I’ve gone quickfire for the first half of today’s letter, as I have so! many! bits! As ever, the juiciest stuff - docs, pods, journalism - is below the paywall. You can upgrade your subscription below, or if you’re unemployed, e-mail me and I’ll comp you.
It turns out that cosmetic surgery is not just addictive, it can make you forget what you used to look like. My friend Sirin told me it’s called perception drift and like facial augmentation, it’s on a rapid uptick
The UK’s most searched Google terms of 2024 are (in order): Euros, Liam Payne, Jay Slater, Michael Mosley, US Election, Kate Middleton, Baby Reindeer, Olympics, Oasis tickets, Fool Me Once
Female frogs fake their own death (tonic immutability) to avoid men they don’t like. It’s so extra, I love it
I interviewed Kaliane Bradley about The Ministry of Time for the last instalment of RefReads, and she told me that her time-travelling ‘expats’ (pulled from different eras of history) were a way to explore colonialism and the refugee experience. Such a clever idea, which made me appreciate the book even more
Emma Chamberlain made a video about getting rid of 95% of her closet and now her fans are following suit. I write this as someone who moved on half their own wardrobe last year (too much, didn’t need it): are they doing it for the right reasons? As Chantal Fernandez notes for The Cut, it kind of feels like an extension of neutral minimalism. Which is, you’ve guessed it, a trend
“The mood around Luigi Mangione is ‘thirst’”. This BBC piece on the appeal of the ‘hot assassin’ - who has even inspired merch - is a must-read
On that note, this comment on a NYT article about UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson’s murder has been upvoted almost 11,000 times: “When all legal avenues to hold the powerful to account have been removed, all attempts at reform have been removed, and all attempts at reform have been defanged, [the murder of a healthcare CEO] becomes the inevitability”
I just got back from The Paddington Bear Experience for my son’s birthday and I was blown away by the magical sets. At one point, it even snowed. My kids went wild. A lot of experiences in London are over-hyped (cough cough Madame Tussauds) — this absolutely isn’t