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. In this episode, Khazan and I talk about two of those traits: extroversion and neuroticism. Khazan shares how she dragged herself to improv classes and meditation lessons, and how having a baby threw a kink in her experiment.
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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 disposal to override their wishes—the real problem is how the military begins to see itself.  

Read more from The Atlantic’s Tom Nichols on “The Silence of the Generals” and “Trump Is Using the National Guard as Bait.”

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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 common with Thomas Edison, how psychedelics fit into the archetype, and what the possible paths are for Musk moving forward.

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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 motivations are behind continuing it.

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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. 

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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”? And if not, what explains the dramatic rise in reported cases of autism over the last few decades? Garcia also recounts his own story growing up autistic in the age of exploding diagnoses, and landing now in a moment where, for his job, he covers a health secretary’s particular brand of concern.  

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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. What does it mean that President Trump has not brought up any of Saudi Arabia’s human rights violations? Is that luxury jet Qatar gifted him just norm breaking or illegal? And how might this friendship influence Trump in his dealings with Israel as its Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, threatens to escalate attacks on Gaza?.   

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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 the Budget Lab at Yale, discusses the problem with this particular variety of two-doll nostalgia.

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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.

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Why would President Donald Trump invite The Atlantic’s editor in chief, Jeffrey Goldberg, whom Trump has attacked as a “total sleazebag,” to meet with him in the Oval Office? We talk with Goldberg about what Trump told him about Signalgate. We also talk with Atlantic staff writers Ashley Parker and Michael Scherer about the lessons Trump learned from his time in the political wilderness, and how he is applying them in his second term (which he is apparently experiencing as a grand adventure).

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