Podcast: The Economics Of The Baby Bust | Works In Progress Podcast. Interview with an economic professor about global fertility rates. The Japanese mode of population decline could be the best case scenario (83m 20s)

Video: How Marlon Brando Changed Acting | YouTube | Nerdwriter1 | 9m 57s

Before Brando, actors were trained to perform theatrically, prioritising “instantly legible emotions for the audience”. His gestures and signature mumble reflected a radical departure from this style.

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You Have To Do The Living Yourself

Oliver Burkeman | The Imperfectionist | 30th October 2025

A self-described "recovering personal-development obsessive" lays to rest the idea that there will ever be one easy hack that will "fix" a life. The answers are internal, not external. "It’s a matter of coming back and back and back to the question of what you could do right now that would constitute living the way you aspire to live." Values, not tricks, are what makes a life feel fulfilling in the long term (1,200 words)

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Bible Sales And Chipotle Explain The Economy

Kyla Scanlon | Kyla's Newsletter | 30th October 2025

The US economy has become a casino and monetary policy is now just a mood ring trying to manipulate how people feel about it. "Apparently, the invisible hand also deals cards." Everything has become transactional. Bible sales are way up but church attendance is way down. For everyone other than the super-wealthy, everything is a gamble — their attention, their time and their faith (2,000 words)

What Is A Manifold?

Paulina Rowińska | Quanta | 3rd November 2025

An accessible primer. “Standing in the middle of a field, we can easily forget that we live on a round planet. We’re so small in comparison to the Earth that from our point of view, it looks flat. The world is full of such shapes, ones that look flat to an ant living on them, even though they might have a more complicated global structure. Mathematicians call these shapes manifolds” (1,800 words)

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How To Write About Sudan

Yassmin Abdel-Magied | Good Chat | 2nd November 2025

“Treat Sudan as if it were one homogenous place. Sudan is made up of 18 states, 50 million people and over 70 indigenous languages. Ignore this. Describe what is happening as a “civil war”. The audience will be most comfortable when the Sudanese are seen to be killing each other like unthinking savages, rather than for common reasons like territorial and resource acquisition, political power” (1,800 words)

The Living Encounter The Dead

Casey Jo Graham Welmers | Pangyrus | 31st October 2025

Nursing student muses on the sterile way modern medicine treats dead bodies. It goes against centuries of human tradition. "Where was the ritual and care? I wanted anointing oils and purifying waters, incense and burning sage. Where were the murmured prayers, holy paints, burial shrouds? He should have been leaden down with silver or gold, sent off on a funeral pyre, entombed in marble" (2,500 words)

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The Kid Is Alright

Irina Dumitrescu | Serious Eats | 18th October 2025

Defence of "picky eating", by someone who refused to eat most foods until the age of twelve. This was especially fraught because her family lived in Ceaușescu-era Romania and food was hard to come by. After a teenage phase of eating only her own peculiar concoctions, she grew out of it. Now her son refuses all but the blandest foods. It's difficult not to pass on the same shame and the judgement (3,000 words)

Yes, There's A Parallel Parking Championship

Christi VanSyckle | Car And Driver | 27th October 2025 | U

The contest is held annually in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, "a lighthearted yet fiercely battled competition that celebrates the everyday art of parking". There are handicaps and officials with measuring tapes. Hitting the curb means instant disqualification. Scores are calculated based on speed and distance from the curb. The winner says the key is confidence: "Those bumpers are called bumpers for a reason" (1,500 words)

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How Not To Win The Nobel Peace Prize

Peter Caddick-Adams | Engelsberg Ideas | 30th October 2025 | U

Insights about the Nobels, drawn from conversations with Odvar Nordli, late Norwegian prime minister and member of the prize committee. Trump is unlikely to succeed in his quest for the Peace Prize simply because he has publicly lobbied for it; the committee likes to reward "underdogs". Winston Churchill had the same problem. He did receive the Literature Prize as a consolation offering, though (2,500 words)

How To Actually Be Enjoyably Well-Educated

Naomi Alderman | Whatever Works | 24th October 2025

This critique of a popular AI-generated list of ways to "disgustingly educated" is frenetic, earnest and astute. "Don’t give in to the AI bigotry of low expectations! Learn how to find good stuff and put it into your brain!" Make good use of Wikipedia's referencing system, look for multiple reputable perspectives, and do subject matter searches rather than following personalities (3,700 words)

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The Simplest Argument For Veganism

Bentham's Bulldog | 29th October 2025

Simple yet provocative argument for not consuming animal products. "If it’s wrong to do something, then it’s wrong to pay other people to do it." You would not personally use the techniques of factory farms on your own animals — the debeaking, the cramped cages, the slaughtering — so you should not pay someone else to do it for you. Especially not just because you like the taste (700 words)

Bob Dylan Doesn’t Get Embarrassed

Ron Rosenbaum | Literary Hub | 28th October 2025

What went relatively unnoticed in Dylan’s many polite snubs to the Swedish Nobel Academy was an essay he gave them months later, about the literature that had influenced him. In it, he paid tribute to All Quiet on the Western Front, writing: “it’s a book where you lose your childhood, your faith in a meaningful world”. “Dylan makes the point that it’s about the failures of civilisation” (1,500 words)

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Buddhism And Deliberative Democracy

William J. Long | The Immanent Frame | 8th October 2025

Democracy in the modern world is largely a competition of votes between self-interested actors aggregated by interest groups and political parties. The Buddhist idea of sangha offers an alternative model of deliberative governance that it probably sustained for centuries. In contrast to Western liberal democracies today, sangha emphasised duties to others as much as rights for oneself (2,800 words)

When Is It Better To Think Without Words?

Henrik Karlsson | Escaping Flatland | 23rd October 2025

Famous mathematicians have reported thinking not through words, images or equations but such ineffable things as “vibrations in their minds, nonsense words in their ears, or blurry shapes in their heads”. Breakthroughs resulted from this state of “deep, conscious-blurry concentration”. They were reluctant to use words because “they were afraid of the false precision writing forces onto thinking” (3,400 words)

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In Praise Of Useless Robots

Laura Tripaldi | MIT Press Reader | 27th October 2025

Once dominated by human-like bodies and rigid materials, robotics is embracing flexible materials with a range of appearances — octopus-like, pachydermic. Their movements are not pre-programmed but emerge from the material’s response to the environment. Instead of triggering the uncanny valley, they “evoke a sense of sublime otherness, like swimming alongside a whale in the sea” (1,900 words)

From Healing Charm To Cautionary Tale

Greti Dinkova-Bruun | Medievalists | 22nd October 2025 | U

Pre-Enlightenment, frogs were both shunned and desired. Their Biblical association with plague and sin, as well as their slimy nature, made them something to avoid. But at the same time, they were thought to have healing properties. One fifth century remedy calls for a live frog to be placed on the patient's stomach so as to transfer the illness to the amphibian. In the 13C, frog bile could cure ear ache (1,100 words)

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Costs and Choices of Kiki’s Delivery Service

Byron Carson | Econlog | 10th September 2025

Studio Ghibli’s 1989 animated masterpiece is about a 13-year-old witch who survives on her own by running a broomstick-based delivery service. As she succeeds, she struggles to manage the workload and have leisure time. This is the perfect case study for those seeking a greater understanding of the economic concepts of cost and choice. Kiki wrestles continually with subjective opportunity costs (1,600 words)