The full Browser recommends five articles, a video and a podcast. Today, enjoy our audio and video picks.
Podcast: Why We Still Trust Wikipedia | GZERO World. Wikipedia co-founder Jimmy Wales describes what it takes to build trustworthy institutions and addresses recent controversies around the site’s neutrality on hot-button issues (37m 15s)
Carney's speech to the World Economic Forum is well worth reading in full. For "middle powers" like Canada, he argues, the "bargain" offered by an international order dictated by American hegemony "no longer works". "If we're not at the table, we're on the menu." The old order will not come back. One of his country's most valuable assets, he says, is "the capacity to stop pretending" (2,500 words)
Felice Basbøll | Engelsberg Ideas | 19th January 2026 | U
On 20C tussles between Denmark and Norway over Greenland, via a profile of explorer Knud Rasmussen. In 1917, the US recognised Danish sovereignty in northern Greenland as a condition for buying the Virgin Islands from Denmark. Other countries followed suit, except for Norway. Rasmussen was held up as a mascot of Danish-Greenlandic relations to challenge Norwegian aspirations to Greenland (1,900 words)
Scott Alexander | Astral Codex Ten | 16th January 2026 | U
Lengthy eulogy for Scott Adams, creator of Dilbert. “Adams knew, deep in his bones, that he was cleverer than other people. God always punishes this impulse, especially in nerds. He created Adams only-slightly-above-average at everything except for a Mozart-tier skill at making silly comics about hating work. Too self-aware to deny it, too narcissistic to accept it, he spent his life searching for a loophole” (10,400 words)
Jean Hannah Edelstein | Thread | 21st January 2026 | U
Genealogical musings. "I am struck in particular by a photo of Bertha, a woman who was born in Minsk, in 1866. The photo was taken towards the end of her life, and the hardness of it seems written on her body and her face. She endured so much." Dozens of people are alive today because this great-great-grandmother decided to flee instead of remain, and was lucky enough to survive (800 words)
Roger’s Bacon | Secretorum | 17th January 2026 | U
Compendia of Jisei, a centuries-old Japanese tradition of poems written in one’s last moments. Some are vivid: “Cherry blossoms fall on a half-eaten dumpling”. Some are prosaic: “I wake up from a seventy-five-year dream to millet porridge”. Some are humorous: “Raizan has died to pay for the mistake of being born: for this he blames no one, and bears no grudge”. Nearly all of them are astonishing (2,600 words)
Podcast: Why We Still Trust Wikipedia | GZERO World. Wikipedia co-founder Jimmy Wales describes what it takes to build trustworthy institutions and addresses recent controversies around the site’s neutrality on hot-button issues (37m 15s)
A skateboarder, a spider, a motorcyclist, a person on a tilting chair — all share a sense of balance that must be maintained in every moment, as demonstrated in this visual meditation on the concept.
Shortcode Glossary: U = Ungated, free. M = Metered paywall. B = Metered paywall can be bypassed using private/incognito browsing. G = Gift link that allows access to one article on a paywalled site. Full details of our shortcodes here.
This post is only for paying subscribers of The Browser, but please do forward it to any friends who deserve a treat today, especially if you think they might be interested in becoming Browser subscribers in the future.
Caroline Crampton, Editor-In-Chief; Robert Cottrell, Founding Editor; Kaamya Sharma, Editor; Jodi Ettenberg, Editor-At-Large; Dan Feyer, Crossword Editor; Uri Bram, CEO & Publisher; Sylvia Bishop, Assistant Publisher; Al Breach, Founding Director
You can opt in or out of any of our newsletters (weekday Browser, Sunday Supplement and more) at your Email Preferences menu. And you can always Give The Browser, surely the finest possible gift for discerning friends and family.
