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A Puzzle About Disability And Old Age

Kasper Lippert-Rasmussen | Justice Everywhere | 1st July 2021

Proposition one: Disabled people are not worse than non-disabled people, merely different in certain ways. Proposition two: Old people are not worse that young people, merely different in certain ways. Proposition three: If a young person were offered a pill that kept them physically and mentally young throughout life, they would be wise to take it. Are all three propositions congruent? (900 words)

Decrypting Indian Legalese

Bhavya Dore | Popula | 1st July 2021

Indian legalese might be one of the most joyously inventive languages on Earth, if only so much of such desperate seriousness did not depend on it. Judges spout the sort of prose you might otherwise obtain by seeding an artificial intelligence with a statute book, the Mahabharata, the works of Dickens, and a diet of LSD. No brief quotes can do justice, this is definitely a read-the-whole-thing (1,600 words)

We Learn Nothing

Tim Kreider | The Nervous Breakdown | 29th September 2012

On the aftermath of a near death experience. Following a stab wound to the throat, the author had a euphoric year free from unhappiness and self consciousness. He brewed dandelion wine, delighted in cheesy music and developed a new laugh, "the laugh of a much larger man". The feeling is hard to hold onto, though — we are prone to finding greater clarity in depression than we do in joy (1,685 words)

Audio of the Week: Where Is Mr President?

Out Of The Woods | Miran Hadžić Productions | 22nd June 2021 | Audio

Series showcasing new plays from writers in the Balkans. This one, by Pristina-based writer Agnesa Mehanolli, is a comic political satire about a fraught and chaotic Independence Day rally in Kosovo. The president doesn't appear to speak on cue, and his colleagues and staffers become increasingly paranoid and alarmed. Like The Thick of It with an eastern European twist (26m 39s)

Book of the Week: Blockchain Chicken Farm

by Xiaowei Wang | Courtesy of Asian Review of Books

A series of connected essays on what's different about the development of technology in China, and how that relates to the development of society. The leading essay discusses how the blockchain is being used to verify the origin of organic chickens: customers scan a QR code on a tamper-proof ankle bracelet to find a picture of the chicken and details of its life. Surreal and insightful throughout (256 pages)

Afterthought:
“The great human error is to reason in place of finding out”
— Simone Weil

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Bitcoin, Currency, And Bubbles

Nassim Nicholas Taleb | Academia | 23rd June 2021 | PDF

Bitcoin's value has been driven mainly by the enthusiasm of miners, and will fall to zero when all Bitcoins have been mined. It will fall sooner if the near-certainty  of an eventual collapse is more widely understood and discounted. Bitcoin is a failed currency with no redeeming virtues. "With the exception of Salvadoran permanent residence (three Bitcoins) there are no prices fixed in Bitcoin" (3,200 words)

City Of Bees

Tim Maendel | Plough | 21st June 2021

Nature notes from an urban beekeeper. "I don’t understand half of what is going on. I can discover a problem only to find the bees are already halfway to fixing it themselves. I have seen a queenless hive, doomed to fail, and rushed out to buy a queen – only to find on my return that the bees were well on the way to making their own, feeding a larva with the special food that transforms her" (1,200 words)

Fat Suits In Hollywood

Hazel Cills | Jezebel | 22nd June 2021

Using padding so that thin actors can play fat characters is a practice that peaked in US entertainment of the 1990s as the "obesity epidemic" was climbing up the news agenda. It's a costuming choice that highlights the real life star's thinness while underlining the moral traits that are often linked to being overweight. The body shape, not the performance, becomes the spectacle (1,890 words)

Audio of the Week: Behind The Scenes

Episode: "The Composers" | Podcast: Mission Commission | 36m 54s

Six-part series documenting the process of creating a new work of classical music in today's arts industry. This episode introduces the three composers being profiled, who each talk eloquently about their process when starting a new piece. The finished works are also on the feed, and are worth listening to after experiencing them coming together over the different episodes (36m 54s)

