Our favourites this week

illustrated avatar of a young woman with curly hair, smiling
Videos that make science look beautiful So many of my favourite things come together in Kurzgesagt – it’s the best Youtube channel you can find. Slow journalism with great respect for its subjects and their complexity, in the format of snappy explainer videos with fantastic design and animation. They make one a month, on topics ranging from loneliness to wormholes and plastic pollution. It’s one of those channels you can completely lose yourself in! (Lise Straatsma, image editor) Kurzgesagt – In a Nutshell: Loneliness (watching time: 12 minutes)
illustrated avatar of a man with a beard, smiling
Reconnecting with home during an era of constant change If you’re like me, it’s easy to feel lost and disoriented in a world that’s demanding more and more of us and at a time when it feels like everything is falling apart. This conversation, from the podcast "Homecomers”, is between two people who grew up as neighbours with me in the state of Kansas, talking about a new model for building lasting and healthy communities. Even though the surface-level conversation is about environmental conservation, the much deeper conversation is about the idea of "home" – something I think many of us are looking for. (Eric Holthaus, Climate correspondent) The Homecomers: on repairing connections between people and lands (listening time: 36 minutes)
Illustrated avatar of a woman with her hair in a bun and large earrings.
Why we need novels “Has fiction, over the centuries, been the creator of compassion or a vehicle for containment?” To answer this question, Zadie Smith unpacks the idea of cultural appropriation, celebrates the beauty of a well-crafted sentence, and defends her compulsive interest in the lives of others. After finishing this essay I reached for a novel with the sense that nothing could be more important. (Kate Kingsford, copy editor) New York Review of Books: Fascinated to presume: in defense of fiction (reading time: 25 minutes)

The best of The Correspondent

Photograph showing human remains in the form of black and white ash Death is a good way to gauge who we think deserves to live People die violent deaths in both the US and Nigeria – why do I fear it there and not here? Where people have little power, they become more vulnerable. Read OluTimehin Adegbeye’s article here Illustration of a yellow coin. The image on the coin shows three people at sea on a small boat. In the background there are icons related to migration. Tracking the European Union’s migration millions In partnership with Italian and Nigerian journalists, I’ll attempt to make sense of financial flows between Europe and Africa’s largest economy – and could use your help. Read Maite Vermeulen’s article here Man wearing a suit standing in a university classroom with his hands on one of the red chairs in it - the wall on the right is white, the one on the left is green. A neuroscientist’s guide to what happens in your brain when you feel guilt I spoke with Roland Zahn, a psychiatrist at King’s College London, whose cutting-edge research on brain activity and mood disorders could transform the way we treat depression. Read Tanmoy Goswami’s essay here