‘Our Minds Can Be Hijacked’: The Tech Insiders Who Fear a Smartphone Dystopia

After having epiphanies about the downsides of persuasive design, several young creators of addictive smartphone technology abandon their posts at Google, Twitter, and Facebook to try to become part of the solution.

Author: Paul Lewis
Source: The Guardian
Published: Oct 6, 2017
Length: 18 minutes (4,500 words)

How the 1970s Could Vanish from Vancouver

Brutalist architecture — heavy on concrete and blocky shapes — used to be polarizing. In Vancouver, where land is scarce and developers are bulldozer-happy, it’s in the process of disappearing.

Source: The Guardian
Published: Sep 27, 2017
Length: 6 minutes (1,645 words)

This Island Is Not for Sale: How Eigg Fought Back

After a few rich men owned the British island of Eigg, residents purchased it and created what it hopes is a model of community ownership and the good life.

Source: The Guardian
Published: Sep 26, 2017
Length: 18 minutes (4,615 words)

How a Tax Haven is Leading the Race to Privatize Space

Luxembourg is a small but savvy nation. With few natural resources — besides a long line of grand dukes, a legacy of skirting tax loopholes, and a valuable national sovereignty — the country has looked to the stars for its next big venture: asteroid mining. The only problem? The 1967 Outer Space Treat explicitly prohibits countries from claiming ownership of any object in space, including asteroids.

Source: The Guardian
Published: Sep 15, 2017
Length: 21 minutes (5,300 words)

The First Social Media Suicide

Alienated and traumatized in a vacuous Paris suburb, 18-year-old Océane saw the world as devoid of intimacy and compassion, a world further cooled by social media, yet she broadcast her own death. Why? What was she trying to teach us about the suffering of others?

Source: The Guardian
Published: Aug 29, 2017
Length: 20 minutes (5,229 words)

The Princess Myth

“Royal time should move slowly and by its own laws: creeping, like the flow of chrism from a jar.” On the 20th anniversary of her death, Hilary Mantel performs a remarkable post-mortem on Diana, Princess of Wales.

Source: The Guardian
Published: Aug 26, 2017
Length: 15 minutes (3,900 words)

Why We Fell for Clean Eating

On the rise of orthorexia — “an obsession with consuming only foods that are pure and perfect” — and the burgeoning industry that feeds it.

Author: Bee Wilson
Source: The Guardian
Published: Aug 11, 2017
Length: 23 minutes (5,947 words)

Unlearning the Myth of American Innocence

When she was 30, left the U.S. for Istanbul — and began to realize that Americans will never understand their own country until they see it as the rest of the world does.

Source: The Guardian
Published: Aug 8, 2017
Length: 20 minutes (5,124 words)

The Town Where Everyone Owns a Gun

After the mine closed nearby, and the residents started to move out of Nucla, Colorado, the town passed an ordinance that every household in the municipality was required to own a gun. But as the residents see it, their main enemy is Telluride, the liberal city next door.

Source: The Guardian
Published: Jul 14, 2017
Length: 20 minutes (5,000 words)

The Great Self-Esteem Con

By now, the idea that positive self-esteem is necessary for success is more or less taken for granted. But what if it’s all based on very shaky, smartly packaged science?

Author: Will Storr
Source: The Guardian
Published: Jun 3, 2017
Length: 14 minutes (3,612 words)