   
CEO Picks - The best that international journalism has to offer!
 S6How Leading Companies Build the Workforces They Need to Stay Ahead   Digital transformation, the industrial Internet, advanced analytics, artificial intelligence, robotics, machine learning and a plethora of other innovations are fundamentally changing the nature of work. The impact of technology will be felt over time, and not overnight, creating the illusion there is time to react. But building a winning workforce for tomorrow starts today. The best-performing companies are already taking steps to attract new talent and widen their lead over rivals. They delineate the skills and capabilities needed to win in the future, identify gaps, and aggressively fill the gaps. Even as strategies, business models, and needed skills and capabilities continue to change as new technologies emerge, successful companies don’t wait to upgrade their workforce.
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S1Favorite Books of 2023  To look back on a year of reading is to be handed a clear mirror of your priorities and passions, of the questions that live in you and the reckonings that keep you up at night. While the literatur…
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S2Why Your Business Might One Day Accept Bitcoin (or Something Like It)  Every day seems to bring a new headline about Bitcoin, the digital currency first created in 2008 by the pseudonymous programmer Satoshi Nakamoto. Yesterday’s news that Mt. Gox, the largest Bitcoin exchange in the world, will file for bankruptcy owing to the theft of nearly six percent of the world supply of bitcoins is a reminder that the digital currency is far from ready for primetime.
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S3Is Your Job AI Resilient?  Leading Wall Street research firm Evercore ISI, in collaboration with venture studio Visionary Future, embarked on a comprehensive study to understand the profound effects of Generative AI on businesses, the broader economy, and its integration into future workforces. They conducted an in-depth analysis of over 160 million jobs in order to produce analytical insight to help leaders navigate this change. With AI’s influence, their projections suggest a potential resurgence in global GDP growth, envisioning a substantial boost to the global economy by 2032. The authors predict that AI will emerge not merely as a technological marvel, but as a beacon of hope in addressing demographic and productivity challenges. This article covers analysis on which jobs will be most affected by AI, including which stand to benefit the most from augmentation by AI.
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S5How the Metaverse Could Change Work  The workplace of the 2020s already looks vastly different from what we could have imagined just a couple of years ago. Now, the metaverse promises to bring new levels of social connectedness, mobility, and collaboration to a world of virtual work. The metaverse is poised to reshape the world of work in at least four major ways: new immersive forms of team collaboration; the emergence of new digital, AI-enabled colleagues; the acceleration of learning and skills acquisition through virtualization and gamified technologies; and the eventual rise of a metaverse economy with completely new enterprises and work roles. The metaverse also opens up new possibilities to rethink the office and work environment, introducing elements of adventure, spontaneity, and surprise. A virtual office doesn’t have to be a drab, uniform corporate environment downtown: why not a beach location, an ocean cruise, or even another world? Our work colleagues in the metaverse will not be limited to the avatars of our real-world colleagues. Increasingly, we will be joined by an array of digital colleagues — highly realistic, AI-powered, human-like bots. The metaverse could also revolutionize training and skills development, drastically compressing the time needed to develop and acquire new skills. While still in its early stages, the emergent metaverse provides an opportunity for enterprises to reset the balance in hybrid and remote work, to recapture the spontaneity, interactivity, and fun of team-based working and learning, while maintaining the flexibility, productivity, and convenience of working from home.
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S7The Gamer Disposition  Today’s multiplayer online games are large, complex, constantly evolving social systems. Their perpetual newness is what makes them enticing to players. Each generation of games begets Browse the entire HBR List.Listen to the podcast.Take the poll. a new generation of participants who develop what we call the gamer disposition. It’s exactly the disposition you should […]
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S8Marketing When Budgets Are Down  The general rule of enterprise finance is that marketing budgets drop like a stone at the first sign of trouble and rise like a feather once the environment is more settled. In mid-2023 we’re far from a settled state — projected GDP growth in western markets is depressingly flat, inflation is proving to be rather stubborn, and those disruptions just keep on coming. It’s tough to see a significant increase in marketing budgets in the near term. Gartner’s annual survey of hundreds of CMOs charts the evolution of marketing spending over recent history, offering guidance for how enterprise leaders can deliver results and build the capabilities to fuel growth in a time of less.
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S9Three Questions Leaders Must Ask About Their Company Too often we see character, certainly in management circles, in reference to lack of it. That is, some CEO or CFO or senior executive has been caught with his hand in the kitty or in the knickers of some subordinate. Character, as our parents tell us, is what you do when you think no one is looking. Therefore, cheaters cheat; liars lie; but the converse is also true; faithful remain so and truthful tell the truth.
