How Will Police Solve Murders on Mars?
As a deep dive into the policing of Mars colonies, this piece is by definition somewhat speculative, but it is no less interesting for it.
The Real Heroes Are Dead
Seventeen years after 9/11, this fine piece of writing has lost none of its heartrending impact. The terrible context of the piece ties a knot in the reader’s stomach as they make their way through a love story, then war stories, to the narrative’s inevitable conclusion.
A Spy Story: Sergei Skripal Was a Little Fish. He Had a Big Enemy.
This story goes back in time to Sergei Skripal’s life in the Russian intelligence service, long before he was poisoned in Salisbury. It skilfully intersperses his story with that of the wider geopolitical climate, from the fall of the USSR to today.
How Peter Thiel’s Secretive Data Company Pushed Into Policing
A look at how Peter Thiel’s company Palantir is being used in law enforcement – the result of an in-depth investigation involving multiple freedom of information requests.
Welcome to Pleistocene Park
An extraordinary piece profiling the scientists in Siberia that are seeking to restore the Ice Age by bioengineering woolly mammoths and other creatures. Their ambition is on an epic scale – to reforge a lost world in order to preserve our present one.
The Lost Civilization of Dial-Up Bulletin Board Systems
The author revisits the lost world of Bulletin Board Systems, and finds himself “strolling through a community frozen in time, Pompeii-style.” He finds discussions perfectly preserved, and in some cases maintained, since their heyday as an intimate precursor to the internet in the 1980s and 1990s.
Sitting Up
A piece describing itself aptly as ‘A brief history of chairs’, looking at how different societies approach the act of sitting.
A Natural History of Walter Rothschild
Beautifully written piece examining the life of a man who possessed a great fortune and an even greater interest in exotic animals. A man who “simply wanted to possess the world in all its endless variety.”
You Are the Product
John Lanchester reviews three books on social media, the war for attention, and Silicon Valley giants. His conclusion? “I am scared of Facebook”.
Going underground: inside the world of the mole-catchers
A look at the surprisingly bitter infighting that exists in the mole-catching community. The profession has been in existence in the UK since the 16th century.