His father, Ali, was born a Shiite Muslim from Iran. They met in the library at the University of Alabama in Huntsville, married in 1978, and eventually settled in Russellville, Arkansas. “I grew up in the Ozarks, so I didn’t have a deep connection to my Iranian heritage,” Sarjahani told me. His family had Christmas trees and celebrated Easter but also marked Nowruz, the Persian New Year.
The Globalist (April 17, 2024): The foreign ministers of the G7 nations touch down in Capri to discuss the crisis in the Middle East and the ongoing war in Ukraine.
Then: Georgia’s controversial bill on ‘foreign influence’ and a look at the debate around South Africa’s National Health Insurance. Plus: newspapers, television news, 100 days to go before the Olympic Games and we speak with luxury home-appliance manufacturer Gaggenau.
The Globalist (April 16, 2024): We discuss rising tensions in the Middle East amid fears of an Israeli military response to Iran’s weekend attacks.
We also have the latest on Donald Trump’s historic criminal trial, Croatia’s parliamentary elections and Monocle’s team in Milan checks in from the first day of the 62nd edition of Salone del Mobile. Plus: a special interview with the former Commanding General of US Army Europe, Ben Hodges, on the laws of engagement in Ukraine, Gaza and beyond.
Film and television writers face an existential threat
In 2012, at the age of thirty-two, the writer Alena Smith went West to Hollywood, like many before her. She arrived to a small apartment in Silver Lake, one block from the Vista Theatre—a single-screen Spanish Colonial Revival building that had opened in 1923, four years before the advent of sound in film.
Smith was looking for a job in television. She had an MFA from the Yale School of Drama, and had lived and worked as a playwright in New York City for years—two of her productions garnered positive reviews in the Times. But playwriting had begun to feel like a vanity project: to pay rent, she’d worked as a nanny, a transcriptionist, an administrative assistant, and more. There seemed to be no viable financial future in theater, nor in academia, the other world where she supposed she could make inroads.
The Republican primaries as farce
On the Saturday before the Iowa caucuses, the super PAC supporting Florida governor Ron DeSantis staged a “drop by” for the candidate at its headquarters in West Des Moines. Outside the modernist office park, much of the Upper Midwest was under a deep freeze brought on by a low-pressure system that had deposited more than a foot of snow in advance of a surge of arctic air that brought the wind chill into the negative thirties. Despite the atrocious road conditions, DeSantis was keeping his schedule as a “special guest” of the Never Back Down PAC, beginning the day at the far western end of Iowa, in Council Bluffs, and concluding it three hundred miles east, in Davenport.
Video-game engines were designed to closely mimic the mechanics of the real world. They’re now used for movies, TV shows, architecture, military trainings, virtual reality, and the metaverse.
They have long been a symbol of a future that never came. Now a variety of companies are building them—or something close.
The Globalist (April 15, 2024): The latest on the conflict in the Middle East following Iran’s reprisal attack on Israel. Then: after days of clashes, we discuss the unrest at the Thailand-Myanmar border.
Plus: the implications of Senegal’s new presidency for regional dynamics and fashion news.
THE NEW YORK TIMES MAGAZINE (April 14, 2024):The latest issue features…
Alvin Bragg, the Manhattan D.A., campaigned as the best candidate to go after the former president. Now he finds himself leading Trump’s first prosecution — and perhaps the only one before the November election.
In her new play, ‘Sally & Tom,’ Suzan-Lori Parks brings exuberant provocation to the gravest historical questions.
Monocle on Sunday, April 14, 2024: Emma Nelson, Dimi Reider, Tessa Szyszkowitz and Kat Hanna on drone strikes on Israel by Iran overnight, as well as more of weekend’s biggest talking points.
We also speak to Monocle’s editorial director, Tyler Brûlé, in Geneva and we check-in with Monocle’s correspondent in Marseille, Mary Fitzgerald, for the latest headlines from the regions.
THE NEW YORK TIMES MAGAZINE (April 6, 2024):The latest issue features…
Inside the notorious “catch and kill” campaign that now stands at the heart of the former president’s legal trial.
He’s a wild, monomaniacal jerk. He’s also our greatest interpreter of American manners since Emily Post.
Monocle on Saturday Podcast (April 6, 2024): Terry Stiastny updates Georgina Godwin on the Wirecard fugitive case and discusses the honeytrap scandal that has rattled Westminster this week.
We examine the history of honeytrap scandals and look back at the lives of two extraordinary people: journalist Hella Pick and author Lynne Reid Banks. Plus: twins Dina and Rosabella Gregory take us through their new opera, ‘The Haberdasher Prince’, and Louise Doughty joins to talk about her guest edition of Writers Mosaic, ‘Blood and belonging: Traveller Writers’.
Boomers Daily 