We’ve all felt it: the pressure to go somewhere despite being tired. The fear of missing out or “fomo” is as big a part of modern life and can lead to burnout or larger consequences, such as rash decisions being made without fully examining the options. The phrase can be attributed to Patrick J McGinniss, who coined it while at Harvard Business School in 2004. At the time, McGinniss used the uncertainty of the years after September 11 to take full advantage of Harvard’s social, academic and career-building offerings but realised that attending everything wasn’t a fulfilling pastime.

McGinniss, now a venture capitalist, podcaster and author, went on to write a book on fomo, which presents a framework for how to use the phenomenon to make better decisions. He has spent years studying how this feeling – and its sister affliction, fear of a better option or “fobo” – show up in business and government dealings, as well as how people can use the impulses to their advantage.

Monocle’s Andrew Tuck and Tom Edwards spoke to McGinniss at the World Governments Summit in Dubai. This transcript has been edited for clarity and length.

You invented the phrase ‘fear of missing out’ or ‘fomo’. Tell us a little bit about how it originated and why it has gained global traction.
I invented the phrase when I was a student at Harvard Business School. I arrived there shortly after September 11 and having experienced that in New York at the time, I remember thinking, ‘I’ve got to live every day like it’s my last.’ Harvard Business School is an incredibly choice-rich environment, so I went to every class, every job interview, every party – and at some point, I realised that all of that opportunity was making me anxious and I had a fear of missing out. I shortened [the phrase] to fomo, then wrote an article in the school newspaper in 2004 and moved on with my life. Years later a journalist traced the phrase back to me and the rest is history.

In recent years you’ve elevated the phrase to talk about how it impacts government and business decisions. Sum that up for us.
Over the last decade and a half, I’ve spent a lot of time studying fomo and talking to big decision makers in business, finance, marketing and government. What I have seen is that this is deeply embedded in our psychology. As a result, when people feel fomo, even though they may not recognise it, they see an urgent opportunity in a time of uncertainty and they feel like they have got to move quickly. 

The easiest way [to do that] is to copy somebody or do something that is not very well thought out. As a result, people put policies in place that don’t work. You end up having a situation that is sub-optimal that oftentimes wastes money and time.

What you’re saying is that fomo can do serious, long-term structural damage on a governmental or international level. But if you don’t move at a reasonable speed, you risk falling behind. How do you know which gear to be in? 
What tends to happen when we make decisions based on fear is that we end up with sub-optimal outcomes. The challenge that we have to face is: how do we get out of the fear place and into the facts place? [My first piece of advice is:] step back and think about your priorities. Gather data from other people. It’s not fomo to observe other places or to bring in experts. [Engaging in] evidence-based decision making, even in times of uncertainty, [can produce good] ideas. 

When you formulate a policy, ask: would I have formulated this policy if country X had not done that thing? If you are simply looking at other countries as the basis [for our decisions], then we’re in a bad place. I always tell policymakers that a lot of decisions are reversible. So feel free to move faster on the things that you can actually change in the future. When it comes to something that you cannot [change], put on the brakes, gather more data and come up with a hypothesis. 

If you communicate the trade-offs to the general public, you normalise uncertainty. [When] you come up with policy objectives to communicate, you will bring people along with you. You may be wrong but you will have [developed those objectives] in a way that is transparent and convinces people that you have put some thought into it.

It seems like fomo could be useful to make decisions about where to eat for dinner but could be dangerous for, say, a venture capitalist who needs to handle millions of dollars quickly. How might people incorporate this framework to making decisions in their own lives? 
I think about high-stakes, low-stakes and no-stakes decisions. No-stakes decisions are [ones] such as, where am I going to go to dinner? I simply outsource [those decisions] to the person who loves choosing or to ChatGPT. For low-stakes decisions, which are things that I will probably not remember [in detail] having decided in a couple of months, I go to third parties and experts; people who [who have niche expertise], such as the guy who wants to help you choose your television. 

I like to think of decisions like investments [and consider three crucial questions]: how am I allocating my time, money and attention? What is the due diligence I must do to build a case? And [can] I surround myself with a diverse set of people to question me? We all know that diverse teams make better decisions.The goal is to surround yourself with people who won’t just agree with you. 

That has always been my goal, I have a tonne of fomo every day. My work is to manage my own fomo and all of yours.

In addition to fomo, you’ve developed a sister phrase: ‘fobo’. Tell us more about that.
Fobo is something that listeners and readers of Monocle will probably feel deeply. It [stands for] ‘fear of a better option’. While fomo is something that lots of people have, it can be very frivolous. It’s something that people can manage. Fobo is something that tends to increase when you have more resources and options. People who are successful tend to deal with fobo. 

