Timeline: Book It

Arts & Culture, Books

1874

Laura Ingalls Wilder (right) and family leave Wisconsin to settle on a 172-acre farm outside Walnut Grove. When their crops are destroyed by grasshoppers, they’re forced to move, but 50 years later, Wilder captures the drama in On the Banks of Plum Creek.

1909

New Ulm teenager Wanda Gág writes a 20-page illustrated story, “Robby Bobby in Mother Gooseland.” It’s published in the Junior Journal section of the Minneapolis Journal. She’s paid $50 for her work.

1928

Dora V. Smith becomes the first professor of children’s lit in the College of Education at the University of Minnesota.

1928

Gág, now an alum of the Minneapolis School of Art (later the Minneapolis College of Art and Design), writes and illustrates Millions of Cats. It’s considered a prototype of the modern children’s book.

1938

Wilder’s On The Banks of Plum Creek wins the Newbery Medal.

1940

Taking inspiration from the childhood adventures she and her best friend Frances “Bick” Kenney had growing up in Mankato, Maud Hart Lovelace writes Betsy-Tacy, the first in a series of 13 novels.

1949

Dr. Irvin Kerlan, an FDA scientist and U of M alum, donates his collection of children’s lit to the University of Minnesota. This seeds the Kerlan Collection, eventually comprising 100,000 children’s books with more than 1,700 authors.

1959

When Dr. Marguerite Rush Lerner asks her brother-in-law Harry Lerner to publish her stories about childhood diseases, Lerner Publishing is born in the Lumber Exchange Building.

1965

The Children’s Theatre Company is established in the lecture hall at the Minneapolis Institute of Art. The first season adapts classic lit like Rumpelstiltskin, Sleeping Beauty, and A Christmas Carol.

1975

The inaugural Kerlan Award is given to kid-lit pioneers Marie Hall Ets, Marguerite Henry, and Elizabeth Coatsworth.

1984

Named after the classic French children’s movie by Albert Lamorisse, Red Balloon Bookshop opens on Grand Avenue in St. Paul.

1986

Kirsten Larson is one of the first three dolls produced by American Girl. Kirsten’s backstory would be familiar to Laura Ingalls Wilder: Coming from Sweden, she arrives in Minnesota Territory with her family in 1854.

1987

Minneapolis’s Gary Paulsen crafts classic teenage survival story Hatchet, featuring Brian Robeson, a protagonist whom readers will follow through four more novels. Paulsen wraps it up in 2001 with Guts: The True Stories Behind Hatchet and the Brian Books.

1989

Dr. Jack Zipes, the world’s leading fairy tale scholar, joins the U of M as professor in the Department of German, Nordic, Slavic, and Dutch. He teaches fairy tales, folklore, and children’s lit until his retirement in 2008.

1992

Wild Rumpus bookstore, replete with pet chickens and cats winding through its beautifully curated shelves of children’s books, opens in Linden Hills.

2000

While working in The Bookman, a Minneapolis book warehouse, Kate DiCamillo comes across The Watsons go to Birmingham. After she’s encouraged by Louise Erdrich to write her own children’s books, Because of Winn-Dixie is published.

2017

Minneapolis writer Kelly Barnhill, who’s open about being bullied as a child and working at a battered women’s shelter as a teen, channels these feelings into her fourth novel, The Girl Who Drank the Moon. She’s awarded the Newbery Medal.

2024

After years of rejections by agents and publishers, local elementary school teacher and viral Instagrammer Matt Eicheldinger’s initially self-published debut, Matt Sprouts and the Curse of the Ten Broken Toes, is finally certified as a New York Times bestseller.

2024

The University of Minnesota Press will publish We Miss You, George Floyd, a picture book by Shannon Gibney.

2025

The Minnesota Opera will adapt Ezra Jack Keats’s 1962 children’s book classic The Snowy Day for its stage.

Nicole Kidman suffered burnout filming Babygirl and ‘didn’t want to orgasm anymore’

Arts & Culture, Film & TV

Nicole Kidman revealed ‘she didn’t want to orgasm anymore’ while filming Babygirl (Picture: A24)Nicole Kidman has revealed that there were points during filming her new movie Babygirl that she didn’t ‘want to orgasm anymore.’ 
The steamy new film starring Kidman, 57 – as Romy, an ambitious tech CEO – alongside Harris Dickinson, 28 – as Samuel, an intern at the company –  is set to come out Christmas day in the US and January 10 in the UK. 
According to The Sun, the Oscar-winning actress called shooting the film ‘liberating’ and explained how trust between herself, the director, and Dickinson was vital to making it happen. 
Halina Reijn directed the A24 erotic thriller that features sex scenes between Kidman and Dickinson as well as between Kidman and her husband in the film, played by Antonio Banderas, 64. 
This meant many days of filming featured an overwhelming amount of touch for Kidman, which she said could lead to ‘frustration.’
She explained: ‘There was an enormous amount of sharing and trust and then frustration. It’s like, “Don’t touch me.”

