The Globalist Podcast, Tuesday, July 4, 2023: The latest on Israel’s major military operation in the West Bank.
Plus: the Hong Kong police’s bounties for self-exiled activists, the inauguration of Thailand’s new government and the soft power of military hospital ships.
‘Editor’s Picks’ Podcast (July 3, 2023) – A selection of three essential articles read aloud from the latest issue of The Economist: The humbling of Vladimir Putin, how misfiring environmentalism risks harming the world’s poor (10:20) and some tips to design better flags (18:55).
The Wagner mutiny exposes the Russian tyrant’s growing weakness. But don’t count him out yet
The last pretence of Vladimir Putin to be, as he imagines, one of his nation’s historic rulers was stripped away on June 24th. A band of armed mercenaries swept through his country almost unopposed, covering some 750km (470 miles) in a single day, seizing control of two big cities and getting to within 200km of Moscow before withdrawing unharmed.
The trade-off between development and climate change is impossible to avoid
Thank goodness for the enthusiasts and the obsessives. If everyone always took a balanced view of everything, nothing would ever get done. But when campaigners’ worldview seeps into the staid apparatus of policymaking and global forums, bad decisions tend to follow. That, unfortunately, is especially true in the world of climate change.
Some tips to avoid having an embarrassing emblem
Have you ever met a vexed vexillologist? This is someone who frets when flags are badly designed. Sadly, too many flags flutter to deceive: they are cluttered with imagery, a mess of colours and all too easily forgettable. Yet flags matter. Witness Ukraine’s blue-and-yellow banner, which now serves as a potent symbol around the world (not to mention on this newspaper’s covers).
The war shows how technology is changing the battlefield. But mass still counts, argues Shashank Joshi
Jamming is knocking drones and missiles out of the sky
I did everything I could to avoid writing my historical novel. When I finally started “The Fraud,” one principle was clear: no Dickens.
By Zadie Smith
For the first thirty years of my life, I lived within a one-mile radius of Willesden Green Tube Station. It’s true I went to college—I even moved to East London for a bit—but such interludes were brief. I soon returned to my little corner of North West London. Then suddenly, quite abruptly, I left not just the city but England itself. First for Rome, then Boston, and then my beloved New York, where I stayed ten years. When friends asked why I’d left the country, I’d sometimes answer with a joke: Because I don’t want to write a historical novel. Perhaps it was an in-joke: only other English novelists really understood what I meant by it. And there were other, more obvious reasons.
We’re told that story will set us free. But what if a narrative frame is also a cage?
By Parul Sehgal
After a millennium, she remains the hardest-working woman in literature. It was not enough to be saddled with a husband who had the nasty habit of marrying and murdering a new virgin every day to assure himself of spousal fidelity. Nor was it enough to produce a series of nested stories under such deadlines (truly, I complain too much), stories so prickly and tantalizing that the king postponed her murder every night to wait for the next installment. That’s to say nothing of the entirely forgotten three children she bore over those thousand and one nights. Who recalls that there was always a new baby in Scheherazade’s arms?
The Globalist Podcast, Monday, July 3, 2023: Riots continue to rock France and threaten to impede preparations for the Paris 2024 Summer Olympics, Russia expert Jenny Mathers examines the fate of Wagner troops in Africa.
Also, the future of local news in Canada as Meta and Google block content. Plus: film critic Karen Krizanovich on the latest in Hollywood and new space technology is put under the microscope.
July 2, 2023 – Monocle’s editorial director, Tyler Brûlé, discusses the weekend’s biggest news stories with Eemeli Isoaho and Christof Münger. Plus: check-ins with our friends and correspondents in London and Tokyo.
Monocle on Saturday, July 1, 2023: The week’s news, newspapers and culture with Georgina Godwin, artist and journalist Siân Pattenden, and Monocle’s Fernando Augusto Pacheco and Robert Bound.
THE NEW YORK TIMES MAGAZINE (July 2, 2023) –
In this week’s cover story, Lynsey Addario takes us to a Ukrainian town where an 11-year-old is navigating a childhood transformed by war. Plus, a profile of the Christian pop star Marcos Witt and an investigation into how federal law targets thousands of women on anti-addiction medications.
In a Ukrainian town, an 11-year-old navigates a childhood transformed by war.
In a town near the Eastern front lines of the Donbas region of Ukraine, an 11-year-old boy named Yegor’s days were as predictable as they could be, given the unpredictability of war.
A string of uncanny videos show what generative A.I. and advertising have in common: They chew up the cultural subconscious and spit it back at us.
By Mac Schwerin
Even if I didn’t work in advertising, I would be a connoisseur of commercials. You’re probably one, too. Think of all the tropes you’ve ingested over the years — the forest-green hatchbacks conquering rugged Western landscapes, the miles of mozzarella stretched by major pizza chains. These are the images that let you know what kind of pitch you’re watching, so you won’t be confused when the brand shows up.
The Globalist Podcast, Friday, June 309, 2023: We speak to NYU professor and ACLU president Deborah Archer about the US Supreme Court ruling on affirmative action, the latest from France as riots rock major cities and an update on the EU Council summit in Brussels.
Plus: Andrew Mueller unpacks a whirlwind week in Russia.
The Wagner mutiny exposes the Russian tyrant’s growing weakness. But don’t count him out yet
Ukraine’s counter-offensive is going slowly
Factions close to the Russian president are thinking about life after him
Boomers Daily 