Podcast: The Hero Housewife Who Solved A Murder | My Mother’s Lies. Citizen sleuth’s solving of a notorious murder case in Kentucky is called into question years later by her son who finds troubling inconsistencies and a possible case of wrongful conviction (41m 47s)

Video: Behind The Magic — Jurassic World Rebirth | YouTube | Industrial Light & Magic | 3m 05s

An artist from the visual effects studio founded by George Lucas explains how they created dinosaurs and other impossible scenes for a new Jurassic Park film.

The Rise And Fall Of ‘Petty Tyrants’

Danny Hillis | Noema | 23rd April 2026

Hunting for hope amid authoritarianism. "Petty tyrants" are those who are "more focused on personal victories than on national priorities" and prioritise lavish public celebrations, ostentatious interior design and foreign wars. Napoleon III, Benito Mussolini and Ferdinand Marcos were of this type. The violent oppression is real and awful. But they have no legacy: "Truth turns reality into a relentless ally" (6,000 words)

Puzzle: Play Nomido, the Browser’s daily word game.

The Clapham North Mystery

Antony Badsey-Ellis | London Reconnections | 21st April 2026

Why is Clapham North, a busy London Underground station south of the Thames, one of only two to still have its original "island platform"? Because in 1900 it was a terminus. Now, every day, thousands of people cram down into a tunnel 30 feet in diameter where trains run both ways. Other stations with this configuration have been replaced, but they can't close this one for long enough (2,000 words)

Shall We Play A Game?

Jon Peterson | Asterisk | 22nd April 2026

Conversation with an expert in simulated combat, encompassing 18C Prussian wargames, Dungeons & Dragons, AI, and more. Interesting throughout. "Don't sell the role-playing in 1824 short. The game was actually played in the feedback loop, in the dialogue. A referee gives you a situation, you play a commander, you are roleplaying somebody in the field. It’s a level of role-playing purity" (3,900 words)

Puzzle: Play Nomido, the Browser’s daily word game.

The Half-Life Of Metrics

Matt Duffy | Signal-Noise Ratio | 21st April 2026

Civilisation is data-driven: we know this from Rome, Egypt and countless other examples. But sentiment, "the actual mood of the citizenry", has always been hard to track other than by proxy. For a time, metrics like GDP or crime rate work for this. Then the metric begins to decay. Crime is going down, but people feel less safe. The economy booms, but they feel poor. Numbers need retirement, too (2,000 words)

Surveillance Pricing

Patrick K. Lin | LPE Project | 20th April 2026

Modern retailers use personal data like purchase history, location, and demographics to charge people different prices for the same product. Mere disclosure — which New York now mandates — may be insufficient to protect consumers from price gouging. This is the “transparency trap”: “the consumer is left informed but unprotected”. “Surveillance pricing is the next data privacy battleground” (1,900 words)

Puzzle: Play Nomido, the Browser’s daily word game.

The Invention Of The Soul

Nicholas Humphrey | Aeon | 17th April 2026

What is the soul? Nothing is more ineffable than this “felt self”. Does it exist? The soul arguably has been a potent invention for human evolution. “From the moment it took off among our ancestors, it must have been highly adaptive, transforming human relationships, encouraging new levels of mutual respect, and greatly increasing the value each person puts on their own and others’ lives” (4,200 words)

Bonnard And Escapism

Julian Bell | Nonsite | 14th April 2026

“One of the reasons, it has often been noted, that Bonnard has had a lower profile in art history than his friend Henri Matisse is that he is much less of an image maker. He creates extraordinarily absorbing objects to look at, and yet he fails — or is it that he declines? — to deliver resoundingly memorable, reproducible, poster-friendly designs. Even at their most majestic, his canvases are relatively elusive” (5,200 words)

Puzzle: Play Nomido, the Browser’s daily word game.

Helium Is Hard To Replace

Brian Potter | Construction Physics | 9th April 2026

Qatar produces a third of the world’s helium, transported through the Strait of Hormuz in specialised containers. The strait’s closure has caused a spike in helium prices and looming shortages. A byproduct of natural gas extraction, helium’s unique properties make it hard to replace — especially in MRI machines, semiconductors, fibre optic cables, scientific research instruments, and technical diving (2,500 words)

Fear And Medical Side Effects

Cremieux Recueil | 17th April 2026

The nocebo effect occurs when negative expectations about a medicine or lifestyle change cause adverse effects even though the intervention itself is inert. This phenomenon is "insidious and pervasive", and has a "shockingly large" impact on public health. Beliefs around seed oils, statins and MSG are high-profile examples. Our ability to lie to ourselves is astonishingly powerful (1,500 words)

Puzzle: Play Nomido, the Browser’s daily word game.

