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 S12Taupo: The super volcano under New Zealand's largest lake   Located in the centre of New Zealand's North Island, the town of Taupo sits sublimely in the shadow of the snow-capped peaks of Tongariro National Park. Fittingly, this 40,000-person lakeside town has recently become one of New Zealand's most popular tourist destinations, as hikers, trout fishers, water sports enthusiasts and adrenaline junkies have started descending upon it.The namesake of this tidy town is the Singapore-sized lake that kisses its western border. Stretching 623sq km wide and 160m deep with several magma chambers submerged at its base, Lake Taupo isn't only New Zealand's largest lake; it's also an incredibly active geothermal hotspot. Every summer, tourists flock to bathe in its bubbling hot springs and sail through its emerald-green waters. Yet, the lake is the crater of a giant super volcano, and within its depths lies the unsettling history of this picturesque marvel.
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S1Know Your Customers' "Jobs to Be Done"  Firms have never known more about their customers, but their innovation processes remain hit-or-miss. Why? According to Christensen and his coauthors, product developers focus too much on building customer profiles and looking for correlations in data. To create offerings that people truly want to buy, firms instead need to home in on the job the customer is trying to get done.
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S3S4S5S6S7S8S9S10S11S13Message sticks: Australia's ancient unwritten language  The continent of Australia is home to more than 250 spoken Indigenous languages and 800 dialects. Yet, one of its linguistic cornerstones wasn't spoken, but carved.Known as message sticks, these flat, rounded and oblong pieces of wood were etched with ornate images on both sides that conveyed important messages and held the stories of the continent's Aboriginal people – considered the world's oldest continuous living culture. Message sticks are believed to be thousands of years old and were typically carried by messengers over long distances to reinforce oral histories or deliver news between Aboriginal nations or language groups.
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S14Did Australia's boomerangs pave the way for flight?  The aircraft is one of the most significant developments of modern society, enabling people, goods and ideas to fly around the world far more efficiently than ever before. The first successful piloted flight took off in 1903 in North Carolina, but a 10,000-year-old hunting tool likely developed by Aboriginal Australians may have held the key to its lift-off. As early aviators discovered, the secret to flight is balancing the flow of air. Therefore, an aircraft's wings, tail or propeller blades are often shaped in a specially designed, curved manner called an aerofoil that lifts the plane up and allows it to drag or turn to the side as it moves through the air.
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S15How ancient civilisations dealt with trauma  The attacker approached from behind. His victim was a muscular middle-aged man with missing teeth – possibly a hardened English fighter, who had already sustained a serious head injury years before. The Norman soldier lifted his heavy double-edged sword, and struck a blow near his target's right ear. He didn't stop. In a frenzy of slashing movements which gouged the Englishman's skull, the victim fell. And there his bones would lie, on the slope of a hill in Sussex, for nearly 1,000 years – that is, until they were discovered under a school by archaeologists in 1994.The original proprietor of "Skeleton 180" is thought to have died during the Norman invasion of England in 1066. If this is the case, his bones are the only human remains ever found from this conflict. But though the physical relics from this violence have mostly dissolved into the region's acidic soil, the evidence of its psychological impact has lingered on in an obscure medieval document.
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S16S1713 Great Deals on Headphones, Wireless Earbuds, and Gaming Headsets  Arguably, the best time to get new audio gear is … well, Black Friday and Cyber Monday. However, just because the shopping event to end all shopping events (and our collective sanity) is over, it doesn't mean there are no deals left. We've found a ton of sales on WIRED-tested headphones, earbuds, and gaming headsets. They'll make great presents, whether for a loved one or yourself.Special offer for Gear readers: Get WIRED for just $5 ($25 off). This includes unlimited access to WIRED.com, full Gear coverage, and subscriber-only newsletters. Subscriptions help fund the work we do every day.
