Happy weekend, dear readers. If you’re feeling like a room without a roof (whatever that means), feel free to clap along with my man Pharrell Williams. Happiness is the truth – not a warm gun – and one of this week’s great reads solves once and for all the mystery of how to attain it.
Before you take that in, be sure to sign up to our weekday email digests of more urgent matters: the Morning Mail and the Afternoon Update, which should be pretty self-explanatory.
But for now, prepare for enlightenment – and some fashion advice to live by.
1. How to have a happy life
If you’re seeking the solution to life’s great problem, Robert Waldinger has you covered. No, not that whole mortality thing – though he is a sprightly looking 72-year-old. The director of the Harvard Study of Adult Development has a new book, The Good Life, which reveals what his work has taught him about health and fulfilment.
Show me the money? Yes, the struggle is real when we are financially strapped. But studies show that beyond a certain wealth threshold the boost to happiness is incremental. Relationships are key, Waldinger says, and the pattern globally is clear: the more socially connected you are, the more likely you are to live longer and live well.
How long will it take to read: Six minutes.
2. WTF is wrong with swearing?
Once mostly confined to wharves, seedy bars and Martin Scorsese films, swearing is now everywhere. Even the independent senator David Pocock was overheard getting a bit fruity in Parliament House this week.
Meanwhile in the UK, a judge ruled that using the F-word in work meetings is now “commonplace”. British parents say their children are more inclined to drop Fs and Cs than mind their Ps and Qs. As Emine Saner learns, people of all ages are peppering their speech with swearwords to “overthrow restraint”.
So has dropping the F-bomb lost its power? Fuck no! “I’ve been answering that question for 50 years,” says US psychology professor and swearing expert Timothy Jay. “The offensiveness of any word is entirely dependent upon context. All of us carry the calculus for who, what, where and when.”
How long will it take to read: Four minutes.
3. The folly of following fashion
“Following fashion trends?” Patricia Field asks. “It’s a waste.” And the veteran costume designer would know. She turned Sarah Jessica Parker’s Carrie Bradshaw into such a fashion icon that even I know what Manolo Blahniks are. Sex and the City made Field’s name and in a new memoir she details her life before and after the “in-law that just won’t get out of your life”.
Notable quote: “To me, fashion is a cousin of art. And like art, originality is what counts. When it starts to feel intimidating, it’s time to change.”
How long will it take to read: Five minutes.
4. George Monbiot’s pandemic warning
While we’re busy trying to get on with things after the lost weekend that was the coronavirus pandemic, avian flu is quietly ripping through wild bird populations in the northern hemisphere. George Monbiot notes that every major influenza pandemic has started with bird flus. But it needs a mixing vessel to cross over to humans and Monbiot notes that mink farming “offers the mixing vessel it needs”.
Notable quote: “If you treated dogs or cats in the same way as we treat these animals, you would be sent to prison. But do it to farmed species on a large enough scale and you are treated with the special respect accorded to a ‘captain of industry’.”
How long will it take to read: Three minutes.
5. Going deep on the King’s latest achievement
Not the King of Spin, nor King Wally, nor Charles – in the US there can be only one and that is LeBron James. As Nelson Mandela is often credited as saying, “It always seems impossible until it’s done.” And so it came to pass this week when LeBron passed the NBA scoring record, which had stood since Kareem Abdul-Jabbar retired in 1989.
Claire de Lune was there in Los Angeles for one of those moments that, as she writes, reminds us of “the fleetingness of our own existence”.
Notable quote: “As impressive as James has been in his 20th season, and as much as he impresses upon us that ageing doesn’t matter, it does eventually come for us all. Because of this, the joy of passing Abdul-Jabbar comes as a package deal with the melancholy the feat is inextricably tied to: this ‘rollercoaster ride’, as James called it after the record was broken, will end at some point. And that day grows ever nearer.”
How long will it take to read: Three minutes.
Further reading: Anything Kareem has written for the Guardian.
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