1. My family and I were sound asleep – then a tsunami swept our house out to sea
Jolted awake at 4.30am, Pedro “Peter” Niada was certain a meteorite had fallen near his seaside home, lifting it from its foundations and sending it flying through the air. He took two steps down the stairs, felt water splash his feet and realised the house was sinking.
In this gripping edition of our How we survive series, Jonathan Franklin tells the story of 27 February 2010, when the village of San Juan Bautista on Robinson Crusoe Island, more than 600km off the coast of Chile, was hit by a colossal wave.
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2. No, you’re not fine just the way you are: time to quit your pointless job, become morally ambitious and change the world
“Of all the things wasted in our throwawaytimes,” writes Rutger Bregman, “the greatest is wasted talent.”
The Dutch writer and historian’s latest book – and mission – is a call to arms for talented individuals to walk away from the corporate treadmill to help make the world a better place. Here he sets out why moral ambition is an antidote to that wasted talent.
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When they’re not shouting at their own children, many of Britain’s soccer dads like nothing more than swearing at the officials, or even trading blows on the touchline. Isn’t this supposed to be fun, wondered Sam Wollaston, as he watched an angry father at one of his own son’s matches.
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4. A year of hate: what I learned when I went undercover with the far right
Charlie, the leader of a white nationalist group, leaned over the sticky pub table. He pointed a big finger at me and locked eyes. “You better not turn out to be an infiltrator for Hope Not Hate,” he said. I froze. Flanked by several of his lieutenants, Charlie watched, waiting for my response. His face softened into a smile. He started laughing and yanked down his collar, pretending to talk into a hidden microphone. “Abort! Abort!” he shouted. I played along, lifting up my wrist like there was a wire stashed in my cuff. “Get me out of here!” I yelled into my sleeve. “They’ve discovered me!”
In this gripping Long read, Harry Shukman explains what happened when he went undercover with an extremist organisation, befriended its members and got to work investigating their political connections.
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5. It turns out you’re never too old to go Interrailing around Europe
Interrailing was for young people – or so thought Phil Mongredien, until he realised that the age restriction for the pan-European train pass is long gone and decided to take his two boys on a train trip across the continent:
Unlike air travel, where the transit element of a holiday is at best a soul-sapping chore in consumerism hell, the actual journeys were as much a part of the holiday as any of our destinations, whether we were on the Oslo-Bergen line, which is habitually – and rightly – described as one of the most scenic in Europe, or the Zutphen-Hengelo line in the eastern Netherlands, which is not, but did have the bonus of a garrulous passenger keen to know my children’s views on Brexit.
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6. ‘Hitler’s hatred of the scientist had intensified. There was a price on his head’: the tragic story of Robert Einstein, Albert’s cousin
After the famous physicist fled Germany in 1933, his cousin Robert moved his family to Italy, where they thought they had found safety. Then, the day before liberation, Nazis smashed down their front door … Thomas Harding, whose relatives were close associates of the Einsteins, tells the story of the vendetta that destroyed a family.
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