Podcast: The Common Kingfisher | The Science of Birds. Well-written and produced introduction to the "Prince of Piscivory", a bird best known for its striking blue and orange plumage and remarkable fish-hunting skills (50m 09s)

Video: Bach, Fugue In E-Flat Major & Cantata "Widerstehe Doch Der Sünde" | YouTube | Glenn Gould | 23m 24s

Extract from a programme made by the storied pianist Glenn Gould for Canadian television in 1962. He discusses Bach's artistry and how it has influenced his own musicianship and then performs a cantata with the countertenor Russell Oberlin.

The Ultimate Electric Experience

Tim Stevens | Verge | 3rd November 2024

Review of the first fully electric Rolls Royce car. Far out of the budget of any "mere mortal", the best thing about it is the noise. "This car makes the kind of sound that you would expect to hear when an omniscient, all-powerful alien force swoops through the clouds in a sci-fi movie, the gut-shaking tone backing the moment when everyone realises that humanity is about to get served" (850 words)

I Told You So

Sam Kriss | Numb At The Lodge | 6th November 2024

The time for considered analysis of the 2024 US election will come. Until then, extravagantly expressed fury at the failure to change after 2016 will do. "You have sinned, and Trump is your punishment: whatever happens next, you will deserve it. You did not learn! The last eight years have taught you absolutely nothing: we’ve gone nowhere, we’re trapped in the same stupid loop" (2,400 words)

An Uncivil Civil War

Anders L. | Wood From Eden | 4th November 2024 | U

Reflections on the Finnish Civil War of 1918, fought between the working classes, the “reds”, and the upper classes, the “whites”, causing 40,000 casualties — over 1% of the population. “The vast majority of all civil wars are not civil wars as much as regular wars that just happen to be fought within the borders of a state. Political conviction is usually not strong enough to make people risk fighting and dying” (5,900 words)

The Lost Art Of Memory

Adam Robbert | The Base Camp | 31st October 2024 | U

The medieval and antique mind valued memory or recollection; the modern one emphasises imagination and creativity. Compare St. Thomas Aquinas with Einstein, both seen as geniuses by their contemporaries. Einstein was hailed for an imagination “unfettered by definite tracks”. Thomas was the man of memory, whose “knowledge increased as page is added to page in the writing of a book” (1,800 words)

Recursion, Tidy Stars, And Water Lilies

Marco Giancotti | Plankton Valhalla | 30th October 2024

Wonderful essay on randomness and design. “Atoms, genes, people, companies interact, build on each other, and lead to new things without end. If all there was to physics was a series of isolated events, destructive chance would reign supreme. The key must be to look at chains of interactions, instead of single ones. Feedback makes recursion possible, and recursion is what makes the unlikely likely” (6,800 words)

The Coffin In The Roof

Kaushik Patowary | Amusing Planet | 1st November 2024

Due to reduced executions, unmet demand for cadavers at anatomy schools caused a rise in grave robberies. Henry Trigg, an 18C Hertfordshire grocer, devised a way to prevent this desecration. In his will, he stipulated that his body be placed in a coffin and mounted beneath the rafters of his barn. The unusual “burial” became popular, drawing visitors after the barn was converted into the Old Castle Inn (1,100 words)

The Private Train Car Edition

Matt Locke | Why Is This Interesting? | 29th October 2024 | U

Super-wealthy people in the US who prefer to travel by train rather than plane can still move about the country in privacy and surrounded by luxury. Their opulent private rail cars can be hitched to ordinary Amtrak services. At their 1929 zenith, there were over 2,000 of them in use. There is something heart-warming about "the mutual co-existence of extreme private luxury and public goods" (800 words)

How To Build A Wonder Of The World

Kevin Duong | Public Books | 29th October 2024 | U

Review of a book about communes. From the Paris Commune of 1871 to the 21C "embourgeoisement" of the Hudson Valley, what defines a commune is its members' acts of protection. "Defending a piece of land, a neighbourhood, or a town is what sustains the autonomous self-management of everyday life, the very quality that makes the commune such a distinctive political form" (X words)

Herding With My “Enlightened Wolves”

Renée Worringer | Active History | 24th October 2024 | U

Potted history of herding dogs. In the UK, where wolves were eradicated, shepherds bred dogs like the Border Collie to herd from a distance, with a “wide outrun and wolfish hunting stance”. In Europe, where wolves had not been eradicated, dogs were bred to patrol closely and ensure that the herd didn’t stray far. The German Shepherd is perhaps most famous for this style, called “tending” (2,200 words)

