push at the summit to expand nuclear power.
Three GOP debates in Iowa and New Hampshire are set to take place in January: two hosted by CNN and another by ABC News.
Officials are worried Israel is seeking U.S. weapons for a war in Lebanon, and analysts say an uptick in attacks tied to Iran risks ensnaring the U.S. in a major conflict.
The human rights group’s investigation accuses Israel of using U.S.-made guidance weapons in two illegal strikes on homes filled with Palestinian families.
The president’s son has been charged with nine counts, including tax evasion, as a special counsel probe into his business dealings intensifies.
Dagen McDowell compared Ramaswamy to your sister’s new boyfriend who inspires you to fake an illness so you don’t have to be around him.
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.’Tis the season of Taylor Swift. Maybe you’re sick of her, or maybe you’re obsessed. Either way, you are likely finding yourself in the middle of a Girl Culture moment.
Welcome to Up for Debate. Each week, Conor Friedersdorf rounds up timely conversations and solicits reader responses to one thought-provoking question. Later, he publishes some thoughtful replies. Sign up for the newsletter here.Question of the WeekHow much time did you spend with peers in adolescence, and what effect did that have on the rest of your life? (Anecdotes illustrating how you spent that time and in what era are especially welcome.)Send your responses to conor@theatlantic.
There has never been a graver test of America’s rule of law than the prosecutions of Donald Trump. He “stands alone in American history for his alleged crimes,” as Jack Smith put it in a recent court filing. No president has ever schemed for months to retain power after losing an election—and over the repeated advice of his advisers and lawyers—nor taken and concealed classified documents for many months following his return to civilian life.
This is an edition of Time-Travel Thursdays, a journey through The Atlantic’s archives to contextualize the present, surface delightful treasures, and examine the American idea. Sign up here.
Longtime Nigerian activist and poet Nnimmo Bassey joins us at COP28 in Dubai to discuss how “false climate solutions” like carbon trading markets are hurting efforts to reduce emissions and prevent catastrophic global heating. “People are making deals rather than talking about how to cut emissions at source,” says Bassey. “We’re seeing a sellout of the African continent.
As we broadcast from COP28 in Dubai, leading climate scientist Kevin Anderson lays out why he dismisses the annual climate talks as “grand events” that do little to actually curb emissions. “These COPs have become little more than a scam under which the oil companies and the other fossil fuel companies are hiding that nothing is being done,” says Anderson.
We speak with celebrated Palestinian poet Mosab Abu Toha for his first interview after he was jailed and beaten by Israeli forces, when he was detained at a checkpoint in Gaza while heading to Rafah with his family. He was rounded up with scores of other Palestinians. “I felt humiliated. I felt terrified and terrorized by this army because they were ordering us to do everything at gunpoint,” says Toha, now in Cairo.