When you have fobo, you have acceptable options in front of you but you’re looking for the perfect, riskless decision and you keep on looking. We live in a time when people have more options than ever before. I call this an affliction of abundance. People have worked very hard for the things that they have but they cannot enjoy them when they have fobo. Nobody ever says, ‘What a great [indecisive] leader.’ It is our challenge in the modern age to be decisive, to know what we want and then to choose those things. Fobo pulls us away from that. [It’s important to] have an opinion and to express it. And you must listen to the other side. If you do that, not only will you learn something and conquer your fomo and fobo but you’ll probably make a better world and solve some problems.

For countries with cold climates, a spot on the Winter Olympics podium is as natural as snowfall. But at Milano Cortina 2026, athletes from nations with temperatures far less conducive to skating, skiing or snowboarding will be going up against the world’s elite.

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1.
Singapore’s ski sensation
Faiz Basha

Come February, 23-year-old skier Faiz Basha will proudly bear Singapore’s flag at Milano Cortina’s opening ceremony – the first time that a skier from the tropical city state will compete in the Winter Games. “Singapore is new to sports – we’re oriented towards academia,” says Basha. “But ever since Joseph Schooling beat Michael Phelps at Rio 2016 to win our first Olympic gold medal, the culture has been changing.”

Basha took up skiing after moving to Switzerland at the age of three. During his mandatory military service at the age of 18, he started training on the running track at Singapore’s national stadium to stay ski-fit.

Since then, he has become the top-ranked Southeast Asian athlete in the men’s slalom. “I hope that the next generation of athletes is better than me,” he says. “I hope I can inspire younger athletes or youths in any endeavour and show that anything is possible.”

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2.
Haiti’s harbinger of hope
Stevenson Savart

Adopted by a French couple when he was three, Haiti-born Stevenson Savart has been on skis for as long as he can remember. “I pushed to join the local ski club before I’d reached the age requirement,” Savart tells Monocle from his training camp in Pontarlier. In 2021 the skier decided to represent his birthplace and he felt vindicated after Richardson Viano became the first Haitian to compete in a Winter Games at Beijing 2022. “I was at a time in my life when I wasn’t sure of the direction that I wanted to take and he motivated me to keep going and represent my country,” says Savart.

In 2023 he became the first Haitian to participate in the cross-country competition of the World Cup. Three years later, he will be competing in his first Olympics at Milano Cortina. His dream is a place on the podium – but even taking part is an achievement at a tough time for Haiti. “I want to show that we can compete at the highest level.”

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3.
Brazil’s bobsleigh veteran
Edson Bindilatti

It takes persistence to compete in multiple Olympics. It takes even more in an event for which the country of your birth seems ill-suited. Yet Cool Runnings-inspired bobsledder Edson Bindilatti is set for his sixth Winter Games in Milano Cortina. He was part of Brazil’s first Olympic bobsleigh campaign, at Salt Lake City in 2002: the team finished 27th in the four-man bob.

The years since have yielded some improvement: in Beijing in 2022, Brazil’s four-man team finished 20th, ahead of sleds from more obviously cold-weather sporting countries including Austria, Canada and Switzerland. (Brazil’s two-man bob, however, was only slightly faster than Jamaica’s.) Bindilatti has come out of retirement in a bid to qualify for Milano Cortina – and to mentor Brazil’s next generation of bobsleigh crews. By mid-January, the 46-year-old should know whether his efforts to make it to the 2026 Games have been successful.

Following 12 months of buffeting and befuddlement, some commentators are now predicting a coming century of humiliation for Europe. In the interests of avoiding such a humbling, there are several things that the vieux continent can do to get itself back in fighting form. The most obvious, and often cited, is to improve its defences. In this regard, Europe has come a long way: last year, defence spending among EU member states rose to €381bn, up nearly 63 per cent since 2020; if you include the UK among them, that figure is about €450bn. This is much more than at-war Russia (about €250bn) and even above generous estimates of what China spent over the same period (approximately €400bn). 
 
But still the prevailing mood among European leaders at a crisis meeting following Trump’s threats to annex Greenland was somewhere between jilted, battered and bruised. This is partly because they know that it will take time for their investment in defence to translate into proper hard power. But also because they are so unused to wielding their geopolitical power in a robust manner. The continent has more leverage with the US, China and Russia than it seems to realise – leverage that will only increase with growing military might. The EU’s trade imbalance with the US, for example, is not as great as Donald Trump makes it out to be. If again one includes the UK, Europe imports nearly €500bn worth of goods from the US every year, making trade between the two almost equal. If Brussels and London could co-ordinate effectively enough to make it clear that they would be willing to take their custom elsewhere, US business might be worried enough to make it a problem for the White House. While European countries have woken up to the need to wield more military influence in a volatile world, they still appear sheepish about flexing their formidable economic muscle.