Kidman stars across from Harris Dickinson, who plays her character’s much younger intern (Picture: A24)

Both actors have spoken about how much they needed to trust each other to get through filming (Picture: A24)‘There were times when we were shooting where I was like, “I don’t want to orgasm any more.”‘
She continued, sharing that sometimes she would feel exhausted by the process: ‘”Don’t come near me. I hate doing this. I don’t care if I am never touched again in my life! I’m over it.”
‘It was so present all the time for me that it was almost like a burnout.’ 
Kidman also said in a recent Q&A that participating in a film of this nature was new territory for her and required a lot of trust. 
She said: ‘There’s a sort of a jump off the cliff thing where you go, okay, I’m just going to abandon everything and explore this with the people that I trust in a genre that is already set, but hopefully we can explore new territory and especially with the female at the helm,’ according to People. 

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Kidman said sometimes she felt frustrated while filming (Picture: A24)

The new film is unexplored territory for Kidman as an actress (Picture: A24)

Dickinson said that he was scared to film certain scenes in the movie (Picture: A24)She elaborated that trusting her director to keep her and her co-stars safe was essential to the process: ‘You have your director at the helm going, ‘I will protect you. Nothing that’s going to be in the film will be anything that you are not comfortable with. You are going to be okay.”’
She also added that she and Dickinson had an ‘enormous amount of trust’ in each other. 
Dickinson expanded on this, saying: ‘Of course, there were days where I would go in really terrified of a scene or I don’t know how I’m going to do this.’
He, too, went on to reconfirm the level of trust between him and his collaborators on the film, stating: ‘There was never a day that if the scene wasn’t working or if we weren’t comfortable or we weren’t getting something, we never felt that time was more important. It was just like, “Okay, everyone go away for a second.”’

The trailer for Babygirl left fans hot under the collar (Picture: AP)Kidman also said that she had to come to terms with the fact that the world was going to ‘see something you do and hide in your home videos.’ 
Speaking about the film with Vanity Fair she said: ‘It’s like, “Golly, I’m doing this, and it’s actually now going to be seen by the world.” That’s a very weird feeling.’
She continued: ‘This is something you do and hide in your home videos. It is not a thing that normally is going to be seen by the world.’
Kidman’s latest comments about the film follow a huge online response to the film’s deeply steamy trailer. 
‘I’m already in the movie theater in case you were wondering,’ commented @StateofKait under the trailer on YouTube, while another fan joked: ‘A24 out here making their better version of 50 Shades of Grey.’

Kidman said that she deeply trusted director Halina Reijn to make sure she was safe and comfortable while filming (Picture: A24)’50 Shades Of Nicole Kidman… I’m in,’ agreed @MePatriick, while @perenniallachrymosity simply exclaimed: ‘HORNY FILMS ARE BACK BABY WOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO.’
‘Oh this is so horny,’ posted a gleeful @JoeOrgana on X, while @booksnbusy shared: ‘Ohhhhh this is about to be a timeee! Soft Dom Harris.’
‘Oof….. very horny & very seated,’ added @moxxie__.
Babygirl’s early premiere at Venice earned Kidman the Volpi Cup for best actress, causing fan excitement to heighten even further. 
The new film also marks Kidman joining the emerging Hollywood trend of older leading ladies romancing younger actors on screen. 

Kidman won an award for Best Actress for Babygirl at the Venice Film Festival (Picture: Stefano Costantino / MEGA)We’ve seen Anne Hathaway, 41, embroiled in a hot and heavy romance with a dashing young twenty-something popstar (played by Nick Galitzine, 29). 
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Read More StoriesEven more recently, Laura Dern, 57, and Liam Hemsworth, 34, starred in Netflix’s latest rom-com offering, Lonely Planet, about a novelist (Dern) who is trying to find herself on a writer’s retreat and soon becomes entangled with a much younger man (Hemsworth).
Olivia Wilde, 40, is set to romance a ‘nepo baby’ in the upcoming film I Want Your Sex alongside 21-year-old Cooper Hoffman. 
At the same time, Julia Fox, 34, will take the lead in LGBTQ+ romantic drama Perfect, starring opposite the slightly younger Ashley Moore.
Alright, Hollywood, you’ve got our attention. 
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John Wick creators reveal the major thing they almost changed about the movie on its 10th anniversary