Book of the Week: Entangled Life

by Merlin Sheldrake | Courtesy of Five Books

A reevaluation of the role of fungi in the natural world. Where there are plants, there are mycelial networks so small that we simply weren't aware of them. The task of unravelling what exactly fungi do requires an interrogation of many of our basic assumptions and principles about the natural world. Sheldrake takes up this task with a sense of wonder that one cannot help but be caught up in (368 pages)

Afterthought:
"Those who do not want to imitate anything, produce nothing"
— Salvador Dali

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Dress And Decor

Witold Rybczynski | The Clothed Home | June 2021 | PDF

Essay from the catalogue for the Polish pavilion at the 2021 London Design Biennale. It explores how textiles connect interior decoration and fashion, from curtains to the Empire fashion for swagged "tent rooms". Fabrics are excellent at communicating aesthetic: "Starchly formal or comfortably casual, intensely avant-garde or resolutely traditional, cosmopolitan or homely" (1,989 words)

Are Plants Animals Like Any Other?

Enrique Utria | Books And Ideas | 5th April 2021

Is plant life worthy of respect? Surely yes, to some degree: A reasonable person will feel distress at the wanton felling of a great tree. Yet we treat the killing of plants for food as positively virtuous, because it substitutes for the killing and eating of animals. Is that just because animal physiology more closely resembles our own? Would we hear le cri de la carrotte if we knew how to listen for it? (1,800 words)

What Does Europe Have Against Halal?

John R. Bowen | Boston Review | 11th June 2021

The growing tension in European countries such as France and the Netherlands over halal and kosher products is less to do with interfaith friction than it is about conflict between religious and secular worldviews. Without clear structures that integrate faith requirements into general food safety, discontent thrives. "Halal worries provide a politically useful focus for anti-Islam politicians" (2,609 words)

Audio of the Week: Hand Waving

Episode: "Noodle Arms No More" | Podcast: Blind Guy Travels | 16m 32s

Is it possible to learn body language, if you have never seen it in action? Matthew Shifrin, blind from birth, found himself in that situation when preparing to give a TED talk. The talking part was relatively straightforward. But what should he do with his arms as he spoke? What did other people do? It proved surprisingly hard to spell out rules and principles generally acquired by observation (16m 32s)

Book Of The Week: Hieroglyphics

by Maria Carmela Betrò |  Courtesy of Five Books

A serious introduction to the study of hieroglyphics, presented almost like an art book. Every sign is given a full page, signs are grouped by category, and the signs are placed within the context of the culture and religion. If you read the book from cover to cover you'll start to feel the recurring themes: what kinds of tools people use, what kinds of plants and animals they encounter, and what significance all these things held (252 pages)

Afterthought:
"We are all curious about what might hurt us"
— Federico Garcia Lorca

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My Sensational Drama Queen

Juli Delgado Lopera | Stranger's Guide | 28th March 2021

Diary of a Saturday afternoon in Bogota. "Señoras in full rulo realness checking the ripeness of avocados on the fruit stand in the corner. Y siempre the altiplando cundiboyacense as our backdrop, the sabana cradling our bodies. Underneath the paved cement, the history of our home whispers its violence as the wheels of the bus continue: Bogotá is Muisca, Bogotá is indigenous land" (1,800 words)

Xi Jinping And Stalin

Geremie Barmé | China Heritage | 9th June 2021

Chinese leader Xi Jinping is following the example of Stalin and Mao in making "struggle" the organising principle of his dictatorship. Xi preserves his own supreme power by engineering conflicts among potential rivals. "When an individual penchant for purblind tyranny is informed by a sophisticated political theory, a breathtaking and deeply troubling vista unfolds" (16,100 words)

Evolution Of The Dad

Elizabeth Preston | Knowable | 15th June 2021

Human fathers are rare among mammals in taking part in the care of their young. This strategy is part of our evolutionary success — it allows more children to be born closer together — but it is far from clear why other animals don't do the same. Post birth, some fathers today experience reduced testosterone levels, "which may help them be more nurturing to their newborn children" (2,034 words)

