In 2002, MI6 revealed new intel that Iraq was stepping up its production of nerve agents – supposedly being loaded into hollow glass spheres. In reality, it was fake intel that was based entirely on the plot of the movie The Rock, starring Sean Connery and Nicholas Cage (glass containers are not in fact used in chemical munitions). This fictional information was being used by the UK government right until the day of the invasion in 2003.
Sam Salama
The British public recently heard the voice behind the seemingly inescapable ads. Zoe Lister jokes that cabin crew members must be “absolutely sick” of hearing her, and I’m sure many consumers would agree, but Jet2holidays now has the highest ad awareness of any airline in the UK – despite being much smaller than the market leaders.
Beware restrictions on distribution. Joe Rogan’s exclusive deal with Spotify caused a decline in search volumes and – as the linked article notes – fewer followers for guests who appeared on the podcast. Reach still matters, even for someone as famous as Joe Rogan.
Blackjack and poker might be the quintessential casino games, but they don’t drive the bottom line. 70% of Las Vegas gambling revenue is from slot machines, which brought in $10.5B last year (for comparison, the entire US box office in 2024 was $8.5B).
After disappearing during Covid, live music is back and bigger than ever. In 2024, spend (in the UK) was up 35% on pre-pandemic 2019 – largely driven by big tours like Beyoncé’s Cowboy Carter.
Covid couldn’t alter our appetite for the theatre. Attendance (in London) reached 17.1mn in 2024 – nearly 11 per cent above pre-pandemic levels.
It wasn’t fancy technology that resulted in £300 million lost profit for M&S. As CEO Stuart Machin bluntly told reporters, it was “human error.” Attackers used social engineering to trick helpdesk staff into handing over access: they rang support desks posing as internal IT, obtained credentials or password resets, and then infiltrated the M&S network.
The pandemic had surprisingly little impact on the values of the UK mainstream (defined as the middle 50% of the population by household income).
One of the most iconic scenes from Monty Python and the Holy Grail shows the knights riding around on invisible horses, using coconuts to sound like horses’ hooves. But this wasn’t the original plan – it was done because the Pythons couldn’t afford real horses. Without this constraint, the scene wouldn’t have been nearly as funny.
Michael Jackson may be synonymous with the iconic dance move, but he certainly didn’t invent it. Charlie Chaplin and Cab Calloway used it in the 1930s, when it was called the “Buzz”, and it was used by singer James Brown on several occasions throughout the 60s and 70s.
In 1953, climbing Everest was the pinnacle of mountaineering. It took roughly 30 years for the first 300 people to reach the summit, but in 2019 that number ascended the mountain on one single day – a remarkable upward trajectory.
A fantastic Reddit thread shows how even the best movies can sound awful, depending on the framing. Who would have thought Star Wars could be reduced to that…?
Watching sports highlights is usually ruined because the videos tell you the final score. But the NBA app has an option to hide scores so you can watch with blissful ignorance. A simple trick that makes a big difference.
According to a (rather old) longitudinal study, only 40% of people have stuck to their resolutions after 6 months. The issue is not knowing how to quit smoking or exercise more – it’s taking the steps to do so.
The NYT’s purchase of Wordle, as Shane O Leary puts it, had a “rising tide lifts all boats effect on their gaming vertical.” It brought in tens of millions of people to the app and doubled the number of weekly users for non Wordle games.