Can you get nostalgia for nostalgia?
Nostalgia as big business: old songs re-entering the charts, Barbie topping the box office, and Britney's catalogue selling for a reported $200mn as an income-earning asset. Taylor links the appetite for the past to uncertainty and the pandemic, then turns to collectibles, separating cards and figures bought as investments (scarcity driving future value) from cheap toys bought purely for the feeling. Her closing idea, that nostalgia works like a cold and weakens with each exp
The £10 pint era
A short read that packs in more than its length suggests. Taylor breaks down the cost of a £9.50 pint at the O2 into taxes, business rates, utilities, wages and rent, then adds two behavioural points: the venue's captive-audience monopoly, and the expensive pint acting as an anchor that makes a £4 Pepsi look reasonable. The idea that a pint's price is unusually 'salient', so price rises feel especially outrageous, is a neat link to inflation expectations. Good for costs of pr
Why your flight costs so much now
Great for price discrimination. Taylor reframes 'stupid' airline websites as clever machines for working out willingness to pay, walking through third-degree discrimination (child, off-peak, senior discounts) and then the self-selecting fare bundles (Basic, Regular, Plus, Flexi Plus) that get travellers to sort themselves by how much they will pay. The unbundling of bags, seats and breakfast, and the prospect of AI-driven individual pricing, extend it nicely towards evaluatio