The completely shelled mollusc is part of the great contemporary trend for convenience at the expense of quality, and the result is rather unappealing too. Without the shells, you’ve stripped away the whole presentation and half the flavour. I’d expect this from the Americans, but what about us?

La bomba d'amore? “It’s an extraordinary and unsettling thriller,” says the film and television producer. To bring this summer’s B-movie (from Ceuta to Antonello da Messina’s stolen paintings) to the screen, he offers us a short screenplay: “A film in three acts and three deceptions: ‘La grande calda estate’”

Firearms and innovations that sought, in vain, to reduce the deadly impact of conflicts on human beings. And today, drones and AI

This generation, obsessed with authenticity, seems terrified by the idea that there are people who don a cloak and work on an identity they haven’t yet earned. If you do something without the proper credentials, you’re therefore LARPing. It’s the ‘be yourself’ police

In these challenging times, let us consider how we can assist one another in revitalising the world and our cities by collaborating. We are the eclipse

In the United States, some surgeons report seeing an increasing number of young people with complications caused by fillers injected at home. It’s ‘looksmaxxing’: the philosophy that, since physical appearance is said to determine sex, success, money and happiness, it must be improved. Perversions and obsessions – this is anything but a revolution in language

“The entire Homeric mythos is nothing more than a Mediterranean adaptation of the Norse myths of the Bronze Age.” Odyssey FdI: The misty sea was the Baltic