Audio of the Week: A Bridge Too Far

Episode: "The Beautiful Bay Bridge Frank Lloyd Wright Never Got To Build" | Podcast: Bay Curious | 11m 17s

Frank Lloyd Wright designed dozens of buildings for San Francisco but only a handful of them were built. Among his unused projects is the "Butterfly Bridge", a proposal for a second bridge across the bay inspired by the curved lines of an insect's thorax. Built from concrete, his bridge would have had a central hanging garden where motorists could pull over and commune with nature (11m 17s)

Book Of The Week: The Autobiography of Benvenuto Cellini

by Benvenuto Cellini | Courtesy of  Five Books

Autobiography of an Italian Renaissance artist, with everything you might hope to find: Cellini drinks with Michelangelo (always referred to as 'the divine Michelangelo'), orchestrates murders, and even the leads defence of the Castel Sant’ Angelo, on the battlements alongside the Pope. And finally, wonderfully vivid descriptions of the process of bronze sculpting (504 pages)

Afterthought:
"I don't believe in anything you have to believe in"
— Fran Lebowitz

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The Crystal Hunters Of Chamonix

Simon Akam | Outside | 8th June 2021

Shadowing a cristallier across the Mont Blanc massif. These precarious expeditions in search of concealed pockets of rare crystals in the rock face are permitted as long as hunters use "traditional" methods — i.e. no explosives or pneumatic equipment. The climber here uses only a chisel and "a green plastic rake appropriated from his children’s sandcastle equipment" (5,794 words)

Thoughts On The Common Toad

George Orwell | Berfrois | 27th May 2021

Beguiling essay about the spawning of toads, and other joys of Spring, in post-war London. "The toad has a very spiritual look, like a strict Anglo-Catholic towards the end of Lent. His movements are languid, his body is shrunken, and his eyes abnormally large. This allows one to notice, what one might not at another time, that a toad has about the most beautiful eye of any living creature" (1,600 words)

Rights And Wrongs

Katrina Goldstone | Dublin Review Of Books | 1st June 2021

Review of a book about Hannah Arendt. Finding a definitive interpretation of such a complex figure is difficult; for many the lure of easy metaphor is too powerful. "Arendt’s life in microcosm symbolises in its extraordinary complexity the twentieth century’s barbarities and upheavals." Her evolution from stateless exile into "celebrity public intellectual" is still an irresistible story (1,746 words)

Audio of the Week: Prince Charming

Episode: "The Coalman Who Could Have Been A Prince" | Podcast: Life Changing | 28m 53s

Touching interview with South Wales coal merchant, "Keith the Coal", about his unexpected family history. Adopted at 13, he tracked down his birth mother in his forties and discovered that his father was a Malaysian prince. The host gently teases out whether learning that he was the firstborn son of the Sultan of Perak changed his self image; he insists he is content to have grown up Welsh (28m 53s)

Book of the Week: Black Spartacus

by Sudhir Hazareesingh | Courtesy of Five Books

A biography of the emancipated black slave who led the first successful slave revolt against a global power, and a step-by-step look at how he managed to pull it off. A brilliant military strategist and advocate of Enlightenment ideals, he also drew on voodoo and was a talented double-dealer. “I am Toussaint Louverture, you have perhaps heard my name. You are aware, brothers, that I have undertaken vengeance, and that I want freedom and equality to reign in Saint-Domingue.” (370 pages)

Afterthought:
"We can understand things better. We can never understand things fully"
— David Deutsch

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Returns To Scale In Broken Windows

Alvaro de Menard | Fantastic Anachronism | 25th May 2021

Bastiat's "broken window fallacy" holds that breaking and then replacing a window might seem to generate economic activity, but sums to a net loss when opportunity cost is taken into account. But what if destruction shows positive returns to scale? Wars and natural disasters enable the rethinking and redesign of cities, systems and institutions. Might such events yield net gains in the long term? (2,900 words)

