For decades America’s soft power put the wind in the sails of its companies as they ventured abroad. When the Berlin Wall fell, Coca-Cola sent lorries emblazoned with its logo into East Berlin, handing out free drinks to the amassing crowds. Sales soon soared, as consumers in the former communist state chugged enthusiastically on the sugary icon of American capitalism. More
For decades America’s soft power put the wind in the sails of its companies as they ventured abroad. When the Berlin Wall fell, Coca-Cola sent lorries emblazoned with its logo into East Berlin to hand out free drinks. Sales soared as consumers in the former communist state chugged enthusiastically on the sugary icon of American capitalism. More
People who enjoy public speaking are luckier than they realise. A much-publicised survey from the 1970s claimed that Americans feared it more than death. In 2012, Karen Dwyer and Marlina Davidson of the University of Nebraska Omaha published a paper that tried to replicate the result. They found that things were less dramatic than that—but not by much. More
BEING SAM ALTMAN is a glamorous gig. Since the launch of ChatGPT in November 2022 the boss of its creator, OpenAI, has turned into a global business superstar. He is the darling of both the starch-collared Davos set and Silicon Valley’s dishevelled techno-Utopians. He hangs out with everyone from Katy Perry to Donald Trump, whom he accompanied on a visit to Saudi Arabia this week. It would shock no one if by its next funding round his startup, currently worth $300bn, overtook SpaceX and ByteDance to become the world’s most valuable unlisted firm. The AI wunderkind recently told the Financial Times that he has the “coolest, most important job maybe in history”. No kidding. More
MOST COMPANIES like to shout about their new products. Not Nvidia, it seems. On May 19th the chip-design firm will release the GeForce RTX 5060, its newest mass-market graphics card for video gamers. PR departments at companies like AMD and Nvidia usually roll the pitch for such products by providing influential YouTubers and websites with samples to test ahead of time. That allows them to publish their reviews on launch day. More
For America’s politicians, there are few easier bogeymen to rail against than pharma bosses. Only a fifth of the country has a positive opinion of the industry, according to Gallup, a pollster—meaning its executives rank below even estate agents in the public’s esteem. The eye-watering prices of many drugs in America have created the impression of a greedy industry that exploits the sick. More
If innovation has an iconography, it involves a genius, a breakthrough and a dash of serendipity. Alexander Fleming notices mould growing on a plate of bacteria and discovers penicillin. John Snow produces a map of the victims of a cholera outbreak in 19th-century London and traces the outbreak to a single water pump. A German chemist called August Kekulé falls asleep, dreams about snakes eating their tails and realises upon waking that the benzene molecule has the shape of a circle. More
“IF I’M NOT president, you’re fucked.” So Donald Trump reportedly told a roomful of oil bosses gathered at Mar-a-Lago after his re-election. During the campaign Mr Trump sought to position himself as the American oil industry’s only hope against the supposedly hydrocarbon-hating Democrats—brushing aside the fact that domestic oil production rose sharply during Joe Biden’s time in office. Since his arrival in the White House, he has set about rolling back environmental regulations and expedited permitting in an effort to get America’s oilmen to “drill, baby, drill”. More
