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The full Browser recommends five articles, a video and a podcast. Today, enjoy our audio and video picks.


Video: Curiosa | Vimeo | Tessa Moult-Milewska | 9m 31s

Stop motion puppet animation about a woman's search for her disappearing boyfriend.

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Podcast: The Adventure of the Speckled Band: Part One | Sherlock Holmes Short Stories. Excellent new readings of the classic Arthur Conan Doyle tales by Downton Abbey actor Hugh Bonneville (30m 08s)

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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.

Best Philosophy Books of 2024

We ask our philosophy editor Nigel Warburton to recommend five of the most notable new books in his specialist area at the end of every year. In 2024, his nominations for the best philosophy books of 2024 include an introduction to the work of Karl Marx, a study of sentience in animals, and an examination of suicide through the work of the Greek tragedians. Read more

Award-Winning Novels of 2024

If you struggle to keep abreast of notable new novels, it can be helpful to check the consult a list of winners of recent literary awards. The juries of major prizes often wade through dozens or even hundreds of submissions when they put together their shortlists, and are therefore well placed to offer informed recommendations. Here, we've put together an easy to consult round-up of novels that won big literary awards in 2024. Read more

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The Diagnostician Of Despair

Robert Zaretsky | American Scholar | 19th December 2024

Rousseau was many contradictory things — among them a playwright who hated the theatre and a writer who regretted writing — but he should be valued above all else for his understanding that civilisation is both the best and worst creation of humankind. The structures that we erect to better society and ourselves also contribute to the "ontological drift" that causes alienation (1,200 words)

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A Garden In Winter

Deborah Vass | Still Sketching | 5th December 2024

Essay about a painting, “Winter Garden” by Evelyn Dunbar. It is a rare example of a painter capturing a garden out of season, "at rest in the fading light of a December afternoon". There, too, is the "quality of light that only exists in the days leading to the Winter Solstice... before dusk slips into dark, when the gardener retreats inside after a hard day’s digging, to warm against the chill" (1,500 words)

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How My Thinking Has Changed

J.P. Koning | Moneyness | 17th December 2024

Reflections on twelve years of covering Bitcoin. An"early optimist", the writer gradually realised that the coin is not "a monetary thingamajig... akin to gold, cash, or bank deposits" as widely assumed. It is rather an example of an "early-bird game", like a pyramid or Ponzi scheme. Although it is generally innocuous, he wonders whether it would have been better to ban it back in 2014 (3,300 words)

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Moon

Bartosz Ciechanowski | 17th December 2024

Everything you could want to know about the Earth's closest celestial neighbour, with attractive visual aids. The Moon affects our tides, our light, and even the planet's rotation. No wonder it has dominated human culture for millennia in one form or another; it is simply always there. It is "a fellow companion that gently affects our own existence" and "never leaves us completely alone" (16,000 words)

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Innovation Bends Towards Decadence

Nicholas Carr | New Cartographies | 15th December 2024

Why is innovation less impressive now than in the first half of the 20C? Perhaps due to a shift in focus, to “smaller-scale, less visible breakthroughs”. As life gets more comfortable, our priorities and reward structures shift from “tools of survival to tools of the self”. An entrepreneur today has a greater prospect of fame and riches for creating a social-networking app rather than a faster system of mass transit (1,500 words)

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Beatrix Potter’s Quiet Rebellion

Hannah Stamler | Humanities | 9th December 2024

The children’s author had a less well-known second act as a farmer and conservationist. She painted fungi and bred prize-winning sheep. She used her wealth and influence to acquire as many buildings and lands as she could in England’s Lake District. At the end of her life, she bequeathed 4,000 acres of land to the National Trust, including “important examples of Lakeland architecture” (2,800 words)

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Shifting Heavenly Models

James Vincent | Port | 16th December 2024

What is the shape of the universe? The early Christians thought it was like a big tent. Today, science tells us that we can never know its actual dimensions — or if finite bounds exist at all — since our observations are limited by the speed of light. “There is something ineffable about the cosmos”, and it “now absorbs some of the awe and mystery that in previous centuries was directed towards the divine” (2,600 words)

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The German Model Is Failing

Yascha Mounk | 16th December 2024

Sobering look at Angela Merkel’s legacy. “Although she always strived to do the right thing, she ultimately got nearly everything wrong. Her refugee policy has been neither sensible nor humane. Germany has long outsourced its security to the United States, its energy needs to Russia and its export-led growth to China. Merkel doubled down on all three bets. Since she left office, all three have gone belly up” (3,100 words)

