👆👆Oh look, it's The Brink podcast! Listen to this week's newsletter here! 👆👆 It’s Christmas. That means the bin bag of Christmas decorations you hastily shoved somewhere so you didn’t have to think about them is now empty, and your home is littered with tinsel
I read something odd the other day. Over in China, the Department of Culture and Tourism announced they had created a unique holiday package. Called the "Exile to Ningguta", paying customers would get the chance to experience what it was like to be exiled during the Qing dynasty.
When you think of psychopaths, where does your mind take you? For me, I’m transported back to my late teens, and watching Patrick Bateman, the eponymous main character from American Psycho: a suave lunatic who can be an expert in the inner workings of Phil Collins, but also an
Oh it’s gloomy out there guys. Regardless of your political views, open your favourite news app and you’re inundated with all the bad things in the world. Whether it’s climate change, poo in the rivers, wars in the Middle East, the refugee crisis, the rise and rise
This week Donald Trump returned to the White House. For the political left it was a gut punch. For the political right it was a vindication of sticking with a man who had been tried, convicted, impeached and bankrupted on multiple occasions. But for the rest of us who don’
Anxiety is everywhere. According to pretty much every statistic measuring it, there has been a steady increase in people feeling a sense of dread or fear about their lives. And it’s global. It’s believed around 4% of the global population currently experiences an anxiety disorder - more than
Artificial intelligence is everywhere: it watches the skies for asteroids, it manages our transport, and it develops our medicines. Even the typing of this sentence had two bits of AI working to ensure I didn’t put a foot wrong. From the predictive text engine Google uses to guess what
When was the last time you felt lucky, or unlucky? Chances are it’s an idea that drifts in and out of your head with some regularity. But have you ever wondered where it comes from and why it forms part of our beliefs about how the world works? People
Are you the main character in your story? That’s not a term I thought I’d be talking about in this newsletter. But then again, we’re an endlessly innovative bunch aren’t we? Take a tour of your social feeds and you’ll find someone declaring they are
Toxic masculinity: that’s a phrase I’m sure you’ve all heard on your travels across the internet. It’s one of those ideas that seems to drift freely through our social feeds, finding its way into the nooks and crannies of everyday life. It’s found its way
The world is an angry place right now. As I wrote about last week, the UK witnessed dozens of violent acts by groups claiming to be protesting an event that was distorted and twisted by known and unknown actors. But zoom out a tad, and there has been anger on
Earlier this month in the UK, something terrible happened. In Southport, Merseyside, three children were killed and 10 others were injured as the result of the acts of a single individual. Thanks to a whole bunch of false reporting, and amplification of that false reporting by prominent individuals, a series