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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 some of the week’s best reads for you to savour.
It’s almost fifty years since Muhammad Ali fought Joe Frazier in the ‘Thrilla in Manila’.
Vann R Newkirk II speaks to some of the people who were there (including the referee) and examines the rivalry between the two men who had a lot in common. This is a brilliantly riveting piece of writing with an audio reading that’s just as good.
(The Atlantic, approx 36 mins reading time)
Ask anyone what makes a human human, and they’ll likely mention something to do with our brains. Maybe they’ll say we stand alone in our capacity for language, or reason, or self-awareness, not knowing that science has chipped away at each of these presumptions. We suspect now that whales can talk; that crows can reason; that octopuses may be self-aware. But one thing that seems to be truly unique to Homo sapiens is this: We are the only animal with fists. Perhaps the fist evolved as an anatomical accident, a by-product of the lengthened fingers and opposable thumbs that gave humans their unparalleled tool-grabbing dexterity. That’s one theory. But compelling evidence suggests that the exact shape of the human fist evolved at least in part for punching. The theory would place the duality of human nature quite literally in our hands. On the one side, we have our instruments for the written word and our tools for daily diplomacy—for shaking hands or putting our palms up in peace. On the other side, we carry our most primal weapons.
This new cuddly chatbot is designed to learn a child’s personality through recording conversations and transcribing them (no, this isn’t an episode of Black Mirror). Arwa Mahdawi and her family spent a week with one.
(The Guardian, approx 10 mins reading time)
When Emma asked Grem to tell her a story, it happily obliged and recounted a couple of poorly plotted stories about “Princess Lilliana”. They also played guessing games where Grem described an animal and Emma had to guess what it was. All of which was probably more stimulating than watching Peppa Pig jump in muddy puddles. What was unsettling, however, was hearing Emma tell Grem she loved it – and Grem replying: “I love you too!” Emma tells all her cuddly toys she loves them, but they don’t reply; nor do they shower her with over-the-top praise the way Grem does. At bedtime, Emma told my wife that Grem loves her to the moon and stars and will always be there for her. “Grem is going to live with us for ever and ever and never leave, so we have to take good care of him,” she said solemnly. Emma was also so preoccupied with Grem that she almost forgot to go to bed with Blanky, a rag she is very attached to. “Her most prized possession for four years suddenly abandoned after having this Grem in the house!” my wife complained.
Richard Nixon declared a war on cancer – a national commitment to combat the disease – in 1971. Since then, sustained investment in cancer research has improved treatment and saved millions of lives. Now the Trump administration is freezing grants.
(The New York Times, approx 30 mins reading time)
I spoke to 50 members of America’s biomedical research establishment for this article — medical-school administrators; N.I.H.- and N.C.I.-funded researchers; former directors and current and former program officers and officials at the two agencies. As a group, they were hardly averse to change: Most acknowledged that the cancer-research system and the biomedical-research system more broadly had become too unwieldy and risk-averse. Before last year’s election, both House and Senate Republicans circulated N.I.H. reform proposals on Capitol Hill, and the leaders of the National Institutes of Health and the National Cancer Institute were expecting — and even looking forward to — some new policies. “We didn’t have our heads in the sand,” says Michael Lauer, who retired in February as a deputy director of the N.I.H. and the agency’s head of grant-making. But no one was expecting this. “It’s an absolutely unmitigated disaster,” Lauer told me. “It will take decades to recover from this, if we ever do.”
Nearly a year ago, a Manchester United fan vowed that he wouldn’t get a haircut until his team won five games in a row. He might be waiting a while yet.
(The Athletic, approx 6 mins reading time)
Almost a year later, and his barber’s chair continues to gather dust as United’s form nosedives further. “I just wanted to do something that kind of gives people a laugh in a bit of a difficult time, really but there was no way that I expected it to go on for as long as it has,” the 29-year-old tells The Athletic. The hair itself is mesmerising. What began as a tight buzz cut has mushroomed into a frizzy, ballooning afro, almost a supersized version of former United midfielder Marouane Fellaini’s trademark mane. Its unwieldiness has only been compounded by Ilett living in Spain, with the blazing Valencian sun beating down on his heaving brow.
The Irish actor talks stepping into the shoes of William Shakespeare and Paul McCartney.
(Rolling Stone, approx 20 mins reading time)
At the Lir National Academy of Dramatic Art in Dublin, surrounded by kids who’d been doing jazz hands since they were toddlers, Mescal maintains that his doggedness got him through. “I didn’t have the ease of talent that I felt other people had, so it had to come from somewhere else,” he says. “Or, no, I suppose I would argue that the talent that I had then is probably no different to the talent that I have now. But I didn’t feel talented. When I’d see actors in my class who had more experience improvising, for example, or doing things that I had no experience in, I started to panic, because I’d spent a lot of my life up until that point being good at Gaelic football and being like, ‘I know how to be good at this.’ With the acting thing, I loved doing it, but I didn’t know if I was good — and I felt bad at it.”
Remember the 5G conspiracies at the beginning of the Covid-19 pandemic? Sean Aaron Smith acted on those, by setting fire to 22 cell towers across Texas. Brendan I Koerner speaks to him in prison.
(Wired, approx 25 mins reading time)
When Smith wasn’t out dealing, he was usually alone in the trailer with Dupre—his mother was working even crazier hours than usual at a hospital flooded with Covid patients. The couple would watch videos from InfoWars impresario Alex Jones and the British conspiracy theorist David Icke, the latter of whom is notorious for claiming the world is secretly controlled by reptilian humanoids. These sources were now espousing increasingly dark and elaborate stories about 5G that portrayed the technology as central to a scheme to enslave entire nations. One popular narrative held that governments had unleashed the Covid-19 virus to force people into isolation, thereby giving construction crews the time and space to build out 5G networks. When a vaccine was eventually developed, the radiation from 5G towers would interact with graphene oxide nanomaterials that were integrated into the injections. This would give governments the power to control how their citizens behave or even to annihilate them en masse if they ever revolted. “If 5G continues and reaches where they want to take it,” Icke warned in an April 2020 interview, “human life as we know it is over.”
An interview with Robert Redford from 1997.
(The New York Times, approx mins reading time)
Tucked in the lower right-hand corner of Robert Redford’s dressing-room mirror is a black-and-white photo of Samuel Beckett. The great Irish playwright of existential despair looks wintery and hawklike, his visage a crumbling tombstone of deep cracks. It’s not the face one would think a Hollywood superstar known for playing sunny romantic leads would want staring back at him every time his hair is brushed. At least not while working on Redford’s current project, ”The Horse Whisperer,” a big-budget, big-emotions melodrama based on the shamelessly corny best-selling novel by Nicholas Evans. ”The Horse Whisperer” — which Redford is being paid about $20 million by Touchstone Pictures to produce, direct and star in — isn’t Beckett, or even close, and Redford’s role as a kind Montana rancher with a gift for soothing traumatized animals is frankly heroic and warmly optimistic. It’s a movie about ”healing,” according to Redford, a movie about the ”textures of the West.” So why the glowering old pessimist in the mirror?
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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