Daniel Engber

San Francisco

Senior Science Editor at The Atlantic

senior editor, The Atlantic

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Articles

Now PBS Is Censoring a Film About Free Speech

2 weeks ago | theatlantic.com | Daniel Engber

American Masters, an award-winning documentary series in its 39th season on PBS, promises to tell “compelling, unvarnished stories” about the nation’s most important cultural figures. The program’s most recent story, though—Art Spiegelman: Disaster Is My Muse, about the cartoonist-author of Maus, the Pulitzer Prize–winning graphic novel depicting the Holocaust, and a self-described “poster boy for books being censored”—seemed to need a bit more varnish on its approach to Donald Trump.
There Is No Dignity in Capitulation

2 weeks ago | flipboard.com | Daniel Engber

11 hours agoEarlier this month, the city of Santa Monica announced plans to turn the beleaguered Third Street Promenade into a so-called “entertainment zone,” where visitors 21 and older can consume alcoholic beverages out in the open air, unconfined. Much like, say, Las Vegas or New Orleans, well-behaved …
Now PBS Is Censoring a Film About Free Speech

2 weeks ago | flipboard.com | Daniel Engber

The court's split means an Oklahoma Supreme Court ruling barring the state from approving a Catholic charter school remains in place. WASHINGTON — Oklahoma will not be able to launch the nation's first religious public charter school after the Supreme Court on Thursday deadlocked 4-4 in a major case …
Trump Thinks He Knows What Started the Pandemic

2 weeks ago | theatlantic.com | Daniel Engber

The lab-leak theory of COVID-19’s origins comes in many forms. Here is Donald Trump’s: A scientist in Wuhan walked outside to have lunch, maybe with a girlfriend or something. “That’s how it leaked out in my opinion, and I’ve never changed that opinion,” the president said earlier this month at a press event. Whether something like this really happened was, until this year, a subject of lively debate. These days, it’s being presented as official history.
PBS Pulled a Film for Political Reasons, Then Changed Its Mind

1 month ago | theatlantic.com | Daniel Engber

On March 25, the veteran film producer Erika Dilday spoke at a documentary conference in Copenhagen, on a panel addressing the many challenges, political and otherwise, that now face nonfiction-film distribution. “Even though it’s terrifying, it’s also incredibly energizing,” Dilday, the executive director of the nonprofit that produces PBS’s long-running, Emmy-winning series POV, told the audience.
PBS Pulled a Film for Political Reasons, Then Changed Its Mind

1 month ago | flipboard.com | Daniel Engber

They Were Loved, Hated, Mocked, Broke Up Twice... And They're Now Playing Sold-Out Stadiums And Cruise Ships: Their Shows Are Pretty TightFar more than just a nostalgia act, as some might call them, the legendary band is as relevant as ever.
Läkarnas knipa: Ozempic gör livsstilsråd poänglöst

1 month ago | svd.se | Daniel Engber

Det sitter långt inne för läkarna att medge det. Men Ozempic och andra GLP-1-analoger gör ordination av bantning och träning rätt meningslöst. Publicerad 2025-04-11 05:52Robert F Kennedy Jr har haft en del funderingar kring Ozempic. Enligt USA:s nya hälsominister bör staten inte tillhandahålla läkemedlet för miljontals amerikaner, utan i stället ta itu med fetma och diabetes genom att tillhandahålla ekologisk mat och gymmedlemskap. Som så ofta när han uttalar sig har det väckt viss upprördhet.
The People Who May Never Stop Masking

2 months ago | theatlantic.com | Daniel Engber

“It breaks my brain sometimes,” Dennis Rosloniec told me. For half a decade now, the 44-year-old media technician and mountain biker from Green Bay, Wisconsin, has done everything he can to understand the risks of getting COVID. He’s read the published studies. He’s looked at meta-analyses. And here’s the truth as far as he can tell: Each time he’s infected, the chances that something really bad will happen to his body ratchet up a little higher. Dennis is not immunocompromised.
The Scientific Fringe Comes Into Power

Mar 6, 2025 | theatlantic.com | Daniel Engber

In October 2020, Francis Collins, then the director of the National Institutes of Health, sent an email that maligned a colleague. A few days before, Jay Bhattacharya, a professor of health policy at Stanford University, had, with two others, put out a statement—the Great Barrington Declaration—calling for looser public-health restrictions in the face of the pandemic.
The Telepathy Trap – The Atlantic - Business And America

Mar 3, 2025 | businessandamerica.com | Daniel Engber

Mia is a teenage girl from Mexico who can read her mother’s mind. Akhil is a young man in New Jersey who is seeing things through other people’s eyes. And Lily parleys brain-to-brain with friends who are far away from where she lives in Georgia. According to The Telepathy Tapes, a 10-part audio series that is now one of the most popular podcasts in America, Mia, Akhil, and Lily are nonspeaking people with autism who have a special skill: They’re savants for ESP.