Five Great Reads: fall of an ayahuasca empire, the secrets of self-optimisers, and when digital nomad life turns sour
Guardian Australia’s weekend wrap of essential reads from the past seven days, selected by Kris Swales
Top of the weekend to you all, and happy Naidoc Week to all who celebrate. Hopefully this week’s first selection inspires you to seek out your nearest event.
1. Indigenous art goes global (again)
Recent attenders of Sydney’s Vivid festival would have seen Vincent Namatjira’s King Dingo character, pictured above, in animated form on the MCA building.
Now the First Nations artist’s work is UK-bound as part of an Indigenous art explosion in the UK. And Archie Moore, a Kamilaroi/Bigambul man who shared the top prize at the 2024 Venice Biennale, is getting some of the credit.
How long will it take to read: Three minutes.
2. The rise and fall of an ayahuasca multinational
Alberto Varela claimed his Inner Mastery venture was the first to take the ayahuasca experience multinational. Users of the Amazonian plant brew often report revisiting past trauma or repressed experiences, and Varela was warned that rolling it out on an industrial scale with minimal oversight would result in accidents.
As the company grew, so did the number of accidents – and deaths. Sam Edwards tells the story of how Varela’s cult-like “anti-therapy” empire unravelled.
Delusions of grandeur: In March 2020, not long after Covid had been declared a pandemic, a half-naked Varela shared a video with the findings from his latest ayahuasca trip: “I created the coronavirus.”
How long will it take to read: 14 minutes.
3. When working remotely becomes a Starbucks world tour
Work your own hours at your own pace, wherever you want in the world? Been there, posted the Facebook updates from Goa. But, as Emily Bratt discovered in her own stint as a digital nomad, the reliability of a certain global coffee chain’s wifi gives it a strong gravitational pull. And by the final month of her latest six-month stint on a south-east Asian island, she found herself wondering: “What am I doing?”
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“I watched friends go about their days, following through on plans made before I arrived and making new ones for after I had gone. I was like a time traveller, temporarily injected into their world from another realm.” – Bratt on the ennui of digital nomad life in Sydney.
How long will it take to read: Five minutes.
4. Succession creator’s new target: tech bros
Who to target after you’ve made a water-cooler show that mirrors the travails of the Murdoch media empire? In his new film Mountainhead, Succession creator Jesse Armstrong pulls back the curtain on tech billionaires.
The former British political staffer tells Danny Leigh why he was terrible at his old job – and how his research for Mountainhead made him feel sorry for Elon Musk.
Move fast and break things: Film and television projects are typically a long haul. But not Mountainhead, which Armstrong conceived in November and premiered in May.
How long will it take to read: Four minutes.
Further reading: Back to the Future at 40, as told by the co-writer and one of its stars.
5. Why ‘microefficiencies’ are on the rise
I’ll sometimes brush my teeth in the shower if I’ve left my run for the office a little late. Some people do this all the time – life comes at you pretty fast, after all, and they figure every second saved is a second you can pay forward to your future self.
Are these so-called microefficiencies clever life hacks, or another sign of a snowed-under, productivity-obsessed society? Whatever the case, the self-optimisers Chloë Hamilton spoke to were uniformly chuffed with their time-saving innovations.
Basic maths: One “microefficient” person makes two cups of tea each time they boil the jug. If you drink eight cuppas a day, that saves you 20 minutes of jug-watching time. Across two years that adds up to more than 10 full days reclaimed. Simples.
How long will it take to read: Four minutes.
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