Merlin’s Owl

Lewis H. Lapham | Lapham's Quarterly | 18th May 2021

Text of a commencement speech delivered in 2003, advising perpetual curiosity. "The future turns out to be something that you make instead of find. It isn’t waiting for your arrival, either with an arrest warrant or a band, nor is it any further away than the next sentence, the next best guess, the next sketch for the painting of a life portrait that might become a masterpiece" (3,673 words)

Objects Of Fire

Tessa Love | The Believer | 1st June 2021

Collection of oral histories about treasured objects lost in the Californian wildfires. Some are substantial, such as the barn housing 12 horses set loose to take their chance when the flames swept in. Others are small and easily left behind, like a set of cutlery or a single photograph of a long dead relative. All are regretted for what they represented and for the memories they held (4,722 words)

Audio of the Week: Origin Story

Episode: "The Curious Curator Of Culinary History" | Podcast: Proof | 35m 03s

Ever wondered what Roman soldiers ate? Ask Lynn Olver, founder of the Food Timeline, a food-history website that has attracted 35 million readers and answered 25,000 questions since launch in 1999, leading with a timeline that shows when particular foods first appeared for consumption, ranging from almonds in 10,000 BCE to Kool-Aid pickles in 2007 (35m 03s)

Book of the Week: When We Cease To Understand The World

by Benjamin Labatut | Courtesy of Five Books

A series of linked pieces, part essay, part story, and part biography, about great thinkers of the 20th century on the verge of collapsing into madness as they unlock the secrets of the universe. The book offers a perspective on mathematics and physics as symbolic systems. Expressive though they may be, they are incapable of truly containing the strangeness of reality (192 pages)

Afterthought:
"To live is so startling it leaves little time for anything else"
— Emily Dickinson

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Is God A Liberal?

Richard Oxenberg | Philpapers | 16th May 2021 | PDF

If God exists, then God is an old-fashioned liberal — because God lets Her subjects choose how to live and what to believe. Many humans throughout history have called for divine rule, but God has never accepted the invitation. "We can assume that if God wishes to rule, God will find a way to do so. The fact that God does not rule can only be taken to signify that God does not choose to" (1,550 words)

Bird Architecture

Etienne Guyonne et al | MIT Press | 26th February 2021

How birds build their nests. Thrushes lay twigs which they cover with moss and mud. Penguins pile up pebbles. Swallows are "expert masons" who "aggregate mudballs". Malay swiftlets use their own hardened saliva to make nests which often end up in bird's nest soup. Cuckoos steal nests from other birds. Ostriches don't need nests at all, because they bury their eggs in the ground (1,100 words)

The Spectre Of Mannetjies Roux

Robina Marks | Africa Is A Country | 14th May 2021

Flying across Africa, an ambassador reflects on the roaming population of white South African men who, despite everything, still benefit from the residue of colonial influence. "They are not a likeable bunch, but then again, they are not trying to be liked. They seem caught in a time warp in this new Africa, where the old rules around race and power no longer work in their favour" (1,502 words)

Audio of the Week: Inner Voice

Episode: "Shipworm" | Podcast: Shipworm | 115m 57s

Experiment with the podcast form that claims to be the "first of its kind feature-length audio movie". The result is a long form audio drama with cinematic sound design that stars Broadway actors. It follows the fortunes of protagonist Wallace, who awakes to find that he has been fitted with an invisible earpiece. This acts as a conduit for a mysterious voice that now controls his life (115m 57s)

Book of the Week: Nothing To Envy

by Barbara Demick | Courtesy of Five Books

A masterwork of narrative nonfiction on life in North Korea, built from the harrowing stories of defectors who lived through famine, brainwashing, and desperate attempts to escape. Of particular interest is the final section, where Demick pulls back the curtain to reflect on the limitations of getting access only through defectors, and to discuss how life in South Korea has affected them (316 pages)

Afterthought:
"The trouble with psychology is that it doesn't take human nature into account"
— Ruth Rendell

