The Globalist Podcast, Monday, August 14: The latest from Kyiv with Ukrainian MP Lisa Yasko, the morning’s papers with Paul Waldie, Europe correspondent at ‘The Globe and Mail’ and interview former Polish foreign minister, Radek Sikorski MEP, on how Poland has changed in recent years.
Plus: the results of the Argentinian elections and why zine culture is on the rise in Japan.
August 13, 2023 – Emma Nelson, Nina dos Santos and John Everard unpack the weekend’s hottest topics. Plus: check-ins with Petri Burtsoff in Helsinki and Hannah Lucinda Smith in Istanbul.
Monocle on Saturday, August 12, 2023: A look at the week’s news and culture with Georgina Godwin. She is joined by the columnist, author and ‘Insult my Intelligence’ podcast host, Tim Dowling, for a lively discussion of the morning’s stories from across the globe.
Plus: the volunteer group who made women’s uniforms for Ukrainian soldiers.
THE NEW YORK TIMES MAGAZINE – The 8.13.23 Issue: In this special issue, Wesley Morris on hip-hop’s 50th anniversary; Niela Orr on the ascendance of female rappers; Miles Marshall Lewis on how hip-hop changed the English language forever; Daniel Levin Becker on the history of bling; Tom Breihan on Too Short’s long career; and Danyel Smith on the rappers we lost.
By MILES MARSHALL LEWIS
In just 50 years, rap has transformed the way the world speaks. Here are five words that tell the story of the genre’s linguistic power.
“I stay woke” — Erykah Badu, “Master Teacher”
We’re celebrating hip-hop’s 50th anniversary this week. Wesley Morris traces the art form from its South Bronx origins to all-encompassing triumph.
As their male counterparts turn depressive and paranoid, it’s the women who are having all the fun.
By Niela Orr
Like American men in general, our top male rappers appear to be in crisis: overwhelmed, confused, struggling to embody so many contradictory ideals. As a result, the art is suffering, too. If the music were any more existentially morose, or stylistically comatose, mainstream hip-hop made by men might be headed the way of hair metal or disco. The narcotized indolence is everywhere; the recounting of opioid abuse is so blasé (the Percs, Xans and Oxys) that these pillbox litanies leave you wondering if the Sackler family sponsored a wing in the rap museum. And then there’s the sense of foreshortened future that’s baked into the genre but has been amplified as gangsta rap branched off into trap, drill and other grittier subgenres. Many of the male rappers are documenting social strife and commenting on the violence that comes with being young, Black, famous men. This thread can be moving and also heartbreaking. When listening to these songs, it is impossible to not ache for their makers, to be afraid right along with them. But the music bears the weight of all that anxiety and grief. Even the occasional Drake smash is not enough to disturb the disquiet.
The Globalist Podcast, Friday, August 11: We discuss Biden’s Chinese technology investment ban with David Schlesinger and ask ‘LatinNews’ editor for the Andean region, Lewis Harrison, how the assassination of a presidential candidate in Ecuador could sway voters.
Plus: we find out the latest transport news with Monocle’s Gabriel Leigh, receive an update from the FIFA Women’s World Cup and Monocle’s contributing editor, Andrew Mueller, gives us a schooling in this week’s biggest lessons.
Supply chains are becoming more tangled and opaque
On august 9th President Joe Biden unveiled his latest weapon in America’s economic war with China. New rules will police investments made abroad by the private sector, and those into the most sensitive technologies in China will be banned. The use of such curbs by the world’s strongest champion of capitalism is the latest sign of the profound shift in America’s economic policy as it contends with the rise of an increasingly assertive and threatening rival.
The countries’ economic ties are more profound than they appear
When it comes to tracing the geography of global supply chains, few companies provide a better map than Foxconn, the world’s largest contract manufacturer. This year the Taiwanese giant has built or expanded factories in India, Mexico, Thailand and Vietnam. The Chinese production sites once loved by Western companies are firmly out of fashion. Souring relations between the governments in Washington and Beijing have made businesses increasingly fretful about geopolitical risks. As a consequence, in the first half of the year, America traded more with Mexico and Canada than it did with China for the first time in almost two decades. The map of global trade is being redrawn.
The Globalist Podcast, Thursday, August 10: West African leaders meet in Abuja after the military junta in Niger refuses to reinstate the country’s president, Mohamed Bazoum.
Plus: political uncertainty in Thailand shakes investor confidence, culture news and a Canadian breed of cow that could help cut greenhouse-gas emissions.
The Guardian Weekly (August 11, 2023) – The issue features Trump playing the victim, escape from Xinjiang, a day off with Matthew Broderick and more…
Donald Trump’s appearance in court in Washington last week to plead not guilty to his third indictment on criminal charges showed how the 45th president of the United States continues to defy every law of political physics. Washington bureau chief David Smith explores how playing the political martyr only firms up support for Trump to be the Republican candidate in the 2024 presidential race and silences critics within his party as well as among Democrats. We profile Trump’s new nemesis, prosecutor Jack Smith, while reporter Chris McGreal takes the temperature among voters in Iowa where the first Republican caucus will take place in January next year.
There have been few authoritative accounts of China’s persecution of the Uyghur people and the repression of their culture in Xinjiang province. Our main feature is an extract from poet Tahir Hamut Izgil’s memoir that details how, seeing the crackdown intensify and friends arrested, he planned to escape knowing that he dare not even say goodbye to his parents.
As the Hollywood industrial action continues, actors and directors have withdrawn from promoting their work, but luckily for Culture Xan Brooks caught up with Matthew Broderick just before the strike was called. He talks about his role as Richard Sackler in the new Netflix drama about the OxyContin scandal, playing opposite his wife, Sarah Jessica Parker, on stage and why escaping his legacy as Ferris Bueller is not an option.
The Globalist Podcast, Wednesday, August 9 2023: Is Belarus’s Lukashenko aggravating Poland without direction from Putin?
Also in the programme: we discuss why India is banning makers of military drones from using Chinese parts, get the latest from France’s bubbling wine harvest and flick through the day’s papers.
Boomers Daily 