Monocle on Sunday (September 29, 2024): Georgina Godwin, Terry Stiastny, and David Schlesinger on the weekend’s biggest talking points.
We also speak to Monocle’s contributing editor Andrew Mueller in London, foreign correspondent Hannah McCarthy in Beirut, and Monocle’s editorial director Tyler Brûlé in Paris on the latest from Lebanon. Plus: Monocle correspondent Mary Fitzgerald on her trip to Kyiv with Brussels think tank Friends of Europe, and Monocle’s Balkans correspondent Guy De Launey on the latest news from the region.
At the heart of Daniel Defoe’s fictional world is a feeling for change, of the mutability and shiftiness of modern life and the people who thrive in it.
The Oxford Handbook of Daniel Defoe edited by Nicholas Seager and J.A. Downie
For years, the former President has claimed that undocumented immigrants vote illegally. That fiction is now the explicit position of the Party establishment. By Jonathan Blitzer
Don Luigi Ciotti leads an anti-Mafia organization, and for decades he has run a secret operation that liberates women from the criminal underworld. By D. T. Max
Lauren Boebert has a “tribal” design on her midriff, but there’s competition from John Fetterman and the tattoo caucus—and don’t forget John F. Kennedy or Theodore Roosevelt. By Charles Bethea
Monocle on Sunday (September 22, 2024):Emma Nelson, Yassmin Abdel-Magied and Stephen Dalziel on the weekend’s biggest talking points. We also speak to Monocle’s editorial director Tyler Brûlé in Zürich and Monocle’s correspondent in New Delhi, Lyndee Prickitt, for the latest headlines.
France Today Magazine (September 20, 2024): Our Great Destinations feature, which sees Caroline Mills explore the western section of the sprawling Nouvelle-Aquitaine region, includes both household names (Bordeaux, Cognac) and hidden gems (Le Train de la Rhune tourist train!).
Part of the intrigue has been which movement would run out of steam first: Trump’s MAGA, through its failures, or Obama’s liberalism, through its successes. By Benjamin Wallace-Wells
The Art of Taking It Slow
Contemporary cycling is all about spandex and personal bests. The bicycle designer Grant Petersen has amassed an ardent following by urging people to get comfortable bikes, and go easy. By Anna Wiener
The Anguish of Looking at a Monet
More than beauty, more than color, the artist reveals the doubts that bind us. By Jackson Arn
Some botanists maintain that peas are capable of associative learning, others that tropical vines have a sort of vision. If plants possess sentience, what is the morally appropriate response?
The Light Eaters: How the Unseen World of Plant Intelligence Offers a New Understanding of Life on Earth by Zoë Schlanger
The Nation of Plants by Stefano Mancuso, translated from the Italian by Gregory Conti
Planta Sapiens: The New Science of Plant Intelligence by Paco Calvo with Natalie Lawrence
A collection of excerpts from women’s diaries written over the past four centuries offers a vast range of human experience and a subtle counterhistory.
Secret Voices: A Year of Women’s Diaries edited by Sarah Gristwood
The painter Paula Modersohn-Becker’s ascension to greater visibility raises questions about how we assess artistic talent, how reputations are made, and how we reevaluate once-neglected artists, particularly women.
Paula Modersohn-Becker: Ich bin Ich/I Am Me an exhibition at the Neue Galerie, New York City, June 6–September 9, 2024, and the Art Institute of Chicago, October 12, 2024–January 12, 2025
“In the Dark” Reports on the Lack of Accountability for a U.S. War Crime
The podcast investigates the events in Haditha, Iraq, and compiles a database to show the inherent problem of the military judging its own members. By Willing Davidson
Are Your Morals Too Good to Be True?
Scientists have shattered our self-image as principled beings, motivated by moral truths. Some wonder whether our ideals can survive the blow to our vanity. By Manvir Singh
Russia’s Espionage War in the Arctic
For years, Russia has been using the Norwegian town of Kirkenes, which borders its nuclear stronghold, as a laboratory, testing intelligence operations there before replicating them across Europe. By Ben Taub
It’s hard to empirically determine whether they drive voters to the polls. But they might have less measurable effects.
The Magazine for Mercenaries Enters Polite Society
Susan Katz Keating, the editor and publisher of Soldier of Fortune, discusses how she’s changing the publication and assesses the threat of political violence.
How Machines Learned to Discover Drugs
The A.I. revolution is coming to a pharmacy near you.
Monocle on Sunday (September 1, 2024): Emma Nelson, Marta Lorimer and Yossi Mekelberg on the weekend’s biggest talking points.
We also speak to ‘The Foreign Desk’ team at the Globsec Forum in Prague, and Monocle’s Helsinki correspondent Petri Burtsoff joins for a roundup of the latest Nordic news.
News, Views and Reviews For The Intellectually Curious
