Articles
AI and the end of writing
If a computer can write like a person, what does that say about the nature of our own creativity?
What does Rahul Gandhi want?
Time is running out for Rahul Gandhi’s vision for India. But he is still trying to unseat Modi and change his nation’s course.
Life near elephants
Elephants have their own, ancient geographies. “They walk 20 or 25 kilometres a day — their bodies need it.” Increasingly, in southern India, that brings them into contact, and conflict, with human beings.
The weight of a story
The words “she cries” show up sixty times in total in Bushra al-Maqtari’s What Have You Left Behind? The men in the book seem to weep less: “He cries” appears twenty times.
Ukraine’s personal shopper
In the war against Russia, some Ukrainians carry AK-47s. Andrey Liscovich carries a shopping list. He’s giving a demo of the future of war: the military-retail complex.
The insider
As author of The Big Short and Moneyball, Michael Lewis is perhaps the most celebrated journalist of his generation. Now he delivers an astonishing portrait of Sam Bankman-Fried, the fallen crypto billionaire. But did he get too close?
The nursing brokers
In India, brokers lure nurses into private care jobs in the UK, with tall promises that seem worth paying a lot for — until they fail to deliver.
The war on Japanese knotweed
“I caught the odd feeling that I had come to the future world from which human beings had departed. Vegetation would be renewed year after year. Hybridised itadori would be the main creature in this area.”
Hiking the Trans-Bhutan Trail
When I visited, the king had thrown open a restored version of an ancient route: once populated only by farmers ambling to their fields, royal messengers hurrying from court to court, and divine madmen scattering grain.