Christmas Specials
Taking the Mickey
A treasure trove of Hollywood intellectual property is heading for the public domain
Mickey Mouse is about to be set free
Complex saviours
The new tech worldview
Silicon Valley may be coming down to earth. Not so tech’s big thinkers
The myth of the holy cow
India’s movement to protect cows is rooted in politics, not religion
How the Hindu right co-opted the cow
A tale of oil and rubber
What Brazil’s 19th-century rubber crash could teach today’s oil drillers
Two Brazilian booms bookmark the history of the car
The weight of the world
The economics of thinness
It is economically rational for ambitious women to try as hard as possible to be thin
Use your loaf
How food affects the mind, as well as the body
It turns out you are what you eat after all
Time lords
In a corner of Java live the Amish of Indonesia
The Baduy of Indonesia shun modernity. But growing numbers are abandoning their way of life
Take me out to the ball game
Why cricket and America are made for each other
The world’s second-most-popular sport and biggest sports market are about to meet
When money dies
The great inflation of the 1500s is echoing eerily today
Inflations past have lessons for today
The three knife trilogy
Emigrants from a small corner of China are making an outsize mark abroad
Chinese migrants from Wenzhou are strikingly different from their compatriots
The wibbly-wobbly circle of life
Deadly, dirty, indispensable: the nitrogen industry has changed the world
It lays waste to ecosystems, allows wars to kill millions and has kept billions from starvation