Lisa Murkowski is the senior US senator representing Alaska, a seat she has held for the Republicans since 2002 – despite repeated efforts by her own party to oust her Murkowski did not endorse – or by her own account vote for – US president Donald Trump in any of his three election campaigns, and she was one of seven Republican senators who voted to remove Trump from office at his second impeachment trial in 2021.

Senator Murkowski spoke to The Foreign Desk at the Munich Security Conference; she had just visited Greenland in the wake of Trump’s threats to seize the territory from the Kingdom of Denmark, by force if necessary.

How much damage has Trump’s Greenland fixation done to the transatlantic alliance?
Relationships matter. How we treat our friends matters. The trust that has built up over decades and generations matters. And so when words like ‘occupy’ or ‘take over’ or ‘buy’ or ‘acquire’ are used that disrespect a sovereign territory, and disrespect the autonomy of the people of Greenland, that’s a problem. But it’s something that can be reconciled through honest dialogue and openness about what is being sought. If we’re talking about shared security interests in the Arctic space, let’s think about it.

Was the welcome in Greenland to a Republican senator at all equivocal?
I didn’t feel that at all. There was an appreciation for the fact that there was a bipartisan delegation from the US that was there to share a message: we want to engage in a co-operative dialogue. 

You’ve spoken to spoken to Monocle before about the US not taking the security of its own patch of the Arctic seriously enough, ie the state you represent. While Trump was talking about taking Greenland, were you sitting in Juneau wondering: how did we get here?
We need to recognise that the Arctic has been under-appreciated, not just by the US but around Nato. Investment in the Arctic has been limited at best. There’s a great deal of focus right now on Greenland and what we need to do for security on that eastern side of the continent. But I maintain that just as important is ensuring that on the western side, where Alaska sits right smack next to Russia. We need investment in everything from communications to defence. We’ve got work to do in the Arctic. So when you [Trump] suggest that the way to address that is to occupy Greenland, that creates division and dissension, rather than a focus on: what are we going to do jointly, co-operatively, to protect this vast area of the globe that is pretty wide open.

And are you hoping that secretary of state Marco Rubio spent some of his flight to Munich rereading ‘How To Win Friends And Influence People’, as vice president JD Vance clearly didn’t last year?
I’ve known Secretary Rubio for a long time, and he is a man with quick wit and a lot of charm. So I’m hoping that this is going to be a great conversation.

As we’re already halfway through Q1, it’s perhaps a good moment to take stock, pull out the diary and do a bit of forward planning and general housekeeping. While the Monocle crew can spontaneously show up anywhere and host a little party, there are three essential dates to keep in mind for the coming months.

On 28 March our Zürich outpost will host its annual Hanami Market to celebrate the arrival of spring. If you’ve not paid a visit, it’s an all-day celebration of the best of Japan with excellent bites, specialist retailers, emerging brands, good tunes and, of course, exceptional drinks. If you’re looking for a little weekend escape, our team will be happy to offer up some hotel and restaurant recommendations but, better yet, you can get all our updated City Guides (Tokyo, Kyoto and many more) by signing up for a subscription. Subscribers will also be able to reserve a spot at our special Ginza-style lounge evenings at Dufourstrasse on 27 and 28 March.

Off the back of Salone del Mobile in Milan there will be a special edition of The Entrepreneurs broadcast live from the heart of Shanghai. Kicking off at a civilised hour on 29 April (I’m sure you’ll find a few of us up for a drink the night before), we are bringing some of China and the region’s sharpest business owners to the stage to introduce their projects, ambitions and insights. Hosted by some of your favourite voices from Monocle Radio, the conference will be a pacy mix of one-on-one interviews and punchy panels with plenty of time for audience participation and, as ever, prizes for the best questions. The day will wrap with a cocktail reception, elegant dinner, night on the town and, if you’re game, it will be a straight-to-plane (STP) affair with a few editors as we head to Bahrain for the 2026 edition of The Chiefs.

On 6 and 7 May our annual conference devoted to leadership and building better brands will be doing a twirl for our first-ever conference in the Gulf. If you’ve not been to Bahrain, it’s high time to make an appearance. I’ve been three times over the past year and have been seduced by the narrow lanes, shopfront typography, 1970s logos and the very good coffee shops in Manama Souq. We get under way with a cocktail on the 6th and pack in a full day on the 7th with speakers from around the world focusing on retail, security, hospitality, media and much more besides. For more information you can go here or drop Hannah Grundy a note at hg@monocle.com if you want to discuss corporate or group rates.

I’ll be on hand for all of these events and, if you just happen to be in St Moritz today and have caught this email before 10.00 CET, please swing by the Monocle Shop at Hotel Steffani for a special art-focused edition of Monocle on Sunday. Of course, if you’re not up here in the lovely Engadine Valley then please tune in and hopefully I’ll see you in Zürich, Shanghai or Bahrain over the coming months. 