Arts & Culture, Film & TV

The creators of John Wick almost let the puppy live (Picture: Everett/REX/Shutterstock)The John Wick franchise is now mentioned in the same breath as legendary action movies like James Bond and Mission Impossible – but the original film was very nearly vastly different than the story we love today. 
The directors recently revealed that they considered not killing off the puppy in its opening scene, a choice that would have fundamentally reshaped Keanu Reeves’ character. 
In a new interview on its tenth anniversary, John Wick directors Chad Stahelski and David Leitch reflected on the movie’s uncertain beginnings in 2014 when they were sure it would be sent straight to video with little fanfare. 
After struggling to secure placement, they had little hope that the pre-screening would earn much audience approval, they told Business Insider this week. 
To their surprise, the audience bought into the story quickly and screamed their approval as the action unfolded. 
‘Keanu turned to me and said, “Hey, I think they like it!”’ Stahelski recalled. ‘We were blown away.’

Directors David Leitch and Chad Stahelski talked about the film on its 10th anniversary (Picture: Eric Charbonneau/REX/Shutterstock)The film opens memorably, setting the tone for the entire franchise (which now has four installments), with former hitman Reeves mourning the death of his wife and bonding with the puppy she left him as her final act. 
When a member of the Russian mob kills the puppy, Reeves dons a now-iconic black suit and sets out on a bloody quest for revenge. 
It’s been a long-held trope of cinema that if you introduce the audience to a dog and then kill that dog off, you had better have a pretty good reason because viewers are certain to react viscerally and emotionally. 
This is so true that there’s even a popular website on which users can look up films to check if the dog dies, aptly named: www.doesthedogdie.com.
The brilliance of beginning John Wick this way is that viewers are certain to root for the avenging hero from that moment on.

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John Wick was an unexpected box office hit (Picture: Everett/REX/Shutterstock)No matter how many moral grey areas he strays into, fans are going to remember that puppy and stay glued to the screen as they wish every bad thing on the person responsible for hurting the poor little guy. 
This phenomenon is at the heart of the simple brilliance of John Wick, but Leitch told Business Insider that many had their doubts about the choice. 
He said: ‘We were told, “It’s bad luck.” “It’s bad juju.” “It’s ‘Old Yeller,’ you can’t do this!” “No one will want to see this on screen; you’re going to alienate the audience.”’

Reeves’ character went up against Russian mobsters in the film (Picture: Everett/REX/Shutterstock)He explained that because the pair set out to make a ‘genre movie,’ audiences would remember ‘hardboiled moments’ like the dog’s death. 
Stahelski added: ‘We were going to use a baby lens; John gets hit hard in the head, so it’s going to be dream-like; the dog death happens off-camera, and all you are going to see in the aftermath is this trail of the blood making it look like the puppy tried to crawl to him.’
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Read More StoriesExplaining how Reeves acted out the scene on the day, Stahelski shared that the beloved actor shot the scene in a beat-up pair of pajamas and acted with a stuffed dog. 

John Wick has become an iconic action hero since the film first came out in 2014 (Picture: Everett/REX/Shutterstock)He continued: ‘For the next couple of weeks it was suggested that we shoot an alternative ending revealing that the puppy actually isn’t dead. But Keanu stood up for us.’
Eventually, the directors were allowed to stick with the original concept that the dog died violently, and the film went on to be a surprise box office hit, earning over $86million on a $20million budget.
The rest, as they say, is history.  John Wick did so well that it created a whole franchise of three sequels, a TV miniseries (The Continental), and soon, its first feature film spinoff (Ballerina), as well as an anime series.
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Abbie Jane: My Local Council’s Motion to Remove LGBTQIA+ Books Really Worries Me

Arts & Culture, Books

Abbie Jane from The Rainbow Shoelace Project (and our October issue cover star) talks about Port Macquarie’s local council putting forward a motion to remove LGBTQIA+ books, and how worried it makes her feel as a young LGBTQIA+ person and writer.

Recently I discovered that the Port Macquarie Hastings local council had a notice of motion surrounding the options to remove books titled Welcome to Sex and Gender Queer.
Words can’t possible express how disgusted and utterly disappointed I was when hearing this. As a young queer person that has grown up in a supportive and open household I have been equipped with the knowledge on queer and sex related topics however there are so many other young people out there that don’t have access to this kind of education.
When young people are uneducated it leads to bad and sometimes dangerous decisions being made. Whether it’s about gender reaffirming care or safe sex, these topics should not be taboo and should be discussed.
If there are no medically accurate and factual books discussing sex, then young people will take it upon themselves to do their own research, this can lead to misinformation and very dangerous situations such as STIs and other unsafe sexual practices. It is important that we have sex education books designed for young people so they can be properly educated.
In this council meeting, LGBTQIA+ books and sex education books targeted at young people were compared to “grooming” not only is this incredibly offensive to victims of grooming and sexual assault but also the queer community. This also makes topics such as sex seem shameful and inappropriate whereas it’s just a regular human component.
These members of local government are clearly uneducated, ignorant and bigoted. If you have not experienced living like as a queer person you have no right to claim that the topic is “inappropriate” or that for it to be discussed with young people that makes it “grooming”. As soon as the book title Gender Queer was brought up, this motion became homophobic.
It is extremely unfair to the LGBTQIA+ community, having straight members of council completely dehumanised and discriminate against the entire community.
This is my way of telling not only the Port Macquarie Hastings Council but also all levels of government to think before they speak. To be better as a whole and be inclusive towards each and every individual and think about young people from a wider and more diverse perspective.
Has nobody learned from Cumberland Shire Council?
I have a book coming out early next year which has themes pertaining to the LGBTQIA+ community – will my book be banned from the Port Macquarie Library?

