Ancient prophecies of worlds destroyed by fire are becoming realities. How will we respond?
New discoveries demystify the bizarre force that binds atomic nuclei together
Times Literary Supplement (April 17, 2024): The latest issue features ‘A Heavy Reckoning’ – Shakespeare and War’; Judgment at Tokyo; Iranian women in revolt; Memoirs of a sociopath and A Chilean masterpiece…
The Globalist (April 17, 2024): The foreign ministers of the G7 nations touch down in Capri to discuss the crisis in the Middle East and the ongoing war in Ukraine.
Then: Georgia’s controversial bill on ‘foreign influence’ and a look at the debate around South Africa’s National Health Insurance. Plus: newspapers, television news, 100 days to go before the Olympic Games and we speak with luxury home-appliance manufacturer Gaggenau.
In debating how to respond to last weekend’s Iranian airstrike, Israel’s war cabinet is choosing between options that could deter future attacks or de-escalate hostilities, but all carry drawbacks.
The justices considered the gravity of the assault and whether prosecutors have been stretching the law to reach members of the mob responsible for the attack.
Representative Virginia Foxx is a blunt partisan. But her life in rural North Carolina informs her attacks against these schools, starting with whether Harvard is truly “elite.”
Country Life Magazine – April 16, 2024: The latest issue features:
Archibald Thorburn’s talent for capturing the essence and atmosphere of Nature set him apart from his contemporaries, as Charles Harris discovers
The mainstay of jam and jelly may have been the fruit that tempted Adam and Eve, suggests Ian Morton
From theorbo to the viola da gamba, ancient musical instruments hold a fascination for a growing number of today’s players, finds Henrietta Bredin
James Alexander-Sinclair visits a home near Godalming, Surrey, where a blank canvas has been transformed into a beautiful, functional garden
Sir John Soane’s acrimonious fall out with his favourite sons was their loss and the nation’s gain, declares Agnes Stamp
Holly Black examines the stellar career of Wassily Kandinsky, who pioneered two major artistic movements in turbulent times
Carla Passino meets ‘ice queen’ Polly Townsend, who spent five fascinating weeks as an artist-in-residence in Antarctica
The Rare Breeds Survival Trust CEO selects a magical work that celebrates food production as well as the wonder of nature
John Goodall charts the rise of Stansted Park, West Sussex, from medieval hunting lodge to spectacular country house
A quartet of actresses take the plaudits from Michael Billington in leading roles ranging from Charlotte Brontë to Sarah Siddons
HARVARD MAGAZINE May/June2024 :
How long will the world’s forests impound carbon below ground?
by Jonathan Shaw
MARYVILLE, Tennessee, lies near the foothills of the Great Smoky Mountains, a range home to more tree species than exist in all of Europe. Benton Taylor grew up amidst this abundance, but as a boy, he barely noticed the plants. In the nearby national park, a family friend was raising—together with a menagerie of other mammals—a pair of bears orphaned as cubs. Taylor dreamed of studying these apex denizens of the forest, who forage at the top of the food chain. But as his education and understanding grew, his curiosity shifted to seed-dispersing animals, plants, and the soil and nutrients that sustain them: a trip down the trophic pyramid, driven by an appreciation of forests as ecological systems in which plants are primary producers. “Now I’ve half moved into the basement,” jokes the assistant professor of organismic and evolutionary biology, whose research encompasses the strategies plants use to obtain essential nutrients such as nitrogen, and how that, in turn, affects their ability to store another vital element with a global climate impact: carbon.
by Nina Pasquini
DIVERSIFYING one’s assets is useful not only in finance but also in diet, according to an October study from the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health (HSPH). Though not many people have heard of the “portfolio diet”—consisting of plant-based foods proven to lower unhealthy cholesterol, such as nuts, oats, berries, and avocados—it is one of the easiest ways to improve long-term cardiovascular health. “The idea was that each of these foods lowers cholesterol quite minimally, but if you make a whole diet based on these different foods, you will see large reductions in [unhealthy] cholesterol,” said Andrea Glenn, an HSPH postdoctoral research fellow in nutrition and the lead author of the study. The more of these foods one eats, the higher the protection—but one need not include them all to reap the diet’s benefits, she said. “Like a business portfolio, you can choose the ones you want.”
Mina Cikara explores how political tribalism feeds the American bipartisan divide.
by Max J. Krupnick
The Globalist (April 16, 2024): We discuss rising tensions in the Middle East amid fears of an Israeli military response to Iran’s weekend attacks.
We also have the latest on Donald Trump’s historic criminal trial, Croatia’s parliamentary elections and Monocle’s team in Milan checks in from the first day of the 62nd edition of Salone del Mobile. Plus: a special interview with the former Commanding General of US Army Europe, Ben Hodges, on the laws of engagement in Ukraine, Gaza and beyond.
The Israeli war cabinet met again on Monday to discuss the strike, with some hawkish members of the prime minister’s government calling for a swift and forceful retaliation.
The U.S., Europe, Russia and China worked together on a 2015 deal to limit Iran’s nuclear program. The arrangement’s unraveling and the spike in superpower tensions make this a dangerous moment.
Lawmakers raising national security concerns and seeking to disconnect a major Chinese firm from U.S. pharmaceutical interests have rattled the biotech industry. The firm is deeply involved in development and manufacturing of crucial therapies for cancer, cystic fibrosis, H.I.V. and other illnesses.
Jury selection began in the Manhattan criminal case, but many who might weigh Donald J. Trump’s fate told a judge that they could not be impartial.
Video timeline: 00:00 Intro 00:46 Where the Salzkammergut region is located 01:02 Hallstatt 02:16 Gondola ride to the World Heritage View 03:42 Meet Hallstatt’s mayor Alexander Scheutz 05:03 Try local food 05:28 Spa town Bad Ischl 05:58 Kaiservilla 07:09 Zauner confectionary 08:03 Exhibition at Altes Sudhaus 09:24 Meet Elisabth Schweeger, Artistic director of European Capital of Culture Salzkammergut, 10:17 Looted art 10:57 Eggenberg brewery
Hallstatt in Austria’s Salzkammergut region is a world-famous tourist magnet. Its popularity is likely to increase this year because the region is holding the title of European Capital of Culture in 2024.
Film and television writers face an existential threat
In 2012, at the age of thirty-two, the writer Alena Smith went West to Hollywood, like many before her. She arrived to a small apartment in Silver Lake, one block from the Vista Theatre—a single-screen Spanish Colonial Revival building that had opened in 1923, four years before the advent of sound in film.
Smith was looking for a job in television. She had an MFA from the Yale School of Drama, and had lived and worked as a playwright in New York City for years—two of her productions garnered positive reviews in the Times. But playwriting had begun to feel like a vanity project: to pay rent, she’d worked as a nanny, a transcriptionist, an administrative assistant, and more. There seemed to be no viable financial future in theater, nor in academia, the other world where she supposed she could make inroads.
The Republican primaries as farce
On the Saturday before the Iowa caucuses, the super PAC supporting Florida governor Ron DeSantis staged a “drop by” for the candidate at its headquarters in West Des Moines. Outside the modernist office park, much of the Upper Midwest was under a deep freeze brought on by a low-pressure system that had deposited more than a foot of snow in advance of a surge of arctic air that brought the wind chill into the negative thirties. Despite the atrocious road conditions, DeSantis was keeping his schedule as a “special guest” of the Never Back Down PAC, beginning the day at the far western end of Iowa, in Council Bluffs, and concluding it three hundred miles east, in Davenport.