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

Paris’s 2020 municipal elections were a muted affair. Voters headed to the polls for the first round on 15 March and, two days later, the coronavirus pandemic sent France into lockdown. When the next round was finally held in June, there were no surprises: the incumbent mayor, Anne Hidalgo, won her second term. It’s often said that in moments of crisis, people stick to the status quo. But this year that’s not an option.

In November 2024, after two consecutive terms in office, Hidalgo announced that she would not seek a third term in 2026. She will leave a mixed legacy. Her environmental initiatives have garnered international acclaim: an additional 500km of cycle lanes have contributed to a 44 per cent reduction in traffic-related air pollution in parts of the city, while the Seine has returned to just-about-swimmable conditions for the first time in a century. Domestically, however, the picture is different. Parisians resent her top-down approach to governance and the rest of the country sees her as out of touch. Her presidential bid in 2022 won her just 1.75 per cent of the vote – the worst result in the Parti Socialiste’s (PS) history.

With her preferred successor knocked out of the running in the PS primaries last summer, Paris is set to move away from the Hidalgo era. But France’s wider democratic crisis might lead to a larger disruption of the status quo. While the left has held the city for a quarter of a century, this year’s vote is less predicated on issues than personalities, underpinned by complex alliances and machinations, and inflected by the now-ubiquitous scourge of social media. 

Paris remains a liberal holdout in the face of the far-right’s rise across France – recent polling by Verian for Le Monde indicated a near-even split across the country between those who support Marine Le Pen’s Rassemblement National and those who reject it. But with next year’s presidential elections looming, the result in Paris this March is likely to resonate far beyond Hôtel de Ville. So let’s meet the candidates standing this year’s elections.

The capital’s likely pick: Parti Socialiste nominee Emmanuel Grégoire 

Anne Hidalgo might have backed political unknown Rémi Féraud as her successor but it was her former deputy, Emmanuel Grégoire, who won the PS nomination. He has become the frontman for a historic coalition with Les Écologistes (France’s Green Party) as well as the French Communist Party (PCF), with both groups supporting his bid for mayor. 

To the left of him, Sophia Chikirou is standing for Jean-Luc Mélenchon’s La France Insoumise (LFI). The LFI has joined forces with PS before, notably in 2024 when the New Popular Front alliance united to counter the far-right in that year’s legislative elections. Grégoire, however, sees a path to Hôtel de Ville without them.

Despite his record of 10 years working alongside Hidalgo – or perhaps because of it – the outgoing mayor is not a fan of the PS hopeful, blaming him for a lack of support following her abysmal presidential bid in 2022. 

The populist pick: Rachida Dati

If anyone is sucking the oxygen out of the room in this election, it’s Rachida Dati. A longtime player in French politics, who earned her stripes under Nicholas Sarkozy, Dati is famed for her aggressive approach (though she says that her threat to turn former prime minister Gabriel Attal’s dog into a kebab was “just a joke”).

This is her second run for the mayoralty and this time she is taking a leaf out of the populist playbook. Inspired by the UK’s Nigel Farage, Dati’s campaign leans heavily on Tiktok; videos of her joining the bin men of Paris on their morning round have attracted nearly three million views. 

In protest against Dati remaining in her post as culture minister, actress Dominique Blanc recently handed back her Légion d’honeur, the highest distinction that the French state can give its citizens. Dati is also facing corruption charges, with a trial set for September. If she loses, she could be disqualified from public office. 

Dati has been a longtime agitator for reform of the Paris municipal elections. This year’s vote will see the end of the previous electoral college system and the implementation of a direct election approach. Despite the controversy, polls put her at 28 per cent, so this might work in her favour.

Macron and the centre-right’s pick: Pierre-Yves Bournazel

Despite Dati’s position in Macron’s cabinet, the president’s faction, Renaissance, is throwing its support behind someone else: Pierre-Yves Bournazel. It’s here, perhaps, that the macro-crisis engulfing French politics is most clearly on display.

In fine French tradition, Bournazel has written a book ahead of the election. Published last month, La Bataille pour Paris (The Battle for Paris) capitalises on Bournazel’s relationship with Dati, who he worked under when she was Sarkozy’s minister of justice, painting her as “a person in a state of narcissistic intoxication”. In attacking what he perceives to be Dati’s “pro-car policy”, he highlights what is likely to be a significant issue come election day: many celebrate the effect of Hidalgo’s environmental initiatives but the debate around motor traffic has become fraught. Responsibility for Greater Paris’s roads is – quelle surprise – mired in bureaucracy, with a growing number of drivers feeling alienated by a wholesale cars-are-bad approach. Bournazel claims to have a plan but with his polls at about 14 per cent, he will unlikely to be able to implement it. The real question, then, is who he will support in the runoff if he loses in the first round. With his obvious distaste for Dati, he might yet cross the line to come down in Grégoire’s corner.