The continent should also take better advantage of its trustworthiness to form deeper bonds with those countries still committed to a rules-based order. In a world of sharks, in which a deal is worth no more than the paper it is written on, a commitment to process need not be a disadvantage. We recently saw with the signing of the massive EU-India trade deal that rising powers, who have staked their futures on better integration into the global economic system, are looking for dependable partners. China has recognised this and is busy selling itself as a squeaky-clean follower of trade rules but its opaque political and economic structure means that it can never be fully trusted when it comes to doing business. Obvious candidates for deeper ties are Canada, South Korea, Brazil, Japan and Australia. If you add India to the mix, you have a formidable bloc of the world’s largest economies and more than half of its population.
 
Then there’s the area in which Europe already does lead the world: its attractiveness as a place to visit and live. Taken as a whole, it is the continent with the best infrastructure, most stable politics and highest quality of life. Last year more than 40 million Americans visited Europe, more than 10 per cent of the US population, while annual international visitors constituted more than half of all global tourism. If the continent were to merely match the foreboding rhetoric and visa policies of the US or China by subjecting citizens of those countries to tit-for-tat restrictions and delays, it would immediately have more sway over their governments.

Finally, in an age of hubristic strongmen, Europe’s other superpower is that it can recognise and constructively debate its own faults. Any institution incapable of reforming itself is doomed to failure. Whatever JD Vance says, Europe is a bastion of free movement, free trade and free speech – eight of the top-10 countries in the Cato Institute’s Human Freedom Index of 2025 are in Europe (the US is 15th). This gives it authority with which to wage any war of words but also a point of pride that can rouse its restive citizenry. And herein, perhaps, lies the engine for Europe’s renewal. Polling produced last week by YouGov confirms that the continent’s population is overwhelmingly anti-Trump – with a majority of respondents taking an anti-American view and favouring increased European autonomy over the Transatlantic Alliance. Though many Europeans are also pretty disillusioned with their own leadership, a robust defence of their way of life and greater assertiveness on the world stage could be just the tonic for the ailing old continent. 
 
Alexis Self is Monocle’s foreign editor. For more opinion, analysis and insight, subscribe to Monocle today. 

Further reading?
– On the defensive: Europe must co-ordinate its defence procurement to avoid past mistakes

– Europe’s defence industry is stepping up to offer smart new solutions. Here are a few of the innovations currently on our radar.

– Irish neutrality is a weak spot for Europe that Putin could use to his advantage

Most people remember their first night at Ronnie Scott’s – or, at the very least, how it began. The jazz bar on London’s Frith Street has become something of a Soho institution in the years since it opened in 1959. I first went as a student, when Ronnie’s became a welcome terminus after a late night spent roaming around town. It is one of a small number of London venues (that you’d actually like to set foot in) that’s open until 03:00. 

Earlier this week, I made my way to Frith Street at a more reasonable hour for the relaunch of Upstairs at Ronnie’s. The renovations of the venue’s second space – which have taken the best part of two years – are extensive. With a new ceiling (complete with geometric fabric panelling) the room is more spacious and there are now seats for 140 guests, a slick new bar and improved acoustics. Rather than the red velvet synonymous with downstairs, Upstairs at Ronnie’s is bedecked in yellows and oranges. The colours create a soft golden light and give visitors the impression of being cocooned somewhere far away from the hectic streets of central London. As the guests found their seats – with hot pink welcome cocktails in hand – I watched them marvel at the room’s makeover. Like the venue itself, the new menu from executive chef Steven Connolly is classic and unfussy. 

Onstage, the exuberant singer Vula Malinga seemed to pull off a magic trick – transporting the audience from 18.30 on a Wednesday evening to late on Saturday night (she might have had some help from a mid-show round of tequila shots for the band). The party atmosphere continued when R&B singer Nao arrived and turned her soulful voice to a high-octane cover of Chaka Khan’s “Ain’t Nobody”. 

As I watched, I was reminded of something Ronnie Scott’s managing director, Fred Nash, had said to me about Ronnie’s being both nostalgic and “a place of exploration and discovery”. He describes the venue as a broad church and argues that Ronnie’s thrives because it showcases the full spectrum of jazz and jazz-adjacent music. And, despite its storied history, Ronnie’s has evolved with the times. The relaunch of Upstair’s is just the latest example of this. Ronnie Scott’s is a treasured institution because it manages to be a home for more than the jazz cognoscenti – its cosy lamplit tables are equally inviting for purists and the wandering students who happen to stumble towards them. 

Need more jazzy reads to riff off?
– Interview: Mathieu Jaton on the secret sauce behind the Montreux Jazz Festival

– The Danish churches putting faith in yoga, jazz and modern design

If you tune in to Monocle Radio, follow our weekday newsletters or were on the rooftop of Iliāna at Jumeirah Marsa Al Arab on Wednesday, you will know that Monocle was very much in the UAE this week. While much of the action was at the World Governments Summit (WGS) just along the beach, there were other colleagues zipping back and forth to Abu Dhabi (who can pass up an invite to a Ricky Martin concert with CNN’s Becky Anderson as your front row seatmate?), scoping out new retail ventures and simply getting a read on the country at this most enjoyable time of year – 26C by day and cool enough to dine outdoors into the wee hours.

