Who Is Portugal For?
Vasco Queirós | Palladium | 23rd February 2024
Increasingly, not Portuguese people under the age of 40. Portugal is the second-oldest country in Europe after Italy. Five million people live on state benefits, 35 per cent of whom are retirees. These seniors are shaping the nation: they vote, "effectively, to extract rent for themselves from young people through the state". Unsurprisingly, one in three people aged 15-39 has left for overseas (3,100 words)
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Consider The Pawpaw
Matthew Meduri | Belt | 15th February 2024
The pawpaw is "an enigma", unknown to most Americans. These fruits are "characterised by their oblong shape, delicate greenish-yellow skin, a creamy custard-like flesh that varies from white to a deep orange, a central row of large black seeds, and the way they typically grow in clusters, like bananas". Unlike the pomegranate, it has never attracted a billionaire fan to promote it (5,400 words)
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On Letting Go Of The Idea Of “Keeping Up”
Molly Templeton | Reactor | 28th March 2024
About that dreaded question: “so, what have you read lately?”. “I suddenly wanted to hold my cards, and my books, extremely close to the chest. People stress about not having time to read — a fair complaint, but one that has a different tone when the subtext is “I’m getting behind”. Behind on what, and to whom? Who is served by this stress, by reading challenges and lists and shelfies and book hauls?” (1,200 words)
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The Great Oxygenation Event
Ethan Siegel | Big Think | 1st April 2024
Two billion years into Earth’s existence, cyanobacteria began proliferating and producing copious amounts of oxygen — which destroyed atmospheric methane, causing global temperatures to plummet. The resulting ice age lasted 300 million years and nearly ended life on Earth. “The way this climate disaster came about is instructive to anyone who wishes to avoid a similar disaster in the present” (3,300 words)
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Digitally Liberating Colonial Plunder
Alizeh Kohari | Noēma | 28th March 2024
Digital repatriation for museum artefacts, as opposed to more politically fraught physical relocation, is surging in popularity. A 3D scan of an object enables those who cannot physically access it to view, study and understand it. One such scan, of the famous Nefertiti Bust displayed at the Neues Museum in Berlin, was made covertly using "a modified Xbox Kinect hidden under a blue scarf" (3,600 words)
$100,000 Lab Leak Debate
Scott Alexander | Astral Codex Ten | 28th March 2024
Novel method for settling an intellectual dispute. On one side, millionaire investor and poker player Saar Wilf, who espouses the lab leak theory of Covid-19's origins. On the other, Peter Miller, a physics student who thinks the lab leak theory is false. Via Wilf's analysis platform Rootclaim, the pair made a $100,000 bet, appointed judges, and took part in a 15-hour video debate. Miller won (16,000 words)
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Five Books features in-depth author interviews recommending five books on a theme. You can read more interviews on the site, or sign up for the newsletter.
The Best Books On Wellness
Today the idea of wellness has been wrapped into 'self care' and the luxury lifestyle. But the movement grew out of radical ideas in the 1960s and 1970s, explains the Cambridge academic James Riley, whose new book presents a cultural history of alternative health. Here he recommends five of the best books on wellness—taking in both satirical novels and how-to guidebooks. Read more
New History Books
A magisterial account of the Eastern Front in World War I and a lively graphic history of the Late Bronze Age are among the new books that'll be out in coming weeks. Our running list of new history books, picked out by Five Books editor Sophie Roell. Read more
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Giving Up
Christiana Spens | London Magazine | 28th March 2024
Lenten memoir. "I booked us into an intriguing B&B in a Victorian house, and we were greeted by a Russian Orthodox Priest. The walls were decorated with icons and antiques, a large gong by the foot of the stairs and shrines and candles at every turn. The Priest wore long black robes and a bright smile and showed us to our room. ‘Does this place even have plug sockets?’ my son asked" (1,700 words)
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Genius And Blood
Tony Morley | Big Think | 28th March 2024
Prior to industrialisation, artificial light was ruinously expensive. In 14C Britain, the cost equivalent of running ten modern bulbs for seven hours would be over £40,000. A candlelit house was a sign of extreme wealth because of the labour involved in making candles. Lamps filled with whale oil were the first reliable and safely portable light source, but the fuel was still costly to procure (1,700 words)
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The Dust Of God
Sam Kriss | Numb At The Lodge | 24th March 2024
On meteor cults, which offer an explanation for human religion. "There’s a chance that the entity billions of us now refer to as God began, 3,000 years ago, as a small lump of rock. Before he was the sole creator of the universe, lord of everything, beyond space, beyond time, not a being among beings but the ground of all being — before that, he spent billions of years erratically orbiting the Sun" (5,900 words)