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LA’s Forbidden, Sunken City

Jennifer Carr | Zócalo Public Square | 12th December 2024

The Los Angeles neighbourhood of Sunken City fell into the Pacific Ocean in 1929. A hotel was demolished and other buildings were relocated before the slumping land caused irrevocable damage. Technically off limits to the public, locals have been hopping the fence for decades. "The real treat is to walk among ruins, a rare opportunity in California, a land of constant development" (1,400 words)

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A Brief History Of Superyachts

Tim Murphy | Mother Jones | 22nd January 2024

A "gigayacht" is a pleasure craft measuring at least 295 feet in length. Only around a hundred are afloat today, owned and used by the ultra-wealthy. These vessels have long been emblems of power: in 1895 the future King Edward VII punched his nephew, Kaiser Wilhelm II, after a yacht race and in 1991, post-Enron, Tom DeLay threatened executives with yacht-based retribution (1,800 words)

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Having Our Forest And Cutting It Too

Brian Donahue | Yale Books | 10th December 2024 | U

The world needs trees, especially trees that have been allowed to grow undisturbed for decades. We, the inhabitants of the world, need houses to live in and these buildings require wood. These two priorities can co-exist: harvesting trees for lumber is possible without destroying forests. Thinning the trees that "fall behind" from the forest creates "slow wood" that matures over centuries (1,000 words)

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Sour

Ettore "Big E" Ewen | Players' Tribune | 2nd December 2024 | U

Memoirs of a professional wrestler. It's a fun, if ruthless, profession. "The thing about being a heel is, it’s a lot easier to get people to boo you than it is to get them to cheer you. You just have a wider breadth of things you can draw from. You can be obnoxious. You can be whiny. You can be a cheater. You can be a dork. You can be a slimeball. You can be a weirdo. You can just try a lot of things" (9,000 words)

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Dawn In Damascus

Kareem Shaheen | Newlines | 8th December 2024

Whatever is to follow in Syria, this outpouring of emotion in the wake of Assad’s fall deserves its day. “How do you distil the meaning of what happened in the last ten days, as Syria’s rebels staged the greatest insurgent comeback in history to end sixty years of Baathist rule? How do you distil the liberation of Aleppo, one of the world’s oldest cities? Damascus, it is from you that the morning flows” (1,300 words)

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Publisher's note - Apologies to anyone who found words were missing in yesterday's game. We've corrected the error — the latter half of the alphabet is restored!

Do General Audiences Exist?

Ernie Smith | Tedium | 8th December 2024 | U

History of the American film industry’s “safe-for-everyone” G-rating. Introduced in 1968 by the Motion Picture Association, its early days produced some puzzling choices — 2001: A Space Odyssey got a G rating, apparently considered safe for eight-year-olds to watch. Once PG-13 and NC-17 were added to the roster, the G-rating devolved into meaning films specifically made for kids, not just safe for everyone (2,900 words)

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52 Things I Learned In 2024

Tom Whitwell | 1st December 2024

Anticipated annual list, always worth reading. A few highlights: China maintains registries of haunted apartments. In the US, table saws cause around 4,300 amputations per year, more than all other tools put together. Swimming to work is a popular means of commuting in Switzerland. Ozempic is changing the secondhand clothes market. Mongolians rave on horseback (1,500 words)

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Women Of A Certain Age

Debbie Cameron | Language: A Feminist Guide | 6th December 2024

Academic linguist examines the nuances of an off-the-cuff insult to so-called "women of a certain age". In a literal sense, everyone alive is "of a certain age", but historically this idiom has been applied to middle-aged women and men. It is not necessarily negative, either: as life expectancy has lengthened and attitudes to ageing shift, it can signify one who "lives with zest and elan" (2,100 words)

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The World Of Tomorrow

Virginia Postrel | Works In Progress | 5th December 2024

In the mid 20C, imagined versions of the future as depicted in exhibitions, films, novels and more were glamorous. A utopian combination of effortless, rapid transportation, idealised urban life, technological solutions for domestic drudgery and avant-garde fashions informed a bold, sleek, silvery design aesthetic. And yet, when the 21C arrived, it looked nothing like this. What happened? (6,300 words)

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How Should A Person Be?

Sam Kahn | Castalia | 4th December 2024

Tongue-in-cheek overview of the seven moral personalities in existence today. Runs the gamut from the market-obsessed, inward-looking "Social Darwinist" to the member of the "educated elite" who is "very comforted by the editorial page of the New York Times and its sense of steadily-unfolding progress". Others adhere to "the wisdom of traditions" or whatever Silicon Valley is doing (1,900 words)

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