The Best of The Guardian

A timely guide to the Greek philosopher – and rival to the Stoics – who saw freedom from anxiety as the ultimate goal

Tesla boss hopes for rise in revenue after advertising downturn in wake of takeover

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?

Movement to tackle lack of diversity within Brazil’s foreign office coincides with Lula’s return to power

What gives us our sense of self? A fresh take on how the brain and body are connected offers answers

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.)»

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?

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

Investigation into Verra carbon standard finds most are ‘phantom credits’ and may worsen global heating

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.»

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

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.»

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»

New data shows how fossil fuel companies have driven climate crisis despite industry knowing dangers

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

Dazzling debut novels, searing polemics, the history of humanity and trailblazing memoirs ... Read our pick of the best books since 2000

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 long read: We know we need to cut down on sugar. But replacing it with artificial compounds isn’t necessarily the answer

Apple and cherry production hampered by lack of wild bees, who are suffering from a loss of habitat, toxic pesticides and the climate crisis

From now, house style guide recommends terms such as ‘climate crisis’ and ‘global heating’

Film by Swedish activist and Guardian journalist George Monbiot says nature must be used to repair broken climate

Chinese-owned social media app bans such content even in countries where homosexuality has never been illegal

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

Expert tips on how to be kinder to the planet – from cooking and cleaning to fashion and finance

Singapore’s approval of chicken cells grown in bioreactors is seen as landmark moment across industry

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

After the discovery of the racy fragments censored from the 13th century’s most popular poem, can any other ancient texts match up?

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

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 …

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»

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

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

‘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?

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