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S105 Principles of Purposeful Leadership  The traditional model of the leader-hero who saves the day, knows it all, is the smartest person in the room, and is too often driven by power, fame, glory, or money is not appropriate in today’s environment. People today expect a different kind of leader. While each company needs to define its own leadership point of view, the author presents five attributes that characterizes leaders who are able to unleash the kind of human magic you see at work at some of the most high-performing companies. First, be clear about your purpose. Second, be clear about your role. Third, be clear about whom you serve. Fourth, be driven by values. Finally, be authentic.
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S11S12The Timeless Lessons of "Mr. Swatch" I was sad to read the news that Nicolas G. Hayek — one of Europe’s most colorful entrepreneurs, and one of the most charismatic CEO’s I’ve ever met — died this past Monday at the age of 82. I take comfort in the fact that the leader of Switzerland’s Swatch Group passed away in his office at Swatch headquarters outside Berne, the Swiss capital. Knowing Hayek as I did, I know he died doing what he loved. He was a dreamer and an innovator to his last breath.
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S13Ending the Shareholder Lawsuit Gravy Train The Supreme Court is going to host a debate next week on the efficient market hypothesis. The battle lines may not be exactly what you’d expect: the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and Justice Samuel Alito have already argued that the EMH is, as Alito put it, “a faulty economic premise,” while Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg and the Obama administration have backed the idea that, as a sextet of Justice Department lawyers put it, “markets process publicly available information about a company into the company’s stock price.”
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S14The Dangers of Becoming Too Dependent on a Single Customer  In managing customer relationships — or relationships with any key stakeholders — it is critical to manage the balance of power between the company and any one customer. This can be done by diversifying the customer base, understanding (and be willing to use) customer pressure points, and (in the case where a company is locked into a single key relationship) to ensure that the customer is as dependent on the company as the company is dependent on the customer.
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S154 Strategies to Cultivate an Authentic Corporate Purpose  In today’s corporate sphere, a growing disparity exists between companies’ declared values and their actions, leading to stakeholder skepticism. This divide prompts discussions about the feasibility of genuine societal contributions within capitalist frameworks. Companies can tread three paths: transactional (profit-focused), toxic (misaligned actions under a guise of societal benefit), or transcendent (true alignment of values and operations). This article introduces four pivotal strategies to help businesses achieve a transcendent purpose, ensuring a cohesive blend of profitability and genuine societal impact.
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S16The Globe: Finding Great Ideas in Emerging Markets Too many companies in mature markets assume that the only reason to enter emerging countries is to pursue new customers. They fail to perceive the potential for innovation in those countries or to notice that a few visionary multinationals are successfully tapping that potential for much-needed ideas in products and services. Think of General Electric’s portable ultrasound technology and Intel’s inexpensive Classmate PC.
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S17S18An Entrepreneur's Guide to Surviving the "Death Valley Curve"  The so-called “death valley curve” represents a crucial early phase of new ventures, when substantial work on a new enterprise has begun but no sufficient revenue has been generated. During this period, companies deplete their initial capital in their quest to establish the business. To help navigate this tricky time, the authors have created a matrix with four phases of new entrepreneurial ventures and the strategic challenges in each phase.
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S1910 Ways to Prove You're a Strategic Thinker  To get ahead in the business world, it’s not enough to think strategically. You also have to effectively communicate those ideas. There are several ways to do this, including elevating the conversation to focus on the big picture and broader context, being forward-looking in your comments, anticipating the effects of potential decisions, connecting disparate concepts, simplifying complex issues, using metaphors and analogies, stimulating dialogue with questions, showing you are informed, actively listening, and seeking feedback.
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S20Obama and the High Cost of High Expectations There’s an old saying that putting someone on a pedestal makes it a lot easier to get kicked in the head. I mention this because two years ago many voters put Barack Obama on a very high pedestal. Expectations went through the roof as crowds of people (even outside the U.S.) shouted that oft-repeated campaign slogan, “Yes we can!” For the first time in many years, Americans foresaw a president who would mobilize the nation to greatness. After the distress of the economic meltdown, Obama represented a fresh start, with new energy, excitement, and hope.
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S21How Savvy Midsize Firms Increase Sales in a Virtual World  Data shows that maintaining customer relations was a huge challenge for midsize companies in 2020. In-person sales is often a crucial differentiator for these companies, which have fewer resources to put into digital selling tools and training than larger firms. But some midsize companies have adapted to virtual selling and have not only held their own during the pandemic, but increased sales. They’ve done so by using online connections to humanize interactions, creating greater sales process efficiencies, and bursting out of traditional geographic boundaries.
