A popular, growing class of drugs for obesity and diabetes could, in an ideal world, help us see that metabolism and appetite are biological facts, not moral choices.
From the poster that turned Bob Dylan into an icon to the logo that helped revive a flagging city, he gave sharp outlines to the spirit of an age.
The New York Times Magazine – March 19, 2023:
Inside a psychiatric hospital in Kyiv, the growing mental trauma of the war is written on every soldier’s face.
Behind our institutions are ordinary people. Emily Kohrs is their new face.
A century ago, Thomas Midgley Jr. was responsible for two phenomenally destructive innovations. What can we learn from them today?
Rising interest rates have left banks exposed. Time to fix the system—again
Only ten days ago you might have thought that the banks had been fixed after the nightmare of the financial crisis in 2007-09. Now it is clear that they still have the power to cause a heart-stopping scare. A ferocious run at Silicon Valley Bank on March 9th saw $42bn in deposits flee in a day. svb was just one of three American lenders to collapse in the space of a week.
Binyamin Netanyahu and a constitutional crisis
When Israel’s best and brightest are up in arms it is time to worry
By saying Ukraine is not a vital American interest, Ron DeSantis emboldens Vladimir Putin
The New Statesman – March 17, 2023:
The breakdown of the West’s rules-based order began with the invasion of 2003.By Peter Ricketts
Could a resolute cabinet and a more sceptical press have stopped Tony Blair?
How do you mourn soldiers killed in an “unjust” war? For years the town of Wootton Bassett showed us…By Jason Cowley
March 13, 2023: A selection of three essential articles read aloud from the latest issue of The Economist. This week, how to avoid war over Taiwan, the mystery of 250,000 dead Britons (9:50) and the small consolations of office irritations (18:20).
Our culture is dominated by efforts to score points and win arguments. But do we really talk anymore?
There was once a time when strangers talked to one another, sometimes eagerly. “In past eras, daily life made it necessary for individuals to engage with others different from themselves,” Paula Marantz Cohen explains. In those moments of unpredictability and serendipity, we confronted difference. There were no smartphones, message boards, or online factions. Maybe because life moved at a slower pace, and every interaction wasn’t so freighted with political meaning, we had the opportunity to recognize our full humanity. Nowadays, she argues, we are sectarian and “self-soothing,” having fallen out of such practice. What we need is to return to the basics: to brush up on the art of conversation.
A succession battle involving a fight for the patronage of Sarah Jessica Parker threatens to stop the presses at a Greenwich Village newspaper.
An entomologist races to find them before they disappear.
Caterpillars are to lepidoptera—butterflies and moths—what grubs are to beetles and maggots are to flies; they are larvae. Even among nature lovers, larvae tend to be unloved. For every ten butterfly fanciers, there are approximately zero caterpillar enthusiasts. The reason for this will, to most, seem obvious. The worm in the apple is usually a caterpillar.
The New York Times Magazine – March 12, 2023:
How the downfall of one intelligence agent revealed the astonishing depth of Chinese industrial espionage.
Oscar campaigns are often run by professional strategists, essentially a specialized breed of publicist. Their job begins as early as a year before the awards, sometimes before a film is even shot. They advise on which festival a film should premiere at, shape a campaign platform and hope that the film gains enough momentum to propel it into awards season.
Much of the cathedral’s restoration, projected to be completed in 2024, will address these large holes. They affect not just the structure of the building, but also something that cannot be seen: the acoustics. “Notre Dame has lost about 20 percent of its acoustics,” says Mylène Pardoen, who is the co-director of the acoustics team working on Notre Dame — under the aegis of the French Ministry of Culture and the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (C.N.R.S.), a research organization from whose ranks specialists have been drawn for the restoration. The holes caused a measurable decline in the glorious resonances that gave the building its unique sound.
A superpower conflict would shake the world
Europe is witnessing its bloodiest cross-border war since 1945, but Asia risks something even worse: conflict between America and China over Taiwan. Tensions are high, as American forces pivot to a new doctrine known as “distributed lethality” designed to blunt Chinese missile attacks. Last week dozens of Chinese jets breached Taiwan’s “air defence identification zone”. This week China’s foreign minister condemned what he called America’s strategy of “all-round containment and suppression, a zero-sum game of life and death”.
Higher interest rates are not sufficiently slowing global growth
But his allies disagree on its strategies and goals
Taiwan’s fate will, ultimately, be decided by the battle-readiness of its people
March 6, 2023: A selection of three essential articles read aloud from the latest issue of The Economist. This week, how to cure obesity, Ron DeSantis’s foreign policy doctrine (10:53) and why hype can help and hinder entrepreneurs (17:00).
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