Looking for something brilliant to read this weekend? We've curated six of our favourite pieces from the last seven days, covering everything from food trends to international crime and personal experiments.
1. The Humble Jacket Potato's Unlikely Comeback
One of the UK's most surprising fast food trends in recent years has been the influencer-led resurgence of baked potatoes, one of Britain's original street foods. Sammy Gecsoyler met the 'spudfluencers' who are spreading the starchy gospel and aiming to make jacket potatoes sexy again.
2. Aleppo's Uncertain Future After Devastation
For 5,000 years, Aleppo has been a great metropolis at the heart of a region stretching from the Mediterranean to modern-day Iraq. The Syrian city prospered as a trade hub and manufacturing centre, enduring invasions, plagues, and natural disasters while preserving its distinctive character.
After the Syrian civil war, nearly two-thirds of the city lies in ruins. The destruction is so vast that it will take years just to clear the rubble, let alone begin rebuilding. The question remains: can Aleppo ever return to the city it was before the war?
3. Wunmi Mosaku's Journey from Manchester to Oscar Nomination
The actor grew up on a Manchester council estate and has now gone stratospheric for her pivotal role in the vampire smash Sinners, earning an Oscar nomination this week. Before her nomination, Mosaku spoke about leaving Britain for LA and the £30 bus trip that changed her life, stating she'd return to the UK but wouldn't play a police officer.
4. Finland's Biggest Crime: The Untouchable Hacker God
At 2am on 23 October 2020, ransom_man uploaded a file containing every record of every single patient on a database. Therapy notes had already been published for free, accessible to everyone in the world.
Who was behind the biggest crime Finland had ever known? Jenny Kleeman spent 18 months investigating, culminating in one of the most chilling conversations she had ever had, exploring whether the perpetrator might have been motivated by something other than money.
5. Mumbai's Coastal Road: A Symbol of Inequality
Mumbai is known for its graphic inequality, home to 90 of India's billionaires but also more than six million slum dwellers. Now, a city where most people squeeze onto buses and trains has a new symbol of the gulf between rich and poor: a high-speed, eight-lane motorway on its western coast.
Critics say this coastal road project serves only the wealthy despite being built with taxpayers' money, representing what Amrit Dhillon describes as "a massive transfer of wealth to the rich and imposes costs on the rest."
6. Living Analogue in a Digital World
Emma Russell asked: "Is it possible to live lo-fi in a hi-tech world?" For a month, she tried swapping her iPhone for a Nokia, picking up physical copies of books, newspapers and magazines, and using a London A-Z for directions to see if ditching her smartphone would make her healthier, happier, or more stressed.