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S22How to Break Down Work into Tasks That Can Be Automated  Virtually every organization is wrestling and experimenting with automation. But the problem comes in when businesses risk significant collateral damage and minimizing their ROI by trying to automate entire jobs. It’s much better to deconstruct jobs so you can identify the specific tasks that can be automated. How do you know? If the work is repetitive and easily predictable, computers can usually do it faster and with no errors; variable work, like consulting or HR, is not easy to automate. Independent work that doesn’t require collaboration is better for automation, whereas interactive work involving communication skills and empathy is best done by humans. Mental work can usually be automated, but some physical work involves human dexterity or strength. Separating these tasks lets you move on to the harder questions when developing your company’s automation strategy.
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S23Betting on the Future: The Virtues of Contingent Contracts A television production company was recently trying to sell the syndication rights for a popular sitcom to an independent station in one of the three largest U.S. broadcast markets. Both parties were eager to close the deal, but they had very different expectations about the program’s ratings. The producer was confident that the sitcom would grab at least a 9% share of the audience in its early-evening time slot. The station felt the show wouldn’t garner more than a 7% share. Because each share point was worth about $1 million in advertising revenue, the difference in expectations translated into very different ideas about what the rights to the show were worth. After many heated debates, the negotiations broke down. The producer forfeited the market, and the television station bought a less attractive program to fill out its schedule.
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S24Building Consensus Around Difficult Strategic Decisions  Making future-focused decisions in an uncertain world presents fundamental challenges for leaders. When we’re talking about the future, data is by definition incomplete, so we’re often relying on assumptions and personal beliefs. People often come into discussions with preconceived notions, and data can be skewed to support pre-existing perspectives. So how can leaders get clarity on the best path forward? The authors of this article have developed a tool that they call “strategic sparring sessions.” These are immersive, interactive discussions specifically designed to help groups see through the fog that accompanies today’s predictable unpredictability. These sessions help teams align on key assumptions, build conviction on a path forward, and activate individual and collective change.
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S25Microdecisions for Macro Impact When companies or pundits talk about decisions, it’s easy to get focused on the major ones made by senior executives. It’s true that big decisions around restructurings, mergers or acquisitions, and strategy can create or destroy a lot of value. However, those decisions don’t typically happen very often, and they are not always amenable to improvement. The senior managers who make them, for example, may not want you mucking around in their decision processes.
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S26Building Data Discovery into Your Organization In the 1800s, enterprises organized themselves to use their capital assets effectively. Beginning in the mid-1900s, they organized to take better advantage of their people. Today, “data” are increasingly important to virtually all companies, government agencies, and nonprofits. They offer unprecedented opportunity and pose new risks, in turn demanding deep organizational change. The thinking here is that virtually no enterprise (whether 100 years old or yet to be established), no department therein — indeed no job — will remain untouched.
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S27When Your Go-To Problem-Solving Approach Fails  We make decisions all day, every day. The way we make decisions depends largely on context and our own unique problem-solving style. But, sometimes a tough workplace situation turns our usual problem-solving style on its head. Situationality is the culmination of many factors including location, life stage, decision ownership, and team dynamics. To make effective choices in the workplace, we often need to put our well-worn decision-making habits to the side and carefully ponder all aspects of the situation at hand.
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S28S29The Passive-Aggressive Organization Healthy companies are hard to mistake. Their managers have access to good, timely information, the authority to make informed decisions, and the incentives to make them on behalf of the organization, which promptly and capably carries them out. A good term for the healthiest of such organizations is “resilient,” since they can react nimbly to challenges and recover quickly from those they cannot dodge. Unfortunately, most companies are not resilient. In fact, fewer than one in five of the approximately 30,000 individuals who responded to a global online survey Booz Allen Hamilton conducted describe their organizations that way.1 The largest number—over one-quarter—say they suffer from the cluster of pathologies we place under the label “passive-aggressive.’’ The category takes its name from the organization’s quiet but tenacious resistance, in every way but openly, to corporate directives.
