Best of the week - 22 May 2020
This article was published on
Each week BISA Director, Juliet Dryden, scours the internet for COVID-19 content that might interest you. Here she brings you this week's best readings and podcasts. She finishes with 'In other news', giving you a moment's break from the pandemic.
Reading
- Patrick Cockburn’s diary in the London Review of Books: The 1956 Cork Epidemic
- Is globalisation dead? The Economist
- Doug Sanders for Foreign Affairs on why travel bans fail to stop pandemics?
- New York Times says Trumps ratings are sagging. Why isn’t Biden surging?
- Robert Preston for the Spectator asks why Boris didn’t act sooner?
- Scott Galloway predicts a US post-pandemic future that will entail partnerships between the largest tech companies in the world and elite universities.
- The Economist looks at why America’s far right seem energised by lockdown
- Afua Hirsch for the Guardian asks why Africa’s coronavirus successes are being overlooked
- New Scientist on contact strategy
- Timothy Garton Ash for the Guardian on the lack of any UK vision
- The Atlantic says the pandemic hasn’t changed voters’ minds about Trump.
Podcasts
- Karen Pierce, Britain’s Ambassador to United States speaks to Alastair Bunkill in 'Off the Record'
- The end of our high-growth world was underway well before Covid-19 arrived. Listen to 'The Great Slowdown and Why It's Good', with Danny Dorling and Linda Yueh from Intelligence Squared'
- Michael Wood talks to Adam Shatz about critical theory, its origins, developments and various diversions, and where it stands today. Listen to 'Theory Truce' from The LRB Podcast series
- Madeline Albright on ambition and obsoleteness. Listen to 'Death, Sex and Money'
- Talking Politics: David Runciman talks to Helen Thompson, Adam Tooze and Shahin Vallee about whether a judgement of the German constitutional court threatens to explode the European project. What might this mean for the Euro, for the response to the pandemic, for Franco-German relations and for the future of central banks?
Other news
Climate Change
- Reasons to be Cheerful with Geoff Lloyd and Ed Miliband: This weekend was the final meeting of the UK’s Climate Assembly. They look at citizens’ assemblies, the climate crisis, how it went and what comes next
- Will the pandemic be the catalyst for greening the world’s airlines?
Middle East
- Israel’s new government. Annexation?
- Washington Post: Changes at the Israeli top
- Keeping an eye on Lebanon. Cash crisis
Foreign Policy
Photo by Sincerely Media on Unsplash
