Radio Atlantic

Long the crossroads of civilizations, Syria has now spent seven years as the proxy warzone of great powers. With over half a million dead and millions more displaced, the conflict is  now “arguably the world’s largest humanitarian disaster since World War II,” writes Andrew Tabler in The Atlantic. “The Syrian Civil War now threatens to morph into the Syria War—a regional conflagration which seems likely to burn for a generation. And civilians are cursed to live it, and die in it, every day.” How did we get here? And what comes next?Links- “How Syria Came to This” (Andrew Tabler, April 15, 2018)- “What If There Is No Ethical Way to Act in Syria Now?” (Sigal Samuel, April 13, 2018)- “The Obama Doctrine” (Jeffrey Goldberg, April 2016 Issue)- “The Syrian War Is Actually Many Wars” (Krishnadev Calamur, April 13, 2018)- “Trump's Selective Empathy for Syrian War Victims” (Krishnadev Calamur, April 18, 2018)- The Poems of Max Ehrmann (Max Ehrmann, 1906) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In her new book Futureface, Alex Wagner writes that “immigration raises into relief some of our most basic existential questions: Who am I? Where do I belong? And in that way, it’s inextricably tied to an exploration of American identity.” In the book, Alex explores her own American identity – daughter of a Burmese immigrant mother and a small-town Irish Catholic father – and asks how true the stories we grow up with really are.Along with co-hosts Matt and Jeff, Alex is joined by The Atlantic’s deputy politics editor Adam Serwer to discuss the tangled intersections of history, heritage, family, race, and nationality. Is America truly a melting pot? Can nationalism be liberal? And is that stalwart American immigrant story just a history written by the victors? Links- Futureface (Alex Wagner, 2018)- “The Nationalist's Delusion” (Adam Serwer, November 20, 2017)- “America Is Not a Democracy” (Yascha Mounk, March 2018 Issue)- ”The End of Identity Liberalism” (Mark Lilla, New York Times, November 18, 2016)- ”How Can Liberals Reclaim Nationalism?” (Yascha Mounk, New York Times, March 3, 2018)- “Why Are We Surprised When Buddhists Are Violent?” (Dan Arnold and Alicia Turner, New York Times, March 5, 2018)- “The Americans Our Government Won’t Count” (Alex Wagner, New York Times, March 30, 2018)- “Huapango” by José Pablo Moncayo (South West German Radio Kaiserslautern Orchestra, 2007)- Black and White: Land, Labor, and Politics in the South (Timothy Thomas Fortune, 1884)- Pogrom: Kishinev and the Tilt of History (Steven Zipperstein, 2018) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

As Atlantic staff writer Robinson Meyer recently wrote, Facebook “is currently embroiled in the worst crisis of trust in its 14-year history.” This week, the company’s CEO Mark Zuckerberg testified before the U.S. Congress for the first time. It’s not clear whether Congress will seek to exert more regulatory control over the company, even after revelations that as many as 87 million people unwittingly had their Facebook data given to the political firm Cambridge Analytica, which may have used some of that data to influence the 2016 U.S. election. And the questions senators asked of Zuckerberg suggest they may not yet understand Facebook well enough to regulate it effectively, even if they wanted to.In this Radio Atlantic news update, Rob shares what he learned from his exclusive interview with Zuckerberg, and from the CEO’s testimony before Congress. We discuss with Atlantic senior editor Gillian White whether Facebook can be regulated, and whether it will.Links- “Mark Zuckerberg Says He’s Not Resigning” (Robinson Meyer, April 9, 2018)- “The 3 Questions Mark Zuckerberg Hasn’t Answered” (Robinson Meyer, April 10, 2018)- “How Facebook’s Ad Tool Fails to Protect Civil Rights” (Gillian B. White, October 28, 2016)- “Facebook Lets Advertisers Exclude Users by Race” (Julia Angwin and Terry Parris Jr., ProPublica, October 28, 2016)- Sarah Jeong on Twitter- “The Most Important Exchange of the Zuckerberg Hearing” (Alexis C. Madrigal, April 11, 2018)- “Mark Zuckerberg Is Halfway to Scot-Free” (Alexis C. Madrigal, April 11, 2018)- “My Facebook Was Breached by Cambridge Analytica. Was Yours?” (Robinson Meyer, April 10, 2018)- “Can Anyone Unseat Mark Zuckerberg?” (Robinson Meyer, March 22, 2018)- “The Cambridge Analytica Scandal, in 3 Paragraphs” (Robinson Meyer, March 20, 2018) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

