“The title ‘Eyes Wide Shut’ captures the movie's central paradox: seeing without understanding. Kubrick suggests that power structures are not hidden, but ignored, existing in plain sight within accepted rituals and social norms. The greatest illusion is not secrecy itself, but the belief that we would recognise the truth if it stood directly in front of us .” The other day, I got into a rather heated political discussion with a couple of old friends. We were discussing decli

Few politicians since the turn of the century have taken the world by storm quite like Zohran Mamadani . He seems to have graduated from the Tony Blair school of charming and underproduced campaign videos, swapping the three-piece suits and out-of-date TikTok trends of his peers for genuine, boots-on-the-ground campaigning. And, if you ignore the added benefit of speaking three different languages, it worked. Mamdani was sworn in as the 112 th  Mayor of New York City  at the

Climber Alex Honnold’s recent ascent of Taipei 101  raises a few questions regarding the modern monetised spectacle. On the 25 th  of January 2026, Netflix livestreamed Honnold’s climb with a ten second delay. Without any safety gear, just one error would have resulted in thousands of spectators lining the tower’s base being witness to a catastrophic death. Questions would have been raised over Netflix’s ethical rights to stage and film such an event. Resignations would be in

We live in a world increasingly connected through social media, yet simultaneously increasingly disconnected from reality and political awareness. In various parts of the world, becoming a trend seems more important than developing innovative proposals. Politics has, in many ways, been hijacked by fame, and this hijacking has ultimately eroded debate and critical thinking. Politics understood as the serious exercise of power has been sidelined, giving way to a distorted and s

Across Europe, a striking consensus has taken hold. Quiz a passerby on the streets of Paris, Berlin or London on the state of society and you are likely to hear all too familiar lamentations concerning the declining state of both government performance and social cohesion. The cost of living continues to rise whilst wages stagnate and public services buckle, politics is brittle and the future looks more precarious than the past. This transnational belief , one which has been