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S30What You Don't Know About Making Decisions  Most executives think of decision making as a singular event that occurs at a particular point in time. In reality, though, decision making is a process fraught with power plays, politics, personal nuances, and institutional history. Leaders who recognize this make far better decisions than those who persevere in the fantasy that decisions are events they alone control. That said, some decision-making processes are far more effective than others. Most often, participants use an advocacy process, possibly the least productive way to get things done. They view decision making as a contest, arguing passionately for their preferred solutions, presenting information selectively, withholding relevant conflicting data so they can make a convincing case, and standing firm against opposition. Much more powerful is an inquiry process, in which people consider a variety of options and work together to discover the best solution. Moving from advocacy to inquiry requires careful attention to three critical factors: fostering constructive, rather than personal, conflict; making sure everyone knows that their viewpoints are given serious consideration even if they are not ultimately accepted; and knowing when to bring deliberations to a close. The authors discuss in detail strategies for moving from an advocacy to an inquiry process, as well as for fostering productive conflict, true consideration, and timely closure. And they offer a framework for assessing the effectiveness of your process while you’re still in the middle of it. Decision making is a job that lies at the very heart of leadership and one that requires a genius for balance: the ability to embrace the divergence that may characterize early discussions and to forge the unity needed for effective implementation.
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S31Do You Pass the Leadership Test? The true mark of a leader is the willingness to stick with a bold course of action — an unconventional business strategy, a unique product-development roadmap, a controversial marketing campaign — even as the rest of the world wonders why you’re not marching in step with the status quo. In other words, real leaders are happy to zig while others zag. They understand that in an era of hyper-competition and non-stop disruption, the only way to stand out from the crowd is to stand for something special.
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S32How AI Could Help the Public Sector  A.I could be used to make government agencies more efficient, to improve to the job satisfaction of public servants, and to increase the quality of services offered. Applications of artificial intelligence to the public sector are broad and growing, with early experiments taking place around the world. In addition to education, public servants are using AI to help them make welfare payments and immigration decisions, detect fraud, plan new infrastructure projects, answer citizen queries, adjudicate bail hearings, triage health care cases, and establish drone paths. The decisions we are making now will shape the impact of artificial intelligence on these and other government functions. Which tasks will be handed over to machines? And how should governments spend the labor time saved by artificial intelligence?
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S33Only the CEO Can Make the Big Bets This blog was written with Jay Terwilliger and Mark Sebell, managing partners at Creative Realities, a Boston-based innovation management collaborative. You have probably heard the Wayne Gretzky quote about skating to where the puck will be a hundred times at least. But did you ever see it as the central metaphor for what truly innovative […]
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S34Sweden: Where it's taboo for dads to skip parental leave  Kjell Sarnold has a glint in his eye as he describes fond memories of his parental leave in the 1970s. His son was eight months old, and they bonded during a balmy September when his employer granted him four weeks off work on 90% of his salary – paid by the state – while his wife returned to work full-time."We went out for a lot of walks. I had one of those baby carriers on my back. We were outside all the time," says Sarnold, who was living in Stockholm's archipelago at the time. The period also involved changing countless nappies, lots of cooking and learning to comfort his son when he was upset. But on the whole, Sarnold loved it.
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S35Yennayer: North Africa's 3,000-year-old new year's celebration  On the evening of 12 January, dozens of bonfires burned on the rocky hillside above the village of Tisselday in Morocco's High Atlas Mountains. They were lit by families for Yennayer, the Amazigh (or Berber) new year celebrations. The fires symbolise a cleansing or purification of the past year, explained Ahmed Agouni, a trained geologist and owner of the long-running Irocha guesthouse in his home village of Tisselday, some 1,530m above sea level on the High Atlas eastern slopes.The Amazigh calendar starts at 950 BCE, when King Sheshonq ascended the throne of Egypt, meaning this year is 2974. For Amazigh communities in Morocco, this Yennayer will be particularly special.
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S36Tilgul: A Indian sweet that encourages kind words  My cousin handed me a fistful of a tilgul, a simple gul (jaggery) and sesame sweet made with ghee (clarified butter), whispering words that everyone should carry with them at all times of the year: "tilgul ghya, goad-goad bola" ("take this sweet, speak good and kind words"). The words, a mantra for joyful and kind-hearted living, are typically spoken as people exchange the treat in the western state of Maharashtra to mark Makar Sankranti, an Indian holiday on 14-15 January that honours the year's end and a new beginning.As children, my cousins and I grabbed chunks of the tilgul – available as ladoo (round sweets), papdi (brittle), barfi (fudge), revdi (coin-sized treats), gajak (bars) and other forms – as we beelined for the door to the yard to resume playtime. The significance of the words was lost on us at that time; today, as mums ourselves, we realise the importance and implication of exhorting kindness and goodness in a world that can be unbearably hard and hostile.