“Trump gambled that Americans resent each other’s differences more than they cherish their shared democracy. So far that gamble has paid off,” writes David Frum in his new book Trumpocracy. Along with The Atlantic's Global Editor Kathy Gilsinan, David joins to explain how President Trump has undermined our most important institutions. What does democracy around the world look like when the leader of the free world is less interested in it himself?Links- Trumpocracy (David Frum, 2018)- “Saudi Crown Prince: Iran's Supreme Leader 'Makes Hitler Look Good'” (Jeffrey Goldberg, April 2, 2018)- “The Risks to Freedom in Hungary” (David Frum, April 5, 2018)- “How to Build an Autocracy” (David Frum, March 2017 Issue)- “Freedom Fights for Survival in Hungary” (David Frum, April 10, 2017)- “An Exit From Trumpocracy” (David Frum, January 18, 2018)- “Americans Can't Afford to Grow Used to This” (David Frum, January 9, 2018)- “Tracking the appearances of “rosy-fingered Dawn” in The Odyssey” (Jason Kottke, kottke.org, April 3, 2018)- “Strategies of Attainment” (C. Lee Shea, War on the Rocks, April 1, 2018) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In his last speech, known to history as “I’ve Been to the Mountaintop,” Martin Luther King Jr. began by remarking on the introduction he’d been given by his friend, Ralph Abernathy. “As I listened to ... his eloquent and generous introduction and then thought about myself,” King said modestly, “I wondered who he was talking about.”The facsimile of King that America would fashion after his assassination—saintly pacifist, stranger to controversy, beloved by all—might have provoked something well beyond wonder. To create a version of King that America could love, the nation sanded down the reality of the man, his ministry, and his activism. In this episode of Radio Atlantic, Vann Newkirk and Adrienne Green join our hosts, Jeffrey Goldberg and Matt Thompson, to discuss the truth of King in the last year of his life and after.Links- KING: Full coverage from The Atlantic of Martin Luther King Jr.’s life and legacy- “The Whitewashing of King’s Assassination” (Vann R. Newkirk, MLK Issue)- “The Chasm Between Racial Optimism and Reality” (Jeffrey Goldberg, MLK Issue)- King’s Three Evils (Martin Luther King Jr., May 10, 1967)- “The Civil-Rights Movement’s Generation Gap” (Bree Newsome, MLK Issue)- “Martin Luther King Jr.'s 'Letter From Birmingham Jail'” (Martin Luther King Jr., August 1, 1963)- “How Much Had Schools Really Been Desegregated by 1964?” (Martin Luther King Jr., MLK Issue)- “Martin Luther King Jr. on the Vietnam War” (Martin Luther King Jr., MLK Issue)- “Generational Differences in Black Activism” (Conor Friedersdorf, June 30, 2016) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The family is where the forces that are driving Americans farther apart—political polarization, generational divides, class stratification, Facebook fights—literally hit home. Economic, ideological, and technological shifts pose uncertain consequences for what Daniel Patrick Moynihan called “the basic social unit of American life.” And not even a burgeoning industry of experts can tell parents what to do. “Parents are now more anxious than ever about their children,” writes Paula Fass in The Atlantic, “while disputes about how to raise children the ‘right’ way to meet a darkening future are a commonplace of child-rearing advice.”On March 20, The Atlantic launched a new section on the family—looking not just at America, but around the world; focusing not just on today, but on yesterday and tomorrow. In this episode, two of the editors steering this coverage, Rebecca Rosen and Adrienne LaFrance, join our hosts to explore how families are faring amid massive change.Links-“Millennials: The Mobile and the Stuck” (Derek Thompson, August 24, 2016)- “The Perils of 'Sharenting'” (Adrienne LaFrance, October 6, 2016)- “It's Hard to Go to Church” (Emma Green, August 23, 2016)- “The Graying of Rural America” (Alana Semuels, June 2016) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

