2025-11-20
7 分钟The Economist.
Welcome to Editor's Picks.
I'm Charlotte Howard.
I'm the co-host of our American Politics podcast, Checks in Balance.
You are about to hear an article we have chosen from the most recent edition of The Economist.
We hope you enjoy it.
Music without instruments and lyrics without meaning.
Endless reboots, sequels and superheroes in the cinema.
After a burst of magnificent TV dramas in the noughties,
every glitzy new show is hailed as a must-see when most are mediocre.
The algorithm has vanquished imagination.
Especially if you are middle-aged, you may share these gripes about 21st century culture.
There is a confounding glut of art, it often feels,
yet little of the original startling kind that matters.
Leaders and crises come and go, but Taylor Swift and Beyoncé still top the charts.
Blank Space, a punchy new book by W.
David Marx, laments and explains this sense of noisy stasis.
Mr.
Marx makes a trenchant case, but he and maybe you, a too gloomy.
He focuses on pop, fashion, visual art and what you might call the zeitgeist or just the internet.