Radio Atlantic

In Kathryn Bigelow’s new movie, A House of Dynamite, the clock is ticking. The film’s fictional president of the United States has less than 20 minutes and very little information to decide whether or not to retaliate against a nuclear missile, launched at the United States, from an unknown source. As with Bigelow’s other war movies, the story is disturbingly plausible. During the Cold War, the likely scenario was a war with the Soviet Union. Now there are nine nuclear powers, which makes the possibility of error, rogue actors, or a total information vacuum more likely. We talk with “A House of Dynamite” screenwriter Noah Oppenheim and Tom Nichols, a national-security writer at the Atlantic, who consulted on the movie.

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This week, the Supreme Court heard oral arguments about the last remaining section of the Voting Rights Act, a civil rights law designed to ensure that states could not get in the way of nonwhite citizens voting.

We talk to Stacey Abrams, voting rights activist and former candidate for Georgia governor, and Atlantic staff writer Vann Newkirk about the case and a world without the Voting Rights Act. 

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The Riyadh Comedy Festival in Saudi Arabia concludes this week, but the outrage (from comedians who didn’t go) and self-justification (from comedians who did) continues. The festival is one small piece of Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman’s grand vision to remake the kingdom for the 21st century and simultaneously draw global attention away from human-rights violations like the 2018 murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi.

In this episode, we talk to the Atlantic staff writers Vivian Salama and Helen Lewis about what happened at the festival and how to understand Saudi Arabia’s push for modernization. 

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President Donald Trump is using the Department of Justice to try to punish his political enemies. How much can the president bend the DOJ, an institution built on norms and ethics, to his will before it breaks? In this episode, we talk to the Atlantic staff writer Quinta Jurecic, who covers legal issues, and Benjamin Wittes, editor in chief of Lawfare, about who the Trump administration might target next, what legal strategies might work, and where the judicial system contains some surprising sources of resistance.

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Hanna Rosin sits down with Oklahoma State Superintendent Ryan Walters to ask him about a purity test for teachers and a nearly scandalous incident that happened days before the interview. And two Oklahoma high-school teachers take very different paths.

This is the second episode of a two-part series from Radio Atlantic. (This episode has been updated from a previously published version to include additional news.)

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A live conversation about authoritarian forces in America with Anne Applebaum, an Atlantic staff writer, and Garry Kasparov, the former world chess champion and a lifelong democracy activist.

Speaking about the upcoming midterms, Kasparov says: “If Democrats do not retake the House, 2028 will be a formality.”

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Yesterday, Jimmy Kimmel’s late-night show was suspended indefinitely. It’s a shocking moment for free speech, given the order in which events unfolded. Earlier that day, FCC Chair Brendan Carr had suggested on a conservative podcast that ABC and its affiliates consider taking steps against Kimmel, saying, “We can do this the easy way or the hard way.”

As it so happened, the late-night legend David Letterman was scheduled to speak at The Atlantic Festival the next day. Letterman and The Atlantic’s editor in chief, Jeffrey Goldberg, sat down for an impromptu interview about the news.

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Get more from your favorite Atlantic voices when you subscribe. You’ll enjoy unlimited access to Pulitzer-winning journalism, from clear-eyed analysis and insight on breaking news to fascinating explorations of our world. Atlantic subscribers also get access to exclusive subscriber audio in Apple Podcasts. Subscribe today at TheAtlantic.com/Listener.

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American public education is changing. And, in many ways, Oklahoma State Superintendent Ryan Walters is at the center of it, trying to push for Bibles in schools, new curriculum standards that include dozens of references to Christianity, and an ideology test for teachers coming from “places like California and New York.”

One Oklahoma teacher finds herself at direct odds with Walters and the Department of Education. And a pair of Walters’s former students no longer recognize the teacher they once loved.

This is the first episode of a two-part series from Radio Atlantic.

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He was, after all, the eldest boy. The family drama that inspired HBO’s Succession ended this week with a settlement that ensures Rupert Murdoch’s conservative media conglomerate will pass to his oldest and most conservative son, Lachlan.

The Atlantic staff writer McKay Coppins wrote about the Murdoch succession saga for The Atlantic’s April cover story, “Growing Up Murdoch.” He joins Radio Atlantic to share insights from his months of reporting on the family and what he thinks now that the real-life Succession has ended.

Get more from your favorite Atlantic voices when you subscribe. You’ll enjoy unlimited access to Pulitzer-winning journalism, from clear-eyed analysis and insight on breaking news to fascinating explorations of our world. Atlantic subscribers also get access to exclusive subscriber audio in Apple Podcasts. Subscribe today at TheAtlantic.com/listener.

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As Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. works to dismantle the national vaccine infrastructure, states have started going their own way. Governors in California, Washington State, and Oregon said they intend to coordinate on vaccine policies. Florida’s surgeon general went in the opposite direction, announcing a plan to end all state vaccine mandates, which he compared to “slavery.” We talk to the Atlantic science writer Katie Wu about how Kennedy’s decisions are affecting the vaccine pipeline and how difficult it will be to rebuild. We also talk about what you, the patient, should do in an atmosphere where the federal government, long the authority on vaccines, is no longer reliable.

Get more from your favorite Atlantic voices when you subscribe. You’ll enjoy unlimited access to Pulitzer-winning journalism, from clear-eyed analysis and insight on breaking news to fascinating explorations of our world. Atlantic subscribers also get access to exclusive subscriber audio in Apple Podcasts. Subscribe today at TheAtlantic.com/listener.

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