My first UAE touchdown was in early 1994. I was being evacuated from Afghanistan by the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) via Islamabad and Dubai. I had been shot in Kabul 48 hours earlier, was high as a kite on morphine and remembered a low-rise city that looked like it might have a story or two worth telling. Six months later, I returned with photographer Zed Nelson and spent a week at the Le Méridien near the airport hunting for stories to file to the various titles that had assigned us. If you can track down copies of Arena magazine from late 1994 or early 1995, you’ll likely land on some of the fine reportage we did from various corners of the world. I was thinking about our time spent in seedy Dubai clubs and overlit Lebanese restaurants when I touched down last Saturday.

As I passed the towers around the Dubai International Financial Centre, I was also reminded of a story we’d done in Singapore at about the same time. We’d found a bunch of young and wealthy locals who were game to talk about the transformation of their city and had arranged for them to stand in front of a forest of girders and cranes that were erecting the soon-to-debut Suntec City. I was also reminded of the sharp Emiratis who told me that same autumn that they wanted to be the Singapore of the Middle East but with more natural resources and a better airline. Three decades ago, with Dubai all low-rise buildings, dusty and scrubby, it seemed like wishful thinking at best. We now have a pretty good idea how that thinking has evolved and it’s an impressive, crazy and ambitious tale.

Just as Singapore’s Shangri-La Dialogues helped define it as a key diplomatic broker in the region, this week’s WGS and various side summits in Abu Dhabi have vaulted the UAE into the spotlight as a region that generates datelines for stories ranging from aviation to big infrastructure, and peace brokering to top-chef talent attraction. Western diplomats like to take the odd sideswipe at the UAE, remind you that all is not what it seems and trot out a host of reasons why Europe, despite all its challenges, is still on the right track. Thankfully there were enough European business leaders at the WGS who were only too happy to point out that working 40 hours a week and pushing for even fewer hours isn’t really a strategy when the continent plays host to the highest social costs on the planet and growth has largely stalled. Meanwhile, the number of young Europeans arriving in Dubai and Abu Dhabi to run restaurants, train as concierges, man architecture firms and open galleries is booming.
 
“The French are leading the way but others are catching up fast,” explained one luxury industry exec. “There are some 60,000 French in the UAE, it’s their new Hong Kong.” And why are they choosing the UAE? “Simple. These are people who want to work, gain experience, build brands, go about safely and be part of something that is growing and exciting.” And perhaps, unlike many corners of Europe, they’re attracted to a place that is open all hours, puts service at the core of its economy and is probusiness.

Off the back of Greenland shenanigans, civil unrest in Minnesota, an English-language news cycle that can’t find the off-ramp from Epstein and too much shouty commentary, the polite and thoughtful conversations found in the majlis suddenly makes much Western political and business conduct feel passé and rudderless.

Enjoying life in ‘The Faster Lane’? Click here to browse all of Tyler’s past columns.

Keen to read more from Monocle’s week in the UAE?
– Neutrality is not passive: Dr Anwar Gargash explains the UAE’s diplomatic stance

– Amid heightened geopolitical tensions, the World Governments Summit is a masterclass in soft power

Monocle was on the road this week in Dubai at the World Governments Summit (WGS), where we built a Monocle Radio studio and an outpost of our café. The vast event comprises numerous auditoriums hosting conversations and debates, companies pitching their products and delegations looking to strike deals in the UAE. This year there were just shy of 40 world leaders in attendance, 500 ministers and numerous business CEOs, especially from the technology sector. And many of them came through the front door of our studio.

Meanwhile, over at our coffee hub, the customer base went beyond cool Emiratis. The chief of police came by and generals whose chests were fly-posted with galleries of medals took meetings under our parasols. I also met the inventor of the phrase “fear of missing out”, was entertained by one of Japan’s most famous TV magicians and talked shop with a man who created a successful tech company off the back of looking like Tom Cruise.

I particularly enjoyed this edition because, as well as the discussions about AI, next-generation governance and the race to a future that might obliterate much of what we know, there were gentler, philosophical conversations woven through the programme. This was especially true when it came to the topic of making better cities. What’s more, Monocle got to help nudge this debate along.

On Thursday I moderated a talk between architect Santiago Calatrava and Marwan Ahmed Bin Ghalita, director general of Dubai Municipality, for a session called “How do cities preserve the human soul?” I asked them both about the notion of “invisible architecture”. This is the idea that it’s not just the steel and timber shells of buildings that shape a city – and how we feel in a place – but also numerous silent, unseen elements that help to determine how we respond to a place. Consider how the flow of people through a train station is managed through design, how accessibility is in the DNA of a building (not a clunky add-on) and how tactility and light are introduced. Calatrava placed his hands on the armrests of the chair, using this to mimic the walls of an edifice, and explained that this really wasn’t the important part and certainly not where you discover the soul of a city. Rather, he said, “it’s what happens in the void that matters”. It’s in the bit between the walls where everything happens, where we work, shop and catch the train.

