A 'neutron bomb for education': Jonathan Haidt and David Brooks at the Atlantic Festival
The newest episode of The Permanent Questions, made with Yale and taped before a live audience, looks back on 40 years of studying human nature.
The AtlanticStory of Why this story? The channel's weekly summary: what went up this week, what is drawing views now, and where the channel stands among similar channels.
Jonathan Haidt: AI Is the ‘Neutron Bomb for Education’
Fourteen uploads went up on The Atlantic's channel this week, and the youngest of them is the one moving fastest. "Jonathan Haidt: AI Is the 'Neutron Bomb for Education'" was taped last month at the Atlantic Festival. In it David Brooks sits down with the social psychologist best known for The Anxious Generation, and the description promises more than the headline phrase: emotions in moral decisions, and how a society might produce less loathsome elites.
The week's biggest audience still belongs to David Frum. His conversation with former Attorney General Eric Holder, about the Voting Rights Act, gerrymandering and whether the 2026 midterms will be free and fair, has passed 160,000 views. The episode closes, as Frum's shows often do, with a book: Robert Harris's novel Agrippa. Many commenters mention that reading list, and a good number write about Holder himself. Frum's shorter Saturday episode on wages, prices and tariffs followed close behind.
The tech side of the house was quieter: two Galaxy Brain conversations with Charlie Warzel, one on Meta's glasses and the surveillance backlash, one arguing that rogue AI agents are less frightening than the reports suggest.
Overall it was a slower stretch than the channel is used to, with daily views well below their usual level and about 3,000 new subscribers. Among documentary and journalism channels of a similar size, RocaNews had the big week, and Odyssey's ancient history films ran a little above their own norm.
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The videos drawing views on The Atlantic right now
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- Channel
- The Atlantic
- Subscribers
- 981,000 ▲ 3,000 this week
- Channel views, last 7 days
- 1,366,660
- Videos published this week
- 14
- Video published
- October 4, 2026
- Video views so far
- 21,914
The numbers
Here is how The Atlantic's channel and its newest videos stand this week.
💡 Test your knowledge
Which of these books was written by David Brooks, the host of The Permanent Questions?
David Brooks published The Road to Character in 2015; the others are by Daniel Kahneman, Malcolm Gladwell and Susan Cain.