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S37Feud: Capote vs the Swans: How a scandalous Truman Capote story exposed the secrets of US high society  A caricature on the cover of New York Magazine in 1975 depicted author Truman Capote as a yappy little French poodle, nipping at the fingers of a stunned woman at a black-tie party. The headline read: Capote Bites the Hands That Fed Him. The article, by the gossip columnist Liz Smith, pulled back the curtain on the real identities of the society women Capote had recently betrayed in print. Babe Paley and Slim Keith – who at the time filled the society pages and best-dressed lists – confided in him about their affairs, their philandering husbands and their insecurities, only to have their close friend mock them and reveal their most intimate secrets. His barely-veiled fiction – a story called La Côte Basque, 1965 – appeared in the widely-read Esquire magazine. The betrayal helped ruin his life.More like this: – The female drug barons of Latin America – How Hollywood retold Breakfast at Tiffany's – The film that captured the tumult of 1970s America
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S38The Taste of Things to How to Have Sex: Ten of the best films to watch in February  The Promised Land didn't get any Oscar nominations, but if Nicolaj Arcel's sweeping, gritty-yet-accessible 18th-Century epic had been in English rather than Danish, it would have won awards aplenty. The always-brilliant Mads Mikkelsen stars as a retired army captain who dreams of being seen as a nobleman. His plan is to cultivate a tract of supposedly unfarmable scrubland in honour of King Frederik V. But if the heath itself weren't hostile enough, he also has to contend with a spiteful local aristocrat (Simon Bennebjerg) who doesn't want this scruffy soldier encroaching on his territory. "The Promised Land makes for a gripping man-versus-wilderness survival story with unmistakable political undertones, but it's also nimble enough to allow romance to blossom under its slate-grey skies," says Phil de Semleyn in Time Out. Arcel has "crafted a kind of Danish The Last of the Mohicans that's full of passion and political conviction. It should stand the test of time almost as well as its rugged hero."Three British schoolgirls go on holiday together without any parental supervision, and look forward to a week of wild adventures in a Greek party resort. It could be the premise of a raucous teen comedy, and for a while that's what Molly Manning Walker's directorial debut seems to be: the noisy, boozy chaos of a hedonistic nightclub has rarely been recreated so convincingly, or so funnily, on the big screen. But things become more unsettling when one girl (Mia McKenna-Bruce) feels herself being pushed towards losing her virginity. One of the year's best films, How To Have Sex is "an unflinching but empathetic look at consent, violation, and the surrounding grey areas of sexual experience," says Isaac Feldberg at RogerEbert.com. "This is fresh, passionate, and remarkably assured filmmaking, made with ample energy and even more exhilarating clarity of vision."
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S39Governments spend US$22 billion a year helping the fishing industry empty our oceans. This injustice must end  Overfishing has dire consequences for ocean health and for the millions of people who depend on fish for food and wellbeing. Globally, catch has been steadily declining since the 1990s. It’s a trend that’s likely to continue if we fail to act now.Nearly all governments, including Australia’s, subsidise their fishing industries. Financial support comes in many forms, from taxpayer-funded fuel to reduced boat-building costs. These subsidies are harmful because they encourage overfishing. Some of the most environmentally damaging and least efficient fishing activities, such as bottom trawling and distant water fishing, would become unprofitable and cease without government subsidies.
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S40Masters of the Air: the real history behind the show's black fighter pilots  New Apple TV series, Masters of the Air, tells the story of the American air effort in Europe during the second world war through the eyes of the Bloody 100th Bomb Group, who were based at Thorpe Abbotts in Norfolk, England. Negative comments have centred on the inclusion of the all-black 99th Fighter Squadron and 332nd Fighter Group who flew in the Mediterranean. This follows the logic that their inclusion is historically inaccurate, as they were not part of the air campaign flown from Britain.
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S41S42Four trends you'll see in online election campaigns this year  Over the past decade, social media has become an essential component of election campaigns. But in 2024, the options seem endless. With a record number of elections taking place around the world, how will digital campaigning look different this year? In 2024, campaigners have access to more digital channels than ever. Facebook and X (formally Twitter) remain a mainstay, but campaigns will also be looking to exploit newer platforms to reach the electorate.
