Atmos

“Education is not in reality what some people proclaim it to be.” —Plato, The Republic In The Republic, Plato conjures his enduring allegory of the cave—a meditation on the nature of reality, ignorance, and enlightenment. Imagine a group of people who have spent their entire existence chained inside a cave. They can only face one wall, and behind them burns a fire. Between them and this fire, there are people carrying objects, which cast shadows on the wall.

Each week, award-winning climate journalist Miranda Green offers a look beneath the climate headlines—into how decisions are being made, why they matter, and what they reveal about this moment. Subscribe to The Understory to never miss an edition. When I decided to move to Paris for two months earlier this spring, I will admit that escaping the United States’ rising gas prices—because I would not be needing a car there—was a major upside.

Episode 28 In the latest episode of The Nature Of podcast, Atmos Editor-in-Chief Willow Defebaugh speaks with Tarot teacher, author, and podcast host Lindsey Mack for a conversation about spirituality rooted in nature and finding meaning in uncertainty. To never miss an episode of The Nature Of, be sure to follow here. Lindsay Mack spends her time helping people rewild and reconnect with their intuition—but not in the way you might expect.

In Poking the Squid, a new book of graphic nonfiction, author and artist Perrin Ireland shares the wild diversity of sex in nature to expand how we think about pleasure and identity. “Do you know Perrin from the animal sex world, the comics community, or the environmental space?” someone asked me last month at her book launch in Brooklyn, hosted by actress and author Amber Tamblyn. Only Perrin Ireland sits at the center of such a colorful Venn diagram.

In David Ụzọchukwu’s photomontages, luminous bodies drift through haunting waters, sprouting fins, scales, and gills as they adapt to unfamiliar worlds. Drawing on African, Greek, and American mythologies, Uzochukwu imagines transformation as a response to histories of migration, displacement, and survival. The artist’s first solo museum exhibition, David Ụzọchukwu: Bodies of Water, opened at the Memphis Brooks Museum of Art on June 10, 2026.

“Whether we and our politicians know it or not, Nature is party to all our deals and decisions, and she has more votes, a longer memory, and a sterner sense of justice than we do.” —Wendell Berry Four billion years ago, the Earth would have been unrecognizable to us. Pocked with volcanoes and hosting a suffocating atmosphere with little to no oxygen, an orange sky hazy with methane gas, and an ocean full of iron, it was a far cry from the verdant utopia it would one day become.

Each week, award-winning climate journalist Miranda Green offers a look beneath the climate headlines—into how decisions are being made, why they matter, and what they reveal about this moment. Subscribe to The Understory to never miss an edition.

As climate fears deepen and trust in institutions erodes, a growing number of UFO enthusiasts are looking beyond Earth for meaning, reassurance, and the possibility that we are not alone. I arrived just after 9 p.m. in the parking lot of a PetSmart about 1 mile west of Uptown Sedona, Arizona, and walked up to a purple van.

Nothing exists outside of nature. I remind myself of this nearly every day that I spend roaming the streets of Brooklyn, where I have nested for over 14 years. When it comes to our binary between urban and rural environments, evolution is indiscriminate: Concrete is geology, traffic is migration, and blinking lights become the celestial sphere. Lament it or not, cities are the fastest-growing ecosystem on Earth. And life is doing what it does best: endeavoring to adapt.

The ruling protects corporations from failure-to-warn claims—and could reshape how Americans seek accountability for dangerous products. In a landmark 7-2 decision, the Supreme Court ruled in favor of Monsanto, the original maker of Roundup. The decision means that people who say they developed cancer after using Roundup may be barred from bringing failure-to-warn lawsuits if the Environmental Protection Agency has approved the herbicide’s label without a cancer warning.