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Care And Keeping Of Mythological Apparitions

Sean Flynn | Literary Hub | 13th May 2021

A farmer discovers the pleasures of acquiring a peacock. It "patrols the yard like a sentry in dress uniform, high-stepping through the irises", throwing up a "fabulous spray of feathers" every now and again, seemingly with no thought other than to show that such events are possible — "inevitable, and yet a surprise every time". A peacock is "not a bird that one possesses, so much as experiences" (1,900 words)

New York’s King Of Russian Hair

Vijai Maheshwari | Narratively | 13th May 2021

Confessions of a hair-based hustler. A writer, laid off from a Ukrainian magazine in a recession, becomes a supplier of Russian hair to New York wigmakers. This hair is "very blond and displayed in glass vitrines, like cold cuts at a deli". The men who deal in it love to stroke it. Briefly, he corners the market, before a revolution takes the hair export business mainstream and leaves him behind (5,167 words)

Construction, Efficiency, And Production

Brian Potter | Construction Physics | 4th May 2021

Why construction projects are intrinsically inefficient, at least when measured against Adam Smith's platonic pin factory. Throughput is "extremely low", cycle time is "incredibly high", work-in-process is "enormous", and any construction site is "rife with variability". Work rarely if ever follows a "well-defined plan", but consists of constant accommodations, shifts, and improvisations (2,500 words)

Audio of the Week: Field Kitchen

Episode: "In Search Of Mycotopia" | Podcast: Roots And All | 32m 00s

Interview with mushroom obsessive Doug Bierend, who says fungi are too often viewed merely as a curiosities and commodities for human consumption, rather than as an ecosystem in their own right. He doesn't quite propose that humans should "live like fungus", but he does think we could learn much of value from the ways that fungi manage to coexist humbly with the rest of nature (32m 00s)

Book of the Week: The Next 500 Years

by Christopher Mason | Courtesy of Five Books

The case for space travel beyond our solar system as a categorical imperative. The author, a geneticist at Weill Cornell Medicine who studies the effect of space on the body, goes through exactly what the plan for the next 500 years should be. “Life cannot remain on Earth, because the sun will eventually over-heat the Earth, likely engulf the Earth, shrivel into a White Dwarf, and die. Earth is the only home we have ever known, and if it remains that way, it will also be our grave” (256 pages)

Afterthought:
"Men talk of killing time, while time quietly kills them"
— Dion Boucicault

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The Inexplicable World Of Dowsing

Dan Schwartz | Outside | 3rd May 2021

Is the ancient practice of dowsing for water a science, a kind of magic, or a charlatan's trick? This writer investigates, and ends up dowsing successfully himself. "The rods begin to close... They close like strong hands have grabbed them and are twisting them in. They close like rain must fall and wind must blow, like it’s their natural course, like they always have and always will" (5,152 words)

The Biggest Churches In The World

James Cameron | Stained Glass Attitudes | 7th May 2021

Succinct and illustrated account of how the Norman conquest of England in 1066 produced an extraordinary programme of cathedral building, resulting in "a string of churches of often dizzying scale and increasing complexity". As well as laying the architectural foundations for future Gothic additions, these structures expressed an imperial might that harked back to the Roman Empire (962 words)

The Origin Of Covid

Nicholas Wade | Bulletin Of Atomic Scientists | 5th May 2021

Wade, who knows his stuff, weighs evidence that the Covid virus originated in the wild, perhaps among Chinese bats, against evidence that the virus was leaked unintentionally from a Wuhan laboratory that was conducting research financed by the US government. Wade warns against drawing final conclusions, but the preponderance of evidence in favour of a lab leak is overwhelming (11,100 words)

Audio of the Week: Song Wars

Episode: "Adam Buxton" | Podcast: Tape Notes | 122m 54s

Long but worth every minute. This nerdy show about music production welcomes cult British radio favourite Adam Buxton, now best known for his eponymous podcast. Over two hours, Buxton takes listeners through his personal archive of jingles and comic songs. An absolute goldmine of behind the scenes detail for fans, but very enjoyable even if Buxton is entirely new to you (122m 54s)