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S18All the Fish We Cannot See ![]() The ocean has a way of upending expectations. Four-story-high rogue waves peak and collapse without warning. Light bends across the surface to conjure chimeric cities that hover at the horizon. And watery wastelands reveal themselves to be anything but. So was the case for the scientists aboard the USS Jasper in the summer of 1942. Bobbing in choppy seas off the coast of San Diego, California, acoustic physicist Carl F. Eyring and his colleagues, who had been tasked with studying a sonar device the navy could use to detect German submarines, were sending sound waves into the deep. But as the echoes of their tests came reverberating back, they revealed a puzzling phenomenon: everywhere the ship went, the sonar detected a mass nearly as solid as the seafloor, lurking about 300 meters or more below the surface. Even more mysterious, this false bottom seemed to shift over the course of the day.People had their theories—shoals? faulty equipment?—but apart from registering the anomaly, scientists let the mystery slide. (There was, after all, a war on.) It wasn’t until 1945, when oceanographer Martin Johnson dropped nets into the Pacific to take a closer look, that the culprit was definitively unmasked: a vast cloud of marine animals, most smaller than a human hand, that moved from the deep ocean to the surface and back every day.
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S19Physicists unveil 10-year plan for exploring the quantum Universe  After a multi-year review, the U.S. particle physics community has announced its vision for research spanning the next five to ten years. The various projects could, if funded, help researchers develop a much better understanding of the laws of nature.The recommendations were released in a report called “Exploring the Quantum Universe: Pathways to Innovation and Discovery in Particle Physics.” It was written by the Particle Physics Projects Prioritization Panel (P5), a sub-panel of the High Energy Physics Advisory Panel (HEPAP), and will be submitted to funding agencies like the U.S. Department of Energy Office of Science and the National Science Foundation to guide their funding decisions over the next decade.
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S20Starts With A Bang podcast #100 - Galaxies in the JWST era  It’s hard to believe, but it was only back just a year and a half ago, in mid-2022, that we had yet to encounter the very first science images released by JWST. In the time that’s passed since, we’ve gotten a revolutionary glimpse of our Universe, replete with tremendous new discoveries: the farthest black hole, the most distant galaxy, the farthest red supergiant star, and many other cosmic record-breakers.What is it like to be on the cutting edge of these discoveries, and what are some of the most profound ways that our prior understanding of the Universe has been challenged by these observations? I’m so pleased to welcome Dr. Jeyhan Kartaltepe to the program, who’s not only a member of the CEERS (Cosmic Evolution Early Release Science) collaboration, but who has spearheaded a number of novel discoveries that have been made with JWST.
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S21How exposure to language in the womb shapes the brain  In the 1950s, Noam Chomsky proposed his theory of universal grammar, which argued that language acquisition is biologically determined and that children have an innate ability to acquire language. The idea revolutionized the field of linguistics and changed the way psychologists view language development.Universal grammar challenged the prevailing view that language development is due solely to environmental factors, instead proposing that newborns are equipped with brain circuits that contain information about the structure of language. We still know very little about the neurological basis of how newborns so easily acquire language.
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S22The quest to turn basalt dust into a viable climate solution  Mary Yap has spent the last year and a half trying to get farmers to fall in love with basalt. The volcanic rock is chock full of nutrients, captured as its crystal structure forms from cooling magma, and can make soil less acidic. In that way it’s like limestone, which farmers often use to improve their soil. It’s a little more finicky to apply, and certainly less familiar. But basalt also comes with an important side benefit: It can naturally capture carbon from the atmosphere.
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S23A locally grown solution for period poverty  Women and girls across much of the developing world lack access to menstrual products. This means that for at least a week or so every month, many girls don’t go to school, so they fall behind educationally and often never catch up economically.
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S24The Joy of Underperforming  The idea of life having “seasons” has become a common way of talking yourself through a sudden upheaval.For many of us—the vitamin-D-deprived, the sugar-addled, perhaps the suddenly jobless or those dreading family gatherings—’tis the season not so much to be jolly, but just to be “in a season.” The phrase has become a common way of talking yourself through a sudden upheaval, or of explaining that you’ll be doing things a little differently for a while.