It’s true. Think of how the void in a cathedral or church can make you feel. It’s hard not to be awed, moved, when you enter, say, the monumental Grundtvig’s Church in Copenhagen. A soaring void is also what Calatrava used in the vast white World Trade Center Transportation Hub in Manhattan. And, he explained, these are places where you can have an individual conversation with your surroundings or be one with the crowd. And, perhaps, find some soul.

Dubai is grappling – like many places – with this issue because while it wants and needs to grow apace, it realises the necessity of making a city that people love, feel at home in, become attached to. The director general, a man overseeing endless planning consents, told the audience that his checklist of what made a good building was whether it would be a place where memories were made, not just function efficiently. That’s a powerful point because it’s memories that bind us to a place and allow us to create mind maps of the settings where our life has unfolded in hopefully wonderful ways.

Also on stage with me this week was Kengo Kuma, an architect with a philosopher’s eye on his industry. He was eloquent about the need to work in harmony with nature and how architecture can improve our well-being while going almost unnoticed. 

Dubai wants to be at the forefront of new technology, urban mobility and much more. But it’s also at a moment when it’s keen to develop ideas around city-making, community, co-designing, youth engagement – ideas that could help deliver a place where tradition moves hand in hand with the future. That’s why it was announced during WGS that Kuma and Calatrava will become principal contributors to Dubai Municipality’s Urban Planning and Design Lab, which is focused on participatory design, youth engagement and working with nature.

A city famed for its pace and building skyline-defining towers could also become a laboratory for a gentler urbanism. There’s lots to do – but it is on their agenda.

To hear more voices on city making from the World Governments Summit, listen to the latest episode of ‘The Urbanist’.

Read next: Beneath the skyline: Discover the real Dubai with Monocle’s City Guide

Andrea Fontanari is on the brink of worldwide recognition but you wouldn’t know it from the well-camouflaged location of the artist’s studio in a small hilltop village near Trento at the foot of the Argentario plateau. The massifs of the Adige Valley offer a dramatic backdrop for his canvases, one of which was commissioned as a poster for the Milano Cortina 2026 Paralympics.

It’s an accolade given to many artistic greats: David Hockney, Andy Warhol and Tracey Emin were also selected to create a poster for the Olympics in 1972, 1984 and 2012, respectively. “It’s a huge responsibility to continue the legacy,” says Fontanari, laying out drafts of his poster on the floor of his studio. On the tables are white sheets of paper covered in dabs of Mussini oil paint and tall paintbrushes stored in empty tins of Acquerello Carnaroli rice. “It’s my favourite brand for making risotto,” he says.

For the 29-year-old painter, this wasn’t just an invitation to create a poster but also a chance to explore the intersection of art and sport. “The Olympics and Paralympics are among the few occasions when humanity recognises itself as a global community,” he says. Fontanari’s poster, entitled “Together We Play, Together We Transform”, was inspired by a photograph of Guinea-Bissau’s Braima Suncar Dabo, who helped to carry Aruba’s Jonathan Busby for the last 100 metres of the 5,000-metre heats at the 2019 World Athletics Championships in Doha. This act became a symbol of the magnanimous spirit of international sport.

Instead of runners, Fontanari’s image portrays two cross-country skiers. “You don’t notice that they’re Paralympians,” he says. “Instead, you get lost in the art.” Did the Olympic Committee give him creative control? Fontanari shows Monocle the brief, which includes the broad themes that it wanted the posters to convey. He points to some of the words and phrases that he chose as a springboard. Among them are “courage”, “new Italian spirit” and “universal language”.

After months of back and forth with the Olympic Committee and various draft sketches and pencil studies, Fontanari’s final version came together swiftly. “It only took a week,” he says. “Once we had agreed on the right image, I followed my instincts and got it onto the canvas.” Wide, sweeping brushstrokes and bold injections of colour (chosen at random so as not to represent any country in particular) give the finished image a sense of fluidity.

“Movement was another key theme,” says the artist, who spent his childhood winters skiing in Trentino. “Growing up in the Dolomites, I saw the mountains as a barrier to the rest of the world.” Today he has a different perspective. “Now, I recognise that the region isn’t isolated but geographically well connected. The Italian Alps border France, Switzerland, Austria and Slovenia. There’s a rich cross-cultural exchange, even in a small northern city like Trento. I believe that this is why my work was selected to represent the Paralympics.”