Book of the Week: Conflicted

by Ian Leslise | Courtesy of Five Books

A British journalist who sets out to reduce personal conflict discovers, in the course of his research, that it’s essential to our well-being. Arguments, it turns out, make us closer to our loved ones and and more creative at work. Passive aggression, however, serves no useful purpose, merely conveying that "we are hacked off but are too anxious at the prospect of confrontation to be upfront about it” (257 pages)

Afterthought:
"Truth springs from argument amongst friends"
— David Hume

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A Grawlix

Keith Houston | Shady Characters | 29th April 2021

Brief lexicon of comic-book art. Brif­fits are "little clouds that show where a fast-mov­ing ob­ject (such as a fist) star­ted its arc". Hites, dites and vites are "lines show­ing the dir­ec­tion (ho­ri­zontal, di­ag­onal or ver­tical) in which an ob­ject moved". Squeans are star­bursts around a person's head signalling intoxication. A grawlix is a "pile of non-al­pha­nu­meric char­ac­ters rep­res­enting a pro­fan­ity" (950 words)

Can Single Cells Learn?

Catherine Offord | The Scientist | 1st May 2021

In the 1960s, psychologist Beatrice Gelber conducted experiments that seemed to show single celled microorganisms like protozoa forming associations after training, or "learning" to expect rewards from certain scenarios. Her findings were highly controversial and largely buried, but are now being revisited as scientific interest in artificial intelligence expands the concept of memory (3,774 words)

The Dangers Of Consistency

Charles Moore | Claremont Review Of Books | 27th April 2021

Critique of a biography of Adolf Hitler. This review offers great insight into the chronicler's art. Repellant as the exercise may be in this case, it is necessary to sympathise with one's subject. "Without such sympathy, there can be no full understanding. The biographer must enter his subject’s mind — the darker, the harder — and try to travel with him on his life’s journey" (2,209 words)

Audio of the Week: Heir Apparent

Episode: "Part One" | Podcast: Little Boots | 50m 37s

Drama set in 37 CE, in the dying days of the reign of the Roman Emperor Tiberius. This first episode is concerned with the murky succession of 24 year old Gaius, better known to history as Caligula. This podcast has been written and recorded much like a play, with minimal sound effects, so listening gives the pleasing sensation of being in the audience at the theatre (50m 37s)

Book of the Week: Rebellion, Rascals, and Revenue

by Michael Keen and Joel Slemrod | Courtesy of Five Books

The seemingly impossible has been achieved: a book about taxes that’s funny. The authors are economists (one in academia, one at the IMF) who truly delight in fiscal history. “The intellectual case for using carbon taxes to save the planet from climate risk," they say, "is much the same as that for the tax on beards introduced in Russia by Peter the Great in order to save Russia from the boyars” (398 pages)

Afterthought:
"A man is what he thinks about all day long"
— Ralph Waldo Emerson

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Human-Monkey Chimeras

Julian Savulescu & Julian Koplin | Practical Ethics | 20th April 2021

Scientists report promising results from experiments to combine human stem-cells with monkey embryos. The immediate aim is to grow organs in animals suitable for transplanting into humans. But the ultimate product could be a living chimera, part-human and part-monkey. Horrific in a way, but also salutary if this forces us to recognise that humans are on a continuum with other animals (1,200 words)

A Kind Of Packaged Ageing Process

Jan Morris | Paris Review | 23rd April 2021

Short postcard from the late writer Jan Morris about a Mediterranean cruise that she took for "convalescent reasons". Initially sceptical about the pressure on the elderly passengers to "face up to decay", she is ultimately won over. "The sprightly enthusiasm of it all had seduced me: the fertile mix of Carnival and Palm Court, and the determination to make the most of everything" (977 words)