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S43Meet your gut microbes: Lactobacillus brevis - a fermentation superstar  Fermentation, one of the oldest food production and preservation techniques, has seen a huge revival in recent years. From craft beers and kombucha to yoghurt, sauerkraut and pickles, fermentation is central to producing these foods and drinks. There are different types of fermentation, one of which is lactic acid fermentation. Lactic acid (also known as lactate) is best known for the burning sensation we feel in our muscles when exercising, which acts as a signal to the body to lower the intensity of the activity.
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S44Students with disabilities often left on the sidelines when it comes to school sports  These inspirational headlines may sound familiar. They highlight brief but exhilarating moments of disabled students in sports.They represent what’s commonly referred to in the disability community as “inspiration porn,” but they often miss an injustice that deserves far more attention. Student athletes with disabilities are sidelined or, even worse, never granted the opportunity to try out, even though they gained equal rights to extracurricular activities such as school sports more than 50 years ago.
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S45How can I get ice off my car? An engineer who studies airborne particles shares some quick and easy techniques  If you live somewhere that gets cold in the winter, you’ve probably seen cars parked outdoors covered in a thin layer of ice on a chilly morning. But what causes this frost, and how can you get rid of it quickly?I’m a mechanical engineering professor who studies how water vapor interacts with airborne particles under different atmospheric conditions. Frosty windshields are similar to some of the thermodynamic questions I study in the lab, and they’re also a pesky issue that I deal with every winter on my way to work.
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S46Orbital resonance - the striking gravitational dance done by planets with aligning orbits  Planets orbit their parent stars while separated by enormous distances – in our solar system, planets are like grains of sand in a region the size of a football field. The time that planets take to orbit their suns have no specific relationship to each other. But sometimes, their orbits display striking patterns. For example, astronomers studying six planets orbiting a star 100 light years away have just found that they orbit their star with an almost rhythmic beat, in perfect synchrony. Each pair of planets completes their orbits in times that are the ratios of whole numbers, allowing the planets to align and exert a gravitational push and pull on the other during their orbit.
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S47A former federal judge explains what it's like to be on the bench in a high-profile trial like those involving Donald Trump's criminal charges  Former President Donald Trump is expected to make many court appearances in the coming months, most in connection with the 91 criminal charges against him in four cases in both federal and state courts. The judges in these cases are under intense public and legal scrutiny, and several have been subjected to violent threats even before the trials begin.To learn about what judges think and experience in these situations, The Conversation U.S. spoke with John E. Jones III, the president of Dickinson College, who is a retired federal judge appointed by President George W. Bush and confirmed unanimously by the U.S. Senate in 2002.
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S48S49S50Training an animal? An ethicist explains how and why your dog - but not your frog - can be punished  People talk to their pets every day: offering praise when they’re good, reassurance when they’re confused and affection when they’re cuddling. We also speak to animals when they misbehave. “Why did you do that?” someone might ask their dog. Or we might scold the cat – “Don’t touch that!” – as we move a family heirloom across the room.When people talk about “punishment,” this implies more than a loss of privileges. The term suggests someone is being asked to learn a lesson after breaking a rule they can understand. But an animal’s understanding is different from a human’s, which raises questions about what lessons they can learn and what, if any, rebukes of animals are ethical.
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S51S52Biden is campaigning against the Lost Cause and the 'poison' of white supremacy in South Carolina  In the blur of breaking news, one of President Joe Biden’s first speeches of the 2024 campaign was given in South Carolina and has already been mostly forgotten in the ongoing coverage of the state’s democratic primary on Feb. 3, 2024.The site of the speech on Jan. 8, 2024, was Charleston, South Carolina’s Mother Emanuel AME Church, where, on a summer evening in 2015, an avowed white supremacist murdered nine Black worshipers, including Rev. Clementa Pinckney, the church’s pastor and a state representative. At Pinckney’s funeral, then-President Barack Obama sang a heart-felt version of the Christian hymn Amazing Grace.
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S53American Fiction: scathing and accurate portrayal of the obstacles black writers face in publishing  Drawing inspiration from Percival Everett’s 2001 novel, Erasure, Cord Jefferson’s directorial debut American Fiction follows disillusioned novelist-turned-professor Thelonious “Monk” Ellison (Jeffrey Wright) as he grapples with the challenges of the American publishing industry. Despite his clear talent, Monk continuously faces rejection for his latest novel. It’s never explicitly said but it’s made pretty clear that his book is just not “black enough”. As a scholar exploring the relationship between black British literature and its intersections with the British publishing industry, I was struck by the similarities between the UK and US industries.