The far-right pick: Sarah Knafo

When Sarah Knafo, political and romantic partner to conservative pundit turned extreme-right presidential candidate, Éric Zemmour, joined the hosts on TF1’s popular evening news programme to discuss her mayoral bid, a reported one million people switched off. 

Knafo, vice-president of Zemmour’s nationalist party Reconquête, is a media-savvy millennial with a very dim view on immigration. She will, unsurprisingly, be running on a platform centred around security. A regular at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) in the US, her public profile and name recognition may put her in a better position than her far-right competitor, Thierry Mariani.

Mariani, the Rassemblement National’s (RN) candidate, has distanced himself from his party’s position on the war in Ukraine, which it views as an illegal war of aggression by Russia, to make regular appearances on Russian military television. 

With neither candidate polling in double-digits, they’re unlikely to play much of a role; still, the far-right’s popularity is on the rise and the platform offered by this campaign might serve in other ways. The next presidential election is around the corner and incremental gains at a local level could add up to a seismic change when France heads to the polls.

It seems as though Emily Brontë’s 1847 novel Wuthering Heights has been reimagined as many times as it has been misunderstood. The official trailer for Emerald Fennell’s adaptation claimed that the film was “inspired by the greatest love story of all time”. Released just in time for Valentine’s Day, it promises an extravagant, erotically charged take on the classic.

The novel’s reputation as a tempestuous romance sits uneasily alongside a book that is, at heart, a Gothic tale of desire, class, race and intergenerational trauma. Fennell’s highly anticipated film has already drawn controversy from critics and audiences, not just for its focus on romance but particularly for casting a white actor, Jacob Elordi, to play a character described in the original text as a “dark-skinned gypsy in aspect”.

Any adaptation will inevitably reveal much about the moment in which it is made, and while we are seeing a return to more conservative values in global politics, Fennell’s hedonistic version of this 19th-century work is a somewhat controversial rebellion against those values.

To unpack the Saltburn director’s take on Wuthering Heights, as well as the role of decadence in the novel and why it is so misunderstood, Georgina Godwin was joined on Monocle on Saturday by Dr Jessica Gossling and Dr Alice Condé of the Decadence Research Centre at Goldsmiths, University of London.

This interview has been edited for clarity and length.

What is decadence?
Alice Condé (AC): The way we conceptualise it at Goldsmiths is as a literary, artistic tradition that emerged out of the 19th century; a rebellious countercurrent that’s running alongside a lot of progress and technology. It is a morose response to modernity. It emerges at times of social and political crisis as well, and responds to those. We’re living in a decadent age now. So we’re trying to unyoke it from the 19th century and consider ways in which our culture is decadent, along with artistic responses to that.

How true is the film to the book? And does it matter?
Jessica Gossling (JG): Adaptations are really interesting because of what they tell us about their cultural moment, and so what Fennell has decided to leave out or keep in is quite fascinating. If you’re going to watch this film because you love the novel, you’ll be disappointed. But if you want to watch it because you love the vibes and the essence of what we think of as Victorian – this kind of oversexed, bodice-ripping lusciousness – then I think it’s a great film.

AC: I agree. It’s not a faithful adaptation, and I don’t think Fennell has claimed it is such. But she says that she was trying to adapt the novel to correspond with her first reading of it at age 14. It’s a complex, nuanced novel, which actually at its heart is not a romance. It’s incredibly harrowing to read. Every page you turn, something more horrible happens to the characters. But what Fennell has done is take forward the enduring romantic appeal of Heathcliff and Cathy’s doomed relationship, and that is something that many younger people might respond to on first reading.

Do you think the novel is capable of doing psychological damage to little girls or teenagers who found Heathcliff incredibly sexy and the story just compelling?
AC: That trope has persisted. Personally, that wasn’t what I took from it at all. What endured with me was the ghost scene at the very beginning of the novel, where what we see is Heathcliff’s outpouring of emotion. For a century very much known for its [particular] kind of emotional restraint, it’s incredibly groundbreaking and quite sensitively done on Brontë’s part. 

What about the controversial race-blind casting?
JG: It’s so different to the novel that the casting decision is the easiest thing to latch on to in terms of what’s problematic about this adaptation. But also, Fennell strips out the sibling rivalry, incest and animal abuse, so there are lots of other important topics that are also removed. The only thing that remains [of the novel] in the film are some Sparknotes quotes and everything else is very much about how we feel Wuthering Heights should be. For example, there are references to Kate Bush in there. Fennell’s Heathcliff is completely chastised; he’s not the wolfish creature that Brontë describes at all.