7 East Jerusalem Residents Charged in Iranian Plot To Kill Israeli Scientist

Science and Health

Seven residents of East Jerusalem were indicted on serious security charges for their alleged involvement in a plot to assassinate an Israeli nuclear scientist, authorities announced on Tuesday. The suspects, aged 19 to 23, are accused of working for Iranian operatives and gathering intelligence on the scientist, as well as plotting to target a city mayor. Israeli authorities, including the Shin Bet, say this case is part of a broader pattern of Iranian attempts to recruit Israeli citizens for espionage and sabotage operations.
The leader of the group, Rami Alian, was allegedly recruited by an Iranian agent and then enlisted six other men from the Beit Safafa neighborhood. Alian and his cell carried out various tasks for their Iranian handlers, including acts of vandalism and arson. In one instance, they were paid to set a vehicle on fire in the Ein Kerem neighborhood of Jerusalem. They also received payment to collect intelligence on Israeli security sites and a research facility.
Alian reportedly gathered detailed information about the nuclear scientist’s movements and personal life, intending to carry out an assassination in exchange for NIS 200,000 ($53,000), but the group was arrested before they could act.

Marseille is neither a drug-choked hell nor a tourist paradise: it’s the city that captures France at its best

Travel

Earlier this month, France’s second city suffered a pair of brutal killings that appeared to be the latest in a long list of tragedies inflicted by drug-related turf wars. In a place where groups have battled for years over highly coveted “points of sale”, many of them in the city’s impoverished northern neighbourhoods, the age of those involved in the latest killings was especially stomach-churning. The Marseille prosecutor, Nicolas Bessone, described how following the recent gang killing of a 15-year-old, a 14-year-old had been hired to carry out a revenge killing. A prisoner had recruited the teenager, the prosecutor said, and “organised the logistics for him to be collected by car and brought to a hotel room in Marseille”. The 14-year-old then allegedly shot and killed the taxi driver, who had nothing to do with the drugs trade, for not waiting for him.Unfortunately, grim stories such as these have become one of the big reasons Marseille makes headlines not just in France, but in the English-language press too. In addition to putting the spotlight on figures clamouring for more police authority and harsher prison sentences, they fuel a particular image of the port city in the rightwing imagination: Marseille as the ultimate symbol of French decline, a once-great metropolis torn asunder by decades of lawlessness and immigration that has become so dangerous it is now practically unliveable. Somehow, this reactionary fantasy hasn’t yet damaged a radically different image of the city gaining steam: Marseille as a promised land for twenty- and thirtysomethings seeking sunshine, natural beauty and just the right dose of urban “grit.”These competing visions of the city are enough to make your head spin. But as with all cliches, the reality is far more complicated.According to police, Marseille did see a record number of 49 drug-related killings in 2023, though the numbers are on track to be lower this year. And while the drug trade is indeed sweeping up younger participants, talk of “cartels” or an alleged “Mexicanisation” of the business is wildly off-base. As the award-winning author and chronicler of the city’s drug trade Philippe Pujol told me earlier this year, drug gangs in Marseille do not control production. Instead, they’re fighting over distribution in a local market. Forget about Pablo Escobar or El Chapo. The situation here is much closer to something out of The Wire: in scores of poor neighbourhoods lacking jobs and opportunities, the drug trade has filled the void, exploiting the labour of teenagers at the behest of a privileged few.But perhaps a better way of considering the paradox of Marseille is to imagine one of those distorting mirrors at a carnival fun-house. Viewed from a certain angle, the city can indeed reflect an uglier version of France. It suffers from racialised social segregation, with poverty and drug violence concentrated far from the wealthiest