What Ancient Greek Is Good For

This is an edition of Time-Travel Thursdays, a journey through The Atlantic’s archives to contextualize the present. Sign up here. Late one night in 1925, a classics professor named Carol…

Nobody Is Getting the Data-Center Water Question Right

Source: YouTube Summary Updated at 3:41 p.m. ET on July 16, 2026There are two competing schools of thought over just how water-intensive AI is. In one, the technology is horribly…

The Lessons About Ebola the U.S. Wants to Forget

The Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of the Congo is now the third-largest Ebola outbreak ever recorded. It will likely pass the second largest, an outbreak in the same…

Nobody Even Expects DOJ to Be Independent Anymore

The most stunning exchange of Todd Blanche’s confirmation hearing to serve as attorney general came in response to an amiable question. Senator John Kennedy from Louisiana, a Republican who appears…

Nobody Even Expects DOJ to Be Independent Anymore

The most stunning exchange of Todd Blanche’s confirmation hearing to serve as attorney general came in response to an amiable question. Senator John Kennedy from Louisiana, a Republican who appears…

The Election Deniers Are in Charge Now

Subscribe here: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | YouTube | Overcast | Pocket Casts Tonight, President Trump is expected to give a speech about what he claims is recently declassified intelligence…

Reading a 3,000-Year-Old Poem to a 3-Year-Old Boy

In Book 12 of Homer’s Odyssey, a band of war-weary sailors is navigating home when a narrow strait appears on the horizon. The ship, captained by their king, Odysseus, is…

How the Smithsonian Could Fall

Photographs by Caroline Gutman The Trump administration wants to control the Smithsonian, but it won’t be so easy. When experts talk about the institution’s relationship to the federal government, the…

The Unapologetic Crime Fiction of Colson Whitehead

Sturdy, steady, and as reliable as a well-tooled construction, Ray Carney, the “cool machine” that powers the third volume of Colson Whitehead’s Harlem Trilogy, is a time-worn but still fully…

The Opening After Netanyahu

Last week, Rahm Emanuel traveled to Tel Aviv University to deliver an unusually blunt warning: Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is jeopardizing Israel’s long-term alliance with the United States. Emanuel, the…