Monocle’s editorial director Tyler Brûlé and panellists Eemeli Isoaho and Chandra Kurt discuss the weekend’s biggest news stories. Plus: we check in with our friends and correspondents in London, Amsterdam and Tokyo.
Audio
Saturday Morning: News And Stories From London
Georgina Godwin and the weekend’s biggest topics. Vincent McAviney reviews the newspapers, Andrew Mueller explains what we’ve learned this week and Monocle’s editor in chief Andrew Tuck is back with his weekend column.
Morning News: Elections In UK & Hong Kong, Dutch Vote, Italian Art Galleries
We preview the long-delayed Hong Kong legislative elections and explore whether Boris Johnson’s mistakes are starting to take an electoral toll. Plus: Mark Rutte’s record-breaking Dutch coalition and an initiative bringing major art works to regional Italian galleries.
Shakespeare & Company: Author Aysegul Savas On Her Book ‘White On White’
A “marvelous” (Lauren Groff) and “gentle, mysterious and profound” (Marina Abramović) novel about a woman who has come undone.
A student moves to the city to research Gothic nudes, renting an apartment from a painter, Agnes, who lives in another town with her husband. One day, Agnes arrives in the city and settles into the upstairs studio.
In their meetings on the stairs, in the studio, at the corner café, the kitchen at dawn, Agnes tells stories of her youth, her family, her marriage, and ideas for her art – which is always just about to be created. As the months pass, it becomes clear that Agnes might not have a place to return to. The student is increasingly aware of Agnes’s disintegration. Her stories are frenetic; her art scattered and unfinished, white paint on a white canvas.
What emerges is the menacing sense that every life is always at the edge of disaster, no matter its seeming stability. Alongside the research into human figures, the student is learning, from a cool distance, about the narrow divide between happiness and resentment, creativity and madness, contentment and chaos.
White on White is a sharp exploration of empathy and cruelty, and the stunning discovery of what it means to be truly vulnerable, and laid bare.
Morning News: U.S. Fed Fights Inflation, Western Loneliness, Music Charts
America’s central bank plans to pinch off its massive bond-buying programme much faster in a bid to stall inflation; our correspondent says it is perhaps a late-arriving signal—but a promising one.
Loneliness is a growing problem in the rich world but seems particularly acute among American men. And why aged artists are increasingly taking over the December music charts.
Science: Pluto’s Giant Ice Patterns, Pamplona’s Bull-Running Crowd Dynamics
An explanation for giant ice structures on Pluto, and dismantling the mestizo myth in Latin American genetics.
In this episode:
00:46 The frozen root of Pluto’s polygonal patterns
In 2015, NASA’s New Horizons probe sent back some intriguing images of Pluto. Huge polygonal patterns could be seen on the surface of a nitrogen-ice ice filled basin known as Sputnik Planitia. This week, a team put forward a new theory to explain these perplexing patterns.
Research article: Morison et al.
06:15 Research Highlights
How Pamplona’s bull-running defies the dynamics of crowd motion, and self-healing microbial bio-bricks.
Research Highlight: Running of the bulls tramples the laws of crowd dynamics
Research Highlight: It’s alive! Bio-bricks can signal to others of their kind
09:06 How the mixed-race ‘mestizo’ myth has fostered discrimination
The term ‘mestizo’ emerged during the colonial period in Latin America to describe a blend of ethnicities – especially between Indigenous peoples and the Spanish colonizers. But this label is a social construct not a well-defined scientific category. Now researchers are challenging the mestizo myth, which they say is harmful and has a troubling influence on science.
Feature: How the mixed-race mestizo myth warped science in Latin America
17:22 Briefing Chat
We discuss some highlights from the Nature Briefing. This time, how interrupted sleep could be a route to creativity, and the development of vaccines to target respiratory syncytial virus.
New Scientist: Interrupting sleep after a few minutes can boost creativity
Morning News: Ethiopia Rebellion, Reining Crypto In, North Korean Wives
More than a year after a rebellion Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed promised to put down in weeks, the balance of power keeps shifting—and neighbouring states may soon be drawn in.
To the chagrin of libertarian crypto types, regulators are weighing in on an industry now worth trillions. And the fed-up North Korean wives earning more than their husbands.
Morning News: Israel PM Visits UAE, Capitol Hill Riot Panel, Christmas Ghosts
We discuss the Israeli prime minister’s visit to the UAE, and the Capitol Hill riot panel’s recommendation that Mark Meadows, Donald Trump’s former chief of staff, face criminal prosecution. Plus: urbanism news and the ghosts of Christmas past.
Politics: What America Will Fight For, British PM Grounded, China Olympics
A selection of three essential articles read aloud from the latest issue of The Economist. This week: what would America fight for? Also, why two years after a famous election victory, Boris Johnson’s would-be radical administration has run into the ground (09:20). And we explore how Beijing’s Winter Olympics may hasten China’s break with the West (17:10).
Sunday Morning: News And Stories From London
Monocle’s Emma Nelson and panelists cover the weekend’s most interesting discussion topics, live from London.
Boomers Daily 