Fontanari, alongside nine others, was chosen from a group of 120 artists from Pittura Italiana Oggi, an exhibition showcasing the work of Italian artists born between 1960 and 2000. The exhibition was on show at the Triennale Milano, one of Italy’s foremost institutions for contemporary art.

Fontanari’s painting, which is reproduced in the poster, is now on display at the Triennale Milano until March, at which point it will be shipped to the Olympic Museum in Lausanne to enter the permanent collection, while the poster will go on display. “One day I would like to go to Lausanne to see it there,” says Fontanari.

He is humble about the growing success of his work, which will be shown at the National Museum of Brasília until mid-February and later in Rio de Janeiro. Fontanari says that he will always find his way back to Trento. “The mountains here are not an easy place in which to work but they constantly open up possibilities and challenge your limits,” he adds. “I don’t think that making art is any different.”

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The next generation of Italian artists designing posters for Milano Cortina 2026

Since 1972 the Olympic Committee has commissioned artists to conceive posters that reflect the spirit of the Games. For the Milano Cortina 2026 Winter Olympics and Paralympics, the committee worked with the Triennale Milano to find 10 promising Italian artists under the age of 40 to interpret the spirit of the Games. “We wanted our selection to showcase Italy’s dynamic contemporary-art scene and the next generation of creatives,” says Raffaella Paniè, the director of brand identity at the Fondazione Milano Cortina 2026. “Through their diverse styles, the selected posters show the intersection of sport, art and society, creating a visual legacy.” We meet some of the artists.

1.
Beatrice Alici Milan
Milan
“I spent my childhood skiing in South Tyrol. Over time, those snow-covered slopes and muted horizons became a quiet archive of belonging. The silvery overcast sky, recreated here using silver leaf, reflects the visual atmosphere and its texture – where recollection turns into light and nostalgia takes on a material form.”

2.
Giorgia Garzilli
Naples and Milan
“I thought about a toy that I had when I was a kid, consisting of a plastic ice-cream cone that, if you pressed a button, would throw the scoop in the air. I’d use it to mark the start of a game.”

3.
Roberto de Pinto Milan
Milan
“I chose to represent the snowdrop. In Italy, we call it bucaneve, meaning ‘snow piercer’. Snowdrops bloom at the end of winter, sometimes breaking through ice. This act of pushing to reach the light became a perfect metaphor for the athletes.”

It starts with sound. First you hear the distinctive clack of skis, then a roar like a military jet in the distance as a suited, booted and helmeted figure hurtles towards the ground, accelerating all the way. Finally, the thud and swish of ski meeting snow as the jumper nails the landing. The sport of ski jumping shows that a human careening through the air is louder than one might expect.

“You get this feeling of flying, especially on the big hills”, says Nika Vodan. She is one of the Slovenian national ski-jumping squad members practising on the 100-metre high, deceptively designated normal hill at the Kranj Ski Jumping Centre, not far from the capital city, Ljubljana. Kranj has five hills of different sizes, starting at just 10 metres, allowing young hopefuls to make safe and steady progress in their training. A nearby high school specialises in the sport, offering dormitories for ski-jumping students hailing from other regions of the country. The infrastructure supporting Slovenian ski jumping has played a significant part in making the national team medal contenders in the 2026 Olympic Winter Games.

High flyers and world-record holders
Vodan, a 25-year-old police officer, positively vibrates with excitement while recounting how she started hurling herself off mountains at the age of eight. “I was the first in my family to take up ski jumping and I just went for it because I knew that I loved it. When you look down and see the people supporting you, it’s something special. All the stress goes down and you just enjoy it.”

Vodan is very good at what she does. She has already won a gold medal at the mixed team event at the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympic Games, plus an overall World Cup title. In many countries, that would make her the star of the team. But Vodan is not even the most decorated member of the outrageously successful Slovenian ski-jumping squad. Going into the 2025/2026 season, the Central European country could boast both the men’s and women’s world-record holders. Even more remarkably: they are siblings. 

Domen Prevc set a mark of more than 254 metres at Slovenia’s legendary ski-flying hill at Planica in March 2025, just a fortnight after his younger sister, Nika Prevc, jumped 236 metres at Vikersund in Norway to break the women’s record. That gives them bragging rights over their older brother, Peter, who is now retired but is himself a former record holder. “From the outside, it looks like destiny,” says Domen. “But from inside, we all know how much hard work went into this.” Aside from his world record, Domen is the reigning world champion in both the individual and team large-hill events. Today, at age 26, he has never competed in the Olympics and Milano Cortina 2026 is a chance to crown his career. “The one thing that we’re still missing in Slovenia is an individual Olympic gold medal in ski jumping,” he says. “In previous years, I wasn’t in shape. But I’m now looking forward to it; I have the focus.”

Just like her brother, Nika will be a strong contender. Her Olympic debut is one of her “biggest dreams” and she hopes to carry the successes of her consecutive World Cup titles, a double World Championship and the world record – all won before the age of 20 – to an Olympic gold medal.

