Claim OwnershipThe Audio Long Read
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The Audio Long Read podcast is a selection of the Guardian’s long reads, giving you the opportunity to get on with your day while listening to some of the finest longform journalism the Guardian has to offer, including in-depth writing from around the world on current affairs, climate change, global warming, immigration, crime, business, the arts and much more. The podcast explores a range of subjects and news across business, global politics (including Trump, Israel, Palestine and Gaza), money, philosophy, science, internet culture, modern life, war, climate change, current affairs, music and trends, and seeks to answer key questions around them through in depth interviews explainers, and analysis with quality Guardian reporting. Through first person accounts, narrative audio storytelling and investigative reporting, the Audio Long Read seeks to dive deep, debunk myths and uncover hidden histories. In previous episodes we have asked questions like: do we need a new theory of evolution? Whether Trump can win the US presidency or not? Why can't we stop quantifying our lives? Why have our nuclear fears faded? Why do so many bikes end up underwater? How did Germany get hooked on Russian energy? Are we all prisoners of geography? How was London's Olympic legacy sold out? Who owns Einstein? Is free will an illusion? What lies beghind the Arctic's Indigenous suicide crisis? What is the mystery of India's deadly exam scam? Who is the man who built his own cathedral? And, how did the world get hooked on palm oil? Other topics range from: history including empire to politics, conflict, Ukraine, Russia, Israel, Gaza, philosophy, science, psychology, health and finance. Audio Long Read journalists include Samira Shackle, Tom Lamont, Sophie Elmhirst, Samanth Subramanian, Imogen West-Knights, Sirin Kale, Daniel Trilling and Giles Tremlett.
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A colossal volcanic eruption in January 2022 ripped apart the underwater cables that connect Tonga to the world – and exposed the fragility of 21st-century life By Samanth Subramanian. Read by Raj Ghatak. Help support our independent journalism at theguardian.com/longreadpod
We are raiding the Guardian long read archives to bring you some classic pieces from years past, with new introductions from the authors. This week, from 2022: Kenya’s great lakes are flooding, in a devastating and long-ignored environmental disaster that is displacing hundreds of thousands of people By Carey Baraka. Read by Reice Weathers. Help support our independent journalism at theguardian.com/longreadpod
Once a stalwart of Hong Kong’s journalism scene, Wang Jian has found a new audience on YouTube, dissecting global politics and US-China relations since the pandemic. To his fans, he’s part newscaster, part professor, part friend By Lauren Hilgers. Read by G Cheng. Help support our independent journalism at theguardian.com/longreadpod
1From murder scenes to whale blubber, Ben Giles has seen it – and cleaned it – all. In their stickiest hours, people rely on him to restore order By Tom Lamont. Read by Elis James. Help support our independent journalism at theguardian.com/longreadpod
We are raiding the Guardian long read archives to bring you some classic pieces from years past, with new introductions from the authors. This week, from 2022: forensic scientist Angela Gallop has helped to crack many of the UK’s most notorious murder cases. But today she fears the whole field – and justice itself – is at risk By Imogen West-Knights. Read by Lucy Scott. Help support our independent journalism at theguardian.com/longreadpod
If the first term of Donald Trump provoked anxiety over the fate of objective knowledge, the second has led to claims we live in a world-historical age of stupid, accelerated by big tech. But might there be a way out? By William Davies. Read by Dan Starkey. Help support our independent journalism at theguardian.com/longreadpod
In the 1970s, the radical leftwing German terrorist organisation may have spread fear through public acts of violence – but its inner workings were characterised by vanity and incompetence By Jason Burke. Read by Noof Ousellam. Help support our independent journalism at theguardian.com/longreadpod
We are raiding the Guardian long read archives to bring you some classic pieces from years past, with new introductions from the authors. This week, from 2022: Thanks to a savvy California lawyer, Albert Einstein has earned far more posthumously than he ever did in his lifetime. But is that what the great scientist would have wanted? By Simon Parkin. Read by Ruth Lass. Help support our independent journalism at theguardian.com/longreadpod
In the early years, American Jewish support for Israel was a fraught issue. The turning point was the six-day war of 1967, which solidified a strength of feeling that has only recently begun to fracture By Mark Mazower. Read by Kerry Shale. Help support our independent journalism at theguardian.com/longreadpod
In 2020, after spending half his life in the US, Song-Chun Zhu took a one-way ticket to China. Now he might hold the key to who wins the global AI race By Chang Che. Read by Vincent Lai. Help support our independent journalism at theguardian.com/longreadpod
We are raiding the Guardian long read archives to bring you some classic pieces from years past, with new introductions from the authors. This week, from 2022: I assumed I would be part of the first generation to have full agency over my reproduction – but I was wrong By Edna Bonhomme. Read by Nerissa Bradley. Help support our independent journalism at theguardian.com/longreadpod
Over a few brutal days in March, as sectarian violence and revenge killings tore through parts of Syria, two friends from different communities tried to find a way to survive By Ghaith Abdul-Ahad. Read by Mo Ayoub. Help support our independent journalism at theguardian.com/longreadpod
The late Kenyan novelist and activist believed erasing language was the most lasting weapon of oppression. Here, Aminatta Forna recalls the man and introduces his essay on decolonisation By Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o with introduction by Aminatta Forna. Read by Kobna Holdbrook-Smith and Aminatta Forna. Help support our independent journalism at theguardian.com/longreadpod
