Boredom feels like a problem waiting to be solved. We complain about it, avoid it, and increasingly design our lives around escaping it. A quiet moment appears and we instinctively reach for something to fill it. A phone, a video, a conversation, a notification. Modern life offers countless ways to ensure that we are rarely …
A strange contradiction sits at the centre of modern life. Most people today communicate with more human beings in a single week than their grandparents might have encountered in a month. We send messages across continents. We join group chats with hundreds of people. We can video call relatives thousands of kilometres away. We can …
A strange thing happens whenever something unlikely occurs. You think about an old friend you have not spoken to in years. A few minutes later, they call. You narrowly miss a train that later breaks down. You find a crumpled lottery ticket on the ground and spend the rest of the day wondering whether the …
There is something slightly embarrassing about crying during a movie. Not during documentaries. Not during footage of real suffering. But during scenes involving people who do not exist, in worlds that were carefully written by strangers, lit by studio lights, edited with music, and performed on a set surrounded by cameras and microphones. You sit …
There is a moment in every crowd when people stop behaving like separate individuals and begin behaving like weather. You can feel it in stadiums just before a goal. In protests, seconds before panic spreads. In concerts, when thousands of strangers somehow begin moving like one body. Even online, inside comment sections and outrage cycles, …