‘It’s in the genes’
Back at Kranj, a team of coaches offer specialised training and instant feedback by iPad after every jump. Given the nature of the sport, the training is not only physical but mental. “This sport is more of a head game,” says Robert Hrgota, the head coach of the Slovenian men’s A team. “You have to have mental training and you need that something extra that nobody else has.”

But some things cannot be taught, he concedes. “It’s in the genes,” he says. That certainly seems to be the case for the record-breaking Prevc family. But one could say it applies to Slovenians in general when it comes to this spectacular sport – just hear them soar. 

Read next: Why the Winter Olympics are better than the Summer Games

The Winter Olympics begin today and you should be excited because these next few weeks outdo the Summer Games for one big reason: the sports are far more dangerous. With the exception of BMX racing, which might have been designed by orthopaedic surgeons working on commission, the greatest risks run by summer Olympians are the sort of strains and sprains that, while doubtless painful for the athlete, are merely tedious for the spectator.

Winter Olympians can crash luges and bobsleighs, wipe out off snowboards, clobber each other into hockey-rink barriers, careen off ski runs into forests and lose their balance mid-leap from the ski-jumping ramp to land with an audible fracturing of limbs. Even the relatively prim and genteel pastime of figure skating offers opportunities to descend from a height, at speed, onto a surface that’s as hard as cement but colder. Winter Olympians are – and the epithet is offered in respect verging on outright awe – total maniacs.

The Winter Olympics have generally been regarded as a junior partner of their summer counterpart. The cold-weather edition started later – the first was held in 1924, 28 years after the first modern Summer Olympics – and they involve a smaller number of competitors, as fewer countries have climates conducive to the training of athletes. Just 91 nations competed at the 2022 Winter Games in Beijing; by contrast, 204 (including the refugee team and independent contingent) attended the 2024 Summer Olympics in Paris.

A lack of snow at home does not have to impede competing in the colder months, however – indeed, it should be considered a challenge. Meanwhile, the soft-power benefits to a warm, dry country that decides to take a swing at the Winter Games can be huge. After all, everyone loves an underdog. The Milano Cortina 2026 Winter Olympics will feature competitors from such unlikely places as Brazil, Eritrea, Haiti, and Madagascar, all of which might well leave with no medals but will win a raised profile.

The model for this sort of enterprise was established in 1988 when Jamaica greatly enhanced the general gaiety by sending a bobsleighing team to the Calgary Games. It finished last in the four-man competition but its story was immortalised in the 1993 John Candy comedy Cool Runnings – and nobody made a Hollywood film about the Swiss team that finished first. (Somewhat unfairly, the Jamaican team also drew the spotlight away from its Caribbean rivals from the Netherlands Antilles – whom proved to be better bobsleighers.) But this is surely the Olympic spirit at its purest: the joy of taking part, with not the faintest prayer of winning.

The importance of the Winter Olympics can be seen not just in who wants to take part but who wants to host. It has always been well understood that the Winter Games can be as much an advertisement for a city and/or country as the summer ones. Josip Broz Tito, the leader of what was still Yugoslavia, had been dead for four years when the Winter Olympics came to Sarajevo in 1984. But the bid had been made on his watch, partly with the idea of promoting Tito’s idea of non-aligned socialism to the world, as well as to encourage patriotic cohesion among his own disparate peoples. Neither was a total success.

Russia carefully managed the public relations around two Winter Olympics. In 2014, Russia waited until the Sochi Games were finished before seizing Crimea from Ukraine. In 2022, Vladimir Putin travelled to Beijing for that year’s Winter Games – and it is generally believed that it was then that he pitched his plan for the invasion of Ukraine to China’s president, Xi Jinping, who asked him to restrain the dogs of war until the Olympic flame had been doused.

The 2002 Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City gave us what was arguably the most useful and heartening morality fable in the history of sport. On the last lap of the final of the men’s 1,000-metres short-track speed skating, Australia’s Steven Bradbury was a distant last and possibly beginning to console himself by pondering the miracle that he was there at all. Bradbury had come back from hideous injuries twice in his career – an accidental slash from a rival’s blade in 1994, which had spilled four litres of his blood on the rink, and a broken neck from a crash during training in 2000, which prompted the doctors who repaired him with screws and steel plates to tell him that he would never skate again.

But, at the final corner of the race, all four of Bradbury’s rivals fell over each other, leaving the Australian athlete cruising to gold, bearing the expression of a man realising that he would never again pay for a drink back home. It was a reminder that fortune favours not merely the brave but, every so often, the diligent, pragmatic and patient.

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Winter Olympic winners, past and future

Gold: Greatest winter Olympian
Norwegian cross-country skier Marit Bjørgen won 15 medals, eight of them gold, across five Winter Games. In all Olympic history, only American swimmer Michael Phelps and Soviet gymnast Larisa Latynina have won more. Bjørgen isn’t but she should be a household name.

