The Best of The Guardian
20+ most popular The Guardian articles, as voted by our community.
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New this Week
These are fresh off the press.
Living for Pleasure by Emily A Austin
A timely guide to the Greek philosopher – and rival to the Stoics – who saw freedom from anxiety as the ultimate goal
Twitter to launch ad-free subscription tier, Elon Musk says
Tesla boss hopes for rise in revenue after advertising downturn in wake of takeover
Mumbling actors, bad speakers or lazy listeners? Why everyone is watching TV with subtitles on
Subtitles aren’t just for the hard of hearing, with Netflix reporting 40% of its viewers regularly use them. But do we just enjoy them or is there a more annoying reason?
Brazil’s female diplomats in new equality push after dark days of Bolsonaro
Movement to tackle lack of diversity within Brazil’s foreign office coincides with Lula’s return to power
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Body Am I by Moheb Costandi review – the new science of self-consciousness
What gives us our sense of self? A fresh take on how the brain and body are connected offers answers
Is modern life ruining our powers of concentration?
Is the ping of a text stealing our focus or do we just lack willpower? And could mindless scrolling ever be good for our brains? Elle Hunt unpacks some surprising truths
«Last year, writer Johann Hari’s book Stolen Focus, decrying the “huge invasive forces” corroding our concentration and championing flow as a solution, was a bestseller on both sides of the Atlantic. Stolen Focus concludes by calling for an urgent societal “movement to reclaim our minds” – and, in the meantime chase that flow state. (Hari himself took a months-long “digital detox” on Cape Cod.)»
Strengthen your heart, bones – and maybe even your brain: a beginner’s guide to weight training at…
A resistance workout is not just about adding muscle: it can bring a host of other proven benefits as well. So what is stopping you?
Becoming a chatbot: my life as a real estate AI’s human backup
The long read: For one weird year, I was the human who stepped in to make sure a property chatbot didn’t blow its cover – I was a person pretending to be a computer pretending to be a person
Revealed: more than 90% of rainforest carbon offsets by biggest provider are worthless, analysis shows
Investigation into Verra carbon standard finds most are ‘phantom credits’ and may worsen global heating
The Guardian on Books
Can ‘smart thinking’ books really give you the edge?
Trust your gut, boost your memory, de-bias your decision making… can we train our brains to perform better?
«A decade ago, the fashion was to be pessimistic about the prospects of improving our thinking, and even about the value of thinking at all.»
Summer reading: the 50 hottest new books everyone should read
From missing lighthouse keepers to the healing power of trees ... 50 new fiction and nonfiction books to enjoy. Plus recent paperbacks to pack and the best children’s stories
The Guardian on Climate Crisis
The climate disaster is here
Earth is already becoming unlivable. Will governments act to stop this disaster from getting worse?
«At 1.5C, about 14% of the world’s population will be hit by severe heatwaves once every five years. with this number jumping to more than a third of the global population at 2C.»
Capitalism is killing the planet
Instead of focusing on ‘micro consumerist bollocks’ like ditching our plastic coffee cups, we must challenge the pursuit of wealth and level down, not up
«The main cause of your environmental impact is your money. You persuade yourself you’re a green mega-consumer, but you’re just a mega-consumer»
The Guardian on Environment
Revealed: the 20 firms behind a third of all carbon emissions
New data shows how fossil fuel companies have driven climate crisis despite industry knowing dangers
Why you should go animal-free: 18 arguments for eating meat debunked
Unpalatable as it may be for those wedded to producing and eating meat, the environmental and health evidence for a plant-based diet is clear
The Guardian on Fiction
The 100 best books of the 21st century
Dazzling debut novels, searing polemics, the history of humanity and trailblazing memoirs ... Read our pick of the best books since 2000
Lost chapter of world's first novel found in Japanese storeroom
A fifth part of The Tale of Genji, which was completed around 1010 by a woman later named Murasaki Shikibu, has been found in a house in Tokyo
The Guardian on Food
The price of ‘sugar free’: are sweeteners as harmless as we thought?
The long read: We know we need to cut down on sugar. But replacing it with artificial compounds isn’t necessarily the answer
Loss of bees causes shortage of key food crops, study finds
Apple and cherry production hampered by lack of wild bees, who are suffering from a loss of habitat, toxic pesticides and the climate crisis
The Guardian on Greta Thunberg
Why the Guardian is changing the language it uses about the environment
From now, house style guide recommends terms such as ‘climate crisis’ and ‘global heating’
Greta Thunberg: ‘We are ignoring natural climate solutions’
Film by Swedish activist and Guardian journalist George Monbiot says nature must be used to repair broken climate
The Guardian on LGBTQIA
TikTok's local moderation guidelines ban pro-LGBT content
Chinese-owned social media app bans such content even in countries where homosexuality has never been illegal
Subversive, queer and terrifyingly relevant: six reasons why Moby-Dick is the novel for our times
The book features gay marriage, hits out at slavery and imperialism and predicts the climate crisis – 200 years after the birth of its author, Herman Melville, it has never been more important
The Guardian on Nature
50 simple ways to make your life greener
Expert tips on how to be kinder to the planet – from cooking and cleaning to fashion and finance
No-kill, lab-grown meat to go on sale for first time
Singapore’s approval of chicken cells grown in bioreactors is seen as landmark moment across industry
The Guardian on Poetry
When Milton met Shakespeare: poet's notes on Bard appear to have been found
Hailed as one of the most significant archival discoveries of modern times, text seems to show the Paradise Lost poet making careful annotations on his edition of Shakespeare’s plays
Vintage filth: a guide to history’s rudest texts
After the discovery of the racy fragments censored from the 13th century’s most popular poem, can any other ancient texts match up?
The Guardian on Vegan
If you want to save the world, veganism isn’t the answer
Intensively farmed meat and dairy are a blight, but so are fields of soya and maize. There is another way, says the farmer Isabella Tree
Want to eat much less meat? Take the top vegan tips from the world’s tastiest cuisines
While veganism is growing rapidly in the west, other parts of the world have had meat-free cuisines for centuries. For a rich and varied plant-based diet, talk to the Chinese, Indians, Ethiopians …
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Your attention didn’t collapse. It was stolen
Social media and many other facets of modern life are destroying our ability to concentrate. We need to reclaim our minds while we still can
«“an attentional pathogenic culture” – an environment in which sustained and deep focus is harder for all of us»
The real Lord of the Flies: what happened when six boys were shipwrecked for 15 months
When a group of schoolboys were marooned on an island in 1965, it turned out very differently to William Golding’s bestseller, writes Rutger Bregman
A robot wrote this entire article. Are you scared yet, human?
We asked GPT-3, OpenAI’s powerful new language generator, to write an essay for us from scratch. The assignment? To convince us robots come in peace
Is your smartphone ruining your memory? A special report on the rise of ‘digital amnesia’
‘I can’t remember anything’ is a common complaint these days. But is it because we rely so heavily on our smartphones? And do the endless alerts and distractions stop us forming new memories?
Skim reading is the new normal. The effect on society is profound
When the reading brain skims texts, we don’t have time to grasp complexity, to understand another’s feelings or to perceive beauty. We need a new literacy for the digital age writes Maryanne Wolf, author of Reader, Come Home
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