Obesity is now considered a medical illness, but this is a modern phenomenon. Throughout history, obesity was seen as a sign of wealth and high socioeconomic status – when food was scarce and famine was rife, only the most prosperous could afford to indulge. The art of Renoir and Rubens presents an ideal figure that is very different from the one today.
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Aside from China (a country with 1.4 billion people and rising wealth), the countries with the most Olympic medals are all high-income democracies. Why is this? They are good at taking care of their inhabitants. Even in the remotest outposts of Norway, for instance, there’s generally an all-weather sports ground around the corner. Usually the changing rooms are warm, the coaches have diplomas, and kids can train and play at a reasonable price.
OnlyFans pays out $7 billion to its content creators, but the split is far from even. The top 1% of accounts make 33% of all the money and the top 10% of accounts make 73% of all the money.
At three Michelin-starred Osteria Francescana, a sous chef accidentally dropped a lemon tart before serving it. All he saw was failure, but the head chef, Massimo Bottura, saw an opportunity. He used it create a new dessert called ‘Oops I dropped the lemon tart’ – a tart served upside down and smashed, which “pokes fun at our daily striving for perfection and pristine beauty.”
Oscar winners are becoming less successful at the box office. In other words, a growing gap between what critics rate and what audiences want to watch. Reminiscent of advertising?
You often hear it has declined from 12 seconds in the year 2000 to eight seconds now. The problem is that the statistic has no reliable source, and the very concept of attention span is misleading given it is task dependent. After all, it didn’t stop people watching the entirety of Baby Reindeer in one go.
The pandemic killed the ability to travel overseas, but not the desire to do so. In 2024 a record number of passengers travelled through Heathrow airport (83.9 million), making the need for a third runway greater than ever.
Advertising was banned on the Thames in the 1920s, so gravy manufacturer Oxo decided to build their logo into the windows at the top of their tower. It’s now one of London’s most iconic buildings.
in 1901, Picasso imposed a self-constraint to boost creativity. His ‘blue period’ helped him produce paintings that conveyed a sense of melancholy and sadness, and killed the assumption that paintings required a range of vibrant colours to be successful.
When pressed to explain the elements in Guernica, Pablo Picasso said: “This bull is a bull and this horse is a horse… If you give a meaning to certain things in my paintings it may be very true, but it is not my idea to give this meaning… I make the painting for the painting. I paint the objects for what they are.”
What led to a 43% reduction in deaths from paracetemol in the 1990s? Smaller packs. The government reduced the number of pills in each pack from 32 to 16, making it harder for people to overdose.
Thomas J. Barratt understood media principles long before they were in textbooks. In the 1860s it was illegal to tamper with British coinage, but French centimes were still legal tender in Britain. So he imported 250,000 centimes, engraved them with ‘Pears’ soap’ – the brand he managed – and put them into circulation.
It was unlike any other sitcom before or since: largely shot in the first person and voiced by an inner monologue. The creators nicked this idea from something completely different: a documentary about the model Caprice Bourret called Being Caprice.
According to John Foley, then CEO of Peloton, “in the very, very early days, we charged $1,200 for the Peloton bike for the first couple of months. And what turned out happening is we heard from customers that the bike must be poorly built if you’re charging $1,200 for it. We charged $2,000 dollars for it, and sales increased, because people said, ‘Oh, it must be a quality bike.’”