We are raiding the Guardian long read archives to bring you some classic pieces from years past, with new introductions from the authors. This week, from 2022: the giant asset management firm used to target places where people worked and shopped. Then it started buying up people’s homes. In one country, the backlash was ferocious By Hettie O’Brien. Read by Evelyn Miller. Help support our independent journalism at theguardian.com/longreadpod
Some days it can feel as if climate catastrophe is inevitable. But history is full of cases – such as the banning of whaling and CFCs – that show humanity can come together to avert disaster By Kate Marvel. Read by Norma Butikofer. Help support our independent journalism at theguardian.com/longreadpod
Kirsten Smith was 19 when she first tried heroin; within a few years she was in prison. She says she willingly made bad choices and wants society to stop treating addiction as a disease By Xi Chen. Read by Katherine Fenton. Help support our independent journalism at theguardian.com/longreadpod
We are raiding the Guardian long read archives to bring you some classic pieces from years past, with new introductions from the authors. This week, from 2022: Josh and Jack used to interrogate life via absurdist jokes and sketches. But the questions they had just kept getting bigger – and led them both to embark upon a profound transformation By Lamorna Ash. Read by Katie Lyons. Help support our independent journalism at theguardian.com/longreadpod
Churning quantities of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere at the rate we are going could lead the planet to another Great Dying By Peter Brannen. Read by Lincoln Conway. Help support our independent journalism at theguardian.com/longreadpod
When the streaming giant began making films guided by data that aimed to please a vast audience, the results were often generic, forgettable, artless affairs. But is there a happy ending? By Phil Hoad. Read by Adam Sims. Help support our independent journalism at theguardian.com/longreadpod
We are raiding the Guardian long read archives to bring you some classic pieces from years past, with new introductions from the authors. This week, from 2022: The horrors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki made the whole world afraid of the atomic bomb – even those who might launch one. Today that fear has mostly passed out of living memory, and with it we may have lost a crucial safeguard By Daniel Immerwahr. Read by Christopher Ragland. Help support our independent journalism at theguardian.com/longreadpod
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please stop promoting "comfort eating". This is a form of self-harm, like comfort-drinking! Obesity is a huge problem and is often caused by "comfort-eating"
comfort eating is dysfunctional self-harm
Funny, all the fuss about towels and air-dryers, when we inoculate our hands on the toilet door handle when we leave the toilets.
I really don't want to hear Grace Dent promoting "comfort eating". As though that is a good thing!
Bringing change is so difficult. A professor of mine said extremists move the public opinion to roughly average of the two extremes (i.e. it's needed). Though personally I hate when people alienate others as it ultimately doesn't help the cause - I agree with the thoughts of this author! I've done a lot of work on framing and it is so, so important.
Why the accent???
mostly talks about his father's cancer. not an easy listen
listening in 2024 ... wrenched my heart to hear all the optimistic predictions that Iran never even came close to.
If this guy thinks there are no nazis in Ukraine he has rocks in his head
is this an AI generated narrator?
Galapagos is a province of Ecuador. Stating that something was found between the former and the latter is equivalent to misguiding listeners by citing the Midlands and England as two separate entities.
I really loved this episode, which pays tribute to Nichola Saunders - a largely forgotten figure who gave the UK so much. But I found it incredibly distracting to hear reasonably well known words mispronounced: cherubim, artisanal, homogeneous (it has 5 syllables not 4) or US pronunciations of words (cedre) by an obviously British reader why don't the editors correct these mispronunciations, as they would misspellings in a written article?
One of the weakest GLRs I've heard. Irritating and uninsightful.
One of my favourite podcasts recently. Great journalism, fascinating diverse stories and excellent production. Well done, The Guardian.
Very half-baked theories based on no facts, can't believe this got printed!
One of the sadest episodes I've ever heard. The whole thing is a piece of spoken word poetry, from the reading to the writing, it's beautiful and gut wrenching.
While JK is very difficult to eradicate, we have had great success in controling it's spread and massively reducing its prevalence in our part of East Ayrshire along the River Annick. Work done more than ten years ago within the Ayrshire Rivers Trust, the body tasked with control of the big 3 in non native invasive plant species, (JK, GH and HB) showed that spraying once with glyphosate (Roundup) in the approximately six week period between the appearance of the flowers and the first hard frost gave a very high (95% plus) reduction in the reappearance of JK stems the following spring. The ART funded SEPA accredited spraying training for volunteer groups to enable safe spraying operations along sensitive watercourses, and provided equipment, herbicide and appropriate PPE. They got much more bang for their buck this way than by using commercial spraying firms, but it is dependent on a volunteer labour force willing to undertake training and supply their labour in this most effective six
an idea: https://www.wildwalks-southwest.co.uk/eating-japanese-knotweed/
the #LieDetector & how we are led to believe that it's accurate but I'm not surprised.
Well, that was a level of ignorance, distortion, and low-end propaganda that I didn't expect from the Guardian.