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S25Emma Stone and Yorgos Lanthimos Get Honest With Each Other  The protagonist of the new film Poor Things is no ordinary heroine. As played by Emma Stone, Bella Baxter is a corpse reanimated by a man who replaced her brain with that of her unborn child; she’s therefore a blend of juvenile innocence and adult promiscuity, shamelessly charting her own course through life because she’s never been conditioned to meet societal constraints. She has no clue what womanhood is supposed to entail or how she’s expected to behave, yet she looks full-grown—a Frankenstein’s monster dressed in frilly outfits, without a single scar in sight.Like her, Poor Things is brazenly, gleefully original in its presentation and ideas. Directed by Yorgos Lanthimos and based on Alasdair Gray’s 1992 novel, the movie takes place in a steampunk, otherworldly Victorian wonderland, and Bella’s story unfolds like a twisted fairy tale. Seeking freedom and adventure, she embarks on a journey around the world, which leads to encounters with characters who are simultaneously enthralled and threatened by her singular perspective—and who all try to control her in their own way. With them, she pursues experiences, many of them sexual, that shape her understanding of what it means to be fully alive. The film can, as a result, be hard to classify: It is at once a strangely charming bildungsroman, an erotic melodrama, a body-horror-tinged mystery, and a wondrous feminist meditation on the power of self-discovery.
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S26'We Only Need Some Metal Things'  In the summer of 1940, when Great Britain was fighting Nazi Germany alone, Winston Churchill asked to borrow a few dozen aging American destroyers to defend the English coast from imminent invasion. Churchill wrote to Franklin D. Roosevelt: “Mr. President, with great respect, I must tell you that in the long history of the world, this is a thing to do now.”Today Ukraine is fighting Russia alone. American aid—never timely or sufficient, but enough to help keep Ukraine alive and Russian invaders at bay—is about to run out. U.S. shipments will stop in the next few weeks. Without American artillery, ammunition, missile systems, tanks, armored vehicles, humanitarian aid, or funds for reconstruction, Ukraine will be left to face the Russian onslaught with diminishing odds of survival. The Biden administration has asked Congress to vote for another $61 billion in aid for Ukraine. So far, Republicans are refusing. Members plan to leave D.C. for the holidays on December 15. This is a thing for them to do now.
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S27Wood That Is See-Through Like Glass and Stronger Than Plastic  Transparent wood could soon make its way into touch screens, skyscraper windows, and car dashboards.Thirty years ago, a botanist in Germany had a simple wish: to see the inner workings of woody plants without dissecting them. By bleaching away the pigments in plant cells, Siegfried Fink managed to create transparent wood, and he published his technique in a niche wood-technology journal. The 1992 paper remained the last word on see-through wood for more than a decade, until a researcher named Lars Berglund stumbled across it.
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S28How to Love Winter a Little More  This is an edition of The Wonder Reader, a newsletter in which our editors recommend a set of stories to spark your curiosity and fill you with delight. Sign up here to get it every Saturday morning.In January 2021, a time when many of us were returning from halfhearted outdoor hangouts with freezing fingers, my colleague Marina Koren revealed herself as a lover of winter. Well, within reason: “I do not ski. I believe a ‘polar plunge’ is appropriate only when you’re trying to outrun a bear. I was born in Russia, but I moved to warmer climes as a toddler,” Koren writes. “I’m just a kindly winter evangelist, standing in front of your outdoor restaurant table, asking you to put on a hat.”
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S29Will Foreign-Policy Debates Decide Biden's Fate?  It’s been a difficult week for President Joe Biden. His agenda on funding Israel, Ukraine, and border security is stalled in Congress, and his approval ratings are nearing a record low.With just 11 months until the general election, will debate over foreign policy determine whether Biden is reelected president in 2024?