Gothic novels often feature gloomy manor settings, eerie, sometimes supernatural elements and characters haunted by a dark past. Was it sexy? Did we get a lot of Yorkshire scenery?
JG: The movie has predominantly been filmed on a set, so it is like an old Hollywood movie in that way. They could control the weather, the lighting, everything, so it doesn’t have that wild naturalness that I would associate with Gothic fiction. It’s very staged. It reminded us of Beetlejuice in a way, with these very strange, anachronistic houses against an almost plastic background.

I’ve been running through preceding periods of decadence in my mind. The roaring 1920s, Weimar Germany. We know what came out of these periods, and, if we’re in another period of decadence now, do you see history repeating itself? What triggers the arrival and departure of such periods?
AC: Yes, absolutely. Those examples that you mentioned are transitional moments on the threshold of decline. The 19th century decadent period is quite interesting because there were these fears of decline and cultural degeneration. That’s why there were such attacks on writers such as Oscar Wilde for his perceived degeneracy, his queerness, his effeminacy. When we tipped into the 20th century, we did end up in these moments of collapse but not quite in the way that the critics of decadence in the 19th century imagined.

To hear the full interview, tune in to ‘Monocle on Saturday’.

Judging by the success of The Ned, Nomad, The Line and Freehand, Andrew Zobler appears to have mastered the art of transforming hotels into community anchors. The founder and CEO of New York-based Sydell Group has found a way to weave the worlds of art, design and food into compelling destinations for travellers and locals alike. Known for his attention to detail – from crafting rooms with residential qualities to creating buzzy playlists – Zobler has been the driving force behind a number of neighbourhood revivals, most notably in the area north of New York’s Madison Square Park.

But even with his string of accomplishments, the entrepreneur shows no signs of slowing down. In 2024, Hilton acquired a majority controlling interest in the Sydell Group, setting into motion an international expansion plan for Nomad. Sydell will continue to manage Nomad’s design, branding and management while Hilton oversees development. 

This “joint venture”, according to Zobler, has enabled him to deliver the Nomad spirit to various hubs around the world, all rooted in the belief that a hotel should feel like a great home. Despite ambitious plans for global growth (Hilton’s long-term goal is 100 Nomad properties), Zobler is confident that the brand will be able to preserve its character while integrating into the individual locales in fresh ways. 

Nomad will break into the Asia-Pacific region with a Singapore outpost in autumn 2026. Zobler sat down with Monocle in the sunny island nation to talk about his involvement in the brand and how a boutique hotel can scale up without losing its soul. The following conversation has been edited for clarity and length.

How did the partnership with Hilton come about?
I met Chris Nassetta, the CEO of Hilton, many years ago. He was always interested in us and we were interested in him. He wanted to get into the luxury lifestyle space and he knew that we were good at it. But most importantly, he recognised that entering a joint venture and keeping the founder and creatives behind it was just as important as buying a brand. If you look at our competitors, the principals are not necessarily involved anymore and that differentiates us in a material way. They tend to duplicate a model rather than do the extra work in creating something that is idiosyncratic and location specific. We now have the benefits of Hilton’s balance sheet, its global distribution and its relationship with [property] owners around the globe but I’m still running the company the same way as I have for the past 15 years.

What makes the Nomad brand special?
The way that we think about the brand is more intellectual than it appears. There are certain principles that are important to us and those can be manifested in different ways. For example, we want the hotel to feel residential, not commercial. We want it to be a melange of cultures, like Paris meets New York meets Singapore. The food experience is also central to the heart of the brand and we create an environment that is welcoming to the community. You won’t just see travellers – you’ll see locals too – and that’s one of the reasons why we’re successful. 

A lot of luxury operators want to be more lifestyle but wonder why they can’t achieve it. The reasons are straightforward: their restaurants are very expensive and all their rooms are large [with] five-fixture baths, so they are also very expensive. Your typical 30-year-old cannot afford to stay there. At Nomad, we have a certain percentage of rooms that are large and luxurious but we also have entry-level rooms because this [chemistry] between the young and the old is important to us.

How do you keep the charm of a boutique hotel while thinking about scale?
Our company is run in a very familial way and a lot of our people have been involved from the beginning. What we do is borrow the best things from Hilton but keep the service, culture and design close [to what we had]. When we open Nomad Singapore, we’re going to send employees from London to transfer the culture. I’ll be here to immerse people in our history and [share] what we’re trying to achieve, and then [we want] them to be themselves. We don’t believe in scripting people.

