The Economist

The surprising liberalism of Bolivia’s “Aymara capital”

Brexit and low language learning limit supply of foreign speakers in the UK

Rarely are they neutral spaces, as a new exhibition in Berlin shows

The insurance industry is stuck in the 20th century. That leaves swathes of the economy dangerously unprotected

T time Wang Zhi performed in drag, 17 years ago, it was in a seedy gay bar three hours’ drive from his university dorm. Today Mr Wang (pictured) says he can make a tidy 2m yuan ($290,000) a year from his cross-dressing routines. Remarkably, they have the Communist Party’s blessing. He regularly appears on nationally televised variety shows. Officials often invite him to entertain people in poor areas. In Xinjiang and Tibet, he boasts, he has enraptured his ethnic-minority audiences. Mr Wang’s s

Sotheby’s joins its arch-rival in private ownership

Buy-out firms are the new banks in emerging markets

Electric-scooter startups are becoming more cautious

A star manager comes a cropper, leaving pension funds frozen

Europe's startup factory is struggling to spend its cash

The grain is getting a new lease of life

TransferWise becomes Europe’s most valuable private fintech

Big Agri wants to make quinoa more mainstream

The biggest collapse in private-equity history will have a lasting impact

Abraaj was one of the world’s highest-profile private-equity firms. We take a look at its spectacular downfall, and the fate of its charismatic boss, Arif Naqvi

The plot thickens in cryptoland

Banks beware: currency trading is entering the modern age

“Small Island”—adapted from a novel by Andrea Levy that was published in 2004—unpicks the complex, vicious tangle of power relations between coloniser and colonised, insider and outsider

The Intelligence: The Economist's daily podcast (16:25 onwards)

Vietnamese migrants are thriving in Poland and Czechia (with Aman Rizvi)

Life for the kings of package holidays is no picnic

Why You Like It. By Nolan Gasser.Flatiron Books; 720 pages; $32.50. T that “writing about music is like dancing about architecture” has been ascribed to Elvis Costello, Laurie Anderson and Thelonious Monk, among others. Undaunted, in “Why You Like It” Nolan Gasser attempts to explain the ineffable ways music produces sensations in listeners’ brains: its power to move people to tears, evoke awe and induce involuntary toe-tapping. Plus the odd proclivity of sad songs to seem uplifting. Mr Gasser

Why You Like It. By Nolan Gasser.Flatiron Books; 720 pages; $32.50. The adage that “writing about music is like dancing about architecture” has been ascribed to Elvis Costello, Laurie Anderson and Thelonious Monk, among others. Undaunted, in “Why You Like It” Nolan Gasser attempts to explain the ineffable ways music produces sensations in listeners’ brains: its power to move people to tears, evoke awe and induce involuntary toe-tapping. Plus the odd proclivity of sad songs to seem uplifting.

David Boulton, a broadcaster and author, is among those who think there is no transcendent God and is even “a bit queasy about the word spiritual”, preferring to call himself a humanist. But he feels comfortable as a Quaker. By contrast Nat Case, a cartographer and non-theist Quaker from Minneapolis, is more open to talk of the supernatural, though he rejects the idea of an external God. He compares his relationship with religion to his appreciation of “Star Wars”: “You don’t need to know the lines from all the movies…It’s about how it grabs you.” [with Bruce Clark]

The weed is an opportunity, but the government has to be careful

The risk of staging a play about ennui is the possibility of instilling the same feelings in the audience

Too much of the money they send home evaporates en route. How can costs be driven down?

Sending money across borders is getting less painful—at long last

We explore how fintech companies strive to disrupt the global remittance market

More people than ever seek to uncork a profit