The Peoples Of America

Rudyard William Lynch | Palladium | 16th April 2026

The USA is like China: a continent-sized nation made up of regions with disparate cultures shaped by different political, economic and climate conditions. "Perhaps this is the story of America as a whole, of foreign peoples from different places wrestling, sometimes winning, sometimes losing against the land. However, in the process, they created a land unmistakably and distinctly their own" (7,100 words)

Podcast: How To Solve A Mystery | How To!. A private investigator explains the day-to-day details of his work. Cracking cases is more about being a sympathetic ear than a stealthy mastermind (39m 47s)

Video: Erghad Afewo | YouTube | Tinariwen | 3m 41s

Song from Grammy-winning Saharan band Tinariwen’s new album, featuring stunning animation by Axel Digoix.

Puzzle: Play Nomido, the Browser’s daily word game.

So What If They Have My Data?

Hana Lee Goldin | Card Catalog | 16th April 2026

In 2010, a person online averaged 298 daily digital interactions. Now, it's over 5,000 and includes everything from credit card transactions to browser cookie refreshes. An individual's accumulated data includes personal photos and biometric information, too. Not all of it is shared willingly. Should we care? Yes, this librarian argues. Read the privacy policy, even when they don't want you to (4,000 words)

Nobel Intentions: From The Browser Team

The full Browser recently recommended Nobel Intentions. Today, Browser publisher Uri Bram shares his response in this video.

Puzzle: Play Nomido, the Browser’s daily word game.

What's The Point Of Hardbacks?

Tom Rowley | My Bookshop Backstory | 11th April 2026

Hardback books are heavier, more unwieldy and sufficiently unpopular that a sizeable proportion of readers would rather wait for the release of a paperback. Why do publishers still produce them? This bookseller investigates and finds that the most compelling reason is simply money: hardbacks cost more to print, but the retail price is also higher. The margins are way better for publishers (3,400 words)

The Machine Is Friendly

Lauren Leek | Lauren's Data Substack | 15th April 2026

Insightful, data-driven comparison of how differing approaches to gambling regulation have shaped life in Britain and Australia. The former saw its "third places" close under austerity, while the latter incentivised football clubs and veterans' organisations to stay open by allowing gambling machines. Neither really worked, especially as online betting and prediction markets took over (3,300 words)

Puzzle: Play Nomido, the Browser’s daily word game.

The Metaphysics Of The Good

Matthew B. Crawford | Hedgehog Review | 15th April 2026

Iris Murdoch was a "formidable student of philosophy" and her work in this field should be treasured. "Murdoch’s positive project is arrestingly unconventional. She argues for the central place of love, not just in interpersonal ethics where one might expect to find a discussion of love, but as an epistemic principle. Loving is at the root of our capacity to apprehend the world in its true colours" (4,900 words)

Notes For Self-Education

Jillian Hess | Noted | 13th April 2026

Feynman was a prolific autodidact and worked out his thoughts through note-taking. He would break subjects down to “essential kernels”, a way of thinking from first principles. He maintained a “Notebook of Things I Know Nothing About”. “For Feynman, not-knowing was an exciting state.” “I think it’s much more interesting to live not knowing than to have answers which might be wrong” (1,800 words)

Puzzle: Play Nomido, the Browser’s daily word game.

How To Walk Through Walls

Henrik Karlsson | Escaping Flatland | 14th April 2026

When he was 22, Robert Rodriguez wrote, directed and sold a 90-minute action movie at a total expense of $7000, a third of the cost of a film trailer. How? By adopting “hacker mindset”. There are people who accept the superficial view of a system and conventional wisdom on how to do things. Then there are those who understand the nuts and bolts of the underlying system and use them effectively (3,000 words)

The Post-Populist Dilemma

Yascha Mounk | 13th April 2026

Sober, sanguine reflections in the wake of Orbán’s crushing defeat at the polls in Hungary. “Most countries are neither perfect democracies nor outright dictatorships; they fall on some point along the messy continuum between the two.” The real risk is that “those in power are able to rewrite the rules of the game in their own favour without ever quite rendering democratic elections meaningless” (2,100 words)

Puzzle: Play Nomido, the Browser’s daily word game.

You Too Could Found A Nation

Brad Skow | Mostly Aesthetics | 10th April 2026

John Adams had poor social skills. Jefferson lived with his mother for much of his life and was awful at public speaking. Washington, in command of the Virginia Regiment in 1754, “fumbled an encounter with French troops”, inadvertently starting a war. He was “acquisitive” about land and used unscrupulous means to get it. Then in 1773, they dumped 340 chests of tea into the Boston harbour, making history (1,100 words)