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S54S55S56Green Football Weekend: eight things grassroots clubs can do to reach net zero  Germany and England might be bitter rivals when it comes international football – but some of their amateur clubs have found common ground leading the charge to tackle climate change in sport.Often, clubs are at the forefront of environmental impacts. A women’s club in the Gambia, Yakaar Academy, is feeling the effects of a changing planet as extreme weather impacts agricultural production, the economy and health in the country.
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S57S58Disney's Crist  Born in a small Basque fishing village on the northern coast of Spain at the end of the 19th century, Cristóbal Balenciaga (1895-1972) went on to become one of the most innovative and influential fashion designers of the 20th century – and the king of fashion in Paris.His dedication to the craft of dressmaking and tailoring was fostered by his seamstress mother and acknowledged by local Spanish aristocracy who recognised his talents. A marquesa’s patronage led to a tailoring apprenticeship in San Sebastián, where he opened his first dressmaking business in 1919 at the age of 24, and later an atelier in Madrid.
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S59Completed Dry January? Reading fiction can help newly sober mothers decide what's next  More people in the UK have gone dry this January than ever before, so drinking, not drinking, and navigating a course between the two, is on many of our minds.Many of those people are mothers. The pandemic saw an unprecedented escalation in domestic drinking. With the arrival of high-speed home delivery companies, alcohol became more readily and rapidly available than ever before. For many women juggling not just work and childcare but also homeschooling, alcohol may have seemed to offer a coping mechanism, a way to survive “the grind of motherhood”.
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S60All of Us Strangers: heartbreaking film speaks to real experiences of gay men in UK and Ireland  A lonely 40-something screenwriter living in an almost-empty London apartment block, Adam (Andrew Scott) is alienated, exhausted and struggling to write about his past, but can’t get beyond the opening line.One evening, Harry (Paul Mescal), a younger man from downstairs, appears at his door. He’s tipsy, vulnerable, flirty and charming. “There’s vampires at my door,” he says. Adam doesn’t let him in and later reveals that fear had stopped him.
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S61Sexism permeates every layer of the music industry - new report echoes what research has been saying for years  The landmark Misogyny in Music report from British MPs on the women and equalities committee, published on January 30, shines an unsettling light upon the gender discrimination, sexual harassment and abuse which is rampant across the music industry. The cross-party inquiry heard evidence from a wide range of witnesses connected to the music industry. The findings are deeply disturbing, highlighting that women working within the industry face “limitations in opportunity, a lack of support, gender discrimination and sexual harassment and assault as well as the persistent issue of unequal pay in a sector dominated by self-employment and gendered power imbalances”.
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S62There are benefits to sharing a bed with your pet - as long as you're scrupulously clean  Jacqueline Boyd is affiliated with The Kennel Club (UK) through membership, as Chair of the Activities Health and Welfare Subgroup and member of the Dog Health Group. Jacqueline is a full member of the Association of Pet Dog Trainers (APDT #01583) and she also writes, consults and coaches on canine matters on an independent basis, in addition to her academic affiliation at Nottingham Trent University.When heading off for a night’s slumber, does your pet follow? Perhaps the cat curls up at the end of your bed. Maybe the dog dives under the duvet or pops their head on your pillow. Alternatively, your pet might have their own devoted sleeping space.
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S63How long might your dog live? New study calculates life expectancy for different breeds  The UK has long been considered to have some of the strongest animal welfare laws in the world. Beginning with Martin’s act on the cruel treatment of cattle, through to the Animal Welfare Act 2006 and then Finn’s law to protect service animals, UK animal welfare laws have sought to reduce harm and cruelty to animals. But what happens when companion animals suffer or live shorter lives simply because of their genetic make-up?On average, dogs live for 10-13 years, which is considered roughly equivalent to between 60-74 human years.
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S64How trophy fishing can have a sustainable future  It was 1984, and a hot tropical sun beat down on the inky blue depths of the Huon Gulf, a large inlet of the Solomon Sea just off the coast of Papua New Guinea. Suddenly, the peace was broken by the scream of a fishing reel as a four-metre-long blue marlin (Makaira mazaraburst) burst from the water. For the next hour the giant fish surged, leapt and tail walked, as my best friend and fishing companion mostly just held on. Then, suddenly, it was gone.
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S65S66S67Elmo's check-in: Iconic brands and influencer culture create a viral post  Sesame Street’s Elmo recently checked in with users on X, asking: “How is everybody doing?” The post quickly went viral, with users sharing their personal issues ranging from stresses at work, the cost-of-living crisis to family problems. The post was also published at the end of January, which was Mental Wellness Month. Elmo’s post garnered over 200 million views, 18,000 replies and has been reposted by users over 58,000 times. Many users used memes and other visuals to add extra layers of comedy and sarcasm in their replies to Elmo.
