Inside this week's long reads

Support the Guardian Support us   Fund independent journalism I was kidnapped by pirates. Now they wanted my forgiveness In this week’s newsletter: if I show my kidnappers mercy, do I have Stockholm syndrome? And how the super El Niño is coming for our fish This newsletter is supported by reMarkable

Illustration: Anaïs Mims/Getty I was kidnapped for 977 days. Could I forgive my captors? | Michael Scott Moore At first the idea of mercy was something that helped me through the ordeal. But would real forgiveness be a form of Stockholm syndrome? When I had the chance to see my former captors face justice, I had to confront what justice, and forgiveness, meant. Photograph: Ernesto Benavides/AFP/Getty Images A perfect storm: how the super El Niño is devastating the fishing industry | Geoff Mann Peru’s anchoveta have made up about a 10th of the entire global commercial fishing catch since 1970, more than any other fish. A combination of warming seas and decades-long overfishing spells disaster.

Inside this week’s long read This week, we published Michael Scott Moore’s account of helping the FBI bring his captors to justice. We asked Michael what it was like to revisit this dark time This is obviously a deeply personal story, since you endured a horrendous period of imprisonment and violence. Has writing about it helped, or has it retraumatised you? No, writing helps. It doesn’t retraumatise me. Writing the book was sometimes difficult but it was good to have all the facts up where I could see them. Telling a dark story like that helps insure you won’t get mugged by memories late at night. Now I can write about Somalia without much awkwardness or pain. Delivering your former captors to the FBI must have been a weird experience for a journalist. What was the strangest thing about this latest phase of your kidnapping story? The strangest part was waiting for Mohamed Tahlil to cooperate. I was very nervous that it wouldn’t work. I didn’t want everyone’s stress and careful work to go to waste. In the end he was stubborn, so it didn’t matter as much as I thought. He frustrated two legal teams. But people make their own decisions, I guess. This has been a long, long story for you. Is there a single thing you would have liked to include in this narrative that ended up getting cut, or that you decided to leave out? I think I’ve said enough.

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This week’s audio long reads ‘A crisis of authenticity’: the truth about food influencers From the archive: ‘Voters are unhappier with the NHS than they’ve been for 30 years. As a GP, I feel the same’ ‘A completely unique opportunity’: the secretive process that will decide the BBC’s future Listen to the Audio Long Read on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or in the Guardian app

From the archive Photograph: Bloomberg/Getty Images ‘Super cute please like’: the unstoppable rise of Shein | April 2024 It is taking fast fashion to ever faster and ever cheaper extremes, and making billions from it. Why is the whole world shopping at Shein? Nicole Lipman reveals her fashion blogger habit and investigates the dark side of fast fashion. Photograph: Graham Turner/The Guardian This sinking isle: the homeowners battling coastal erosion | April 2015 As sea levels rise, thousands of people on the coast of Britain have been forced to move inland. But a handful of hardy souls refuse to abandon their property to the ravages of the waves. After all, they tell Patrick Barkham, we have fought off invaders before.

What else we’ve been enjoying I’ve been listening to Radical Thinking with Aditya Chakrabortty, the new podcast from our colleagues on Opinion. Each episode is a meaty interview with a smart person (or duo). The first was with Yanis Varoufakis, the second with Naomi Klein and Astra Taylor. The next one is something of a departure. It’s with Michael Gove. David Wolf, editor In a week when we are sadly contemplating the bad effects of introducing people to wild animals in confined spaces, Malcolm Gaskill writes about the mishaps and miseries of the first public zoo, opened in Paris in the 1790s. The zoo was intended as a “microcosm of nature” supposed to civilise both animals and people; signs warned visitors not to “throw bottles or brickbats at the animals”, and the animals, not much liking civilisation, died. Clare Longrigg, deputy editor I love to read Dan Brooks, an American writer who always has distinctive things to say about comedy and satire. His piece on how the rise of conversational comedy podcasts is changing our sense of what it means to be funny is very astute (and also funny). Yohann Koshy, deputy editor

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