Stockholm Walks Films (October 17, 2023) – Windy October, leaves falling, going out for some chanterelles. There are mushrooms that will kill you, so I stick to chanterelles and funnel chanterelles that are hard to mistake for poisonous cousins
Architecture: Art-Filled New Zealand Home Tour
The Local Project (October 17, 2023) – As we venture Inside an art-filled home grounded in ideals of permanence and resilience, it is evident that Zed House signifies the prospect of rebuilding through an examination of the past and planning ahead for the future.
Video timeline: 00:00 – Introduction to the Art-Filled Home 00:48 – Designing A Legacy Project 01:37 – The Z-Shaped Layout of the Home 02:03 – A Nostalgic and Personal Brief 02:40 – A Walkthrough of the Home 04:38 – Building for Changes in Climate 04:57 – The Material Palette 05:32 – Incorporating Aspects from the Previous Homestead 06:12 – An Enduring Family Home
The expansive, single-storey, red-brick home references the original residence that was destroyed in the 2011 earthquake in Christchurch, New Zealand, and is injected with art, nostalgia and childhood memories. Originally owned by the client’s parents, there was not much remaining of the original architecture, except for the gardens, which have been tendered to and reintegrated into the landscape.
As such, the client wanted a family home that would retain as much of the original house as possible, such as arched windows. Zed House receives its name from a distinct floor plan, which snakes around the site and forms the letter ‘Z’. Although the house is single storey, it boasts generous spaces, as seen in the house tour. Inside the art-filled home, one will find a deeply considered floor plan where a low-entrance front door contrasts with the vaulted ceiling within, which is close to four metres high, creating a sense of compression and release.
A juxtaposition between the casual arrangement of the kitchen, family and living rooms with the more formal dining and living area at the edge of the northern wing offers a dynamic balance inside an art-filled home. The sunken family room is relaxed and comfortable, whilst the other living area is more sophisticated, with green accents that echo the greenery of the natural surrounds. A gallery-like hallway with concrete walls houses the bedrooms and other smaller rooms.
Previews: Country Life Magazine – Oct 18, 2023

Country Life Magazine – October18, 2023: The latest issue features Norfolks – Little pockets of fun; The real Macnab – great adventures in the field; Britain’s loneliest trees; Beethoven’s Austria and Amsterdam’s canal life, and more…
I’m still standing
In memory of the Sycamore Gap tree, so callously cut down, we salute its fellow arboreal sentinels of Britain

Following in the footsteps of John Macnab
The Editor and The Judge set off across the Tulchan estate in pursuit of a stag, a brace of grouse and a salmon, in the spirit of John Buchan’s hero
Country Life International
- Anna Tyzack uncovers Monaco’s unexpectedly magnificent restoration
- Deborah Nicholls-Lee settles in to an Amsterdam canal house
- Tom Parker Bowles gorges on Alpine cheese
- Russell Higham explores the Austrian countryside that inspired Beethoven
- Holly Kirkwood picks the best Caribbean properties
- Mark Frary straps on his pads for a spot of cricket in the Windward Islands

Felix Francis’s favourite painting
The author picks a scene full of the thrill of the racecourse
Totally foxed
The rural people of Scotland are reeling under a prejudiced new law on hunting. Jamie Blackett despairs for the fox
The Englishness of English architecture
What makes a building English? Steven Brindle considers the answer, from soaring cathedral vaults to austere Palladian villas and rambling country piles

Native breeds
Kate Green luxuriates in the luscious locks of the Leicestershire Longwool
Come hell or high water
Few creatures face as difficult a journey as the salmon does to and from its spawning grounds. Simon Lester follows in its wake

Interiors
A dramatic kitchen and why it’s time to cuddle up in British wool
Plant theatre
Charles Quest-Ritson takes the well-worn path to the famed nursery of Larch Cottage in Cumbria
Having a field day
Behind hounds or on the marsh, casting for a salmon or stalking a stag, nothing stirs Adrian Dangar’s heart as fieldsports do
Kitchen garden cook
Melanie Johnson finds the perfect pairing for hazelnuts
Health: Harvard Magazine November/December 2023


HARVARD MAGAZINE November-December 2023 :
You Are What (Your Microbes) Eat

Diet, cooking, and the human microbiome
IN THE LATE 2000s, Rachel Carmody was spending a lot of time counting calories. An anthropology graduate student at Harvard, she was studying whether cooking changed the number of calories the gut can extract from food. When humans invented cooking thousands of years ago, she and her advisor Richard Wrangham wondered, had they opened the door to a new source of energy?
The Brain-Cancer Link