areas. Basic public services can be unreliable or downright lacking, problems that could get worse as the French government prepares for an austerity budget with €40bn (£33bn) in spending cuts. Amid a dearth of jobs, the local economy relies heavily on tourism. The “war on drugs” is an unmitigated failure.View image in fullscreenAnd yet, from a slightly different angle, Marseille can resemble a more attractive version of France. For one, it’s a place where people of different backgrounds do coexist. Despite the segregation, many Marseillais are accustomed to living among people who don’t look or talk like they do. This is the legacy of a port city with a long history of welcoming visitors and newcomers from abroad: from Italy, Armenia and the Maghreb in particular, but also from west Africa and the Comoros in more recent years.It may not be a giant melting pot, but the sheer diversity encountered by residents over the years has forged a certain kind of tolerance. “It’s a city that’s very welcoming for people who arrive from wherever,” Driss Benattia, 58, the son of Algerian immigrants who grew up in the Cité Busserine, a housing project in the northern neighbourhoods, told me. “It’s a city that allows for you to have a place in it so long as you adopt it. If you adopt Marseille, you’ll be adopted by Marseille.”As Benattia pointed out, affordability is another closely related historical benefit. “Even if you didn’t have a lot, you could always figure out a way to get by,” recalled the musician and handyman of his younger days. “You could find a place somewhere to live and to survive.” Rents are inching up, but the average rental price in Marseille is still half the level it is in Paris, and remains on the lower side when compared with other big French cities.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionThat open-minded spirit and relative inexpensiveness go a long way to explaining why Marseille has attracted a spate of new arrivals over the past several years, including creative professionals such as chefs, artists, musicians and writers. (For the sake of full disclosure, I could be considered part of that cohort, having fled Paris two years ago, in part for the aforementioned reasons.) This newer wave of transplants has fuelled the city’s trendy aura, no doubt contributing to a rise in housing prices in the process.But something else seems to explains Marseille’s appeal: France is arguably the most centralised country in western Europe, and in the capital, cultural production is highly stratified and highly codified, staffed by gatekeepers whose influence spans the worlds of politics and business. Looking back into the distorted mirror, Marseille seems to offer another path forward. Shouldn’t the barriers to entry for hopeful artists be lower? Shouldn’t people be able to create without the snobbish gaze of those who think they’ve figured everything out? Shouldn’t France just be more decentralised in general?I had initially approached Benattia for this story because he is the most Marseillais person I know, and was hoping he would wax poetic about his home town. But then he shared the terrible news: his nephew, Nessim Ramdane, was the taxi driver killed in the crime that recently shocked the city. “It always seems like it’s far off until you’re directly concerned,” he said.When I asked what he thought of all the calls to beef up law enforcement, Benattia said he was sceptical. “We’re going to talk about policing and quickly turn the page. And then it’ll be vive l’OM [the football team Olympique de Marseille], vive Marseille with all its parties and festivals, but the root of the problem isn’t addressed. If you don’t take care of the wound, then it gets infected again.”Beyond the fantasies and projections, Marseille is a poor city in dire need of investment and another approach to the failed war on drugs. Unfortunately, it appears France is moving in the wrong direction on both fronts.

Cole Stangler is a journalist based in Marseille and the author of Paris Isn’t Dead Yet

Do you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? If you would like to submit a response of up to 300 words by email to be considered for publication in our letters section, please click here.

Marseille is neither a drug-choked hell nor a tourist paradise: it’s the city that captures France at its best

