Winter is here and sickness is in the air. If you’re ailing, let’s hope it’s just the “weird cold-flu thing” (as a colleague described it) doing the rounds and not the affliction sweeping through Parliament House. Symptoms: going through the motions of democracy while eroding faith in it. I fear it may be terminal.
This week’s reads are not easy – a tale of survival, one of salvation, two of a climate in crisis. The perfect primer for the bleak worldview of Cormac McCarthy. If you’ve never read the US author, dead this week aged 89, here’s a guide on where to start.
1. The secret life of Elliot Page
Imagine having to make one of the biggest decisions of your life, then following it up several years later with an even more monumental one – and doing it all in the public eye. That’s Elliot Page’s story: Oscar-nominated for Juno at 20, coming out as gay at 26, then again as trans at 32.
And all against the backdrop of a paranoid, abusive Hollywood seemingly frozen in the 1950s, as Page recounts to Simon Hattenstone while on the promotion trail for his new biography.
What else is discussed? Good times (working on Juno and Inception), bad times (multiple abusive encounters with crew members) and the eternal quest for true love.
How long will it take to read: Nine minutes.
2. The perilous Russian threat emerging in the Arctic
Scientists now project an Arctic free from summer ice by 2040–45, which is bad news for humanity on two fronts. First, the loss of ice is contributing to a vicious spiral of heating. And second, it will expose Russia’s northern border – home to 475 new military sites in the past six years – as never before.
Why does this matter? “Recent experience in the Pacific suggests that the US or Nato will seek to assert rights of navigation under the UN convention on the law of the sea,” writes UK Labour MP Barry Gardiner. “Russia could see such attempts to declare freedom of navigation as a provocation.”
How long will it take to read: Two minutes.
3. Rival churches covet Hillsong’s flock
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“I was probably the only kid at school who regularly witnessed demons being cast out in his living room. To me, all of this seemed normal.”
Before Marc Fennell was a broadcaster he was a child, trying to make sense of his Pentecostal Christian upbringing. As the questions piled up and the answers proved elusive, one question stood out from the others: “God, why can’t I feel you?”
Now with 17 years as a non-believer under his belt, and the once unstoppable Hillsong seemingly on the wane, Fennell has time to consider what comes next.
How long will it take to read: Three minutes.
4. ‘There is no vaccine to cure it’
So said the UN’s Mami Mizutori in 2021 of what she predicted would be the next pandemic: not Covid-25 nor another as yet unknown virus, but drought.
“We are currently using up the water sources on which our very existence relies,” writes Tim Smedley in this week’s Long Read. “We can continue doing that until the very last drop. Or we can decide to change our approach before it’s too late. The world isn’t running out of water – people are.”
Life hack: Although Smedley argues the biggest changes need to come at an institutional level, keeping a bucket at your feet in the shower to capture the water for reuse isn’t the worst idea.
How long will it take to read: Nine minutes.
Further reading: Guardian Australia’s climate and environment editor Adam Morton on why net zero targets are just “fig leaves” when negative emissions are required.
5. ‘Have you ever eaten penis?’
Normally hearing a quote like that would be the lasting memory of any visit to a television studio. And so Clem Bastow would have thought when she left the set of MasterChef in January. But by the time the episode finally aired this week, judge Jock Zonfrillo was dead and the viewing experience was bittersweet.
Other observations: The workroom is grand and imposing. The garden is glorious. And entering the pantry is “like Homer Simpson visiting the Land Of Chocolate”.
How long will it take to read: Two minutes.
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