MONOCLE RADIO (January 14, 2025): The impeachment trial for South Korea’s embattled president, Yoon Suk Yeol, gets under way with the first hearings in Seoul. Also on the programme: Pope Francis’s biography is published and leaders of Nato’s Baltic nations talk defence.
Then: has there been a “breakthrough” in a deal between Israel and Hamas? Plus: the life and legacy of Italy’s Oliviero Toscani, the photographer behind shock Benetton ads.
Clearing the toxic remnants of burned buildings around Los Angeles will require a complex and expensive mobilization. California has been there before.
In the hills above Pacific Palisades, there is crime scene tape and scattered debris, clues to what may have caused the initial fire that eventually raged through thousands of structures.
The White House scrambled to get a message to President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia last year after U.S. intelligence agencies said a Russian military unit was preparing to send explosive packages on cargo planes.
Ukrainian soldiers are describing fierce clashes as Russian forces try to retake territory in the Kursk region that could be key in eventual cease-fire talks.
DISSENT MAGAZINE (January 13, 2025): The latest issue features ‘The End of the Biden Era….
Without confronting the economic conditions that gave rise to right-wing populism, the Harris campaign could not meaningfully address a deepening crisis of liberal democracy.
Alyssa Battistoni, Tressie McMillan Cottom, Aziz Rana, Timothy Shenk and Patrick Iber
Ned Resnikoff, Brian Callaci and Sandeep Vaheesan
Moira Birss and MacKenzie Marcelin
John Trowsdale Yale Univ. Press (2024)
To understand the body, “we might picture the heart as a pump, the brain as a kind of computer, the lungs as bellows, the kidney as filters”. But what about the immune system — asks immunologist John Trowsdale in his engaging analysis. It has no straightforward analogy, operating simultaneously as an antiviral software, a surveillance camera, a weapons system and a way to share resources. The system is “unobtrusive yet extensive, nowhere and everywhere, redundant yet essential, powerful yet remote”.
Rowan Jacobsen Bloomsbury (2024)
When residue inside decorative pots from ancient Mexico was analysed, it yielded traces of cacao — early evidence of cocoa consumption. The Spanish word chocolate might have been influenced by the Nahuatl (Aztec) cacahuatl, or cacao water. Journalist Rowan Jacobsen’s appealing book explores wild chocolate’s history as he travels through Central and South America, meeting chocolate makers, activists and Indigenous leaders who revive the bean’s variety in taste and prestige, lost during its modern industrial manufacture.
Eds Silvia Ferrara et al. Routledge (2024)
The logo of the Beijing 2008 Paralympic Games was a figure with a red dot ‘head’, blue ‘body’ and single, straight green ‘leg’ — adapted from the Chinese character zhi, meaning ‘birth, life’, ‘arrival’ and ‘achievement’. It is one of a huge variety of “talking images” in a collection edited by three scholars interested in writing. Images range from Palaeolithic symbols and ancient Mesopotamian pictograms to modern Chinese calligraphy and Indian comics. The book traces links between images, marks, language and writing.
Stéphane Douady et al. Princeton Univ. Press (2024)
THE NEW YORKER MAGAZINE (January 13, 2025): Barry Blitt’s “Two’s a Crowd” – Elon Musk takes center stage.
Certain business titans have made Mar-a-Lago a scene of such flagrant self-abnegation, ring-kissing, and genuflection that it would embarrass a medieval Pope. By David Remnick
He’s ruled with absolute power for five decades, forever adding to his list of oracular pronouncements—about producing TV, making comedy, and living the good life. By Susan Morrison
A nationwide movement has funnelled taxpayer money to private institutions, eroding the separation between church and state. By Alec MacGillis
MONOCLE RADIO (January 13, 2025): Presidential election results are announced in Zagreb and nuclear talks between the UK, Germany, France and Iran kick off in Geneva. Then: show me the mooney! We investigate the future of lunar investment. Plus: master of wine Patrick Schmitt serves up the latest news for oenophiles.
Mayor Karen Bass of Los Angeles has been criticized for being out of the country when the wildfires broke out. Three years ago, she promised in an interview to cut back on her world travel and focus on the city.
As Republican voters embraced a practice that Donald J. Trump railed against for years, softening his tone only slightly in 2024, the party eroded a key Democratic advantage across the country.
Days after a devastating wildfire, residents of Pacific Palisades have started sifting through the ruins, and their memories.
Sid Edwards was a high school football coach who had never run for office. Now, he’s the mayor of Baton Rouge, Louisiana’s second-largest city.
Foreign Affairs Magazine (January 12, 2025): How the Next Computing Revolution Will Transform the Global Economy and Upend National Security
Over the last several years, as rapid advances in artificial intelligence have gained enormous public attention and critical scrutiny, another crucial technology has been evolving largely out of public view. Once confined to the province of abstract theory, quantum computing seeks to use operations based on quantum mechanics to crack computational problems that were previously considered unsolvable. Although the technology is still in its infancy, it is already clear that quantum computing could have profound implications for national security and the global economy in the decades to come.
THE NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW (January 12, 2025): The latest issue features ‘A Deal With The Devil’ – A.N. Wilson’s new biography of Goethe approaches its subject through his masterpiece and life’s work, the verse drama “Faust”.
Our columnist on the month’s most exciting releases.
The scion siblings at the center of Sara Sligar’s Gothic thriller “Vantage Point” try desperately to outrun the calamity that is their inheritance.
Samrat Upadhyay’s new novel, “Darkmotherland,” is a sprawling epic in which a natural disaster gives way to an authoritarian takeover.
MONOCLE RADIO (January 12, 205): Isabel Hilton joins Emma Nelson for a look through the week’s news. Plus: we head to St Moritz to get the latest from our editorial director, Tyler Brûlé. Then: Monocle’s Balkans correspondent, Guy De Launey, gives us the latest news from the region.
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