Sitdown Sunday: Mick Jagger shares his secrets to a long life

IT’S A DAY of rest, and you may be in the mood for a quiet corner and a comfy chair.

We’ve hand-picked some of the week’s best reads for you to savour. 

1. Do you have a ‘phone body’? Here’s how to fix it 

Apparently our bodies are changing shape due to how much time we spend on our phones. This article from the BBC shows you how to prevent your digital habits from altering you neck shape, vision, motor skills and muscle strength.

(BBC, approx six mins reading time)

‘The latest science suggests your phone and its digital comrades may be altering the shape of your neck, hurting your vision, affecting your motor skills and reducing your muscle strength. People even worry our tech-driven lives are causing more wrinkles. And some of these physical issues could in turn lead to cognitive decline or other more serious problems.’

2. Walking in Boston

This enjoyable long-read from The 42′s David Sneyd, who is currently in the US reporting on the World Cup, takes readers on a journey around Harvard and Fenway Park.

(The 42, approx eight mins reading time)

‘Leaving Cambridge and heading back into the city towards Boston Common, there is a large gathering of activists outside steps of the Massachusetts State House pleading their case for the treatment of Haitian immigrants. Further down Beacon Street there are more JFK landmarks. Former Ireland international Ronnie Whelan is stopped for selfies by some who recognise him, while just a few minutes away at a plaza on Washington Street is the Irish Famine memorial. There are benches around it and signs up asking to respect the space by not smoking.’

3. The Greek priest who made a metal album 

Father Tabakis – who is a priest in a church which frowns on electric guitars – made a doom metal album at home. It’s now better rated than Aphex Twin’s Drukqs or Daft Punk’s Discovery.

(The Guardian, approx eight mins reading time)

“Paradise Metal is a wild ride, marrying Byzantine music, Christian orthodoxy, heavy metal, rap and techno. Resonant incantations feature on most of the songs, but there are unexpected twists at every turn. A track entitled Techno in a Monastery opens with a rallying call – ‘Are you ready? – before launching into rhythmic chanting superimposed over an ominous, synthy beat. ‘An absolute playground,’ is how Pitchfork described the track which manages to be both ambitious and expecting little of itself.”

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4. Would you change your eye colour?

Surgeons can now change the colour of people’s eyes through a controversial cosmetic keratopigmentation – a procedure invented in France that colours the space in front of the cornea. Would you try it?

(The New York Times, approx 13 mins reading time)

“‘All OK, doctor?’ she asked, gingerly sitting up. An artificial teardrop slid down her cheek. ‘They are green?’ ‘They’re green, they’re green, they’re green!’ Ferrari merrily exclaimed, approaching the patient to admire his colleague’s handiwork, and the fruits of his invention.

5. Mick Jagger shares his secrets to a long life 

Rolling Stones frontman Mick Jagger, who is now 82, has shared his secrets to living a long life in a wide-ranging interview with GQ ahead of the release of the Rolling Stones 33rd album.

(GQ, approx 10 mins reading time)

“I think, unfortunately, you can’t really, after a certain age, do loads of drink and drugs.”

6. Has gentle parenting changed France?

France was once seen as the leader of detached parenting, but one French psychologist said a new US style of gentle parenting has changed that, and created more unruly children.

(The New York Times Magazine, approx xx mins reading time)

“This shift has fueled a vitriolic debate about the extent to which society should be organized around children. On one side are the positive-parenting experts; on the other, Goldman and her allies. Articles sneer at ‘gentle’ parenting, while podcasts and social media posts warn that sanctioning children means setting them up for emotional instability. Each side has large groups of professionals behind it. In 2022, Goldman and 355 early-childhood experts signed an open letter in Le Figaro stating that positive education was harming children, who had been ‘abandoned by adults with an exclusively empathetic attitude.’ Five months later, 280 other early-childhood experts signed another letter, this time in Le Monde, denouncing Goldman for being ‘repressive’ and ‘detrimental’ to child development.”

…AND A CLASSIC FROM THE ARCHIVES… 

7. Why did four football stars beat deer to death?

In 2007 four high-school football stars from a small town in West Texas viciously clubbed a doe and a young stag to death. This 2008 longread from Skip Hollandsworth looks into what happened, and attempts to figure out why it happened.

(Texas Monthly, approx 25 mins reading time)

“But in her letter, she was unable to explain why her grandson and the others had so viciously clubbed the deer, except to write, ‘We all understand that messing up is part of growing up.’ The truth was that plenty of people, even those who supported the boys, remained baffled by what had happened. ‘How do you explain why four good kids suddenly decide to do a bad thing?’ Allen told me, leaning back in his chair and staring out the window of his office, which, coincidentally enough, provided him a slight view of the high school’s baseball field. ‘How can anyone explain it?’”

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