Travel

Earlier this month, France’s second city suffered a pair of brutal killings that appeared to be the latest in a long list of tragedies inflicted by drug-related turf wars. In a place where groups have battled for years over highly coveted “points of sale”, many of them in the city’s impoverished northern neighbourhoods, the age of those involved in the latest killings was especially stomach-churning. The Marseille prosecutor, Nicolas Bessone, described how following the recent gang killing of a 15-year-old, a 14-year-old had been hired to carry out a revenge killing. A prisoner had recruited the teenager, the prosecutor said, and “organised the logistics for him to be collected by car and brought to a hotel room in Marseille”. The 14-year-old then allegedly shot and killed the taxi driver, who had nothing to do with the drugs trade, for not waiting for him.Unfortunately, grim stories such as these have become one of the big reasons Marseille makes headlines not just in France, but in the English-language press too. In addition to putting the spotlight on figures clamouring for more police authority and harsher prison sentences, they fuel a particular image of the port city in the rightwing imagination: Marseille as the ultimate symbol of French decline, a once-great metropolis torn asunder by decades of lawlessness and immigration that has become so dangerous it is now practically unliveable. Somehow, this reactionary fantasy hasn’t yet damaged a radically different image of the city gaining steam: Marseille as a promised land for twenty- and thirtysomethings seeking sunshine, natural beauty and just the right dose of urban “grit.”These competing visions of the city are enough to make your head spin. But as with all cliches, the reality is far more complicated.According to police, Marseille did see a record number of 49 drug-related killings in 2023, though the numbers are on track to be lower this year. And while the drug trade is indeed sweeping up younger participants, talk of “cartels” or an alleged “Mexicanisation” of the business is wildly off-base. As the award-winning author and chronicler of the city’s drug trade Philippe Pujol told me earlier this year, drug gangs in Marseille do not control production. Instead, they’re fighting over distribution in a local market. Forget about Pablo Escobar or El Chapo. The situation here is much closer to something out of The Wire: in scores of poor neighbourhoods lacking jobs and opportunities, the drug trade has filled the void, exploiting the labour of teenagers at the behest of a privileged few.But perhaps a better way of considering the paradox of Marseille is to imagine one of those distorting mirrors at a carnival fun-house. Viewed from a certain angle, the city can indeed reflect an uglier version of France. It suffers from racialised social segregation, with poverty and drug violence concentrated far from the wealthiest areas. Basic public services can be unreliable or downright lacking, problems that could get worse as the French government prepares for an austerity budget with €40bn (£33bn) in spending cuts. Amid a dearth of jobs, the local economy relies heavily on tourism. The “war on drugs” is an unmitigated failure.View image in fullscreenAnd yet, from a slightly different angle, Marseille can resemble a more attractive version of France. For one, it’s a place where people of different backgrounds do coexist. Despite the segregation, many Marseillais are accustomed to living among people who don’t look or talk like they do. This is the legacy of a port city with a long history of welcoming visitors and newcomers from abroad: from Italy, Armenia and the Maghreb in particular, but also from west Africa and the Comoros in more recent years.It may not be a giant melting pot, but the sheer diversity encountered by residents over the years has forged a certain kind of tolerance. “It’s a city that’s very welcoming for people who arrive from wherever,” Driss Benattia, 58, the son of Algerian immigrants who grew up in the Cité Busserine, a housing project in the northern neighbourhoods, told me. “It’s a city that allows for you to have a place in it so long as you adopt it. If you adopt Marseille, you’ll be adopted by Marseille.”As Benattia pointed out, affordability is another closely related historical benefit. “Even if you didn’t have a lot, you could always figure out a way to get by,” recalled the musician and handyman of his younger days. “You could find a place somewhere to live and to survive.” Rents are inching up, but the average rental price in Marseille is still half the level it is in Paris, and remains on the lower side when compared with other big French cities.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionThat open-minded spirit and relative inexpensiveness go a long way to explaining why Marseille has attracted a spate of new arrivals over the past several years, including creative professionals such as chefs, artists, musicians and writers. (For the sake of full disclosure, I could be considered part of that cohort, having fled Paris two years ago, in part for the aforementioned reasons.) This newer wave of transplants has fuelled the city’s trendy aura, no doubt contributing to a rise in housing prices in the process.But something else seems to explains Marseille’s appeal: France is arguably the most centralised country in western Europe, and in the capital, cultural production is highly stratified and highly codified, staffed by gatekeepers whose influence spans the worlds of politics and business. Looking back into the distorted mirror, Marseille seems to offer another path forward. Shouldn’t the barriers to entry for hopeful artists be lower? Shouldn’t people be able to create without the snobbish gaze of those who think they’ve figured everything out? Shouldn’t France just be more decentralised in general?I had initially approached Benattia for this story because he is the most Marseillais person I know, and was hoping he would wax poetic about his home town. But then he shared the terrible news: his nephew, Nessim Ramdane, was the taxi driver killed in the crime that recently shocked the city. “It always seems like it’s far off until you’re directly concerned,” he said.When I asked what he thought of all the calls to beef up law enforcement, Benattia said he was sceptical. “We’re going to talk about policing and quickly turn the page. And then it’ll be vive l’OM [the football team Olympique de Marseille], vive Marseille with all its parties and festivals, but the root of the problem isn’t addressed. If you don’t take care of the wound, then it gets infected again.”Beyond the fantasies and projections, Marseille is a poor city in dire need of investment and another approach to the failed war on drugs. Unfortunately, it appears France is moving in the wrong direction on both fronts.

Cole Stangler is a journalist based in Marseille and the author of Paris Isn’t Dead Yet

Do you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? If you would like to submit a response of up to 300 words by email to be considered for publication in our letters section, please click here.

