The New Zealand Herald is bringing back some of the best stories of 2020 from our premium syndicators, including The New York Times, Financial Times and The Times of London.

Today we look at how Trump has spent years twisting the narrative, the Kiwi DJ talking to the stars, the future of robots, 2020's impact on fashion and what it feels like to have Covid-19.

Trump's years long plan to turn losing into winning

By the time Donald Trump acknowledged in September 2016 that Obama was indeed born in the United States, he was well along in promoting a new false narrative that the election was rigged in favour of his Democratic opponent, Hillary Clinton.

Facing what he and the entire political world expected to be a loss, Trump repeated the claim regularly.

The New York Times looks at how Trump's conspiracy theory about voter fraud took on new energy this year, as his political fortunes ebbed during the coronavirus pandemic.

Trump at a campaign rally in Janesville, Wisconsin, in October. He urged his supporters to become poll watchers. Photo / Doug Mills, The New York Times

How Zane Lowe became pop's unofficial therapist

The New Zealand DJ's interviews on Apple's Beats 1 have gone from promotional stops to opportunities for deep thoughts, anchored by an impulse to share his own story.

The New York Times talks to the DJ about what it's like to have musicians breakdown to him.

Zane Lowe performs in LA. Photo / Getty Images

Is AI finally closing in on human intelligence?

GPT-3 has been hailed as an artificial intelligence breakthrough.

It can churn out emails, computer code, internet ads, plotlines for video games, guitar riffs and suggestions for Halloween costumes. It can write disarmingly plausible poems in the spirit of Emily Dickinson, prose in the style of Ernest Hemingway and even, if so instructed, an imaginary conversation between Dickinson and Hemingway.

The possibilities seem almost endless.

John Thornhill of The Financial Times tries it out and assesses the rewards — and the risks.

Is AI finally closing in on human intelligence? Photo / 123RF

This is not the end of fashion

It is a truth that may be hard to imagine in a world devastated by illness and economic insecurity, riven by racism and unrest, but we will get dressed again.

Dressed not for the anonymity of the hospital or the essential workforce, the heat and heartbreak of the protest, the anomie of the supermarket or the park, but for the next stage catharsis. Capital D Dressed. It is both history and human nature.

The New York Times looks at how history and human nature prove we will dress up again.

Models walk the runway during the Chloe show as part of the Paris Fashion Week 2017. Photo / Getty Images

'It felt like I was in a UFC match': What it's like to have Covid-19

There is a clinical list of Covid-19 symptoms that includes a dry cough, a fever and shortness of breath. And then there is how the disease actually feels. It is like a lengthy hangover. An anvil on your chest. An alien takeover. It is like being in a fight with Mike Tyson.

People who have been sickened with the coronavirus describe to the New York Times what it's like to endure this scary and disorienting illness.

"You had to be in a certain position in order to be able to take a full, comfortable breath." Illustration / Thoka Maer via The New York Times