Stephen Sedley
Rae Armantrout
Thomas Meaney
Schools in rich countries are making poor progress. They need to get back to basics, argues Mark Johnson
Hanging on to the best of them is getting harder
The actor talks about the origins of “Adaptation,” his potential leap to television, and the art of “keeping it enigmatic.”
By Susan Orlean
The wobbly distinction between reality and artifice fascinates Nicolas Cage. The first time we encountered each other was in 2001, during the making of “Adaptation”—a film based on Charlie Kaufman’s struggle to adapt my book “The Orchid Thief” for the screen—in which Cage played Kaufman and his twin, Donald. He was in the middle of a scene, and I tiptoed onto the set as quietly as possible, convinced that any distraction would trigger one of the eruptions for which Cage had become famous. Between takes, he glanced at the handful of people watching, and exclaimed cheerily, “Oh, guys, look!” He pointed at me and a small, fuzzy-haired man I hadn’t noticed beside me. “It’s the real Charlie and the real Susan!” He seemed tickled by this collision between the characters in the movie and their real-life counterparts, and insisted that the crew take note. (Kaufman and I, who had never met before that moment, slunk away sheepishly.)
Three decades into “This American Life,” the host thinks the show is doing some of its best work yet—even if he’s still jealous of “The Daily.”
By Sarah Larson
It can be easy to take the greatness of “This American Life,” the weekly public-radio show and podcast hosted by Ira Glass, for granted. The show, which Glass co-founded in 1995 at WBEZ, in Chicago, has had the same essential format for twenty-eight years and more than eight hundred episodes. It was instrumental in creating a genre of audio journalism that has flourished in recent decades, especially since the podcast boom—which was initiated by the show’s first spinoff, “Serial,” in 2014. Like “The Daily Show” or Second City, “This American Life” has trained a generation of talented people, and Glass’s three-act structures, chatty cadences, and mixture of analysis and whimsy are now so familiar as to seem unremarkable.
And so has the world in which they are used, says Shashank Joshi
Afew years ago intelligence analysts observed that internet-connected cctv cameras in Taiwan and South Korea were inexplicably talking to vital parts of the Indian power grid. The strange connection turned out to be a deliberately circuitous route by which Chinese spies were communicating with malware they had previously buried deep inside crucial parts of the Indian grid (presumably to enable future sabotage). The analysts spotted it because they were scanning the internet to look for “command and control” (c2) nodes—such as cameras—that hackers use as stepping stones to their victims.
Nine thinkers on the continent’s future without America’s embrace.
By Mark Leonard, Constanze Stelzenmüller, Nathalie Tocci, Carl Bildt, Robin Niblett, Radoslaw Sikorski, Guntram Wolff, Bilahari Kausikan, Ivan Krastev, and Stefan Theil
No bloc of countries has, for the past 75 years, been as umbilically tied to the United States as Europe. First, its western half and, since the end of the Cold War, much of its eastern half have prospered under the world’s most extensive bonds in trade, finance, and investment. Europe could also depend on the U.S. military’s iron commitment—enshrined in the 75-year-old NATO alliance—to come to its defense. Together with a few other nations, the United States and Europe defined many of the institutions that comprise what we call the Western-led order. The U.S.-European alliance has arguably been the bedrock of the global system as we know it today.
Without Washington’s embrace, the continent could revert to an anarchic and illiberal past. By HAL BRANDS
Which is the real Europe? The mostly peaceful, democratic, and united continent of the past few decades? Or the fragmented, volatile, and conflict-ridden Europe that existed for centuries before that? If Donald Trump wins the U.S. presidential election in November, we may soon find out.
President Biden has offered help to undocumented spouses of U.S. citizens, in the most consequential act of immigration relief in more than a decade. By Jonathan Blitzer
Give now to get your name on the wing of a fighter jet!
In “Long Island Compromise,” wealth is a curse. Or is that just what we’d like to think?
Monocle on Saturday (June 29, 2024): Thursday saw an extraordinary US debate between presidential candidates Joe Biden and Donald Trump; what happened and what comes next?
International journalist Isabel Hilton joins Georgina Godwin to discuss the fallout of the event and the global reaction, the comparatively uneventful debate in the UK, Bradford Literature Festival and the latest news from China. Plus: Monocle’s senior news editor, Chris Cermak, speaks to the debate director of Braver Angels, Jessie Mannisto, about its debate watch party and how they are fighting political polarisation.
Biden and the Search for a New American Strategy
“America is back.” In the early days of his presidency, Joe Biden repeated those words as a starting point for his foreign policy. The phrase offered a bumper-sticker slogan to pivot away from Donald Trump’s chaotic leadership. It also suggested that the United States could reclaim its self-conception as a virtuous hegemon, that it could make the rules-based international order great again. Yet even though a return to competent normalcy was in order, the Biden administration’s mindset of restoration has occasionally struggled against the currents of our disordered times. An updated conception of U.S. leadership—one tailored
Making the Case for Trump’s Foreign Policy
Si vis pacem, para bellum is a Latin phrase that emerged in the fourth century that means “If you want peace, prepare for war.” The concept’s origin dates back even further, to the second-century Roman emperor Hadrian, to whom is attributed the axiom, “Peace through strength—or, failing that, peace through threat.”
And China Is Reaping the Benefits
Until recently, it wasn’t clear that the two men would ever share a stage again. Now there’s a potential for even greater stakes and strangeness than four years ago. By Evan Osnos
Neal ElAttrache, the surgeon to the stars of sport and screen, can fix anything. By Zach Helfand
Is the Pennsylvania senator trolling the left or offering a way forward for Democrats? By Benjamin Wallace-Wells
REASON MAGAZINE (June 22, 2024) – The latest issue features The Debt Lies We Tell Ourselves….
Both parties—and the voters—are to blame for the national debt fiasco.
Georgia parents were accused of child abuse after they took their daughter to the doctor. Does the state’s story add up?
How legislators learned to stop worrying about the constitutionality of federal drug and gun laws by abusing the Commerce Clause
Thousands of people who helped the U.S. in Afghanistan are still looking for an escape.
Boomers Daily 