Jean Hannah Edelstein | Thread | 21st January 2026 | U
Genealogical musings. "I am struck in particular by a photo of Bertha, a woman who was born in Minsk, in 1866. The photo was taken towards the end of her life, and the hardness of it seems written on her body and her face. She endured so much." Dozens of people are alive today because this great-great-grandmother decided to flee instead of remain, and was lucky enough to survive (800 words)
Account of an attempt to cope with extreme nerve pain by playing a very hard videogame extremely slowly. Hollow Knight: Silksong has "the energy of a horror-tinged European animated TV show you only half-remember from your childhood". Usually, long periods of immersion would be required to defeat it. Playing just 20 minutes at a time teaches valuable lessons about the nature of pain (2,300 words
Want more? The full Browser recommends five outstanding articles, a video and a podcast daily, for less than $1 a week.
Carney's speech to the World Economic Forum is well worth reading in full. For "middle powers" like Canada, he argues, the "bargain" offered by an international order dictated by American hegemony "no longer works". "If we're not at the table, we're on the menu." The old order will not come back. One of his country's most valuable assets, he says, is "the capacity to stop pretending" (2,500 words)
Data scientist investigates what Google Maps is doing to the restaurant scene in London. The app is so powerful that it now decides which establishments succeed. "It is organised by visibility that compounds, rent that rises when discovery arrives, and algorithms that allocate attention long before consumers ever show up. What looks like 'choice' is increasingly the downstream effect of ranking systems" (1,900 words)
Want more? The full Browser recommends five outstanding articles, a video and a podcast daily, for less than $1 a week.
Felice Basbøll | Engelsberg Ideas | 19th January 2026
On 20C tussles between Denmark and Norway over Greenland, via a profile of explorer Knud Rasmussen. In 1917, the US recognised Danish sovereignty in northern Greenland as a condition for buying the Virgin Islands from Denmark. Other countries followed suit, except for Norway. Rasmussen was held up as a mascot of Danish-Greenlandic relations to challenge Norwegian aspirations to Greenland (1,900 words)
Alas, it is a relic of the past. Whether you were watching a classic or a dud, you could take solace in the fact that the rest of the day was yours to do what you wanted. It is survived by the “this-assuredly-shouldn’t-be-more-than-two-hours Netflix streamer and the three-hour prestige-Oscar-play-picture directed by a guy in his 80s that lost the studio $100 million. And of course, the modern superhero movie” (1,000 words)
Want more? The full Browser recommends five outstanding articles, a video and a podcast daily, for less than $1 a week.
Scott Alexander | Astral Codex Ten | 16th January 2026
Lengthy eulogy for Scott Adams, creator of Dilbert. “Adams knew, deep in his bones, that he was cleverer than other people. God always punishes this impulse, especially in nerds. He created Adams only-slightly-above-average at everything except for a Mozart-tier skill at making silly comics about hating work. Too self-aware to deny it, too narcissistic to accept it, he spent his life searching for a loophole” (10,400 words)
Compendia of Jisei, a centuries-old Japanese tradition of poems written in one’s last moments. Some are vivid: “Cherry blossoms fall on a half-eaten dumpling”. Some are prosaic: “I wake up from a seventy-five-year dream to millet porridge”. Some are humorous: “Raizan has died to pay for the mistake of being born: for this he blames no one, and bears no grudge”. Nearly all of them are astonishing (2,600 words)
Want more? The full Browser recommends five outstanding articles, a video and a podcast daily, for less than $1 a week.
Marianne Wellington | Guardian | 16th January 2026
If endangered crane chicks are to be successfully released into the wild, the young must believe their human attendants are birds. Thus, aviculturists don an elaborate costume with a bird's head puppet on one arm and a "wing" on the other, play bird sounds from a concealed mp3 player, and give flying lessons. This ersatz-crane dreams sometimes of taking flight like a real bird (900 words)
The best thing about skiing is the food — take it from someone who grew up as a "resort rat" while his father ran the ski school. Whether it is is $100 flammkuchen in St Moritz or the greasiest burger available in a mountainside New Hampshire cafeteria, hot food always tastes wonderful in the cold air. It is not advisable to order a magnum of Riesling with lunch and then ski home, though (2,500 words)
Want more? The full Browser recommends five outstanding articles, a video and a podcast daily, for less than $1 a week.
