A piece revisiting a celebrated series of documentaries about the Ganiga tribe in Papua New Guinea and their fractured interactions with Australian prospectors. The author looks at how the story has progressed in the thirty years since The New York Times said of the first instalment_Ñ_Òwatching it feels like taking an inspired crash course in economics and cultural anthropology.
The historian Linda Colley proposes that the relative political stability of Britain (along with the US) over time has left its political system with more maintenance work outstanding than other countries that have experienced greater upheaval. From there, she looks to the lessons history can offer in addressing Britain’s current challenges. http://bit.ly/lrb-history
The story of the Soviet fighter pilot who defected in 1976 in a new supersonic fighter jet that no one outside the Soviet military had ever before set eyes upon.
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.
A new entry in a series that profiles “badass world-historical women of centuries past.” Joanna of Naples had an extraordinary life even by the standards of the 14th century’s topsy-turvy geopolitics. Escape from her castle by night, papal trials, attacks on her kingdom by her own relations and four husbands of varying quality all feature in this engaging portrait.
A stunning archaeological find is not only providing a window into a 3,500 year old society, but also challenging founding principles underpinning our views of how Western civilisation developed.
A piece reassessing the pirates of yesteryear and their impact on society, suggesting it was much more nuanced than is commonly understood. http://www.bit.ly/humanities-pirates
The author retraces Lenin’s return from exile in 1917, a journey that was to have a profound impact on human history.
On the trail of Cahokia, a city in what is today Illinois – at its peak around the year 1000, it was bigger than Paris, but it was later totally abandoned.
The remarkable story of a family who lived nearly half a decade totally cut off from the rest of humanity.