Best Of: Margaret Atwood on the Bible and the Future

Today we're revisiting one of our favorite episodes from this year, with the prolific writer Margaret Atwood. A good rule of thumb is that whatever Margaret Atwood is worried about now is likely what the rest of us will be worried about a decade from now. The rise of authoritarianism. A backlash against women’s social progress. The seductions and dangers of genetic engineering. Climate change leading to social unrest. Advertising culture permeating more and more of our lives. Atwood — the author of the Booker Prize-winning novels “ The Blind Assassin ” and “ The Testaments ,” as well as “ The Handmaid’s Tale ,” “ Oryx and Crake ” and, most recently, the essay collection “ Burning Questions ” — was writing about these topics decades ago, forecasting the unsettling world that we inhabit now. Pick up any one of her 17 published novels, and you will likely come across a theme or a quality of the setting that rings eerily true in the present day. This is especially true of Atwood’s magnum opus, “The Handmaid’s Tale,” which takes place in a future America where climate change, droughts, a decaying economy and falling birthrates lead to the rise of a theocracy in which women called Handma…