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The Atlantic has long been known as an ideas-driven magazine. Now we’re bringing that same ethos to audio. Today we’re introducing Radio Atlantic, The Atlantic’s flagship podcast, with a new host: senior editor Hanna Rosin.
Like the magazine, the show will “road test” the big ideas that both drive the news and shape our culture. Through conversations—and sometimes sharp debates—with the most insightful thinkers and writers on topics of the day, Radio Atlantic will complicate overly simplistic views. It will cut through the noise with clarifying, personal narratives. It will, hopefully, help listeners make up their own mind about certain ideas.
The national conversation right now can be chaotic, reckless, and stuck. Radio Atlantic aims to bring some order to our thinking—and encourage listeners to be purposeful about how they unstick their mind.
New episodes come out Thursdays, starting May 25, wherever you find your podcasts.
The following is a transcript:
Hanna Rosin: Hi, I’m Hanna Rosin, I’m the new host of Radio Atlantic, and I’m here to make trouble. But in a friendly way.
Jeffrey Goldberg: Hannah, honestly, I don’t know if you’re just playing devil’s advocate or you actually believe this, but I think you’re off on this. I just think you’re genuinely off.
Rosin: What do you mean I’m off? I’m just being genuinely realistic.
Rosin [in studio]: Okay, something to know about me: I’ve done a lot of competitive debating, so I know how to scrutinize an idea.
I want to do that on this podcast, in a way that helps you make up your own mind about what’s happening in the world.
I want us to look at the most interesting ideas, ideas out there we may not like so much, or we don’t understand, or even trust. Like AI medicine.
Charlie Warzel: The people who have the means and the power, they’re going to have the in-person doctor experience, right? Whereas the rest of us are going to get …
Amanda Mull: Doc bot.
Warzel: Doc bot, exactly.
Rosin: We’ll get to the real edge of things that we all need to figure out—about Ukraine, our courts, the elections, teens and social media.
Kaitlyn Tiffany: Another frustrating element of this conversation is how paternalistic it ends up sounding, like rescuing these tiny damsels in distress from the evil machine.
Rosin: I already understand so much more than I did half an hour ago, when we started this conversation.
Rosin: There’s this phrase someone said to me recently: road-testing ideas, like you would road test a car. You run them through the dirt; see if they can stand up to actual real-world conditions. And I’m totally okay being wrong!
Here’s my promise: I will approach every conversation thinking I could end up in a totally different place than I began, and I will create a space where we can think more calmly, openly, and freely. And mostly what I want is for you—and me—to sometimes change our minds. It’s not something we do that much anymore.
You’ll find episodes every Thursday, wherever you listen.
Goldberg: All right, Chomsky, what else you got?
