Freakonomics: Can I Ask You a Ridiculously Personal Question?

 One reason I love to do what I do is because a). I am curious, which I’m guessing you are as well; but also b). I’m fairly shy — or at least I used to be. Not sure I ever really outgrew it. Shy and curious is a tough combination: there are answers you want to know but you’re not always comfortable asking the questions. These days, the internet is a big help — you can learn a lot from the comfort of your keyboard. But there are still occasions where you really need to ask another human being a question. Sometimes a sensitive question. That’s one reason I became a writer: it gives you permission to ask. [...]

This result may not surprise you. Most of us want other people to like us. And it would seem obvious that we’re more likable if we don’t ask sensitive questions. On the other hand: these were anonymous, virtual conversations; you might think it’d simply be more interesting, more fun, to ask the so-called sensitive questions. But this experiment suggests that most people don’t think that way, or perhaps that we’re so conditioned to not ask sensitive questions that even when allowed, we don’t.

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The Guardian Longreads: Penthouses and poor doors: how Europe's 'biggest regeneration project' fell flat

It has been billed as the world’s first swimming-pool bridge, a dazzling feat of acrylic engineering that will span the 14-metre gap between the two buildings and give residents the feeling of “floating through the air in central London”. But, although he lives in Embassy Gardens, Iqbal and his neighbours will never enjoy the thrill of going for an aerial dip. “We have a front-row seat of the Sky Pool,” he told me. “But the sad thing for us, living in the shared-ownership building, is that we will never have access to it. It’s only there for us to look at, just like the nice lobby, and all of the other facilities for the residents of the private blocks. Nobody expects these amenities for free, but we’re not even given the choice to pay for them.” [...]

The capital is well used to high-rise, high-end totems by now, but VNEB takes the iniquities of the real estate-industrial complex to extremes. It is a place where penthouses with private chapels and running tracks loom above crumbling council estates across the railway line, where scores of flats lie empty, held by secretive shell companies in off-shore tax havens, and where the division between absentee investors and owner-occupiers confined to poor doors could not be more stark. Dogged by allegations of cronyism and gerrymandering, it is the product of politicians in thrall to property developers, driven by a blind faith in the market – even when investors started to realise that they might have bought into a mirage. [...]

In one snapshot, looking at an agency that listed 35 new-build properties for sale during an eight-month period, the constant relisting made it look as if there were in fact 368 properties for sale. Rather than roughly £50m in market value of apartments advertised, the distortion would have made it appear as more than £500m. In another example, a £3.6m flat was re-listed 15 times in six months, making it seem like the average asking price in the area was skyrocketing. The manufactured flurry also gave the impression to potential buyers that flats were “flying off the shelves”, she said, when in fact the developers were struggling to offload them. The reality was that they were selling off homes in bulk at steep discounts to corporate landlords and institutional investors, with prices slashed by up to 38%.

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BBC4 In Our Time: Medieval Pilgrimage In Our Time

 Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the idea and experience of Christian pilgrimage in Europe from the 12th to the 15th centuries, which figured so strongly in the imagination of the age. For those able and willing to travel, there were countless destinations from Jerusalem, Rome and Santiago de Compostela to the smaller local shrines associated with miracles and relics of the saints. Meanwhile, for those unable or not allowed to travel there were journeys of the mind, inspired by guidebooks that would tell the faithful how many steps they could take around their homes to replicate the walk to the main destinations in Rome and the Holy Land, passing paintings of the places on their route.

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