Around dusk, you begin to notice the little things when you stroll through any neighborhood in central Tehran. With the composure of someone who has done it a hundred times, a shopkeeper resets a generator. Before the tap dries up once more, a woman fills plastic jerrycans. Kids working on their homework under a phone’s blue light. It appears that no one is shocked anymore. That’s the part that merits a pause. Due to sanctions, internal mismanagement, aging power plants, and the more recent shock of military strikes, Iran’s infrastructure has been deteriorating for years. Power outages are no longer…
Author: Jack Ward
When the topic shifts from policy to family, a politician experiences a certain kind of silence that John Swinney attributes to a quiet science. Sitting opposite Brian Taylor in front of an Edinburgh Fringe audience at The Herald’s Unspun Live event in August, he refrained from making the customary political digressions. Simply put, he stated that things at home are “not too good.” Elizabeth Quigley, his wife, has had secondary progressive multiple sclerosis for more than 20 years, and the way he talked about it that night—calm, a little worn out, almost apologetic—suggested a man who has long since stopped…
The undercard at Co-op Live on Saturday night had a subtle peculiarity. Fabio Wardley’s defense of his WBO heavyweight title against Daniel Dubois was the main event; this is the kind of bout that steals the show in any arena. However, many people in Manchester had turned their attention away from the main event by the time the lights came up on the sixth round of the welterweight fight earlier in the evening. They were staring at Jack Rafferty, who had been told he had less than two days to live eight months prior. He hadn’t mentioned it. Not at…
The way Joe Swash addresses the camera has a disarming quality. There’s no script, no makeup counter polish, just a 44-year-old man telling the internet that he’s not doing well in what appears to be his kitchen. The video he uploaded to Instagram in late April of this year, with Pickle Cottage humming in the background, was more of a check-in than a confession. About a year ago, he had stopped taking his medication for ADHD. In retrospect, he had concluded that this was a mistake. Additionally, he wanted his supporters to understand that he was starting over. Ten years…
Every few months, a certain type of online outrage that is as predictable as a seasonal shift reappears, and in early 2026, Rihanna was the target of it once more. On a chilly January afternoon in Manhattan, she went out with her son Riot, her coat half-buttoned and sunglasses on. The moment was captured by paparazzi. In a matter of hours, the online discussion had nothing to do with her destination or attire. It had to do with her body. Less than six months prior, she had given birth to a child. Somehow, I kept forgetting that detail. In September…
A small whiteboard is kept behind the desk of a therapist I know in Karachi. There are two columns on it in faded marker. One is marked “yours.” Not you, but the other. She once told me that nearly every client over the past two years has at some point found themselves staring at that board, usually after bringing up the cost of cooking oil, which seems to increase every few weeks, the price of gasoline, or the electricity bill. “It’s not a fancy board,” she said. However, it is the only thing that constantly causes people to slow down.…
A certain kind of fear takes hold somewhere between the checkout cart and the headlines. When something dramatic occurs on the news, you can see it on the faces of people waiting in line outside coin dealers in strip malls. In reality, they are not there for the gold. The feeling that gold gives them is what draws them in. The entire product is that emotion. Some therapists have begun to refer to it as the “Gold Rush Mindset,” which predates markets. A quiet voice inside murmurs that the only sensible thing left to do is to grab something solid…
There’s a specific type of anxiety in Britain that doesn’t show symptoms. It lingers at the gas pump, in the moment before someone hands over their card at Tesco, that is a little longer, and in the way a Radio 4 presenter now says “Hormuz” without explaining. People are aware. They have acquired knowledge in the same manner that the nation acquired the terms “gilts” in 2022 and “furlough” in 2020. The most recent undesirable vocabulary lesson is located about 4,000 miles away, and the emotion it evokes at home is more difficult to identify than the politics that gave…