“It’s hard to be an influencer via a newspaper.” That one line from James Marriott explains more about politics in 2026 than most of the punditry I have heard this year. The New York Times podcast Interesting Times has handed its microphone to a series of guest hosts, and Mary Harrington’s turn is a cracker. She talks with Marriott, a Times of London columnist and author of The New Dark Ages.
Jerry Falade’s crime novel won a 14-way auction for over $2 million. Then an AI detector read it.
Call Me, I’ll Hide the Body attracted bids from fourteen publishers. Minotaur, Macmillan’s crime imprint, won. Film rights were in play. By any measure, this was an excellent story. Then AI detection tools flagged “fingerprints,” Falade’s agent lost faith, and the deal collapsed.
“Go’n load us up with tariffs, but we’ll never be the 51st state." That’s the chorus Bryan Adams dropped on Canada Day, and it’s about as subtle as a power chord. He never says ~Trump’s~ name once. He doesn’t need to. CBC covers the release: a two-minute, sixteen-second rock anthem timed to July 1 (Canda Day), built around the annexation rhetoric Trump has repeated on and off for the better part of two years.