One of Nomad’s hallmarks is the high number of repeat guests – it’s all about creating relationships with them. We Google everyone who comes into the restaurant, so that we know a little about who they are. For regulars, we always figure out a way to get them a table. Another thing that’s important in creating a restaurant for the community is humility. To be sustainable in the long run, we’ve got to treat everyone with a great deal of respect, make them feel comfortable and not act like we’re the coolest kids on the block.

How did you decide on Singapore? 
It’s one of the gateway cities of Asia and we want to be in all of [the cities]. Hilton’s Asia headquarters is also here, which means that it is an easy place for us to start and receive support. We also liked the location on Orchard Road, the architecture and [Singapore-based property and hospitality company] UOL Group, so it all worked out.

What can we expect from the Singapore outpost?
Many of the lifestyle hotels here were not custom-crafted for Singapore. We’re going to deliver a hotel that will speak to Singaporeans. The public spaces have double-height ceilings and what we like to call “aspirational aspects”. The restaurants will have that strong New York-meets-Singapore duality. What’s particularly Singaporean is the design of the building, such as the open-air lobby and hallways, which have a real connection to nature. The biggest challenge was to take a brand that has been set in great, old buildings and make it work in a new build. And we’ve done that successfully through the art programme, which will bridge the classic Nomad look with the contemporary architecture. 

What would you say to travellers who are sceptical now that Nomad is under a big brand?
I would ask them to come and judge for themselves. The Hilton relationship is taking us towards a global direction and it has introduced us to extremely interesting people in places that we otherwise wouldn’t have had access to. The relationship is entirely accretive: Hilton has been very smart about letting us do our own thing without diluting the brand.

“You will not, under any circumstances put this in your column,” said the other half as we exited the tube station at South Kensington, him still looking shocked, me barely able to contain my delight at what had just occurred.

We had been standing in the carriage of a Piccadilly Line train, en route to my friend Dave’s sixtieth birthday party, when a young woman sat in a “priority seat” for seniors and the like stood up and said to my partner, “please have my place”. I watched as he declined with a flapping of hands and then spun around to face me, going into a panic-induced conversational mode in an effort to avoid eye contact with the would-be seat-donator. He began telling me, almost verbatim, about an article that he’d recently read in The New Yorker but I couldn’t focus as I was shaking with trapped laughter. Because while he’s a bit of a grey fox, he wears his age well, which made this all the more marvellous.

Getting older is an honour – too many people lost along the way for you to think fretting about a creased face is acceptable – but still, when we are forced to confront how other people view our wrinkles, well, it can sting. We all, me especially, like to delude ourselves that nothing much has changed over the years but that clock is kicking. Here’s how I know this to be true.

1.
My Instagram feed is full of ads recommending testosterone-boosting injections to ramp up your energy (and another thing).

2.
You have items in your wardrobe that are older than some of your colleagues. And you still wear them.

3.
You make cultural references that leave those same colleagues either staring at you blankly, or surreptitiously typing into Google to find out who the hell you’re talking about.

4.
You still think people use Google.

5.
You have a Facebook account, unused, but still there.

6.
On epic journeys you like to have a “real” map.

7.
When you go to the flower market, just as it’s opening on a Sunday morning, you pass the location of a long-gone nightclub where, on occasion and in your twenties, you might have been known to have exited at this very same time.

8.
Younger colleagues ask you questions that imply you were born in Victorian times. “Did they have cars when you were young? Or did you go everywhere by horse?”

9.
You have friends who you have known for decades. People who have never failed you. Friendships that have endured even when you have worked together for 19 years.

10.
You get up at 06.00. With no effort.

11.
You need IT support. Constantly.

12.
You need arch support, also constantly.

13.
Your bathroom cabinet has creams that promise more miracles than Jesus.

14.
You think millennials are young people.

15.
As fashion edicts change about sock heights and the cut of jeans, you stay your course. It will come back around you think (correctly).

16.
You’d rather not drive at night.

17.
You click through on one of those testosterone ads to see what it entails. Shrunken testicles? Perhaps better to go for the Saturday afternoon nap alternative.

18.
You keep quiet about your age (partly because it takes a moment to recall the exact number).

19.
You’re dismayed when someone offers you their seat on the subway.

20.
You know stuff. Life stuff.

After the party we made the return journey by London Underground and stood up just as the train was entering Russell Square station. For some reason, the driver had to slam on the brakes, the train jolted and the other half fell backwards, landing on the lap of a young muscular man the size of a baby bison. But rather than complain at having a gentleman of a certain age perched on his knee like a mature lap dancer, he simply said, “are you OK sir?”. “I have been totally humiliated tonight,” muttered the other half as we finally exited the station. I proffered my arm for added stability. “And I am serious about the column,” he reiterated. Really, I don’t see how I could have had a more fun night out.

