Hero
Climate change, at least according to Donald Trump, since rising sea levels will create “more oceanfront property”. It’s a bold prediction. Trump’s iconic Florida estate – Mar-a-Lago – rests on a low-lying island in Palm Beach. Conservative estimates put its manicured lawns under water within 30 years.
Villains
True crime podcasts, which have a shocking habit of failing to solve the crime they’re investigating and then trying to convince listeners “it’s all about the journey”, says Caleb Pershan in Gawker. At the end of The New York Times’s Trojan Horse – which set out to prove that a so-called “Islamist plot to infiltrate British schools” was a hoax – the hosts got all the way to Australia before finally giving up, having failed in their quest, “reflecting on the noble struggle of seeking the truth”. The biggest mystery is: “Why do I keep listening?”
Hero
Lockdown, says Gordon Ramsay, because it wiped out so many “crap” restaurants. Two years of closed doors were “devastating” for the restaurant industry, Ramsay tells the Radio Times, forcing surviving restaurateurs to “raise their game”. But on the upside, “the crap’s gone”. Among the hundreds of “shithole” chain restaurants to shut branches for good in lockdown were Byron Burger, Carluccio’s and Zizzi. Ciao bella.
Villain
Edward VIII, who encouraged Hitler to “bomb Britain into submission” and put him back on its throne, according to historian Andrew Lownie. The exiled king – who abdicated in 1936 in order to marry the divorced American socialite Wallis Simpson – also passed secret information to the Nazis that aided the fall of France in 1940. There was long a suspicion that the Duke’s “loose lips” had contributed to the Nazi war effort, says royal historian Ed Owens, but proof has only recently come to light thanks to unearthed German diplomatic cables from the time.