Author: Michelle Korhonen
This past August, officials at William C. Holman Correctional Facility distributed copies of Alabama’s execution protocol to the 165 prisoners of death row. A signature from each man was required to confirm receipt of the protocol, which contained an entirely new section devoted to death by nitrogen hypoxia, a novel and untested execution method that the state intends to try this Thursday. The subject of the Alabama Department of Corrections’ experimentation will be Kenneth Eugene Smith, who survived an attempted execution by lethal injection in November 2022.Elizabeth Bruenig: Alabama’s history of violenceNitrogen hypoxia as an execution method is credited to…
Mindfulness has been shown to reduce stress, anxiety and loneliness. And it benefits school kids too. One elementary school in Florida is using a daily mindfulness program with great success.
You knew it was coming.As soon as former South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley emerged as the main threat to Donald Trump in the battle for the Republican nomination, it became inevitable that she would be targeted by him. Any front-runner would do the same thing. But Trump did it with his typical touch.Last week Trump reposted on his Truth Social account a conspiracy theory that Haley, who was born in South Carolina, was not qualified to be president because her parents, born in India, were not U.S. citizens at the time of her birth. In fact, the Fourteenth Amendment establishes…
By focusing on his good looks, SNL didn’t leave much room for the actor to let loose.Will Heath / NBCJanuary 21, 2024, 11:48 AM ETIf you know two things about the Saltburn and Priscilla star Jacob Elordi, you’re probably aware that he’s very tall (Google says 6 feet 5 inches) and very handsome in a classical way (sharp cheekbones, strong chin). If you were seeking more information, you didn’t get it from his hosting gig on last night’s episode of Saturday Night Live.Nearly every time Elordi was on-screen, the show made sure to remark on his beauty, and it made…
This is an edition of The Atlantic Daily, a newsletter that guides you through the biggest stories of the day, helps you discover new ideas, and recommends the best in culture. Sign up for it here.Welcome back to The Daily’s Sunday culture edition, in which one Atlantic writer or editor reveals what’s keeping them entertained. Today’s special guest is a familiar one: Lora Kelley, an associate editor and writer for The Daily. Aside from her wide-ranging newsletter work, which includes essays on air travel, Sam Bankman-Fried’s trial, and politicians’ obsession with shoes, she has also written about an emoji’s day…
If one word could sum up Nikki Haley’s ambivalent challenge to Donald Trump in the New Hampshire Republican primary, that word might be: if.If as used by New Hampshire’s Republican Governor Chris Sununu, Haley’s most prominent supporter in the state, when he concluded his energetic introduction of her at a large rally in Manchester on Friday night. “If you think Donald Trump is a threat to democracy, don’t sit on your couch and not participate in democracy,” Sununu insisted. “You gotta go vote, right?”In that formulation, “if” served as more shield than sword. By framing his argument that way, Sununu…
We asked our readers to send in their wishes for 2024, and many of you expressed a hope that humans pay attention to the health of the planet. The woman pictured above is one of the nomadic Wodaabe people — cattle herders who live mainly in Chad and Niger. Their lifestyle is affected by higher temperatures, shifting winds and changing precipitation patterns due to climate change. Marco Longari/AFP via Getty Images hide caption toggle caption Marco Longari/AFP via Getty Images We asked our readers to send in their wishes for 2024, and many of you expressed a hope that humans…
In late November, the NPR reporter Leila Fadel interviewed the international-law scholar David Crane about a disquieting subject: potential genocide in Gaza. Crane was uniquely qualified to opine on this fraught topic, having served as the founding chief prosecutor for the UN’s Special Court for Sierra Leone, where he indicted the president of Liberia for war crimes. On air, he explained why he did not think Israel’s actions met the criteria.“If I was charged with investigating and prosecuting genocide,” Crane said, “I would have to have in large measure a smoking gun,” which he characterized as “a rebel group, a…
Miki LowePublished in The Atlantic in 2005By Erica FunkhouserIllustrations by Miki LoweJanuary 21, 2024, 6 AM ETThe poet Erica Funkhouser grew up on a farm in Massachusetts, and it was there—many times while wandering through the woods—that she grew enchanted by language. She loved the music of words, “the kind of clang of them together and the sound and the playfulness of them,” she later said in an interview. Throughout her career, she has continued to describe, joyfully, the natural world, “where all the discoveries, wondrous or desperate, come without names.”At some point, though, she also realized that writing can…
Eleven-year-old Monte Johnson and 9-year-old Waylon Parker run for the ball at a 7-on-7 practice at Tahoe Park in Sacramento, California on Jan. 14, 2023 Kate Wolffe hide caption toggle caption Kate Wolffe Eleven-year-old Monte Johnson and 9-year-old Waylon Parker run for the ball at a 7-on-7 practice at Tahoe Park in Sacramento, California on Jan. 14, 2023 Kate Wolffe In early January, dozens of children, some decked out in helmets and pads, showed up at the California capitol to push back against a proposal that would ban tackle football for children under 12. The bill’s author, Democratic Assemblymember Kevin…