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S30S31A festive Filipino bread for the holidays  If you've stumbled upon a panaderia (neighborhood bakery) in the Philippines, chances are you have seen freshly baked pan de regla, the soft Filipino bread roll filled with a custard-like pudding that ranges in colour from bright pink to dark red. The so-called "pink bread" appears different from its cousins pandesal (Filipino bread roll) and pan de coco (coconut bread), with its vibrant-coloured filling. No other favourites from the panaderia look like this, which screams for attention and piques your interest.Pan de regla literally translates to "menstrual bread" for its distinct filling, but there are 14 different names given to it in different parts of the country. Depending on who you talk to and where they are from, pan de regla may have a Filipino name, such as ligaya (happiness) and lahi (race of a people), while in some regions, the bread has an English name, such as "everlasting" and "lipstick".
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S32The 18 best TV shows of 2023  Just when it seemed there wasn't room for one more post-apocalyptic drama or video-game adaptation, The Last of Us came along. The story involves terrifying mushroom-headed zombies, but they are the least of the reasons for the show's impact. The series brings deep humanity and emotion to its tense survival story, centred on the relationship between Joel (Pedro Pascal), a bereaved father, and Ellie (Bella Ramsey), the orphaned girl he reluctantly agrees to take cross-country to safety. As they travel west across what was once the US, the changing landscape and characters they encounter add range and variety. An episode starring Nick Offerman and Murray Bartlett whose relationship endures over the decades after the apocalypse is already one of the year's most poignant. A meeting with Joel's lost brother is satisfying yet fraught with loss by the end. Pascal has achieved a well-deserved mainstream breakout with the role, as he grounds the genre elements with a powerful, realistic performance, earning him an Emmy nomination. The Last of Us speaks eloquently to people who never knew it was a video game in the first place. (CJ)Sometimes a concept for a show is just so inspired, there's simply no way it can fail. Such is the case with this murder-of-the-week series from Knives Out creator Rian Johnson, which came about in the first place following of a casual dinner conversation between him and star Natasha Lyonne about their love of detective shows. One of Hollywood's most inimitable stars, Lyonne is an absolute dream here as the insouciant Charlie, a cocktail waitress on the run who finds herself travelling around the US, inadvertently getting involved in murder cases that could do with her mental acuity and unique ability to detect when someone's lying. She is, in her scrappy, wisecracking energy, a female Columbo; and as with that classic series, we see the murder at the beginning of each episode – so that it's not a whodunnit, but a howdunnit. And there is something singularly soothing about watching Lyonne put the pieces of the puzzle together, before hitting the road once more. True episodic TV of the old school, it is one of the year's simplest and purest pleasures. (HM)
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S33John Lennon: 'If we got in the studio together and turned each other on again, then it would be worth it'  Beatle John Lennon met Mark Chapman – the man who was to kill him – twice on the day he died, 8 December 1980.The first time was at around 5pm. Having finished a radio interview in their apartment in the Dakota building in New York to promote their new album, Double Fantasy, the musician and his artist wife Yoko Ono headed out on to the street. Mark Chapman approached Lennon to ask if he could sign a copy of the new LP. The album was later used as evidence in Chapman's trial, and reportedly went on to sell in a private auction for $1.5m in 2020.
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S34Israel's AI can produce 100 bombing targets a day in Gaza. Is this the future of war?  Last week, reports emerged that the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) are using an artificial intelligence (AI) system called Habsora (Hebrew for “The Gospel”) to select targets in the war on Hamas in Gaza. The system has reportedly been used to find more targets for bombing, to link locations to Hamas operatives, and to estimate likely numbers of civilian deaths in advance.Militaries use remote and autonomous systems as “force multipliers” to increase the impact of their troops and protect their soldiers’ lives. AI systems can make soldiers more efficient, and are likely to enhance the speed and lethality of warfare – even as humans become less visible on the battlefield, instead gathering intelligence and targeting from afar.
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S35Seven tips for ethical shopping this Christmas  Laura Spence is affiliated with the Oxford University Centre for Corporate Reputation and Kellogg College, University of Oxford. She is a Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences. As you walk into a shop or go online to hunt for Christmas gifts, it can feel pretty daunting. Who needs what, how much will it cost, will they like it? But also very important: am I making a good choice in where I am shopping?