The full Browser recommends five articles, a video and a podcast. Today, enjoy our audio and video picks.
Podcast: The Job | The Coldest Shift. Beginning of a fascinating series about the British Antarctic Survey in 2020, following the doctor who had the job of keeping the continent free of Covid (24m 10s)
Performance of a famous J.S. Bach piece using accurate early music instruments. The Baroque oboe gives a distinct and beautiful sound to the solo melody.
Engineer embarks on a mathematical odyssey to try and understand the "squircle" shape that Apple uses for its app icons. "This may seem trivial, a cool story, but subconsciously it really makes a big impact: a squircle doesn’t look like a square with surgery performed on it; it registers as an entity in its own right, like the shape of a smooth pebble in a riverbed, a unified and elemental whole" (5,900 words)
Logan Paul, a YouTuber, should not be boxing against Anthony Joshua, former two-time world heavyweight champion and Olympic gold medalist. It's a circus act, not a contest of skill. Such a fight shows that in many spheres we are living through the death of mastery at the hands of entertainment. Paul ended up with a broken jaw, but his fame means he can keep cutting ahead of those with real expertise (2,200 words)
Want more? The full Browser recommends five outstanding articles, a video and a podcast daily, for less than $1 a week.
Solace Chukwu | Africa Is A Country | 14th January 2026
In praise of an impetuous yet brilliant Nigerian footballer. Victor Osimhen is arguably the best striker currently playing, who publicly aired his frustration when Nigeria did not qualify for this year's World Cup. Born "into the miasma of a giant, odious landfill in Olusosun" as the youngest of seven, he worked as a water-seller in the Lagos traffic after his mother died. His "unruliness" is crucial to how he plays (1,200 words)
Wild Swans memoirist recalls her teenage years in Chengdu during the Cultural Revolution. Too soft-hearted to join her school's Red Guards, she was accused of "warm-feelingsism". She watched fellow pupils smash the ancient Confucian temple and beat its gardener to death. Teachers were physically punished at "denunciation rallies". Still, at 14, she never thought of rejecting Mao outright (1,800 words)
Want more? The full Browser recommends five outstanding articles, a video and a podcast daily, for less than $1 a week.
“If you are highly congruent, you disown none of your experience. You accept the stubborn approach of death, the arbitrariness of your fortune, your unimportance on the cosmic timescale, your potential importance for the local environment. Although congruence is a source of endless happiness, the path there can be devastating. You may have to finally give up on experiencing a better past” (1,500 words)
Perhaps a single steel tower of books, five feet tall — a bookshelf essentially “designed to disappear”. Bookshelves have always been real estate for one’s personality. The rise of Pinterest and Instagram turned the bookshelf into a stage where one would artfully display a book as a conversation piece or accessory. But avid readers have long known that “a simple stack of books is pretty chic” (1,000 words)
Want more? The full Browser recommends five outstanding articles, a video and a podcast daily, for less than $1 a week.
If you’re at a party and need something to talk about, this compendium of music trivia should come in handy. Bruno Mars was nicknamed after pro-wrestler Bruno Sammartino because he was a chubby baby. Coldplay sent a formal request via lawyers to Kraftwerk to use the “Computer Love” melody. Weeks later, they received a reply from Kraftwerk’s Ralf Hütter, containing only a handwritten “yes” (1,400 words)
The Islamic Republic is a maze of power with two parallel governments. Over the years, it has created a class of people who benefit from the regime and another class who enforce it. “Leaderless protests are brave, but fragile.” Potential leaders are arrested or killed immediately. Much of the world has a vested interest in maintaining the status quo. Iranians distrust foreign intervention, with good reason (1,400 words)
Want more? The full Browser recommends five outstanding articles, a video and a podcast daily, for less than $1 a week.