
Preview: New Scientist Magazine – Oct 15, 2022



The women and girls facing down Iran’s leaders. Plus: Putin strikes back
For the past few weeks, nationwide protests have gripped Iran after the death in police custody of Mahsa Amini, a 22-year-old Kurdish woman who had been detained for breaching Islamic dress codes.
Details of what is happening inside the country remain patchy, but social media footage suggests action has been substantial, resulting in mass arrests and scores of deaths. Yet Iran’s repressive state apparatus has not been able to quell the unrest or diminish the morale of protesters, many of whom are young women and schoolgirls.

Country Life Magazine 12 October 2022 is an interiors special, but also looks at ancient barrows, Roald Dahl and much more.
Jack Watkins on Ronald Blythe’s seminal Akenfield
Rural life was a joy to the author, says Matthew Dennison
Thoughtfulness abounds in the countryside, writes Margaret Casely-Hayford
Legendary interior designer Veere Grenney talks to Giles Kime about spending lockdown in a Palladian folly
This week’s @TheTLS , featuring Rosemary Righter and @peterfrankopan on Xi Jinping; @LaurenElkin on Annie Ernaux; @pottmeister on John le Carré; @MirandaFrance1 on Clarice Lispector; @Lordoflongitude on measurement – and more.

There’s plenty to go around, but it’s going to the wrong places.
Developing countries need to boost their yields, even if that conflicts with climate goals.
Who’s eating more, and who’s eating less.
A selection of three essential articles read aloud from the latest issue of The Economist. This week, the outlook for the world economy, how worried you should be about Elon Musk’s superpowers (12:50), and a study allays fears that covid vaccines harm menstrual cycles (16:50).

Our skippers spot it first: a dark lump on the horizon. There’s a scramble as a second pair of binoculars is found and shared around, each of us careful not to take our eyes off the distant point while we wait our turn. Silence as we stand on the ship’s foredeck staring determinedly at the sea, hoping it wasn’t an illusion. And then we see it – the sleek arc of a minke whale’s back and a hint of its dorsal fin.

A multigenerational network of activists is getting abortion pills across the Mexican border to Americans.
Henry James decried the nineteenth century’s “loose baggy monsters,” but a new translation of Alessandro Manzoni’s “The Betrothed” demonstrates the genre’s power.


Treehotel has revealed its eighth experimental retreat called Biosphere, which is suspended between two trees and wrapped in a façade of 350 birdhouses.
Designed by BIG in collaboration with Swedish ornithologist Ulf Öhman, the boutique hotel room is designed to immerse guests in nature and to help facilitate the conservation of the local bird population. The 34-square-metre glazed cube is surrounded by a metal grid that supports the timber-made birdhouses of various sizes, and creates its spherical form.