“Politicians from both parties publicly worship the solemn dignity of entrepreneurship and small businesses. But by the numbers, America has become the land of the big and the home of the consolidated,” writes The Atlantic’s Derek Thompson.In a time when Americans have lost faith in their institutions, the nation seems to now look to corporations for positive action. Can big business be a force for good or only a force for profit? Does their very size pose a threat? If corporations can be people, can they be good citizens?Links- “Is Big Business Really That Bad?” (Robert D. Atkinson and Michael Lind, April 2018 Issue)- “America’s Monopoly Problem” (Derek Thompson, October 2016 Issue)- “'Corporations Are People' Is Built on an Incredible 19th-Century Lie” (Adam Winkler, March 5, 2018)- “How American Business Got So Big” (Gillian B. White, November 18, 2016)- “A Small Town Kept Walmart Out. Now It Faces Amazon.” (Alana Semuels, March 2, 2018)- “Why Amazon Pays Some of Its Workers to Quit” (Alana Semuels, February 14, 2018)- “The Internet Is Enabling a New Kind of Poorly Paid Hell” (Alana Semuels, January 23, 2018)- “Hitchens Talks to Goldblog About Cancer and God” (Jeffrey Goldberg, August 6, 2010) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Discarding the limits on a leader's time in office is a classic autocrat's move. So when Xi Jinping began to clear a path for an indefinite term as China's president, he dimmed many once-bright hopes that he would speed the nation's path toward a new era of openness and reform. For James Fallows,The Atlantic's national correspondent, it was a sad vindication of a warning he issued two years ago in the magazine, of “China’s Great Leap Backward.”As the 15th anniversary of the U.S. invasion of Iraq approaches, we review the developments in China, and look back at another warning that proved prescient: Fallows's National Magazine Award-winning essay, "The Fifty-First State?" Fallows joins our hosts, Alex Wagner and Matt Thompson, along with The Atlantic's global editor Kathy Gilsinan.  Links- “China’s Great Leap Backward” (James Fallows, December 2016 Issue)- “Xi Jinping Reveals Himself As An Autocrat” (James Fallows and Caroline Kitchener, February 26, 2018)- “China Is Not a Garden-Variety Dictatorship” (David Frum, March 5, 2018)- “The Myth of a Kinder, Gentler Xi Jinping” (Isaac Stone Fish, February 27, 2018)- “China's Surveillance State Should Scare Everyone” (Anna Mitchell and Larry Diamond, February 2, 2018)- China's Trapped Transition (Minxin Pei, 2006)- “The Fifty-First State?” (James Fallows, November 2002 Issue)- “The Obama Doctrine” (Jeffrey Goldberg, April 2016 Issue)- Steve Coll on “The Atlantic Interview” (February 7, 2018)- A Peace to End All Peace: The Fall of the Ottoman Empire and the Creation of the Modern Middle East(David Fromkin, 1989)- On Grand Strategy (John Lewis Gaddis, 2018)- An American Tragedy (Theodore Dreiser, 1925)- “Babylon Berlin” on Netflix- “Christopher Steele, the Man Behind the Trump Dossier” (Jane Mayer, The New Yorker, March 12, 2018) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Moviegoers across America are filling theaters to see, as The Atlantic’s Adam Serwer describes it, “a high-tech utopia that is a fictive manifestation of African potential unfettered by slavery and colonialism.” Wakanda, the setting of Marvel’s blockbuster film Black Panther, is suddenly everywhere, which means people the world over are seeing something that’s never had this widespread an audience: Afrofuturism.“Blockbusters rarely challenge consensus, and Disney blockbusters even less so,” Vann Newkirk wrote for The Atlantic in an essay about the film. “That’s what makes the final provocation of Black Panther so remarkable and applicable today.” But what is Black Panther’s remarkable provocation, and how does it apply to our world?Black Panther is only one part of a sudden explosion of Afrofuturism into mainstream American culture, from a new visual concept album by Janelle Monae to Children of Blood and Bone, a forthcoming YA book series by Tomi Adeyemi that has already become part of a seven-figure deal. Adam Serwer and Vann Newkirk join our hosts to talk about what this genre encompasses, and what its newfound popularity means.Links - “The Tragedy of Erik Killmonger” (Adam Serwer, February 21, 2018)- “The Provocation and Power of Black Panther” (Vann Newkirk, February 14, 2018)- “What Chadwick Boseman and Lupita Nyong'o Learned About Wakanda” (David Sims, February 28, 2018)- “Why Fashion Is Key to Understanding the World of Black Panther” (Tanisha C. Ford, February 14, 2018)- “Why I'm Writing Captain America” (Ta-Nehisi Coates, February 28, 2018)- “‘Black Panther’ and the Invention of ‘Africa’” (Jelani Cobb, The New Yorker, February 18, 2018)- “The Surprising Optimism of African Americans and Latinos” (Russell Berman, September 4, 2015)- Standing at Armageddon (Nell Irvin Painter)- Autonomous (Annalee Newitz) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

After Rick Magnis, a Texas judge, reviewed the evidence in Benjamine Spencer’s case, he recommended a new trial for Spencer “on the grounds of actual innocence.” But Texas’s highest criminal court took the rare step of rejecting the judge’s ruling. Why? Because Spencer did not meet the state’s “Herculean” standard of unassailable proof, such as DNA, that would remove all doubts of his innocence. According to the judge who wrote the opinion denying Spencer a new trial, this standard has kept innocent people in prison without a possibility of getting out.In this third and final chapter of “No Way Out,” we reveal more evidence that points to Spencer’s innocence: A new witness who confirms his alibi, new technology that calls into question the testimony of the star eyewitness in his trial, and a full recantation by another key eyewitness against him. We also share a stunning discovery: potential DNA evidence that offers Spencer the thinnest hope of meeting the state’s astronomical burden of proof.And yet, none of this may be enough to exonerate Benjamine Spencer. In this episode, we explore why that is, and what it means.Links:- A list of key individuals mentioned in this story- "Can You Prove Your Innocence Without DNA?" (Barbara Bradley Hagerty, January/February 2018 issue)- "Innocence Is Irrelevant" (Emily Yoffe, September 2017 issue) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices