Energy isn’t just an economic input but also a strategic asset that underwrites national security and geopolitical influence.
How to keep the lights on in the new geopolitical age of energy security
Gorana Grgić
Monocle February, 2026
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You know that when you put your hand out, you will always find a hand that holds yours and carries you towards your goal.
Talking about pairs skating
‘Figure skating is art’: Italy’s Valentina Marchei on the Olympic spirit and taking life lessons from the ice
Ed Stocker
Monocle
FEBRUARY 18, 2026
“People think of it as a compromise with the other person but it’s [actually] a compromise with yourself,” she says. It’s about “how much you let go” and trust the other person.
Talking about pairs skating
‘Figure skating is art’: Italy’s Valentina Marchei on the Olympic spirit and taking life lessons from the ice
Ed Stocker
Monocle
FEBRUARY 18, 2026
“There are only three sports: bullfighting, motor racing and mountain climbing; all the rest are merely games.”
Often attributed to Ernest Hemingway
phrase first appears in print in a 1957 short story by automotive writer Ken Purdy _
“The task for diplomacy is not to amplify anxiety but to contain it.”
Neutrality is not passive: Dr Anwar Gargash explains the UAE’s diplomatic stance
Dr Anwar Gargash diplomatic adviser to the UAE president
Writer: Inzamam Rashid
Monocle February 4! 2026
Done well, writing isn’t the transcription of thought so much as the interrogation of it.
Mark Carney’s Davos address put world leaders – and their speechwriters – on notice
Blake Matich
Monocle January 2026
“The strong will do what they can and the weak suffer what they must”
Thucydides
c. 460 -c. 400 BC an Athenian historian and general.
The persistence of language-based award categories feels increasingly misplaced. While viewers flick easily between languages, institutions continue to draw borders that the screen itself has already dissolved.
Why the Academy Awards should get rid of its foreign-language category
Monocle January 2026
Catherine Balston
Autoplay is a minor assertion of power and one of the many, easily overlooked ways that the attention economy leans on us every day.
The death of the end credits: What streaming subtly gained by taking them away
Monocle
JANUARY 13, 2026
And in the same way that AI, as studies imply, might impinge upon our cognitive abilities, the technologically mediated urban environment might be weakening our civil muscles: our ability to simply be with other people in public.
What I gained from replacing the self-checkout with small talk
Tom Vanderbilt
Monocle December 2025