To read more columns by Andrew Tuck, click here.

By the time the torch is extinguished at this year’s Olympic Winter Games, more than 6,500 hours of video will have been recorded. That’s nearly nine months of footage. Only about 1,000 hours of that coverage will air but it will be broadcast around the world on TV, streaming and social-media platforms. For the Olympic Broadcasting Services (OBS), producing the world’s biggest sporting and cultural event is no small task but it’s one that it was set up to do.

Established by the International Olympic Committee, the OBS is the host broadcaster for all Olympic, Paralympic and Youth Olympic Games. This means that it is responsible for setting up temporary media centres for the event, producing images and audio of the Games and personalising broadcasts for media partners, all while innovating with video-capture techniques, including stroboscopic effects that make fast-moving action appear frozen. 

As the CEO of the broadcaster since 2012, Yiannis Exarchos has overseen 14 Olympics. While the job is tough, “you get inspired by having to cover the greatest athletes in the world”, he said. Exarchos joined Monocle in Milan to talk about how OBS has evolved its production to ensure that both casual and experienced fans can follow the Games, no matter where or how they watch.  

This interview has been edited for clarity and length.

The OBS is responsible for all of the pictures, video and sound that come out of the Games. You’re distributing content to rights holders all over the world. It sounds like a difficult task with a lot of people involved.
[It is a challenging job] but you get inspired by having to cover the greatest athletes in the world and there is no incentive like that. We do what’s called host broadcasting, which essentially means two things: to do comprehensive coverage of all competition and ceremonies for the Olympic Games and provide these images to all media-rights holders around the world. The second important task is to help all these media-rights holders – there are more than 100 – to customise this coverage for the sake of their own audiences. We help them put in their own commentators and do their own interviews with athletes. 

The scope of it, as you said, is quite large. Here we will produce about 6,500 hours of broadcast, even though the total duration of competition is around 1,000 hours. The reason why we shoot so much is because in today’s world, you have to provide all different types of content. It’s not just traditional television: it’s social, it’s digital and it’s streaming, and we produce for all these different formats. It’s very important that we do so because the Olympics remains one of the large, great audience aggregators. It’s a meeting place for all audiences. We do not have the luxury to say that we want to focus more on Generation Z or a specific country. We need them all. This is what makes the Olympics special. It’s a unifying force.

And no pressure with several billion people watching around the world, right?
We hope that [this year] it’s going to be about three billion. But just to give you an idea, in Paris 18 months ago we had five billion people following the Olympics. What does it mean that 89 per cent of the human population – people from the age of five with access to television or an internet connection – followed the Games? On traditional television, people watched nine hours of coverage on average during the two weeks [of the Summer Games]. People with access to social media checked their accounts for Olympic content 100 times on average during these two weeks. It was a massive following.

You’ve been CEO since 2012 but you’ve been doing this much longer. How have the viewing audience and demands for content changed over the years?
In a sense, it has become harder because there is not a single way of producing that is sufficient for all audiences. Today we have different demographics that consume in different ways: you wake up in the morning and check your mobile phone. Then you go to your office and pretend to be working while on your laptop, where you also watch a little bit of the Games. Then you go back home and watch on a bigger screen with friends. The viewing habits have become more diverse. This puts more pressure on us but it also provides us with more opportunities to make the Olympics a more intense and immersive experience for people throughout their lives. 

It’s important to note that more than half of the audience is not sports fans. It’s what we call ‘casual fans’ or people who tune in every two or four years. I feel that this is an important contribution of sports to the world [at large]. I hope that many people will agree with me: we live at a time when unifying forces are few and the Olympics is an event that brings people together. If sport has this capacity, we need to do whatever it takes to enforce this message.

There has been an increase in drones footage, as well as split angles and stroboscopic effects that render replays in seconds. It has been amazing to watch. How do you balance all this technology with making sure that the event still feels human?
This question guides everything that we do. We are people who look into innovation to see what we can find from technology. We have many brilliant engineers in our company but we need to constantly remind ourselves that this is not about technology. The Olympics is about telling the stories of the greatest athletes in the world. So we look at three filters [when judging whether to use new technology]. Whether it allows us to do something that was not possible before, whether it allows us to produce more compelling content and whether it allows us to do our job more efficiently. We focus on the ones that we believe will bring something special to the coverage. 

As I said before, half of the audience is not sports fans. And those who are sports fans usually follow two to three. But at the Olympics, you have dozens of different events. That means that for the vast majority of people, it’s going to be the first time in their lives that they will be exposed to a sport. So they need to understand it very fast and get familiar with the major personalities and the heroes of the sport. 