The Failure Of Nuclear Power

Jason Crawford | Roots Of Progress | 16th April 2021

Nuclear power could substitute fully and more cheaply for fossil fuels, but it has been priced out of America's energy market by a piling-on of misconceived health and safety regulations treating any risk of radiation as dangerous. We know enough now to design disaster-proof reactors; but the taboos are too strong. Bolder, and probably poorer, countries will have to lead the way (4,600 words)

Audio of the Week: Dawn Chorus

Episode: "Beautiful Swamp" | Podcast: Science Talk | 36m 01s

Combination of a soundscape and a nature walk. The host, an ecologist and field recordist, sets out to capture the sound of wildlife at dawn in a nature reserve in northeastern Louisiana, USA. The habitat includes flooded forest and is home to grey tree frogs, crickets and many species of bird. Their calls are enhanced by the inclusion of gentle explanatory interjections from the expert (36m 01s)

Book of the Week: Malevolent Republic

by K.S. Komireddi | Courtesy of Five Books

An Indian essayist embarks on a scathing history of his country since independence, explaining the various forces and personalities that got India to its current point, as "a brutally exclusionary Hindu-supremacist state" being "run by bigots dedicated to destroying all that made it." Modi’s path to power seems almost incidental given the missteps of the preceding prime ministers—from Indira Gandhi, a ruthless leader “devoured by the ogre she fostered”, to Manmohan Singh, politically “the least qualified candidate for the job” (210 pages)

Afterthought:
"Genius is only a greater aptitude for patience"
— Georges-Louis Leclerc

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Signs That Make A City

Owen Hatherley | Tribune | 15th April 2021

Lovingly created signage makes a city look lovely and creative. Cheap and nasty signage makes a city look cheap and nasty. The medium is the message. Berlin sends all the right messages, with well-turned fonts and neons; East Berlin copied West Berlin's aesthetics, so the reunified city is surprisingly cohesive. Pre-war London signs were gorgeous; post-war London signs are tawdry  (1,300 words)

Building A Chinese WWE

Kenrick Davis | Sixth Tone | 19th April 2021

China’s tiny professional wrestling scene is attracting a fanbase by putting a local twist on western tropes. "The villain, Steve the English as a Second Language Teacher, cements his bad guy status by bringing textbooks for the IELTS — an English exam loathed by Chinese students — into the ring. He battles heroes such as Bamboo Crusher, a fighter with painted panda eye marks" (3,058 words)

Getting Sick For Medical Research

Hannah Thomasy | Undark | 7th April 2021

Horribly gripping. What it's like to be a volunteer in a "challenge trial". Your body is "challenged", by being infected with germs, or parasites, so that your reactions, and the effects of unproven drugs, can be monitored. "Bernot couldn’t see the larvae, but he could soon feel them: a tingling, itchy sensation as the worm larvae wriggled through his skin and into his bloodstream" (2,700 words)

Audio of the Week: Dairy Free

Episode: "California Milk Processor Board 'Got Milk?'" | Podcast: Tagline | 65m 09s

Detailed dissection of a 1990s American advertising campaign. The "got milk?" slogan and accompanying TV adverts — the most famous of which was directed by an early career Michael Bay — became ubiquitous in pop culture. This show zooms in on the craft and conflicts involved in creating such a campaign, and asks whether it was actually effective in getting more people to drink milk (65m 09s)

Book of the Week: War and Peace

by Leo Tolstoy | Courtesy of Five Books

A Tolstoy biographer (and translator of Anna Karenina) gives her view on the best translation of War and Peace. When recent revisions by an American scholar are taken into account, the 1922 translation by the husband and wife team Louise and Aylmer Maude comes top, and deserving of the title 'definitive'. "The Maudes both spent long years living in Moscow and spoke flawless Russian. Although neither came from a literary background, they knew Tolstoy well"  (1392 pages)

Editor's Note: The conversation between Robert Cottrell and Stephen Dubner on all things Freakonomics is now available to watch online.

Afterthought:
"It's not the voting that's democracy, it's the counting"
— Tom Stoppard

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