The causes of long COVID, which disables millions, may come together in the brain and nervous system
New experiments can re-create the young cosmos, when it was a mash of fundamental particles, more precisely than ever before
Plato was right: newborns do math
A selection of three essential articles read aloud from the latest issue of The Economist. This week, how chatbots will influence the lucrative business of internet search, the parable of Adani (11:25) and why France is arguing about work, and the right to be lazy (19:50).
Barron’s Magazine – February 13, 2023 issue:
Artificial intelligence has sparked new competition in internet search—for the first time in decades. Here’s how to build an AI portfolio.
More people are living longer and healthier. Here’s how to make sure your retirement savings lasts, while still living life to the fullest.
A new book digs into the communication giant’s troubled history as investors await a turnaround under CEO Robert Bakish and nonexecutive Chair Shari Redstone.
Even if you’re fit, healthcare is a massive—and growing—expense that increases the longer you live. Here are ways to stretch your spending power.
 Illustration by Ben Giles |
The New York Times Book Review – February 12, 2023:
“Unscripted,” an account by the Times journalists James B. Stewart and Rachel Abrams of the media titan Sumner Redstone’s final years, is a chronicle of corporate greed, manipulation, misogyny and sexual impropriety on a spectacular scale.
Laurie Winer’s new book, “Oscar Hammerstein II and the Invention of the Musical,” takes the measure of Sondheim’s mentor and spiritual godfather.
The New York Times Magazine – February 12, 2023:
The U.S. prosecuted Brian Lemley for threats, not violence. Is that what it takes to fight extremism?
“There are people who don’t know how to spell, they don’t know how to think,” says the bestselling novelist.
A poem that shakes us awake, enacting and preserving the fugitive possibilities of “healing from the law.”
February 10, 2023: In this special episode, we are in Amsterdam for one of the shows of the year: Vermeer at the Rijksmuseum.
As an unprecedented 28 of the 37 surviving Vermeer paintings are gathered in the Dutch capital, Ben Luke talks to several people involved in the project: Gregor Weber, one of the exhibition’s curators, tells us about his new biography that reveals the depth of influence of the Jesuits and Catholicism on the artist.
In the exhibition itself, we talk to Pieter Roelofs, Weber’s co-curator; Ige Verslype, a conservator who led an extensive research project on Vermeer paintings in the Rijksmuseum, Mauritshuis and Frick collections; and Taco Dibbits, the Rijksmuseum’s director. Plus, we bump into the artist Alvaro Barrington in the exhibition and he tells us what he makes of Vermeer as an artist working today.
In this episode’s Work of the Week, we explore a debate around the attribution of a painting: Betsy Wieseman, Curator and Head of the Department of Northern European Paintings at the National Gallery of Art (NGA) in Washington DC, discusses Girl with a Flute (around 1669-75). Wieseman and her NGA colleagues now regard the painting as a work by Vermeer’s studio, even though it appears in the Rijksmuseum show as an authentic work by the master.Vermeer, Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam, until 4 June. Gregor Weber, Johannes Vermeer: Faith, Light, Reflection, Rijksmuseum, €25 (pb)
In theory, it’s possible to live well while using energy at a rate of just 2000 watts – a quarter of the average for people in the US. Our environment reporter took on the challenge. Here’s what he discovered
Living on Mars will take enormous work, but urban planner Justin Hollander is already on the case in this guide to settling the Red Planet
Psychologists are forging a new understanding of paranoia, which is helping to explain why more of us are prone to the condition in today’s uncertain world
The drug apremilast reduces alcohol intake in mice bred to imbibe to excess and in humans with alcohol-use disorder.
For the first time, astronomers have identified a planet outside the Solar System using ‘microlensing’ data from a telescope in space.
The Arctic fox, which weighs less than many house cats, covers long distances in the frigid north.
Giuliani: The Rise and Tragic Fall of America’s Mayor By Andrew Kirtzman
Boomers Daily 