TED Global 2011Ted This article is more than 12 years oldInterviewTED's Chris Anderson: the man who made YouTube cleverThis article is more than 12 years oldCarole CadwalladrWith his TED Talks series, the former magazine mogul Chris Anderson has racked up 500 million web video views for speeches by academics and technological experts. But that, he says, is only the start of an educational revolutionA few minutes after Alain de Botton announced to a packed auditorium in Edinburgh that secularism needed to learn the lessons of religion and reintroduce the concept of the sermon, Chris Anderson, the head of TED, needed to fill a few minutes and asked for questions from the floor.

WomenWhen relationships are hit by serious illness, such as cancer, it can bring existing gender inequalities shockingly to the surface When Christie Sanchez was 12, she had the best stepdad in the world. He was charismatic and intelligent. He introduced her to new music and took her hiking every weekend. Then, her mom got sick. For two years Sanchez’s mom, Sandra, battled stage four breast cancer. It was advanced enough that within days of her diagnosis she was having her breasts, lymph nodes and both ovaries removed.

BooksReviewRyan Grim provides an exhaustive account of challenges faced – and sometimes failed – by the US progressive stars Ryan Grim’s sprawling new book is called The Squad, but it is about much more than Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and her progressive allies in the US House. It does provide mini-biographies of AOC, Ilhan Omar, Rashida Tlaib, Ayanna Pressley, Cori Bush and Jamaal Bowman, but it should have been called The Squad and Its Enemies, given the amount of space it devotes to their adversaries.

‘A tremendous hater’ … Gore Vidal. Illustration by Edel Rodriguez for Review‘A tremendous hater’ … Gore Vidal. Illustration by Edel Rodriguez for ReviewBiography booksSpats with Truman Capote, punch-ups with Norman Mailer, a TV showdown that electrified the US and has now been made into a feature-length documentary … Jay Parini on the bravery and bite of Gore Vidal I came to know Gore Vidal in the mid 1980s, when I was living in southern Italy, virtually a neighbour, and our friendship lasted until his death in 2012.

Australian lifestyleYou’ll need a hefty list of materials, but it’s worth it to keep veggie gardens happy and watered for up to 10 days – even in the heat Hotter summers make for harder growing soil conditions, and the poor veggie garden beds can suffer the most. One way around this is to set yourself up with wicking beds. The basic theory behind wicking beds is that the water is stored in an airtight reservoir underneath the soil, and it “wicks” up through the soil to the roots above as the plants transpire moisture through their leaves.