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S36Erotic Vagrancy: Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor biography revels in scandal and excess of Hollywood glamour couple  Roger Lewis’s biographies are always rich, wayward, engrossing, idiosyncratic and above all obsessive, which seems entirely fitting for evoking the particular qualities of his latest subject – the celebrity couple to end them all, Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor.Lewis’s substantial new book, Erotic Vagrancy: Everything About Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor, takes its title from a phrase used in a papal condemnation of the couple when their affair began during the making of 20th Century Fox’s epic 1963 film Cleopatra in Rome. This served to emphasise the atmosphere of notoriety that surrounded Taylor and Burton’s relationship throughout its 20-year duration.
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S37S38Kenya at 60: the shameful truth about British colonial abuse and how it was covered up  It is fairly well known that the lives of hundreds of thousands of Kenyans were affected by terrible acts of violence under the British colonial administration. The British government and King Charles have acknowledged it, and some victims of violence have taken the British government to court for these crimes. Less-known is how much the British imperialist government tried to cover up these violations.
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S39Humiliation and violence in Kenya's colonial days - when old men were called 'boy' and Africans were publicly beaten  When King Charles visited Kenya in November 2023, many Kenyans renewed their demands for an official apology for atrocities committed by the British government during the colonial era. The widespread human rights abuses during the Mau Mau rebellion are the best-known of these atrocities. Yet we should not forget more mundane, everyday acts of domination.I am a social historian who has studied race, violence, colonialism and white settlement in Kenya. From the start of colonialism in 1895 to the drawing down of the Union Jack on 12 December 1963, black Kenyans were constantly subjected to violence and humiliation at the hands of colonial officials, settlers and missionaries alike.
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S40S41S42Conservatives' 'anti-woke' alternative to Disney has finally arrived  As fanfare blares, female sprinters at the starting line suspiciously eye a man in a wig. A hulking, goateed wrestler slams a woman half his size to the mat. An ominous voice-over intones that women’s sports are being “trans-formed.”No, this isn’t the beginning of a classic cross-dressing comedy. It’s the trailer for “Lady Ballers,” a new right-wing movie that farcically depicts cisgendered men claiming to be women in order to dominate women’s sports.
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S43S44AI can teach math teachers how to improve student skills  When middle school math teachers completed an online professional development program that uses artificial intelligence to improve their math knowledge and teaching skills, their students’ math performance improved.My colleagues and I developed this online professional development program, which relies on a virtual facilitator that can – among other things – present problems to the teacher around teaching math and provide feedback on the teacher’s answers.
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S45S46S47How Benjamin Zephaniah became the face of British Rastafari  The sudden and untimely passing of Benjamin Zephaniah at age 65 has rightly brought reflection on his legacy as a poet and as a writer, the two fields in which he made monumental contributions. Zephaniah’s warmth, his accessibility –- and his lyrical genius – made him a household name and a national treasure. Hear him, in 2018, on BBC Radio 3, waxing lyrical about his favourite Shakespearean moments. “In Caribbean and African folklore,” he says, “there’s a character called Anansi who’s a spider and a bit of trickster, and it’s very much like Puck.”
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S48Does exercise really do nothing for longevity, as a Finnish twins study suggests?  Surveys on lifestyle and longevity consistently find that people who do more exercise live longer. So it is surprising to see a report from the Finnish Twins Cohort Study that there is little direct effect of “leisure time physical activity” on lifespan. What makes this study different from others – and is it right?Human behaviour and biology are complex and interact with wider society and the environment. How much exercise a person gets could be linked to their genetics, diet, disabilities, education, wealth, or just whether they have enough leisure time and a safe green space. Each of these factors could also be linked to lifespan in different ways.
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S49Napoleon: ignore the griping over historical details, Ridley Scott's film is a meditation on the madness of power  While Ridley Scott’s Napoleon has been causing consternation among some historians, they are overlooking the fact that the historical record does actually support the film’s narrative in terms of one man taking power and shaping a new order during times of revolution and chaos.Set against the bloody backdrop of the French revolution (1789-1799), Empress Josephine – a beautifully judged performance by Vanessa Kirby – who narrowly escaped Robespierre’s guillotine, loves Napoleon for his power and image.
