Andrea Nagel

Ihave a friend who tells me she doesn’t watch anything on TV without keeping her phone close by, so she can check on alternative facts, or follow side stories on Google while the action of the show plays out. I get it, despite thinking, “How distracting!” sometimes you want to know more. This happened to me on a cross-country drive over Easter weekend. I found an enticing eight-hour podcast to listen to, Bone Valley, about a Florida man falsely accused of his wife’s murder. He’d spent 30 years in jail. I used all my willpower not to “Google-and-drive” the guy to see if he looked murderous, and where he is now.

Down a similar rabbit hole I went with my colleague, Elizabeth, when we read the snippets of life in war-torn Odesa, Ukraine, that forms our main feature this week. Traversing the warren, we found stories about a Darth Vader sculpture in Odesa — a makeover of a Vladimir Lenin statue that factory workers and local residents asked to be given a new look.

We read that Mark Hamill, who plays Luke Skywalker in Star Wars, has lent his voice to “Air Alert ”— an app linked to Ukraine’s air defence system. “Attention. Air raid alert,” the voice says with a Jedi knight’s gravitas. “Proceed to the nearest shelter.” When the air alert is over, he signs off with an uplifting: “May the Force be with you.” It’s a surreal moment in a surreal war.

Further down the hole, reading about Ukrainian gastronomy, I found this delicious quote: “No matter what happens, we’ll harvest new cucumbers, tomatoes, and beets on our missile-scarred, blackened but unconquered land, because we’re not only pickleloving, we’re resilient. We’ll drink tomato beer together in my beautiful, brave, freedom-loving, independent country. Here’s to that day coming as soon as possible.”