“It’s a laboratory experiment gone wrong,” a senior Australian bureaucrat told the political anthropologist Julia Morris. They were sitting in the bureaucrat’s Canberra office discussing the arrangement his government had with the Pacific island of Nauru, the place where Australia had been sending its asylum seekers and refugees.

It’s exactly the kind of deal the UK is now pursuing with Rwanda, as last week’s visit from the UK home secretary, Suella Braverman, underlined. But things did not go smoothly in Nauru: mounting costs and deepening civil unrest, along with a series of other controversies, led to the project’s demise. Morris went to Nauru to find out how things got so toxic, and if there are any lessons to be learnt for the UK.

Elsewhere we look into what’s behind the appeal of so-called “misogyny influencers” such as Andrew Tate to some boys and young men – and the failures and anxieties that have left them vulnerable. And, as it’s Monday, we’ve got two experts to tell us how to train our brains into feeling more positive at the start of a new week.

Paul Keaveny

Investigations Editor, Insights

‘A toxic policy with little returns’ – lessons for the UK-Rwanda deal from Australia and the US

Julia Morris, University of North Carolina Wilmington

Anthropological fieldwork into ‘outsourced’ asylum measures in Nauru and Guatemala reveal how they actually work - and don’t work - in practice.

How ‘misogyny influencers’ cater to young men’s anxieties

Emily Setty, University of Surrey

There seems to be a vacuum for these influencers to fill.

How to rewire your brain to feel good on Mondays

Cristina R. Reschke, RCSI University of Medicine and Health Sciences; Jolanta Burke, RCSI University of Medicine and Health Sciences

You can train your brain to get excited about the start of the week – or at least cope with it.

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