Radio Atlantic

For a while, it seemed as if DOGE Elon and Tesla Elon could exist in the same space-time continuum. One of them carried out Donald Trump’s ruthless cost-cutting mission while the other pitched cars that appealed most to people who were highly likely to oppose that mission, or even rage against it.

Then this week came Tesla’s first quarterly earnings report since Elon Musk started his work with DOGE, which showed that the company’s profits were down 71 percent from the same time last year. The Atlantic staff writer Charlie Warzel talks with Patrick George, editor in chief of InsideEVs, about how Musk found himself in this predicament.

Further reading:

Patrick George on how “Tesla’s Remarkably Bad Quarter Is Even Worse Than It Looks”

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Sarah McBride made models of the White House when she was 6. Her childhood dream, as a Delawarean, was to meet Joe Biden.

Then last November, one of her ambitions came true when was elected to the House of Representatives. She became the first openly trans member of Congress, a historic achievement that also happened to coincide with a rise in anti-trans sentiment and the election of Donald Trump.

We talk with McBride about how she navigates Congress, personally and politically, and how she thinks Democrats can make it through the minefield of the culture wars.

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The stock market has been tanking since President Donald Trump announced sweeping tariffs a week ago. Then Wednesday mid-afternoon—after Trump reversed course on global tariffs—the market experienced one of its biggest single-day jumps ever. So … what exactly happened? And if the U.S. economy continues to be this unpredictable, what does that mean for the future?

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If the Trump administration’s actions and rhetoric against universities sound vaguely familiar, that may be because they’ve already happened elsewhere. Over the years, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán has dismantled his country’s higher-education system; cracked down on diversity, dissent, and critical thinking; and cast academic institutions as dangerous.

So what does that mean for the future of higher ed in America?

Further reading:

Ian Bogost on “The End of College Life”

Anne Applebaum on “America’s Future Is Hungary”

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The Atlantic’s editor in chief, Jeffrey Goldberg, and staff writer Shane Harris published more details from a Signal chat between President Donald Trump’s top advisers that included sensitive details about a military strike in Yemen. In screenshots published by The Atlantic, the defense secretary messaged information about strike targets and times of attack. Top Trump officials have denied both to reporters and in congressional hearings that the information in the chat was classified.

Claudine Ebeid talks to Shane Harris, who covers national security, about how he would characterize the messages and what kind of reverberations to expect from this breach.

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The Atlantic’s editor in chief, Jeffrey Goldberg, received a connection request on Signal from a “Michael Waltz,” which is the name of President Donald Trump’s national security adviser. Two days later, he was added to a group text with top administration officials created for the purpose of coordinating high-level national-security conversations about the Houthis in Yemen. (Read his story here.)

We talk with Goldberg and Shane Harris, an Atlantic national-security reporter, about what it means that this absurd and admittedly relatable thing happened in such a high-stakes situation.

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It’s been five years since the start of the coronavirus pandemic. But there may be another potential pandemic on the horizon: bird flu. Against the backdrop of growing anti-vaccination sentiment, exhaustion from COVID, and a new administration, The Atlantic’s Katie Wu explains that the U.S. is perhaps less prepared to deal with a widespread outbreak than it was when COVID hit—and bird flu, if it spreads to humans, could be worse.

Read more from Wu’s reporting at The Atlantic here and here.

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How has the cease-fire changed water access in Gaza? And what does it mean when the people in charge of keeping the water flowing are displaced? Host Hanna Rosin talks with Claudine Ebeid, The Atlantic’s executive producer of audio, who reports on her visit with water worker Marwan Bardawil, who is now a Gazan refugee living in Egypt.

Read more about Marwan Bardawil’s journey: https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2025/02/gaza-needs-clean-water/681583/

Listen to our previous Radio Atlantic episode with Marwan: https://www.theatlantic.com/podcasts/archive/2023/11/the-man-working-to-keep-the-water-on-in-gaza/675877/

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How far would a parent go to understand their child? How much might a parent believe?

A popular new podcast claims that some nonspeaking kids with autism can read people’s minds. But is it real? Or does it just come from a deep desire to connect?

Read Dan Engber’s story at The Atlantic here.

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The sound designer Randy Thom was faced with a challenge: What does a robot sound like? And what if that robot learns to love?

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