IT’S A DAY of rest, and you may be in the mood for a quiet corner and a comfy chair.
We’ve hand-picked the week’s best reads for you to savour.
In an excerpt from her new book, Maureen Ryan speaks to those who worked on the hit TV show Lost about how its success hid disturbing details about the toxic environment behind the scenes.
(Vanity Fair, approx 39 mins reading time)
On set in Hawaii, much of the cast got along really well, at least at first. “A lot of us grew very close,” said an actor I’ll call Sloan. “The thing that kind of created a rift in the cast was money.” Perrineau and Sloan told me that the cast had discussions about holding firm and asking for equal pay when salary renegotiations with ABC Studios began. According to both, promises were made to present a united front. Almost a decade earlier, the cast of Friends had done just that and wound up with equal pay for all six leads. But at Lost, the united front quickly crumbled. Ultimately, the cast ended up in a series of compensation tiers, and Perrineau and Sloan said the highest tier was occupied solely by white actors. “That affected relationships,” Sloan said. But the actor had no relationship with Cuse, who, Sloan believed, “didn’t seem to think much of me.” At least, during a work-related conversation, Cuse never berated Sloan to the point of tears for being “ungrateful,” which happened to another Lost actor Sloan knew.
An interesting piece about how animals see the world and their place in it, and what it says about our own species’ intelligence.
(The Guardian, approx 17 mins reading time)
If human minds are incapable of solving the problems they create, then perhaps our salvation lies in encountering very different types of minds. The global popularity of the documentary My Octopus Teacher, released by Netflix in 2020, is just one example of the growing hunger for such encounters. In the film, the South African diver Craig Foster spends months filming a female octopus in an underwater kelp forest, observing most of her lifecycle. Foster presents himself as the anti-Jacques Cousteau; he doesn’t go underwater to study the non-human, but to learn from it. Humility is a traditional religious discipline, and there is a spiritual dimension to Foster’s quest and to the film’s success. On YouTube, where the trailer has been viewed 3.7m times, thousands of people testify that My Octopus Teacher made them weep, changed their understanding of the world and made them resolve to lead better lives. It’s clear that, for modern people who seldom encounter animals except for pet cats and dogs, entering into a close relationship with a non-human mind can be a sacred experience.
David D. Kirkpatrick gives an insight into India’s burgeoning hacker-for-hire industry, and who uses it.
(The New Yorker, approx 14 mins reading time)
The hacking-for-hire business has prospered in India for some of the same reasons that I.T. outsourcing has: an abundance of inexpensive skilled labor in an open marketplace readily accessible to Western clients. But Indian hackers are also unusually brazen, with competing firms publicly touting “ethical” or “white hat” hacking services, and individual hackers bragging on LinkedIn about their spear phishing. In authoritarian havens such as Russia, Iran, and North Korea, cybercriminals do not advertise. Yet, as both Rey and Scott-Railton, of Citizen Lab, told me, Indian hackers appear to share something important with their counterparts in those authoritarian nations: a tacit alliance with their government. Rey told me that, according to target lists and other information that he gained from Indian hackers, the top dozen Indian hacking-for-hire firms “have always tended to have the same profile—they always do a little bit of government work, with private work on the side.”
Still thinking about the ending of Succession? Director Mark Mylod tells all about that series finale. If you haven’t seen the episode, be warned, this contains major spoilers.
(Vulture, approx 12 mins reading time)
Executive producer and filmmaker Mark Mylod, who has directed more episodes of Succession than anyone else, usually takes the chair for momentous chapters of the series; “With Open Eyes” was the most fraught of all because it would retrospectively frame the show, coloring how viewers remembered it. By focusing on intimate interactions between two, three, or perhaps four characters, putting everyone else in the background, and trying to make both the performances and the visual record of the performances seem as spontaneous as possible, Succession ends with a sense of resignation, though not futility: This is what happened, and here is where the main characters ended up.
Sarah Kliff and Jessica Silver-Greenberg write about the US nonprofit health system that withholds care from patients who have unpaid medical bills.
(The New York Times, approx 7 mins reading time)
Allina has an explicit policy for cutting off patients who owe money for services they received at the health system’s 90 clinics. A 12-page document reviewed by The Times instructs Allina’s staff on how to cancel appointments for patients with at least $4,500 of unpaid debt. The policy walks through how to lock their electronic health records so that staff cannot schedule future appointments. “These are the poorest patients who have the most severe medical problems,” said Matt Hoffman, an Allina primary care doctor in Vadnais Heights, Minn. “These are the patients that need our care the most.”
Have you ever thought about quitting social media? This essay from a college student who is trying to do just that gives an insight into what it’s like.
(Washington Post, approx 8 mins reading time)
I used social media constantly in high school, but especially during the Covid-19 pandemic. Being stuck at home was pretty awful for my mental health, as I’m sure any member of Gen Z can attest. But I found communities on these apps that fueled my need for conversation. Social media became my form of expression. I tried to authentically capture my life on my profiles, and my identity was broadcast online for hundreds (sometimes thousands) of people to see. Things quickly went downhill when likes and comments became my validation. I developed an obsession with the way I was perceived online and spent entire days, weeks, months, on my phone. Despite being in constant communication with people, I had never been more alone. My screen time was at least eight hours per day, a terrifying number.
…AND A CLASSIC FROM THE ARCHIVES…
Many people have begun leaving their countries for fear of starvation due to the impact of climate change. This longread from 2020 looks at where people might go if nations lose the ability to farm.
(ProPublica, approx 50 minute read)
Even as hundreds of thousands of Guatemalans fled north toward the United States in recent years, in Jorge’s region — a state called Alta Verapaz, where precipitous mountains covered in coffee plantations and dense, dry forest give way to broader gentle valleys — the residents have largely stayed. Now, though, under a relentless confluence of drought, flood, bankruptcy and starvation, they, too, have begun to leave. Almost everyone here experiences some degree of uncertainty about where their next meal will come from. Half the children are chronically hungry, and many are short for their age, with weak bones and bloated bellies. Their families are all facing the same excruciating decision that confronted Jorge.
Note: The Journal generally selects stories that are not paywalled, but some might not be accessible if you have exceeded your free article limit on the site in question.
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