Making Athens Great Again
How does a citizen respond when a democracy that prides itself on being exceptional betrays its highest principles? Plato despaired, but he also pointed the way to renewal.
How does a citizen respond when a democracy that prides itself on being exceptional betrays its highest principles? Plato despaired, but he also pointed the way to renewal.
Facing increasing hostility from the administration, the religious community also has to cope with its own internal tensions.
The policy could pose challenges to economic prosperity and potentially lead to greater restriction.
Military officers have checked some of the president’s uglier populist impulses. But what does that mean for liberal values?
With the president giving Trump golf courses free publicity, and Kellyanne Conway telling citizens to buy Ivanka Trump products, business is good and ethics are dubious.
Critics had plenty of reasons for wanting to disqualify women from spaceflight in its early stages—but none of them stuck.
The short film What a Ride is an ode to one man’s passion for speed and California roads.
Flynn’s acknowledgment this week that he lobbied for Turkey, and the revelation that the White House knew that, raise new questions about Trump’s vetting process.
A weekly roundup of our writing on arts and entertainment
Expansions don’t die of old age, economists say. But President Trump still seems likely to face a contraction.
Schools near Detroit have reworked curriculum to include both technical and soft skills.
A Time story got pilloried for focusing not on the speech the human rights lawyer delivered to the U.N., but on her “baby bump.” It deserved the mockery … and, in another way, it didn’t.
A remote part of the Indian Ocean has become has become, by chance, one of the best-mapped parts of the underwater world.
Since 1857, The Atlantic has been challenging established answers with tough questions. Here, Michael K. Williams wrestles with one of his own: Is he being typecast?
Florida has already pulled panthers back from the brink of extinction—but to keep them alive, people will have to be comfortable coexisting with the big cats.
In Arctic Siberia, Russian scientists are trying to stave off catastrophic climate change—by resurrecting an Ice Age biome complete with lab-grown woolly mammoths.
A father-son team is working on a project in the Siberian Arctic called Pleistocene Park, where resurrected woolly mammoths will fight climate change.
A 20-minute film takes us to Sevnica, Slovenia, now preparing for a tourism boom thanks to the 2016 election.
In a short film, 4-year-old Almas and 10-year-old Mustafa explain what it was like to leave Iraq for Oregon.
An excerpt from a feature documentary on LGBTQ refugees advocating for better representation and resettlement
In an animated interview, the scientist describes the importance of taking chances.
A documentary about three of the 13 million unregistered people born outside the nation’s former one-child policy
The Newsmax CEO has emerged over the course of the last few weeks as one of the president’s most prominent unofficial spokesmen—but their ties long antedate the administration.
A new study suggests different groups of Americans see their country in radically divergent ways.
President Trump reportedly will send the beleaguered Republican to Rome as ambassador to U.N. for food and agriculture.
“It really comes down to a binary choice,” the speaker declared on Thursday, rejecting major changes sought by conservatives.
Vice President Mike Pence declined to say whether he thought the president’s allegation is true, while the White House press secretary has insisted he won’t discuss the matter at all.
As right-wing parties across the West indulge fascist impulses, should the United States pursue a relatively restrictionist or libertarian policy?
A comprehensive guide to reported encounters between the president’s aides and Putin’s government.
The U.S. economy added 235,000 jobs last month, while the unemployment rate is 4.7 percent.
Income growth is faster at the bottom than at the top. Thank a growing economy, falling unemployment, and minimum-wage hikes across the country.
It’s easy to feel comfortable in a space that magically cleans itself.
Peter Moskowitz’s new book on gentrification outlines how cities cede their power over residents’ lives to private interests.
The Nobel laureate Angus Deaton discusses extreme poverty, opioid addiction, Trump voters, robots, and rent-seeking.
The president’s business partners in the capital city of Baku have ties to corruption not only there but in Iran as well.
Inbox maintenance was taking up a lot of Dan Ariely’s time, so he decided to study it as he would anything else.
Tell us your birthday, and we’ll show you how the world has changed since you were born.
You’ve already lived through enough to fill history books. Consider this a sneak preview of what those books might say.
Emergency call lines in the United States rarely fail, yet they're more vulnerable than ever.
Inside the battle for the future of a technology that could really, truly change the world
Can a 3-D printed model of the organ change views on female sexuality? Yes and no. An Object Lesson
With its latest leak, the site is daring reporters to go on a scavenger hunt for scoops.
