“A recurring theme is that bravery is like a muscle that must be developed and regularly exercised in order to make it second nature.“

A Time for Bravery: What Happens When Australians Are Courageous

Tiled.art: “Discover great tessellation art, understand how it works, and create your own.”

Spies, spirits and social change: 10 new books to add to your shelf

The lasting message John le Carré gave Tom Hiddleston  — Behind John le Carré's masterwork is an unexpected friendship which binds actor Tom Hiddleston to the iconic espionage

Cast an eye across the headlines, and 2026 feels like a world of obfuscation and distraction. The modern world as we see it on TV suddenly looks more like the fractious and shadowy universe of espionage writer John le Carré, populated by spies like George Smiley and Jonathan Pine.

Is this life imitating art? Or art imitating politics? At a time, when we are invoking Orwell’s famous line “the Party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears – it was their final, most essential command”, there are many questions but few easy answers.

“Art has to engage with the real world, and yet the best art can exist on its own,” says actor Tom Hiddleston, who plays superspy Jonathan Pine in The Night Manager. “But if there’s a tangible connection to the real world, I think it invites the audience to bring their own experience to it.”

“One of the things I know le Carré cared deeply about was, if he’s talking about the East and West and their capacity for invention, [that] he’s coming to it from the point of view of the West, right? And I know that his work to some extent evolved out of a response to what was happening in the world.

“What fascinated him as a British writer was, ‘what does it mean to be British’?” Hiddleston says. “Douglas Hodge, who plays [high-ranking intelligence officer] Rex Mayhew, says in the first episode, a nation’s security service is the truest expression of itself. Know thyself. And the challenge is: what does this country stand for? Where is it going, and who’s driving the boat?”

Exit Stalin — reforms and repression in the postwar, pre-collapse USSR

Mark Smith’s impressive history surveys life in the Soviet Union, and its advances and failures from Khrushchev to Gorbachev

The IRS is effectively unable to audit private equity, venture capital, and real estate investment firms. Thousands of workers have been fired from the agency since DOGE and the world's richest man took an ax to it. Now audits of these giant enterprises have dropped 80 or 90%.

 Push to Audit Private Equity and Venture Capital Falters Under Trump

From New York Times Shanghai bureau chief to U.S. intelligence contractor All-Source Intelligence

My final message before I’m on an FBI watchlist: Palantir, Epstein, & The New York Times Juan Sebastian Pinto. From a former Palantir employee

Why men should really be reading more fiction 

Novels require a kind of attention that the modern world is steadily eroding

“People in 1999 using the internet as an escape from reality,” the text read, over an often-used image from a TV series of a face looking out of a car window. Below it was another face looking out of a different car window overlaid with the text: “People in 2026 using reality as an escape from the internet.” 

Trump Lays Out a Vision of Power Restrained Only by ‘My Own Morality

The New York Times Interview with President Donald Trump, January 8, 2026: “On topic after topic, President Trump made clear that he would be the arbiter of any limits to his authorities, not international law or treaties. President Trump declared on Wednesday evening that his power as commander in chief is constrained only by his “own morality,” brushing aside international law and other checks on his ability to use military might to strike, invade or coerce nations around the world

An ecologist in Wales uses tracking dogs to help track & protect the endangered wild otter population; meet The Detectorists.

Set against the serene backdrop of rural Wales, this short documentary follows wildlife ecologist Lee Jenkins and his two German Pointers — Neo and pup-in-training Cariad — as they search for elusive otters. Using scent detection to guide camera trap placement, the team gathers crucial evidence to protect these endangered animals. Shot from a dog’s-eye view with immersive cinematography, the film offers a poetic glimpse into conservation through the nose and eyes of a canine detective.