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S50Baldurs Gate 3 wins game of the year at 2023's Game Awards -  I’m looking over the shoulder of my friend, Iulia, as she boots up her PC. “You’re going to lose your mind,” she grins. Iulia and I share a love of fantasy worlds, hot monsters and video games, and she’s invited me over to her flat to show me something “really special”.Iulia admits, with a mixture of guilt and pride, that she’s already spent over 100 hours exploring the first act of a new game. She clicks through the opening, rhapsodising about the beauty of the environments, the intricacy of the turn-based combat and the glory of something or someone called “Astarion”.
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S51S52Why Venezuela is threatening to annex Guyana's oil-rich province of Essequibo  The US air force has taken the unusual step of holding joint drills with Guyana as the United Nations scheduled an emergency meeting of the security council to discuss Venezuela’s threat to annex more than two-thirds of the oil-rich South American country.Guyanese president, Irfaan Ali, appealed to Washington and to the UN after the Venezuelan president, Nicolás Maduro, announced that he had taken steps to formalise the incorporation of Essequibo – an oil-rich 160,000sq km region of neighbouring Guyana – as part of Venezuela.
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S53S54How to protect yourself from cyber-scammers over the festive period  The festive season is a time for joy, family and festive cheer. However, it’s also a prime target for cybercriminals. As online shopping ramps up, so does the risk of falling prey to cyber-attacks. That’s why it’s crucial to be extra vigilant about your cybersecurity during this time. Here are some essential tips to safeguard yourself and your data during the festive period:
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S55From the Paris agreement to COP28, how oil and gas giants try to influence the global climate agenda  There is “no science” behind demands to phase out fossil fuels, according to the current COP president. This level of cynicism at the top of the annual climate summit makes it less surprising that the conference has also been used as an oil trading venue.A record number of fossil fuel lobbyists gained access to the conference this year. So it seems to presage a bright future for fossil fuels, when it should be a venue to discuss how to stop using them.
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S56S57The disagreement between two climate scientists that will decide our future  Getting to net zero emissions by mid-century is conventionally understood as humanity’s best hope for keeping Earth’s surface temperature (already 1.2°C above its pre-industrial level) from increasing well beyond 1.5°C – potentially reaching a point at which it could cause widespread societal breakdown. James Hansen of Columbia University in the US published a paper with colleagues in November which claims temperatures are set to rise further and faster than the predictions of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). In his view, the 1.5°C target is dead.
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S58Frozen methane under the seabed is thawing as oceans warm - and things are worse than we thought  Buried beneath the oceans surrounding continents is a naturally occurring frozen form of methane and water. Sometimes dubbed “fire-ice” as you can literally set light to it, marine methane hydrate can melt as the climate warms, uncontrollably releasing methane – a potent greenhouse gas – into the ocean and possibly the atmosphere. Releasing it from the seabed could cause the oceans to become more acidic and the climate to warm further. This is a dangerous set of circumstances.
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S59This hand-painted film is a 'must see' - what you should watch this week  The mark of a good film, for me, is the way I feel when it’s over. If I jump up to brush off the popcorn and pull on my coat, it’s forgettable fare. If I’m still glued to my seat as the final credits roll, it will probably stick with me for quite some time.Such was the case with Loving Vincent in 2017, a beautiful film about the life and death of Vincent van Gogh. The story, about a man attempting to deliver the artist’s final letter and, in the process, unravelling the mystery around his death, wasn’t what hooked me.
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S60How the Christmas pudding, with ingredients taken from the colonies, became an iconic British food  As an American living in Britain in the 1990s, my first exposure to Christmas pudding was something of a shock. I had expected figs or plums, as in the “We Wish You a Merry Christmas” carol, but there were none. Neither did it resemble the cold custard-style dessert that Americans typically call pudding.Instead, I was greeted with a boiled mass of suet – a raw, hard animal fat this is often replaced with a vegetarian alternative – as well as flour and dried fruits that is often soaked in alcohol and set alight.
