novel. An official podcast will chronicle “the joys and challenges of bringing 1980s television and naughtiness to life”. At least 17 companion podcasts have launched this year alone (see chart). They tend to offer fans a glimpse behind the scenes, as the tv show’s cast and crew chat about the decisions and antics on set. Take, for example, Neil Druckmann, who developed the video game “The Last of Us”, and became host of a podcast accompanying the television show. He let fans in on the adaptation process, including how he “just could not crack” a film and how he was “unburdened by teaching people how to walk, move, jump and crawl”, as he rejigged entire plot points for a passive, non-gamer audience. Becky Rho, HBO’s director of podcasts, says the format appeals in an “age of information”. Audiences are eager to know: “How did they pull off that stunt? How did this character or story arc come together?” Such podcasts should be “genuinely immersive and insightful”, says Darby Dorras, a producer on the recent “Peaky Blinders” tie-in. It is no good “assuming the audience is going to stick around for a bit of a fun chat”. Some podcasts bring in subject experts to add authority and analysis. A paediatrician has dissected the medical storylines in “The Pitt”, and a space scientist has guided viewers through the astrophysics of “3 Body Problem”.
There has long been demand for this kind of content. Back in the day, dvd box sets came with special features and interviews. (Streaming did away with DVDs and their behind-the-scenes bonuses, to the dismay of enthusiasts.) Unofficial “rewatch podcasts”, in which fans scrutinise their favourite shows, filled some of the gap and gained a popular following. In the 2010s two comedians found a huge audience with “Gilmore Guys”, an affectionate tribute to the teen drama “Gilmore Girls”. So for networks, companion podcasts are a no-brainer. They are relatively cheap to produce, bolster retention and can be enjoyed anywhere. “One of the core objectives here is to introduce content that can be consumed on the move,” reckons Matt Trickett of Ampere Analysis, a research firm. Fans can be thinking about their favourite show all day long, not just when they watch it on the sofa after work. In time, a saturation point will surely come. Can you imagine if even half of the 1,100 shows released in America in 2025 had an official podcast? But for now, they are thriving. Television audiences are primed for an earful. ■ For more on the latest books, films, TV shows, albums and controversies, sign up to Plot Twist, our weekly subscriber-only newsletter This article was downloaded by zlibrary from https://www.economist.com//culture/2026/05/14/companion-podcasts-are-the-latest- hit-format
Who wants to relax on holiday? Daredevil vacations are becoming thrillingly popular May 14th 2026 “A VACATION IS having nothing to do and all day to do it in,” said Robert Orben, an American comedy writer. Summer holidays have long involved reclining on a far-flung beach. But more tourists are forgoing sun loungers in search of adrenalin-packed pursuits, such as canyoning (scrambling down gorges) and abseiling (descending rock faces). “Darecations” are a top tourism trend of 2026, according to Pinterest, a social-media firm. Around 14% of international travellers are keen on such pursuits, suggests the Adventure Travel Trade Association (ATTA), a trade group. Adventure travel involves “wanting to get out of your comfort zone”, explains Heather Kelly of ATTA. Sometimes that means trying an extreme activity: SportsCover Direct, an insurance provider, claims that the number
of people buying travel insurance for sporting activities nearly tripled between 2023 and 2025. The fastest-growing endeavours include mountaineering, rafting, hiking and running events such as marathons. Other times darecations come with added comforts. “Soft adventures”, as industry folk call them, are on the rise. Such holidays can involve less strenuous activities—calm kayaking rather than white-water rafting—and luxury accommodation. On Airbnb bookings for nature and outdoor experiences, which include surfing and cycling tours, are outpacing all other activities. There is “a shift away from fly-and-flop holidays”, notes Lisa Marçais of Airbnb, and towards “immersive and memorable travel experiences”. As the wealthy amass even greater riches, they have more to splurge on tailored trips. Darecationers say they want to get off the beaten track; many see adventure travel as a status symbol. Rare events, such as seeing a volcano erupt at sunrise, make great stories to tell friends. Or better yet, show off on social media. Darecations offer the sort of enviable views instantly loved on Instagram. “The best things”, many captions attest, are found not on the beach but “on the other side of fear”. Holidays spent simply lounging about have never been such a flop. ■ For more on the latest books, films, TV shows, albums and controversies, sign up to Plot Twist, our weekly subscriber-only newsletter This article was downloaded by zlibrary from https://www.economist.com//culture/2026/05/14/who-wants-to-relax-on-holiday