Sugar rush: the sweet science of human genetic adaptation

Science and Health

THE taste of food is something that seems fundamental. In Marx’s view, expressed in A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy (1859), a physical property like taste provides a measure of the use-value of a commodity as distinct from its exchange-value: “From the taste of wheat, it is not possible to tell who produced it, a Russian serf, a French peasant or an English capitalist.”
Today, humanity consumes nearly 800 million metric tons of wheat a year. Other foods such as potatoes, rice, and different cereal crops are essential to diets around the world.
All of these contain large amounts of carbohydrates in the form of starch molecules. These molecules were made by the plants as an energy store. When plants photosynthesise, they use sunlight to convert water and carbon dioxide into glucose molecules.
Glucose and other sugars can be used for energy to power cells, but not all of it is needed at the point of photosynthesis. Those glucose molecules are therefore joined together into larger chains — starch molecules — to be broken back down into sugars when the plant needs them.
The way plants break down starch into sugar was discovered in the 1830s. The French scientists Payen and Persoz were trying to explain why malting grain — soaking it in water and then drying it out — made it sweeter.
Something in the grain was performing a chemical reaction to break down starch, a reaction which could only otherwise be accomplished with heat and acid. The explanation had remained a mystery for decades.
Payen and Persoz wrote that they had wondered if there was “anything left to be found on this beaten path.” There was: they isolated a substance that they called diastase. Diastase was the first named enzyme, a biomolecule capable of speeding up a chemical reaction by its presence without itself being used up. (All enzymes since have been given an “ase” suffix because of their naming choice.)
The enzymes humans use to break down starch are called amylases. If you eat a piece of bread — made from wheat and high in starch — the taste will change as you chew. As you leave it in your mouth, it will become sweeter over time. There is amylase in your saliva, which mixes with the bread and starts to break down the starch molecules.
The amylase in saliva is encoded by a gene called AMY1. But when it comes to the ability to produce enzymes, it doesn’t just matter about having the gene to be able to do it. It also matters how many copies one has.
Humans on average carry six copies of this gene within their total genome. Having more copies means more amylase can be made, which increases the rate of breakdown of starch in our mouths.
Most animals are not as good at it: chimpanzees, our closest living relatives, only have two copies. When a chimpanzee chews bread, it will not taste as sweet. In Marx’s terms, the use-value of wheat is different for humans and chimpanzees. That taste difference is a sweet signature of the history of agriculture.
In 2007, scientists observed that populations with high-starch diets tend to have slightly more copies of AMY1 than those with low-starch diets. That suggests that having multiple copies of AMY1 is a genetic adaptation to the emergence of agriculture based on starchy foods.
Agriculture is believed to have first developed around 12,000 years ago in the “fertile crescent,” a region that spans from Palestine in the west up through Lebanon and Syria, then down to Iraq in the east.
In historical terms, as some people began to eat more starchy plants, it was beneficial to produce more amylase in saliva to get more sugar out. Genes in the human genome can sometimes be duplicated due to random events in the copying of the genetic information, like accidentally typing the same word twice.
People with more copies of AMY1 could get more energy out of agricultural food, so were more likely to pass these copies on to their descendants because they could extract more nutrition from their food. The result was that over the last 12,000 years, the average number of copies of the amylase gene in the human genome increased.
Last month, researchers shed more light on that evolutionary process in a study published in Nature. They looked at the number of copies of AMY1 in over 500 genomes from human remains from Eurasia, ranging from 12,000 years ago to the late 18th century. The researchers found a significant increase in the number of copies as time passed.
Another study in Science last week agrees that the number of copies has increased in the human genome over the past few thousand years, although this separate research team suggests that humans, in fact, evolved three copies of AMY1 as far back as 800,000 years ago.
More work will ascertain which team is right about the original duplication of AMY1, but the increase in copies connected to the history of agriculture seems solid.
These studies show how quickly evolution can happen. Traditionally, biologists have tended to look at single mutations to DNA happening within genes, which are easier to study but happen at a much slower rate.
Now, it has become easier to study gene duplication because of improved DNA sequencing. These recent research papers underline just how quick duplication can be: the rate of duplications of AMY1 was around 10,000 times higher than the background mutation rate.
The general principle that gene duplications can increase the production of useful enzymes has been seen elsewhere, such as in bacteria responding to antibiotics. Thanks to recent advances in the technology needed to read genomes, it is likely that more evidence of the role of gene duplication in human evolution will be reported over the next few years.
Marx, who wrote a great deal on the role of agriculture in human civilisations, would no doubt have been fascinated by what new genetic research can reveal about our past. What we taste varies, not only because of our tastebuds but because of how food changes in our mouths.
Human genetic variation continues today. Although the average number of copies of AMY1 is six, some people alive today have 11 copies. Increased numbers of copies of the gene is not wholly a good thing; it is also associated with getting more dental cavities, presumably due to the extra sugar generated in the mouth. For his part, Engels was apparently afraid of getting false teeth — but as far as we know, he never did.