We have been experimenting with drones since 2014 but it’s only now that some have reached a point where we can use them to show people what it feels like to be skiing downhill or driving the bobsleigh. These first-person-view drones, as we call them, allow that with very high quality cameras and with an extreme level of safety and security. Using this technology allows viewers to see the immense technique and beauty that goes into Olympic sports.

More coverage of the Games: 
– Ski mountaineering is the Winter Olympics’ newest sport. It is also its noblest

– Skating’s solo act: Donovan Carrillo is the only Latino on the ice at the 2026 Winter Olympics

– Three unlikely Winter Olympians to watch at Milano Cortina 2026

From the opening notes of “Ó Abre Alas” or “O Canto da Cidade”, Brazilians know that it’s time to celebrate: Carnival is here. From samba school parades to blocos (roving street parties), music plays a major part in Brazil’s annual festival, which begins today and stretches until Lent on 18 February. From Rio de Janeiro and S​ão Paulo to Salvador and many cities further afield, revelers will don elaborate costumes to dance, sing and party. 

Originally brought to the country by the Portuguese in the 17th century, Carnival has since become distinctly Brazilian with the rise of Samba, a music genre created by Afro-Brazilian communities in the early 1900s. Samba isn’t the only music that will be blasted from speakers – frevo, funk and even electronica will generate sound waves across the next five days. Over the past few years, celebrations have become even more eclectic, with this year’s roster of events including a Bollywood party and a set by DJ Calvin Harris.

Regardless of the music, Carnival festival is the beating heart of Brazilian culture, not to mention that it is also a large source of stimulation to the country’s economy and tourism industry. More than 50 million people are estimated to have taken part in celebrations across the country in 2025 and this year’s event is expected to generate 12bn Brazilian reais (approximately €1.94bn) for the national economy. The music industry capitalises on the festive season to release new tracks made for dancing in the heat. New songs this year include one from disco diva Gretchen and another about being sexy on a jet ski – here are five notable songs we think are worth remembering. Turn your speakers up.

‘Carnaval’, Marina Sena feat. Psirico
The 29-year-old singer’s new EP is a pure celebration of summer and Carnival, and this funky, sultry track is certainly a highlight.

‘Marquinha De Fitinha’, Léo Santana
Carnival in Bahia wouldn’t be the same without Léo Santana, who just celebrated two decades in the spotlight. 

‘Freak Le Boom Boom’, Gretchen
Gretchen is known for her disco tracks from the 1970s and 1980s, constant presence on Brazilian TV and starring in Katy Perry’s “Swish Swish” lyric video. As younger generations have discovered her music, some of her classic songs have been repackaged, including this gem.

‘Bembé’, Beija-Flor de Nilópolis
Every year, samba schools in Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo pick their Samba Enredos (the theme songs for their parades). This year, the traditional samba school Beija-Flor selected the theme of Bembé do Mercado – an Afro-Brazilian celebration rooted in the Candomblé religion. 

‘Jetski’, Pedro Sampaio, MC Meno K, Melody
This year’s Carnival might belong to Brazilian singer and producer Pedro Sampaio, whose track “Jetski” captures the festival’s playful energy. Also a hit in Portugal, the song’s strong beats and rapped lines are layered with melodic vocals that would make anyone want to get up and dance. 

Find these songs on Monocle’s Spotify playlist. And for more on the musical hits of Carnival 2026 tune in to this special episode on ‘The Global Countdown’ on Monocle Radio.

Over the past two decades, Latin American art fair Zona Maco has evolved from a regional showcase into a fixture on the global circuit. When it launched in 2004, it drew roughly 15,000 visitors. But at its 22nd edition last week the crowd swelled beyond 80,000, each person keen for a glimpse of presentations by more than 200 galleries from 26 countries. The fair today is a reflection of Mexico City’s transformation into a point of convergence, a place where regional voices have the floor in global conversations. 

Zona Maco’s selection committee includes representatives from Mexico City, New York, Berlin and São Paulo, and this year’s programme was supported by major sponsors from HSBC to Starbucks and Mercedes-Benz – a roster unthinkable in its early years. But the fair’s growth is about more than flashy new logos. In the crucial first 24 hours, between 70 to 80 per cent of visitors were industry professionals: museum directors, curators, advisors and representatives roaming the aisles, business cards in hand. 

It’s clear that collectors also want in on the region. In 2024, Latin America’s online art market generated just over $1bn (€843m) in revenue, accounting for 9.2 per cent of the global total. In November 2025, Frida Kahlo’s painting “El Sueño (La Cama)” fetched $54.7m (€46.1m) at a Sotheby’s auction, while Leonora Carrington’s “Les Distractions de Dagobert” sold for $28.5m (€24m) in 2024. At Zona Maco, more than half of the participating galleries hailed from Latin America, with Mexico representing the largest share. “Over the past five years, major international fairs have expanded their curatorial frameworks to foreground Latin American artists,” says the fair’s artistic director, Direlia Lazo. “Historically, the prices of [artwork by] Latin American artists were shaped more by regional socio-economic conditions rather than the significance of the work. In recent years, values have risen in a measured and sustainable way.”