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Toni Morrison’s Rejection Letters
Melina Moe | Los Angeles Review Of Books | 26th March 2024
This survey of the hundreds of rejection letters Morrison wrote during her 16 years at Random House suggests that she was a very good editor. Too good, perhaps, for the era of aggressive corporate consolidation she witnessed. She was not afraid to be blunt — "it simply wasn’t interesting enough", one slip reads — but she was always honest, and did her best to help unjustly rejected writers (2,500 words)
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Big Gods
Brian Klaas | The Garden Of Forking Paths | 21st March 2024
Humans had largely lived in small bands of fewer than a hundred people, until 12000 years ago, when large, complex civilisations emerged. What enabled the transition? The “Big Gods” theory holds that it is the belief in omniscient beings who watched and punished moral transgressions — “supernatural monitoring” which acted as social glue, preventing individuals from acting against the group’s interests (3,700 words)
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The Hostile Mother-In-Law
Jack Maden | Philosophy Break | 25th March 2024
Reflections on Iris Murdoch’s philosophy. The essence of a moral life is not in moments of action or decision, but in paying the right kind of attention. This entails “unselfing”: “observing the world without the crutch of our usual prejudices”. Example: a mother-in-law finds her daughter-in-law “unpolished and undignified” but over time, realises that this reflects more on herself as someone “old-fashioned and prejudiced” (1,400 words)
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Beware Of Falling Fruit
Sony Devabhaktuni & Joanna Mansbridge | CCA | 18th March 2024
Performances of safety pervade Hong Kong, where “unruly” plants and animals inconvenience day-to-day business. Warning signs include “wild pigs in area” and, incredibly, “beware of falling fruit”. How would this curious assembly of boars, mangoes, and road-side trees interact with each other? — “would they form alliances? Are they anxious about their own safety, indifferent, amused, or blasé?” (3,200 words)
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Etymology Of South Asia’s Missiles
Qamar Shahzad | South Asian Voices | 29th February 2024
India's and Pakistan’s naming strategies for their missiles are calculated statecraft, to increase legitimacy of military and political elites amongst a low-literacy populace. For example, Pakistan’s missiles: “Hatf” — “death”, the Prophet’s sword; “Ra’ad” — “thunder”, the Islamic concept of divine punishment. India’s missiles: “Agni” — Vedic fire god invoking nuclear power; “Trishul” — the god Shiva’s trident (1,500 words)
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Five Books features in-depth author interviews recommending five books on a theme. You can read more interviews on the site, or sign up for the newsletter.
The Best Travel Writing: the 2024 Edward Stanford Awards
Every spring, the judges of the Edward Stanford Travel Writing Awards draw up a shortlist for the title of the 'travel book of the year.' The 2024 shortlist highlights six fascinating recent travelogues that wrestle with political and environmental issues, and explore the contrast between the outsider and the insider gaze. Read more
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Readers in New York are invited to join us for another edition of our famous Olfactory Browser meetup on Sunday, March 31st at 4pm, a fun chance to meet other Browser readers and win special giraffe-laden prizes. Friends and children welcome; tickets + details here.
The Best Science Fantasy
We use 'science fantasy' when a book seems to be both science fiction and fantasy. What distinguishes the two, and what does it mean to combine them? These books are an opportunity to explore our ways of knowing, reflect changing cultures, and find humour in the unexpected, says award-winning fantasy and sci fi author Vajra Chandrasekera. Read more
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Things That Don't Work
Dynomight | 21st March 2024
Things, big and small, that don't work for most people, with links to sources. Interesting throughout. Mundane entries include: dieting, explaining board games, telling jokes, multivitamins, acupuncture and elegant mathematical notation. Bigger concepts fall under the same heading, such as "wanting to be liked", communism, picking stocks and "religion without the G word"(1,600 words)
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Interaction Patterns Across Platforms
Walter Quattrociocchi et al | Nature | 20th March 2024
This comparative analysis of online conversations on different platforms over the course of thirty years reveals that the contemporary orthodoxy that the internet has never been a more horrible place is not necessarily correct. Levels of toxicity are consistent across all platforms, subjects and through time. Begs the question: is the problem human beings, rather than the tools they use? (10,000 words)
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