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S61Viva Guadalupe! Beyond Mexico, the Indigenous Virgin Mary is a powerful symbol of love and inclusion for millions of Latinos in the US  Dec. 12 is a special day for millions of Catholics around the world, especially those of Mexican descent. Known as el Dia de la Virgen Guadalupe, it is a popular feast day that celebrates the Virgin of Guadalupe: a brown-skinned, Indigenous vision of Mary that Catholics believe appeared to a peasant in 1531.The story of Guadalupe’s appearances is recounted in a text called the Nican Mopohua, which means “Here It Is Told” in Nahuatl, an Aztec language. The Nican Mopohua describes Jesus’ mother appearing multiple times to Juan Diego Cuauhtlatoatzin, an Indigenous convert to Catholicism, about a decade after the Spanish had conquered Aztec Mexico. After her fourth and final apparition to Diego, Catholics believe that her image imprinted onto his cactus-fiber robe, known as a “tilma.”
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S62S63The NBA In-Season Tournament is a play for viewer attention -- will it succeed over time?  The National Basketball Association’s inaugural In-Season Tournament wraps up this weekend. The tournament kicked off on Nov. 3 and will culminate in a championship game between the Indiana Pacers and Los Angeles Lakers on Dec. 9.The tournament is something NBA commissioner Adam Silver has reportedly wanted to implement for years for a variety of reasons. One obvious potential benefit of the tournament is to generate revenue, as the Women’s National Basketball Association has already done with its own tournament, the Commissioner’s Cup.
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S64COP28: The scientific basis for a rapid fossil fuel phase out  It was perhaps unavoidable that fossil fuels would take centre stage at this year’s COP28 climate negotiations, held in Dubai and presided over by oil magnate Sultan al-Jaber. And indeed, it took only days for controversy to erupt in the wake of al-Jaber’s claim that there is no science behind the need to phase out fossil fuels to meet the 1.5 C target of the Paris Agreement. He later claimed he was misinterpreted.
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S65Inquest into Soleiman Faqiri's death at an Ontario 'super jail' reignites calls for reform  Imagine your family member is experiencing a mental health crisis, but instead of being treated at a mental health facility, they are locked inside a notorious provincial jail. You go to help by bringing their medication and medical records but are turned away again and again. Days later, a knock at the door brings the devastating news that your loved one is dead.The Faqiri family has been living this nightmare for the last seven years. They had come to Canada as refugees from Afghanistan in the early 1990s hoping for a better life.
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S66"The Zone of Interest" Finds Banality in the Evil of Auschwitz  Life is good, on a fine day, by a glittering lake. A family picnic on the grass, a merry swim, and the comforting of a crying baby. Such is the opening scene of "The Zone of Interest," a new film from Jonathan Glazer. The family is that of Rudolf Höss (Christian Friedel), his wife, Hedwig (Sandra Hüller), and their five children. Later, as darkness gathers, they drive back home to their orderly house, beside the walls of Auschwitz.Höss is not a fictional invention. He was the commandant at Auschwitz from 1940 to 1943, and returned there in May, 1944, on the orders of Heinrich Himmler, specifically to oversee the extermination of Hungarian Jews. Their arrival in unprecedented numbersâup to twelve thousand a dayâwas a logistical challenge to which S.S. Obersturmbannführer Höss was trusted to rise. Train lines were extended so that they ran right up to two of the crematoriums. The entire operation even bore his name: Aktion Höss. A rare honor.
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S67What October 7th Did and Didn't Change About Israeli Politics  Hamas's October 7th attack on Israel, in which more than twelve hundred people were murdered, revealed a woefully unprepared Israeli government, as well asâit was later discoveredâa government that ignored warnings about the raid. As a result, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, the longest-tenured leader in Israel's history, has seen his approval ratings crater, with a majority of Israelis saying that he should leave office at the end of the war in Gaza. But, with the war showing no signs of ending, and with Netanyahu's record of near-invincibility, it remains unclear what any future government will look like.To understand what may come next for Israeli politics, I recently spoke by phone with Dahlia Scheindlin, a political scientist and an expert on Israeli public opinion, as well as a policy fellow at the Century Foundation and a columnist for Haaretz. During our conversation, which has been edited for length and clarity, we discussed who might succeed Netanyahu, whether October 7th and the war in Gaza have opened up new space for a different kind of politics in Israel, and how to understand Israel's long rightward drift.