Descartes Labs lets you point-and-hop between features in China and the United States.
Unlike a conventional military strike, state-on-state cyberattacks can go unreported for years.
The pontiff said he’s open to studying the question—but that doesn’t mean he’ll do away with celibacy.
When a would-be reformer meets one of the most corrupt institutions in a country infamous for graft
The highlights from seven days of reading about the world
Finding clever ways to spy on people is what spy agencies are supposed to do.
The Knesset passed a law that would deny entry to some foreign activists who support boycotting the Jewish state.
More than a decade ago, Liberia made history. A new biography of Ellen Johnson Sirleaf recounts how.
Healthy people pay for sick people in health insurance, like it or not.
For those who experience “musical anhedonia,” listening to a song is halfway between boring and distracting—and their brain activity reflects that.
Professional organizations are speaking up.
Access to medical treatment may help solve unrelated, difficult societal problems, a study finds
Rarely, extending your neck over the ledge of a sink can cut off blood flow to the brain.
Ninety-two percent of citizen petitions filed against generics come from brand-name drug companies.
He has no evidence. He’ll successfully mislead people anyway.
Cassini has captured unprecedented views of the oddly shaped Pan during the spacecraft’s final weeks.
Some ate woolly rhinos; some were vegetarians.
Exploring the galaxy will only give our problems more room in which to expand.
Even before they grew strong legs, their eyes surged in size.
The event has around 21 stated goals.
You've probably heard about your gut bacteria—now get to know your gut archaea.
Six years after the devastating 2011 earthquake and tsunami struck Japan, the evacuation zone around the crippled nuclear power plant remains devoid of humans—but the boars have moved in.
Creator Joss Whedon’s narrative risk-taking—seamlessly blending episodes-of-the-week with heavy serialization—set the tone for the Golden Age of television.
As the WB show turns 20, a look at how it dealt with grief in season five
The debate around the new French arthouse drama This Is Our Land says a lot about the rise of the country’s far-right.
Director Jordan Vogt-Roberts’s Vietnam-era reimagination of the giant ape is just good enough to make you wish it were better.
Discovered 70 years after it was written, Claude McKay’s "Amiable With Big Teeth" depicts an overlooked time in African American history when global solidarity and black nationalism found themselves entangled.
Olivier Assayas’s new film stars Kristen Stewart as a grief-stricken Parisian fashionista who moonlights as a medium.
Mohsin Hamid’s striking, lyrical new novel explores how lives can be upended in the blink of an eye.
By a one-vote margin, the Senate overturned many Obama-era education regulations on Thursday.
The best recent writing about school
Sports programs at elite universities are not aligned with the institutions’ academic missions.
The generous Grand Rapids resident and the tone-deaf Trump official
The Kansas Supreme Court ordered the state to confront the inequality of its public-school funding.
In South Africa, student anger over tuition costs and access has bubbled over—and some observers say the tumult is a harbinger of worldwide unrest.
What happened at Middlebury last week marks a shift in campus activism.
“Exploring the galaxy just means giving the problem more room in which to expand.”
The images were posted in “Marines United,” a 30,000-member Facebook group for male-only active Marines and veterans.
Nearly two-dozen Jewish community centers and day schools in nearly a dozen states received bomb threats.
Peak bloom has typically fallen around early April.
This week, our “Americans at Work” photo essay features photographs of Melissa Eich, a speech pathologist in Charlottesville, Virginia, taken by her husband Matt Eich.
Officials say it's the worst flood to hit Silicon Valley in nearly a decade.
The U.S. Supreme Court, led by Chief Justice John Roberts, overturns a death-penalty sentence after an expert witness testified the defendant was more likely to commit future crimes because he is black.
This week, our “Americans at Work” photo essay features photographs of millennial freelancers living in Los Angeles made by photographer Jessica Chou.
Director Ezra Edelman on how the football player’s commercial success became a beacon for African Americans
Philip Carlson was the agent who signed Philip Seymour Hoffman and Claire Danes. In a short film, he describes his love for the industry.
It’s not for his cat. But maybe it should be.
The Atlantic will recognize grassroots innovators who are improving their communities from the ground up, and discuss what Washington can learn from progress made at the local level.
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