Sugar rush: the sweet science of human genetic adaptation

Science and Health

THE taste of food is something that seems fundamental. In Marx’s view, expressed in A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy (1859), a physical property like taste provides a measure of the use-value of a commodity as distinct from its exchange-value: “From the taste of wheat, it is not possible to tell who produced it, a Russian serf, a French peasant or an English capitalist.”
Today, humanity consumes nearly 800 million metric tons of wheat a year. Other foods such as potatoes, rice, and different cereal crops are essential to diets around the world.
All of these contain large amounts of carbohydrates in the form of starch molecules. These molecules were made by the plants as an energy store. When plants photosynthesise, they use sunlight to convert water and carbon dioxide into glucose molecules.
Glucose and other sugars can be used for energy to power cells, but not all of it is needed at the point of photosynthesis. Those glucose molecules are therefore joined together into larger chains — starch molecules — to be broken back down into sugars when the plant needs them.
The way plants break down starch into sugar was discovered in the 1830s. The French scientists Payen and Persoz were trying to explain why malting grain — soaking it in water and then drying it out — made it sweeter.
Something in the grain was performing a chemical reaction to break down starch, a reaction which could only otherwise be accomplished with heat and acid. The explanation had remained a mystery for decades.
Payen and Persoz wrote that they had wondered if there was “anything left to be found on this beaten path.” There was: they isolated a substance that they called diastase. Diastase was the first named enzyme, a biomolecule capable of speeding up a chemical reaction by its presence without itself being used up. (All enzymes since have been given an “ase” suffix because of their naming choice.)
The enzymes humans use to break down starch are called amylases. If you eat a piece of bread — made from wheat and high in starch — the taste will change as you chew. As you leave it in your mouth, it will become sweeter over time. There is amylase in your saliva, which mixes with the bread and starts to break down the starch molecules.
The amylase in saliva is encoded by a gene called AMY1. But when it comes to the ability to produce enzymes, it doesn’t just matter about having the gene to be able to do it. It also matters how many copies one has.
Humans on average carry six copies of this gene within their total genome. Having more copies means more amylase can be made, which increases the rate of breakdown of starch in our mouths.
Most animals are not as good at it: chimpanzees, our closest living relatives, only have two copies. When a chimpanzee chews bread, it will not taste as sweet. In Marx’s terms, the use-value of wheat is different for humans and chimpanzees. That taste difference is a sweet signature of the history of agriculture.
In 2007, scientists observed that populations with high-starch diets tend to have slightly more copies of AMY1 than those with low-starch diets. That suggests that having multiple copies of AMY1 is a genetic adaptation to the emergence of agriculture based on starchy foods.
Agriculture is believed to have first developed around 12,000 years ago in the “fertile crescent,” a region that spans from Palestine in the west up through Lebanon and Syria, then down to Iraq in the east.
In historical terms, as some people began to eat more starchy plants, it was beneficial to produce more amylase in saliva to get more sugar out. Genes in the human genome can sometimes be duplicated due to random events in the copying of the genetic information, like accidentally typing the same word twice.
People with more copies of AMY1 could get more energy out of agricultural food, so were more likely to pass these copies on to their descendants because they could extract more nutrition from their food. The result was that over the last 12,000 years, the average number of copies of the amylase gene in the human genome increased.
Last month, researchers shed more light on that evolutionary process in a study published in Nature. They looked at the number of copies of AMY1 in over 500 genomes from human remains from Eurasia, ranging from 12,000 years ago to the late 18th century. The researchers found a significant increase in the number of copies as time passed.
Another study in Science last week agrees that the number of copies has increased in the human genome over the past few thousand years, although this separate research team suggests that humans, in fact, evolved three copies of AMY1 as far back as 800,000 years ago.
More work will ascertain which team is right about the original duplication of AMY1, but the increase in copies connected to the history of agriculture seems solid.
These studies show how quickly evolution can happen. Traditionally, biologists have tended to look at single mutations to DNA happening within genes, which are easier to study but happen at a much slower rate.
Now, it has become easier to study gene duplication because of improved DNA sequencing. These recent research papers underline just how quick duplication can be: the rate of duplications of AMY1 was around 10,000 times higher than the background mutation rate.
The general principle that gene duplications can increase the production of useful enzymes has been seen elsewhere, such as in bacteria responding to antibiotics. Thanks to recent advances in the technology needed to read genomes, it is likely that more evidence of the role of gene duplication in human evolution will be reported over the next few years.
Marx, who wrote a great deal on the role of agriculture in human civilisations, would no doubt have been fascinated by what new genetic research can reveal about our past. What we taste varies, not only because of our tastebuds but because of how food changes in our mouths.
Human genetic variation continues today. Although the average number of copies of AMY1 is six, some people alive today have 11 copies. Increased numbers of copies of the gene is not wholly a good thing; it is also associated with getting more dental cavities, presumably due to the extra sugar generated in the mouth. For his part, Engels was apparently afraid of getting false teeth — but as far as we know, he never did.