The late Leila Alaoui’s work looks back at you. Her subjects’ eyes gaze out and lock with yours from frames and screens made on a much grander scale than the little boxes on Zoom. At the start of November 2020, I went to see an exhibition of her photographs and…

As the world locks down, podcasters are reaching out for our stories. — We’re in the midst of the first pandemic of the internet era, the most anxious moment of our extremely online age. Unsurprisingly, there has been a surge in the number of podcasts about the coronavirus. All the usual big names have started one to keep us up to speed with…

A forum for young orphans to grieve together thrives on the world’s most popular messaging platform — My parents both died in the early 2000s, before my 20th birthday. Becoming an orphan long before anyone else you know is incredibly isolating. People who have not had the experience find it hard to understand you; all too often, they’re frightened by the depth of the loss. And it…

The media obsession with — and recent mockery of — teen climate activist Greta Thunberg show how we’re failing future generations — In Ursula K. Le Guin’s 1973 dystopian short story “The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas,” the eponymous city pays a high price for the happiness of its inhabitants: the constant torture of one child kept in perpetual filth, darkness, and misery. Everyone in Omelas knows about the child: “This…

Yep it’s a long name and it’s fine if you don’t quite get it first time — Sending me out into the world with the name Suchandrika Tia Chakrabarti was a bold move by my parents. It’s a gift, on many levels. For one, it makes every introduction to a new person a chance for me to get the measure of them. Occasionally, just a Suchandrika Chakrabarti…

Public speaking is utterly terrifying, right? The fear starts the moment you take on the assignment. Your boss tells you it’s good for the company, or you’ve got to stand up in front of the board, or you’ve been approached and aaaargh don’t they understand that you know nothing?! *…