Silver: Best mascot
For the 1984 Sarajevo Games, Slovenian artist Jože Trobec created Vucko, a cheerful wolf draped in a scarlet scarf, prone to misadventure – essentially Wile E Coyote’s Balkan cousin. His signature howl of the host city’s name was furnished by Bosnian-Serb pop singer Zdravko Colic. Besides being extremely cool, Vucko was a fine example of pan-Yugoslav co-operation.

Bronze: Unlikeliest future bidder
Saudi Arabia is due to host the 2029 Asian Winter Games, which has led to rumours of a future Winter Olympic bid, despite what might appear to be a fundamental difficulty: a lack of snow.

Brazilian political-crime thriller The Secret Agent is a visual feast. Set in the late 1970s, when the country was still under military dictatorship, it follows a professor (Wagner Moura) as he travels to Recife during Carnival to start over. The Secret Agent has been a runaway success in its home country and has performed well in box offices in countries such as Portugal and France. The film marks the return of Brazilian cinema to the Oscars, only one year after I’m Still Here won Best International Feature in 2025. The Secret Agent has four Oscar nominations and is up for two Baftas, just in time for its UK release on 20 February. The film’s director, Kleber Mendonça Filho, and its star, Wagner Moura, stopped by Midori House to discuss politics, shooting in Panavision and getting that “World Cup feeling”. 

This film has been a special project for you as you’ve wanted to make it for quite a long time. Is that right?
Kleber Mendonça Filho: It all began with the desire to develop a thriller set in the 1970s and I really wanted to shoot in widescreen Panavision – and to do it with Wagner as the main actor. I spent seven years trying to make my previous film, Pictures of Ghosts. In the process, I had been looking at old newspapers, photographs and films, and that made me reconnect with some childhood memories. Suddenly, I felt that I had the emotional structure to write The Secret Agent. And then the last thing that happened – because that’s how these things come together – was Bolsonaro. The Bolsonaro years were a bizarre mixture of [the] 21st-century far-right with this fetishistic desire to bring back the good old days of the military dictatorship. In many ways I was writing about the 1970s but living the complete madness of those years in the 21st century. A lot of the energy of The Secret Agent came from that crazy and just dreadful moment in contemporary Brazilian history. 

And Wagner, how does it feel to finally work with Kleber and to return to acting in Portuguese?
Wagner Moura: Can you imagine? It was the time of my life. I hadn’t worked in Portuguese for 12 years. I was directing Marighella and I did Narcos – and that took a long time. But things happen when they should happen. I’ve been trying to work with Kleber for a while, basically since I met him. And I think that this was the perfect project for us. It’s very political and we’re both political people. It’s as cinematic, Brazilian and northeastern as it can get. We’re both from the northeast of Brazil and share lots of cultural codes. 

‘The Secret Agent’ feels like a love letter to 1970s cinema but it’s also a portrayal of a difficult time in Brazil under military dictatorship. How do you think about fact versus fiction?
KMF: This film is not based on a true story, it’s all fiction. But the sense of time is quite truthful, I would say. And very honest. It comes from not only my own childhood memories but from many stories that were told to me by family members: my uncles, my parents. And I think that sense of truth is in the film. 

It’s also in the actors. They’re great actors but also incredibly truthful people and there’s a real sense of social, human truth in the film. I’m happy with that sense of truth, which you can pick up even if you’re not Brazilian.

‘The Secret Agent’ has had such success. Do you think this is a particularly interesting moment for Brazilian cinema? 
WM: Yes, it’s a great moment. You cannot disconnect it from the great democratic moment that Brazil is going through. I think that democracy in art, films and theatre walk together. We now live in a country in which the government believes in culture as a tool of development and a mirror for society. And then the world can see this country as well. I hope that we can keep believing in the importance of culture.

After all the nominations, are you getting that World Cup feeling?
WM: [Actor] Fernanda Torres asked us not to go into World Cup mode. And I was like, why not? I think it’s pretty cool. It’s impossible not to do it. One of the things that I loved about I’m Still Here last year was seeing all those Brazilians rooting for the film, those artists saying, ‘Oh my God, we see ourselves in them.’ I think that’s beautiful, especially as our country went through a period in which artists were labelled as enemies of the people. So yeah, I’m good with the World Cup thing. Are you, Kleber? 

KMF: Brazilians are super connected. They’re very aware of and sensitive to the way Brazil is seen abroad. I think having a film on the international stage during the awards season is a pretty big thing. It’s a cool energy. What happened last year with Fernanda was amazing. 

‘The Secret Agent’ is out now in the US, Brazil and Europe and will be released in UK cinemas on 20 February. You can listen to the interview with Mendonça Filho and Wagner on the latest edition of ‘The Monocle Weekly’.