DURING THE past two decades, the number of annual cancer deaths in the United States has fallen by 27 percent, a remarkable improvement driven by new precision diagnoses and treatments tailored to individual patients. Today, oncologists can detect cancer in its earliest stages and deliver drugs that enlist the patient’s own immune system to improve their odds of survival. Yet cancer remains the second deadliest disease in the United States, claiming more than 600,000 lives every year. Its persistence underscores the urgent need for a deeper understanding of how cancer interacts with the body. Assistant professor of neurology Humsa Venkatesh believes she may have found a promising new pathway for highly effective cancer treatments in the most unexpected of places: the human brain.
News: Biden To Visit Israel, Egypt-Gaza Border, Putin To Meet With Xi In Beijing
The Globalist Podcast (October 17, 2023) – The latest on the fighting between Israel and Hamas from ‘Haaretz’ journalist Allison Kaplan Sommer in Tel Aviv, as well as a look at the situation at the Egypt-Gaza border.
Also in the programme: Vladimir Putin prepares to make his first trip to a major global power since the International Criminal Court arrest warrant to meet Xi Jinping at the Belt and Road Summit. Plus: why Italy’s population is in crisis.
The New York Times — Tuesday, October 17, 2023
Biden to Visit Israel as Gaza’s Crisis Worsens Under Siege

President Biden will make the extraordinary trip on Wednesday as Israel readies a possible invasion of Gaza in response to the worst terrorist attacks in its history.
For Hostages’ Families, an ‘Endless Loop of Hope and Despair’

Relatives of those captured or missing express despair at the lack of information, and they are terrified of what an expected Israeli invasion of Gaza may mean for their loved ones.
Confusion and Frustration Reign at Egypt-Gaza Border
Told they could escape Gaza, scores of people with foreign passports gathered at the only border crossing into Egypt, only to find it still closed, as diplomatic efforts floundered.
Scientists Offer a New Explanation for Long Covid
In some patients, remnants of the coronavirus in the gut may stifle production of serotonin, an important neurotransmitter, researchers suggest.
Travel: A Walking Tour Of Schönbrunn Park, Austria
anbax Films (October 16, 2023) – The park at Schönbrunn Palace was opened to the public around 1779 and since then has provided a popular recreational amenity for the Viennese population as well as being a focus of great cultural and historical interest for international visitors.
Extending for 1.2 km from east to west and approximately one kilometre from north to south, it was placed together with the palace on the UNESCO list of World Heritage Sites in 1996.
Opinion: Israel’s Agony & Retribution, Green Policy Recoil, 2-Day Workweeks
‘Editor’s Picks’ Podcast (October 16, 2023) – A selection of three articles read aloud from the latest issue of The Economist. This week, will Israel’s agony and retribution end in chaos or stability? Also, the backlash against green policies (09:58) and a disastrous workplace experiment (16:15).
Culture/Politics: Harper’s Magazine – November 2023

Harper’s Magazine – NOVEMBER 2023: This issue features The Machine Breaker – Inside the mind of an “ecoterrorist”; Forbidden Fruit – The anti-avocado militias of Michoacán; Principia Mathemagica; From Magus – The Art of Magic from Faustus to Agrippa, and more…
The Machine Breaker – Inside the mind of an “ecoterrorist”
In the summer of 2016, a fifty-seven-year-old Texan named Stephen McRae drove east out of the rainforests of Oregon and into the vast expanse of the Great Basin. His plan was to commit sabotage. First up was a coal-burning power plant near Carlin, Nevada, a 242-megawatt facility owned by the Newmont Corporation that existed to service two nearby gold mines, also owned by Newmont.
Forbidden Fruit

The anti-avocado militias of Michoacán
Phone service was down—a fuse had blown in the cell tower during a recent storm—and even though my arrival had been cleared with the government of Cherán in advance, the armed guard manning the highway checkpoint, decked out in full fatigues, the wrong shade to pass for Mexican military, refused to wave me through. My guide, Uli Escamilla, assured him that we had an appointment, and that we could prove it if only we could call or text our envoy. The officer gripped his rifle with both hands and peered into the windows of our rental car.
Travel: Village Of Baveno On Lake Maggiore, Italy
Italy Together (October 16, 2023) – A picturesque town on the shore of Lake Maggiore north of Stresa, Baveno faces the romantic Borromean Islands and backs to the green hills surrounding the lake. The town of about 5,000 residents has seen a very long history, starting with prehistoric human existence. The many archeological finds testify to the many millennia that have touched this area.
The Romans left evidence in the way of necropoli, domestic wares, funerary items and coins. The town was along a crossroads between Ossola and the Alps, and later between Genova and Venzia, making it stragetically important with a once-flourishing commercial port.