For London-based Cadogan Gallery, Zona Maco has been a turning point. Since debuting at the fair, the gallery has expanded its roster with artists from or working in Latin America now accounting for roughly a quarter of its representation. “We’ve seen strong and growing demand, particularly at international fairs,” says director Freddie Burness. Smaller galleries have felt the shift too. At New York’s JO-HS, half of its artists are Latin American and roughly 75 per cent of recent sales have been of works by creatives from the region. “Early interest came primarily from Peruvian, Venezuelan and Mexican collectors,” says founder Elisabeth Johs. Today, she notes rising engagement from US and Chinese buyers, and widening institutional interest in Latin American creators from the likes of the San Diego Museum of Art and San Antonio Museum of Art. For these galleries and the artists they represent, Mexico City has shown itself to be more than a cursory stop on the art-fair circuit. In the crowded aisles, what feels tangible is not just a market trend but a cultural transformation.  

Keen to read more about Mexico’s booming art market? Meet the entrepreneurial trailblazers revitalising Guadalajara’s art scene.

In Washington, one gag is growing tired. This week, Donald Trump celebrated the news that the US economy had surpassed expectations, with promising job growth last month. But among federal employees, jokes about how many of them it takes to change a light bulb – or run a country – are told relentlessly.

Just a year ago, Elon Musk’s now-dissolved Department of Government Efficiency was taking its hacksaw to the US federal workforce – but the Trump administration is finally realising that it takes a significant number of staff to govern a country. When Trump was inaugurated in January 2025, there were 2.4 million federal employees. In the space of a year, more than 317,000 of them were pushed out. Some retired but most took payouts and quit. Others were fired or found that the agencies that they worked for had simply disappeared.

The president assured voters that this culling was necessary to eliminate waste, streamline spending and improve performance. But a year later, it turns out that all of those lawyers, interns, analysts, project managers and accountants were useful after all – and agencies from the Department of Justice to air-traffic control are scrambling to hire new staff to replenish a depleted workforce. 

The rehiring began not long after the firing. At the Department of Energy’s National Nuclear Safety Administration, which is tasked with keeping the US nuclear arsenal safe, about 350 people were let go, only for the government to realise that they were rather important and ask them to come back. The same thing happened at the Department of Agriculture, where 25 per cent of staff tackling avian-flu outbreaks were laid off and then rehired. The Internal Revenue Service invited back sacked staff when it became clear that it needed people to process tax returns. And it didn’t take long for some bright spark to realise that culling food-safety examiners could have stomach-churning consequences.

The Brookings Institution think tank, which has been tracking federal comings and goings, estimates that 25,747 federal employees have been fired and rehired. However, not everyone has gracefully accepted the invitation to return. Publicly maligning a group of people as “crooked” or “rogue” tends not to engender loyalty. There are certainly some federal workers dedicated to public service and willing to look beyond partisan politics for the greater good. But there are plenty of others giving a metaphorical middle finger to the White House and taking their talent elsewhere. 

Now, many agencies are hiring again. Brookings found that in mid-November 73,000 jobs were posted on USAJobs, the federal government’s official employment site. Only 14,400 candidates, however, were found. The agencies struggling the most to find suitable candidates appear to be those most closely aligned with Trump’s divisive policy agenda. The New York Timesrecently reported that the US attorneys’ offices had shrunk by 14 per cent in a year, a record annual drop.

Many attorneys have chosen to quit rather than work on the nakedly political cases that the administration is sending to their desks. There’s also a hiring bonanza at Homeland Security, which is implementing Trump’s migration crackdown. Staff have already been seconded from other areas, including the FBI and the Drug Enforcement Agency. But it’s still not enough and the department is offering candidates a $50,000 (€42,140) signing bonus in a bid to hit its hiring targets.

So what does this mean for the coming years? There is plenty of doom-mongering: taking FBI agents off the surveillance of extremism could lead to lapses in intelligence gathering, the cuts to weather monitoring could prove deadly and backlogs in processing will mean delayed social-security payments. Time will tell but polls suggest that Americans are worried, with a recent Washington Post survey finding that 63 per cent of people disapprove of their president’s handling of the federal workforce. While most agreed with trimming a little flab off the civil service, paring it right down to the bone is foolish. The self-proclaimed greatest country on Earth cannot be run by a skeleton crew.

Charlotte McDonald-Gibson is a Washington-based journalist and regular Monocle contributor. Read her thoughts on Kristi Noem here.