The Big Gamble
Betting shops are ubiquitous on Britain’s high streets. They can be very dangerous places to work.
How Rudy Giuliani Turned Into Trump’s Clown
Jeffrey Toobin’s profile of Rudy Giuliani is full of political insight, but also contains a healthy dose of revealing anecdotes – such as those about life at Giuliani’s favourite cigar club, complete with Alec Baldwin’s description of “Republican Manhattan”.
The Big Business of Being Gwyneth Paltrow
An often surreal peek inside the highly successful world of Goop. Gwyneth Paltrow started the business in her kitchen as an aspirational newsletter focusing on fashion and food, but it has now become a ‘wellness’ behemoth, offering a dizzying array of products and services. http://bit.ly/nyt-goop
The Marvelous Automata of Antiquity
A piece looking at mechanical automata and their owners, from Mark Anthony to Anne Boleyn – evidence perhaps of humanity’s enduring interest in artificial intelligence and robotics.
Hugh Cudlipp Lecture 2018: James Harding
The former Director of BBC News and Editor of The Times asserts in this lecture that technology is damaging democracy. The piece is elevated from the multitude of others with a similar theme by its superior writing, wry humour, and effective deployment of numerous case studies from this time of “democratic recession”.
It’s the (Democracy-Poisoning) Golden Age of Free Speech
A special issue of Wired contains several strong pieces looking at the complex freedom of speech trade-offs required in the new information era. Pieces include – the web infrastructure company Cloudflare being embroiled in a free speech debate when offering services to far-right extremists, Reddit as a case study for civil discourse online, a startup making smartphone-neutralising pouches, six stories of censorship, and a look at a database of extremists called Whack-a-Mole.
Al Franken, That Photo, and Trusting the Women
This eloquent piece looks at the sexual harassment allegations against Senator Al Franken and uses them as a springboard to examine humanity’s long history of identifying trustworthiness as a male trait and duplicity as its female counterpart – via Aristotle, Galen, Jezebel, Cassandra, Hamlet and others.
Trivium’s Guide To: The 19th Party Congress
Produced by a consultancy specialising in China, an in-depth visual guide to the intrigue, power plays and key issues at stake in the country’s upcoming Party Congress, seen as a pivotal moment in Xi Jinping’s tenure.
The Weekly Package
A look at the way in which many Cubans get access to the international culture that has historically been denied to them – a weekly delivery of films, TV and other content on a USB stick.
This Lawsuit Goes to 11
Entertainment meets accounting in this piece looking at a lawsuit brought by the creators of the cult classic This Is Spinal Tap. They initiated the suit when they were told that despite a healthy percentage share in earnings from their creation, they would be entitled to under $200 in royalties over a period spanning 20 years.