Climate change is stirring up internecine conflicts, criminality is making them longer, and cross-border contagion is complicating matters further. We explain why civil wars are so hard to resolve. Japanese carmakers’ dominance of the automobile industry could be at risk if they don’t catch up in the race for EVs. And, a tribute to musician and civil-rights campaigner, Harry Belafonte.
For full access to print, digital and audio editions of The Economist, try a free 30-day digital subscription by going to www.economist.com/intelligenceoffer
Las Vegas has pulled off an epic pivot: From sin city to family fiestas. First Republic Bank’s stock has plummeted 99%, and all the options to handle the crisis are bad. And Wendy’s is bringing its chili to aisle 6 because grocery stores have become the Garden of Eden of American Capitalism.
$FRB $LVS $WEN
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Probably the most consequential monarch in British history was Henry VIII. He upended much of English society by changing the religion in the country from the top down.
He also left in his wake a century of controversy and turmoil about the succession of the monarchy. In all of that controversy, one figure wound up being an asterisk in the list of British Monarchs.
Someone who only ruled for nine days, if it can be said they ruled at all.
Learn more about Lady Jane Grey, the shortest-serving English monarch….maybe, on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily.
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Adam Rutherford asks what ordinary life was like in the Soviet Union and how far its collapse helps to explain Russia today.
Karl Schlögel is one of the world’s leading historians of the Soviet Union. In his latest book, The Soviet Century: Archaeology of a Lost World (translated by Rodney Livingstone), he recreates an encyclopaedic and richly detailed history of daily life, both big and small. He examines the planned economy, the railway system and the steel city of Magnitogorsk as well as cookbooks, parades and the ubiquitous perfume Red Moscow.
The historian Katja Hoyer presents a more nuanced picture of life in East Germany, far from the caricature often painted in the West. In Beyond the Wall: East Germany, 1949-1990 she acknowledges the oppression and hardship often faced by ordinary people, but argues that this now-vanished society was also home to its own distinctive and rich social and cultural landscape.
But what did it feel like to live through the fall of communism and then democracy? These are the questions Adam Curtis looked to reveal in his 7-part television series, Russia 1985-1999 TraumaZone (available on BBC iPlayer). The archive footage from thousands of hours of tapes filmed by BBC crews across the country records the lives of Russians at every level of society as their world collapsed around them.
South Asia is home to more than a billion Hindus and half a billion Muslims. But the region is also home to substantial Christian communities, some dating almost to the earliest days of the faith. The stories of South Asia’s Christians are vital for understanding the shifting contours of World Christianity, precisely because of their history of interaction with members of these other religious traditions. In this broad, accessible overview of South Asian Christianity, Chandra Mallampalli shows how the faith has been shaped by Christians’ location between Hindus and Muslims.
South Asia's Christians: Between Hindu and Muslim (Oxford UP, 2023) begins with a discussion of south India’s ancient Thomas Christian tradition, which interacted with West Asia’s Persian Christians and thrived for centuries alongside their Hindu and Muslim neighbors. He then underscores the efforts of Roman Catholic and Protestant missionaries to understand South Asian societies for purposes of conversion. The publication of books and tracts about other religions, interreligious debates, and aggressive preaching were central to these endeavors, but rarely succeeded in yielding converts. Instead, they played an important role in producing a climate of religious competition, which ultimately marginalized Christians in Hindu-, Muslim-, and Buddhist-majority countries of postcolonial South Asia. Ironically, the greatest response to Christianity came from poor and oppressed Dalit (formerly “untouchable”) and tribal communities who were largely indifferent to missionary rhetoric. Their mass conversions, poetry, theology, and embrace of Pentecostalism are essential for understanding South Asian Christianity and its place within World Christianity today.
Byung Ho Choi is a Ph.D. candidate in the History and Ecumenics program at Princeton Theological Seminary, concentrating in World Christianity and history of religions. His research focuses on the indigenous expressions of Christianities found in Southeast Asia, particularly Christianity that is practiced in the Muslim-dominant archipelagic nation of Indonesia. More broadly, he is interested in history and the anthropology of Christianity, complexities of religious conversion and social identity, inter-religious dialogue, ecumenism, and World Christianity.
Liz and Andrew break down the just-filed lawsuit by Disney with respect to Ron DeSantis and his Republican buddies' shenanigans in Florida. Who will prevail? Listen and find out!
This photograph of a Famous Mouse was taken 21 April 2009 by Marcus Quigmire of Florida and originally posted to Flickr. It was downloaded by Opening Arguments Media, LLC on April 27, 2023 from Wikimedia Commons and is used without modification under Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 2.0 Generic (CC BY-SA 2.0) license, which is linked below. No endorsement by any other party than Opening Arguments Media, LLC is implied.
I wanted to let you know my latest book, The Fall of Rome, is now available on Amazon in ebook and paperback. It’s about how the unthinkable happened in AD 410 when Rome was sacked by the Goths. Although it's about Rome rather than Byzantium, you might be interested because it's very relevant as background to how Byzantium and the Christian kingdoms of western Europe developed. It's only $3.99 for the ebook and $11.99 for the paperback. I hope you enjoy it!
Please take a look at my website nickholmesauthor.com where you can download a free copy of The Byzantine World War, my book that describes the origins of the First Crusade.
We'll update you about flooding impacting almost all areas in the U.S. in different ways and the reason behind what's now the biggest strike in Canada in decades.
Also, it's another failed bank. Why the government is taking over and what's expected to happen next.
Plus, we're explaining the rising trend of reverse ATMs, the White House Correspondents' Dinner, and the Met Gala.
For more than two months, Nebraska State Senator Machaela Cavanaugh has filibustered nearly every single bill that has passed through the state legislature. It’s an effort to keep her Republican colleagues from following other red states to ban gender-affirming care for trans youth. Sen. Cavanaugh joins us to talk about how she’s managed to hold the floor – and keep fighting.
And in headlines: authorities in Texas are searching for a man accused of fatally shooting five of his neighbors, fighting continues in Sudan despite an extended cease-fire, and the federal government is reportedly scaling back drug screening rules to entice more young workers.
Crooked Coffee is officially here. Our first blend, What A Morning, is available in medium and dark roasts. Wake up with your own bag at crooked.com/coffee