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S68Barbara Leeâs Antiwar Campaign for the Senate  Los Angeles's Kingdom Day Parade is billed as one of the oldest and largest celebrations of Martin Luther King, Jr.,'s birthday in the country, held each year in the morning on Martin Luther King, Jr., Boulevard in Leimert Park, a neighborhood in South L.A. This year, it was chilly but sunny along the parade route; families had set up camping chairs and picnic blankets, meat smokers had been rolled out onto front lawns, and the piano notes of Mary J. Blige's "I Love You" rang out from a bicycle-mounted speaker. The Los Angeles All City marching band and color guard kicked things off, followed by dancers in bright, whirling skirts from the Cathedral City High School Ballet Folklorico. Karen Bass, the city's first elected Black female mayor, called out greetings with a microphone from the back of a vintage convertible.Earlier that morning, Barbara Lee, the Democratic congresswoman from the Bay Area, who is currently running to represent California in the United States Senate, attended a King Day breakfast sponsored by the Los Angeles County Federation of Labor. Under a tent near the end of the parade route, members of the Hollywood Teamsters, the Service Employees International Union, and other unions sat at folding tables, eating from a buffet of sausage, eggs, and grits. Lee, who is the highest-ranking Black woman currently serving in the House, wore a T-shirt that said "Elect Black Women" under a blue puffer vest embroidered with the logo of the Congressional Black Caucus, which she chaired from 2009 to 2011. Laphonza Butler, the U.S. senator appointed by California's governor, Gavin Newsom, last year to finish out the late Dianne Feinstein's term, was there, along with Mayor Bass, who gave a quick speech reminding the assembled union members to vote. After breakfast, Lee posed for a photo with Butler, Bass, and several other Black women holding office in California. "Who runs the world?" someone shouted out, quoting Beyoncé. "Girls!" the group chimed in response. Off to the side, Adam Schiff, the L.A.-area congressman, who is one of Lee's Democratic rivals in the Senate race, spoke with a few potential voters.
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S69Where Will Virtual Reality Take Us?  Because we in Silicon Valley are newness junkies, it can feel like an act of sabotage to have memories, but, for better or worse, I have them. It’s been more than forty years since I co-founded the first company to make headsets and software for simulated experiences, and came up with familiar terms like virtual and mixed reality. Since then, virtual reality has flooded the public imagination in waves; back in the nineteen-eighties, for instance, it had quite a presence in movies, cartoons, TV shows, the occasional arcade game, and a few early consumer products, like the Nintendo Power Glove. I still love V.R. But, these days, I sense that what I experience of it, what I enjoy in it, is different from what it has come to mean to many enthusiasts.Back then, at the beginning, did I talk about V.R. like the people I disagree with now? Sometimes I did! I did occasionally promote V.R. as an alternate cosmos that might swallow us all to good effect. I don’t agree with that sort of talk now, but at the time the joy of being edgy and extreme was too great to resist. Every young technical person wants to see around the corners that others cannot, to be the harbinger of great change. To explain to someone in the early eighties what V.R. was—to give them a demo—was an ego rush, because they often couldn’t grasp what was being said or what had just happened to them. It was a primal validation, a power trip, and I wish I had done it with more humility. But here we are, after almost a half century of products, movies, and startups, and V.R. people still seek that rush. Apple’s promotional videos for its new headset—the Vision Pro, a metal-and-glass, ski-goggle-like apparatus that costs around thirty-five hundred dollars—show people experiencing V.R. for the first time. The producers either had to search hard for those people or ask actors to pretend.
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S70The Immigration Battle in Washington, and the Real Crisis at the Border  Now that the border crisis has migrated into blue cities, the White House cannot avoid addressing a political liability, and the President has dramatically shifted his rhetoric on the border. “You have a global moment of mass migration converging on the border at a time when resources are down. Congress is refusing to give the President the money that he needs for basic operations—it’s a perfect storm,” The New Yorker’s Jonathan Blitzer tells David Remnick. Blitzer’s new book, “Everyone Who Is Gone Is Here,” takes a long view of the immigration crisis. Plus, the author Sheila Heti talks about using her own journals to craft the new book “Alphabetical Diaries.”Now that the border crisis has migrated into blue cities, the White House cannot avoid addressing a political liability. The staff writer Jonathan Blitzer talks with David Remnick.
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