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My life as a prison officer: ‘It wasn’t just the smell that hit you. It was the nois…

3/21/2025 • 27 min

I saw first hand how prisons are having to use segregation units for acutely mentally ill inmates who should not be in prison at all Written and read by Alex South. Help support our independent journalism at theguardian.com/longreadpod Play episode

From the archive: The revolt against liberalism: what’s driving Poland and…
‘The ghosts are everywhere’: can the British Museum survive its omni-crisi…
Turkey said it would become a ‘zero waste’ nation. Instead, it became a du…
From the archive: The end of Atlanticism: has Trump killed the ideology th…
Signature moves: are we losing the ability to write by hand?
‘Here lives the monster’s brain’: the man who exposed Switzerland’s dirty …
From the archive: ‘In my 30 years as a GP, the profession has been horribl…
Massacre in the jungle: how an Indigenous man was made the public face of …
Israel and the delusions of Germany’s ‘memory culture’
From the archive: One drug dealer, two corrupt cops and a risky FBI sting
Innit innit boys and Super Eagles: how Nigerian Londoners found their iden…
The mysterious novelist who foresaw Putin’s Russia – and then came to symb…
From the archive: Was it inevitable? A short history of Russia’s war on Uk…
The loudest megaphone: how Trump mastered our new attention age
How a young Dutch woman’s life began when she was allowed to die
From the archive: The knackerman: the toughest job in British farming
‘Bring me my tariffs’: how Trump’s China plan was 40 years in the making
Tokyo drift: what happens when a city stops being the future?
From the archive: The false positives scandal: how thousands of innocent C…
The great abandonment: what happens to the natural world when people disap…
Endless work, little money, occasional UFOs: my father’s five decades driv…
From the archive: How one man spent 34 years in prison after setting fire …
The man making a business out of China’s burnout generation
Humphrey’s world: how the Samuel Smith beer baron built Britain’s stranges…
From the archive: Inspired by nature: the thrilling new science that could…
‘Look, they’re getting skin!’: are we right to strive to save the world’s …
Inside the Vatican’s secret saint-making process
From the archive: ‘A deranged pyroscape’: how fires across the world have …
The inspiring scientists who saved the world’s first seed bank
The ‘mad egghead’ who built a mouse utopia
From the archive: Cold comfort: how cold water swimming cured my broken he…
Teeth as time capsules: Soviet secrets and my dentist grandmother
The brain collector: the scientist unravelling the mysteries of grey matter
From the archive: The invisible addiction: is it time to give up caffeine?
The rollercoaster king: the man behind the UK’s fastest thrill-ride
Best of 2024: ‘If there’s nowhere else to go, this is where they come’: ho…
Best of 2024: As a teenager, John was jailed for assaulting someone and st…
Best of 2024: ‘It comes for your very soul’: how Alzheimer’s undid my dazz…
Best of 2024: Nairobi to New York and back: the loneliness of the internat…
Revisited: Two poems, four years in detention: the Chinese dissident who s…
10 years of the long read: Ukraine’s death-defying art rescuers (2024)
10 years of the long read: ‘All that we had is gone’: my lament for war-to…
A new nuclear arms race is beginning. It will be far more dangerous than t…
Revisited: Too much stuff: can we solve our addiction to consumerism?
The scandal of food waste – and how we can stop it
‘I couldn’t cry over my children like everyone else’: the tragedy of Pales…
10 years of the long read: Seven stowaways and a hijacked oil tanker: the …
A cool flame: how Gaia theory was born out of a secret love affair
‘You tried to tell yourself I wasn’t real’: what happens when people with …

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