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S68Liz Cheney: Trump Should Go to Jail if Convicted  Liz Cheney has been Republican royalty, and a conservative stalwart in Washington. But after protesting Donald Trump’s election lies, and voting for his impeachment after January 6th, she found herself in exile from the G.O.P. Cheney is contemplating a Presidential campaign on a third-party line. As she promotes her new book, “Oath and Honor,” she is raising the alarm that Americans across the political spectrum have become “numb” to the threat of a would-be dictator. “People really understood that what he had done [on January 6th] was unacceptable, not to mention unconstitutional and illegal,” she tells David Remnick. “That recognition quickly dwindled.” Plus, the country songwriter Brandy Clark talks with Emily Nussbaum about her Grammy-nominated self-titled album, and explains how she came to embrace the “dirtier” aesthetic of “Americana”: “I’ve heard it called country music for Democrats,” she jokes.Once a top Republican, Cheney is calling out her former colleagues in Congress—including Speaker Mike Johnson—for “enabling” a would-be dictator.
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S69"May December" Probes the Dark Assumptions Behind a Tabloid Scandal  Not long into "May December," the slinky new Netflix movie directed by Todd Haynes and written by Samy Burch and Alex Mechanik, you start to get a bad feeling. The melodramatic piano music has put you on edge, as have the visible damp of the Savannah air and the oak trees dripping with moss. A family is hosting a party at their sprawling waterfront house. Gracie Atherton (Julianne Moore), a striking strawberry-blond matriarch in middle age, frosts a cake. Joe Yoo (Charles Melton), a handsome, athletic man, maybe thirtysomething and Asian in appearance, tends an enormous barbecue. Teen-agers, also Asian-looking, run around with their friends. Amid this reverie, a stranger arrives. Elizabeth Berry (Natalie Portman) has come on business: she will be playing Gracie in a film, and intends to embed with the family.We soon learn that Gracie and Joe are married, and that their twins are about to graduate from high school. There's an obvious age difference between the coupleâa quarter century, in fact. This is a big deal only because of when they got together: Joe was in seventh grade. Elizabeth's goal is to elevate this scandal into art and, in turn, elevate her middling "TV famous" career.
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S70The Anti-Spectacle of the Republican Debates  What were the takeaways from the final Republican debate of the year? Who won? Who lost? Were the various gaffes forgettable, or can they lodge themselves in the addled brain of a viewer in Iowa or New Hampshire, lasting there in the grooves well into mid-January, when she will go to put in her vote? Was that candidate’s feeble command of the lectern in Tuscaloosa—or in Milwaukee or Miami before it—a preview of a career of wannabe tyranny? Are there heels hidden in his boots? Paraphrasing some of the punditry response to the Republican debates is not done scornfully. Everyone has a job to do, and everyone, from the press to the moderators to the shrinking crowd of hopeful extremists shouting over one another on a lit stage, has worked in tedious harmony, these past several months, to fill the unfillable absence of Donald Trump.Between August and December, there were four debates that were sanctioned by the Republican National Convention and aired on television, and not a single one of them came to me live. A post-facto watch of nearly eight hours of political theatre creates a story that is, of course, counter to how a debate is meant to be consumed. The story being: how the G.O.P. was seeking to arrange its characters in a Trumpless environment, a future that could end up being a fantasy. Eight candidates qualified for the first debate, in Milwaukee—a dangerous number of voices from a producer’s point of view, that nonetheless had the useful effect of exhibiting the weird diversity of the right, in a party where diversity and diversion has not always been tolerated. Tucker Carlson’s interview with Trump, on X, purposefully scheduled at the same time, also gave the debate’s participants a sense of camaraderie and a sturdy target—at least they had shown up. They would vie for your attention, divided as it was by the Tucker interview.
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