The Forces Of Chance

Brian Klaas | Aeon | 29th October 2024 | U

The social sciences need to take chaos more seriously. They have largely treated the world as “one that can be understood, controlled, and bent to our whims. It can’t. We produce too many models that are often wrong and rarely useful. When we try to explain our social world, we foolishly ignore the flukes. Confidence in a predictable future is the province of charlatans and fools” (4,900 words)

Lady Baker And The Source Of The Nile

Sarah Harkness | The Macmillans’ Crusade | 19th October 2024 | U

Samuel Baker’s 1866 tale of the search for the Nile’s source was an instant hit with the Victorian public. His book outshone rival titles in part due to his wife, Florence, whom he had bought in a Bulgarian slave auction. Florence braved the perilous journey through Africa with grit: she was fluent in Arabic and handy with guns. Back in England, she became the toast of the Royal Geographic Society (2,100 words)

The Divine Discontent

Celine Nguyen | Personal Canon | 27th October 2024 | U

“The most fulfilled people tend to have two traits. They’re insatiably curious. And they seem to exist in a state of perpetual, self-inflicted unhappiness. These people have a project they’re working on. An essay. Testing out a recipe. Improving their Cantonese. If you take this dissatisfaction at face value, it may seem as if the project is the problem. But it’s this restless pursuit of greatness that makes things interesting” (4,800 words)

The Role Of His Life

Tomas Weber | Smithsonian | 24th October 2024

Leo Reuss, a Jewish actor in Germany and Austria, had a novel approach to the Nazi crackdowns of the 1930s. He created a "role within a role", turning himself into an Alpine farmer with Nazi sympathies. He worked as "Kaspar Brandhofer" for months before he was caught. After escaping to the US, he lived out WW2 playing German characters, often Nazis, in Hollywood films (3,700 words)

Final Flight Of The Airline Magazine

Lucy Schiller | Columbia Journalism Review | 16th October 2024

End of an era. For writers and publishers, the in-flight magazine was always a challenge. A publication with a captive readership — trapped "in a Wi-Fi void, inside of a high-altitude tin can" — that needed to be suitable reading for anyone, child or adult, who pulled it from the seat pocket. Beloved by many who thumbed through them, such magazines could not survive the smartphone (2,600 words)

The Rollercoaster King

Tom Lamont | Guardian | 24th October 2024 | U

Profile of a theme park wunderkind. A former crab feeder at an aquarium, as a child he was afraid of rollercoasters. He secured a job designing them thanks to his architecture degree and his prowess at the videogame Rollercoaster Tycoon. At the age of 27, he was given £18m and told to create Britain's tallest rollercoaster. The result? His "scribbled signature" of steel in the sky (6,500 words)

What Is Human Energy?

Richard Cohen | Lapham's Quarterly | 9th January 2024 | U

Despite trying for centuries, we still don't know what human energy is, on either a chemical or psychological level. Why do some people have boundless reserves of it, while others so little? How is it that it can be summoned in some moments of great stress but not others? Perhaps the better question is how we should use what we have. The ethics of energy points to a life of purpose and service (3,300 words)

"The Kids Are Too Soft"

Anne Helen Petersen | Culture Study | 23rd October 2024 | U

Are today's wannabe journalists from a coddled generation? Or are they just young people fighting a broken system? "The best indication of the health of an industry like journalism isn’t who excels there, because the answer is obvious: work robots who come from some sort of family money. To understand just how broken media is, look at who leaves the field — or who dares not pursue it" (3,000 words)

Statistical Significance And Why It Matters

Emily Oster | ParentData | 29th January 2024 | U

How to read studies more effectively. The phrase "statistically significant" is sometimes used in lay parlance as a synonym for "true", which is not, in fact, a true definition. Use this one instead: "When we say an effect is 'statistically significant at the 5 per cent level', what this means is that there is less than a 5 per cent chance that we’d see an effect of this size if the true effect were zero" (2,400 words)

Habermas Machines

Rob Horning | Internal Exile | 19th October 2024

Should we let machines arbitrate our fraught public sphere? Google researchers suggest that LLMs can help people find common ground on divisive issues. “That sounds like the Habermas Machine, something that resembles a public sphere but is actually software architecture. It may be that the process of producing common ground is what makes the subsequent working together possible” (1,500 words)

Kafka’s Creative Block

Maria Popova | Marginalian | 20th October 2024 | U

Kafka’s diary reveals entirely relatable anxieties about creativity. He complains that his day job at the insurance company leaves him with no time to write, yet laments his procrastination — “the shameful lowlands of writing”. Global events wreck him: during WWI, he “sinks into an inner darkness, anxiety rising to untenable heights”. He is crippled by envy; Goethe’s writings paralyse him for a month (3,100 words)