Villain
“Healthy Coke”, a distinctly unappetising concoction being pushed on TikTok. The drink, as explained by one user, consists of soda water, ice and a “splash” of balsamic vinegar. Despite the claims, it doesn’t actually taste like Coca-Cola, says Kelly Conaboy in Gawker. It tastes like sparkling balsamic vinegar. “Whether it is good or bad depends on how much you enjoy the taste of balsamic vinegar.”

Is America on the brink of a second civil war?

That’s the argument made by the authors of three recent books, who present what Edward Luce in the FT calls an “alarmingly persuasive case that the warning lights are flashing redder than at any point since 1861”.

Boris Johnson’s critics often compare him to Donald Trump, says Jeremy Cliffe in The New Statesman, but a better comparison would be Silvio Berlusconi. Over his four terms as Italy’s prime minister, “the Cavalier” substituted boosterish posturing for action. Amid “lurid palace intrigue”, political norms were eroded and problems were ignored – and the country stagnated. The same fate awaits Britain if Johnson clings on. Starting in 2016, Brexit drama began monopolising the energy of the UK’s political brains. When Johnson came to power three years later, “the definitive deoxygenation of British politics” was complete.

When a 400lb lion took a “fist-sized hole” out of Tony Fitzjohn’s neck in 1975, the Kenya-based conservationist worried his time was up, says The Times. “Am I dying?” he asked his boss, George Adamson. “I think you probably are,” came the reply, “but I’ll do my best.” Treated initially with just Savlon, whisky and Valium, Fitzjohn made a miraculous recovery. During his convalescence, he received a cheering letter from Adamson. “There is nothing for you to blame yourself for,” he wrote. “Getting chewed up by a lion is one of our occupational hazards.”

Desert Island Discs was thought up by Roy Plomley, “an unsuccessful actor turned slightly more successful radio broadcaster”, in November 1941, says Miranda Carter in the London Review of Books. “It was brilliantly timed.” The BBC was desperate for good light entertainment, and what could be more appealing in the middle of wartime than escaping to a quiet, sunny desert island? Plomley duly became the first host of what is now the world’s longest-running interview show. Desert Island Discs even has its own urban myth, in which Brigitte Bardot, who never actually appeared on the programme, says she wants “a peenis” for her luxury. “Choking on his microphone,” Plomley eventually realises she means “’appiness”.

I have a little theory as to why the Queen has been so successful, says Zadie Smith in Vogue. She seems “distinctly lower middle-class”. It’s strange: her children seem aristocratic, the grandchildren terribly posh, “yet around the Queen there hangs this persistent aura of Mrs Windsor”. Think about it. Did any resident of Buckingham Palace – “replete as it surely is with bone china and silver serving dishes” – ever before have their breakfast delivered in Tupperware alongside a copy of the Racing Post? We’re told her taste in culture is ordinary: she likes Benny Hill re-runs, TV quiz shows and Question Time (“but only if there’s a good bust up”). And of all the dogs she could have chosen, the Queen “opted for those squat little corgis with their stubby legs, bush tails and uninspired faces, who are the very doggy definition of ‘nothing to see here’”.