Browser Bites

Uri and Robert discuss a deep Browser dilemma: what do we do about interesting pieces of writing by people who for other reasons we find distasteful or disturbing?

From Robert's Books in Riga, Robert and Uri discuss drinking.

From Robert's Books in Riga, Robert and Svens discuss anger, inspired by Agnes Callard's essay in the Boston Review. What is anger? And how come Svens is so nice? We find out.

First in a new series, Find Good Things, where we interview a certain type of person that there isn't an accepted name for yet: someone with excellent taste who finds good things in a particular area of life (art, wine, podcasts, potato peelers....) and recommends them to a broad audience. Today, Browser Publisher Uri Bram interviews Browser Editor Robert Cottrell about how he reads and recommends writing of lasting value.

Good Things mentioned in this episode:

Our newsletter: The Browser

Dance critic: Alastair Macaulay

Tyler Cowen's "Underrated or Overrated?" round

Underrated City: Poznań (and Riga, and Tallinn)

Underrated Book: The Just City, by Jo Walton

Audiobook: A History of Western Philosophy, by Bertrand Russell

Underrated Musician: violinist Gidon Kremer

Small Item: Valmiermuižas Tumšais Alus

The Art of Reading interview with John Thornhill, co-founder of Sifted (https://sifted.eu/) and the Innovation Editor at the Financial Times

"It's fundamentally altered my perception of what people are like. "

Co-founder of Future Crunch, political economist Dr Angus Hervey scours the web for good news every day. He says the world is becoming a better place. But, most people never get to read about it. 

"Most people are fundamentally good... In general, humanity is moving in the right direction."

This interview is based on his piece 99 Good News Stories You Probably Didn’t Hear About in 2018. 

"We are human, not because of what makes human, we are human because we are. We recognize other humans." 

Professor Sang-Hee Lee is an explorer, of sorts. She's a biological anthropologist at the University of California, where she specializes in advancing our knowledge of human evolution. She trained in Korea, the US, and Japan, and is a professor of anthropology at the University of California.

This conversation is based on Lee's piece in Anthropology News - which featured in The Browser. 

"Our loneliness drives us to be narcissistic. Isn’t that the most widely accepted argument that we are fundamentally alone?"

When an American died on a mysterious island, it threw a spotilght on an unknown group of people. Sentinel Island, about the size of Manhattan, lies in the Bay of Bengal. It's home to a pre-neolithic tribe who have occupied the area for more than 30,000 years - and they kill nearly everyone that approaches. In this episode, we talk to a reporter in India who tells us why they're so hostile to foreigners. 

This story is based on Lhendup G Bhutia's story in Open Magazine:  The Sentinelese: The Death of a Missionary and the Lost Tribe of the Andamans

One organisation currently owns and controls all the emoji in the world. So who are they? And how do they decide what we type on the internet?

This conversation with Keith Houston is based on his story Who Owns Emoji