Dazed and Discoursed

“More and more young people are embarking on spiritual journeys,” writes Susan Akyeampong in her latest article, ‘ Why Are So Many Young People Looking for God? ’ . In 2019, just 22 per cent of 18 to 24-year-olds in the UK said they believed in God. By early 2025, that figure had more than doubled to 45 per cent . New research commissioned by the Bible Society reveals that, since 2018, the number...

Jack Thorne and Stephen Graham’s Adolescence has sparked vital conversations around the radicalisation of young boys and men. However, writer Esme Hood argues that while these discussions are crucial, they often overshadow an equally pressing issue: the radicalisation of young women. From platforms like Tumblr normalising self-harm and eating disorders content, subtly desensitising girls to violen...

Since its release on Netflix last month, Jack Thorne and Stephen Graham’s Adolescence is all anybody has been talking about. The British crime drama television mini-series centres on a 13-year-old schoolboy named Jamie Miller (Owen Cooper) who is arrested for the murder of a girl in his school. The show has reinvigorated conversations about the manosphere, incels and the rise of misogyny among you...

Since March 2024, the fashion world has stepped into an alternate timeline. In the last 12 months, we’ve seen a frankly ridiculous number of creative directors change jobs, with announcements happening days and sometimes even hours apart. Right now, the biggest houses in fashion are simultaneously refreshing their top teams – referred to by fans online as a game of “musical chairs.” Whether you lo...

Dan Erickson’s critically acclaimed Apple TV+ series Severance has returned for its second season. The show centres on Lumon, a mysterious corporation that has developed a novel medical procedure known as ‘severance’. This process allows employees to split their professional (“innie”) and personal (“outie”) identities via a microchip implanted in their brains. The chip activates when descending to...

Since the Super Bowl, Kendrick Lamar has been all we’ve been able to think about. From his effortlessly cool bootcut jeans, his reimagining of Uncle Sam as the incomparable Samuel L. Jackson to the continuous jabs he made at Drake throughout his 13-minute performance – Lamar has been crowned by the public as thee professional hater.  He even says it himself on Euphoria, his first full diss tr...

From Halina Reijn’s Babygirl and Robert Eggers’ Nosferatu to FKA twigs’ EUSEXUA and Ethel Cain’s Perverts , sex is back in the mainstream. And it’s not just any kind of sex — as Emma Garland argues in her latest essay, “ Everyone is Horny Now ”, “there has been a pendulum swing not just towards sex, but towards deviance.” With Nicole Kidman being dog-walked by her twenty-something-year-old male in...

Dating is in the pits – everyone says so. In England and Wales, fertility rates are at an all-time low, with the US similarly reaching its lowest rate in 2023. Last week, our deputy editor, Serena Smith , wrote about how “ the dating crisis is going global .” From the US to Finland, South Korea, Turkey, Tunisia, and Thailand, birth rates are falling, and it’s likely that part of this decline can b...

In July 2024, writer and artist August Lamm shared her prediction for the future on X: “I’m calling it right now: abstention is the next big thing. Sobriety, celibacy, digital minimalism, dumb phones, religion. The age of hedonistic hyper-consumption is over. We’re moving into a new peaceful age marked by moderation and self-discipline. I can’t wait.” Lamm, who has been without an iPhone for two a...

As the year draws to a close, we couldn’t let it pass without reflecting on what has been an extraordinary year in pop culture. In this episode, hosts Halima Jibril and Elliot Hoste dive into the highs and lows of 2024, spanning film, music, fashion and politics. From blockbuster films like Poor Things , Challengers , Dune: Part Two and Queer , they explore whether this has truly been the year of...

Since Elon Musk acquired Twitter (and renamed it X) the platform has become inundated with right-wing rhetoric, sparking questions about whether X played a direct role in putting Donald Trump back in the White House.  Recently, celebrities such as Lizzo and publishers like The Guardian have posted impassioned statements explaining their decision to leave X. And many people are flocking to Blu...

When Donald Trump won the 2016 election the New York Times declared he’d made the US a laughingstock. Lately, however, there has been a shift in how America is spoken about and portrayed in popular culture. Video essayist and podcaster Mina Le explored this change in her recent video , “Why is ‘America’ Cool Again?” She observed that while America has long been culturally dominant, patriotic senti...

“Manifestation is intention-setting through focusing your thoughts on the desired outcome until it happens. It’s part of psychological thought that became popularised by books like The Secret, before taking over popular culture in 2020. Since then, there’s been a growing fascination around how algorithms, the internet, and even AI can be tools for manifestation. Over the summer, Gabi Abrão Tweeted...

“A video of Christina Aguilera has come up on my TikTok feed multiple times over the past few weeks. Going to the comments, it’s abundantly clear what has caused this clip to go viral. Dressed in an anime-cosplay monochrome look for a performance in Osaka, with her hair pinned high and flawlessly blended diamanté-encrusted make-up, it’s not just that Aguilera looks “good” for her age (which is 43)...