The AI that transformed American warfare Maven not only identifies targets—it tells commanders how to attack them, too May 14th 2026 THE MAVEN Smart System is perhaps the most important weapon system you have never heard of. It has spotted Iranian missiles heading for Israel and rocket launchers in Yemen. It has detected migrants crossing America’s southern border and drug boats in the Caribbean. On one day in 2022 it found more than 260 potential targets for Ukraine. And Maven does not just sense such things: it can also co-ordinate the response. It fuses together different sorts of intelligence—photos, text, radio and electromagnetic pulses—and works out which plane, carrying which munitions, is closest to which target. With a single click by a human, Maven can turn data into ash. As one NATO official tells Katrina Manson, “This is
the Microsoft Windows of warfighting.” It may well become to armed forces what Microsoft is to office drones. In “Project Maven”, Ms Manson, a national-security journalist at Bloomberg, has written one of the most important books on war and technology in many years. It is a scintillating account of how Drew Cukor, a hard-driving marine, created a team of mavericks who put AI at the heart of America’s war machine—even though that team was often at war with itself and with the rest of the Pentagon. It is also a story of Silicon Valley’s shifting relationship with war and the Pentagon. Google walked out of Maven in 2018 after employee protests over the tech giant collaborating on lethal tools. Palantir later became the single most important firm in Maven’s development. It started out as a project harnessing AI to find objects in reams of drone footage, a job that previously consumed huge quantities of manpower. Early algorithms, tested during counter-terrorism operations in Somalia in 2017, were erratic. Algorithms would label clouds as flying school buses. The next year, in Afghanistan, the software identified trees as people and rocks as buildings. But it improved. On one occasion, just as American forces were about to launch a drone strike, an analyst spotted a shepherd walking into the field of view. It had taken him 40 seconds to notice the man; when they tested Maven on the same video feed, it took the AI less than a second to detect him. In 2019 Maven was used during the operation to kill Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the head of Islamic State, in Syria, and Qassem Suleimani, an Iranian general, by drone strike in 2020. When Joe Biden pulled American forces out of Kabul the next year, Maven would work out how many people were thronging the airfield during the mad scramble. However, it was Russia’s invasion of Ukraine that was the pivotal moment for Maven. The targeting tool was feeding what America euphemistically called “points of interest” to Ukraine on an industrial scale, at the cost of $1m per month in cloud-computing bills. “Sometimes it felt as though the
US was all but punching co-ordinates into the weapons systems themselves,” Ms Manson writes. AI is context-specific, the book makes startlingly clear. Models that had 70% success rates in Afghanistan dropped to 30% in the Philippines, where people walked in front of thick green jungle rather than dusty yellow ground. Similarly, the algorithms struggled to cope with Ukrainian snow and Russian tanks with their turrets blown off. Good data was crucial. Training a single algorithm might take 10,000 images, each one accurately labelled. In 2021-22 more than 1,500 algorithms were whittled down to just two dozen for use in Ukraine. When Maven was launched, Pentagon officials portrayed it as an intelligence tool, far from the messy and controversial work of targeting. Ms Manson’s book dispels this notion. From the start, Maven was intended to speed up America’s kill chain: the process of finding targets, deciding what to do and conducting an attack. One official at the National Geospatial- Intelligence Agency tells Ms Manson that large-language models have speeded up the targeting process five-fold, allowing America to identify and hit 5,000 targets per day. “Ultimately,” says General Chris Donahue, who pioneered Maven’s use in Ukraine and now serves as the commander of American land forces in Europe, “all this stuff will become automated.” That raises profound questions around human control of war. In a conflict between America and China or Russia, each side would face enormous pressure to strike quickly and decisively, before the other side could find targets and launch weapons. Even if people are overseeing the process, can they keep up, particularly if something goes wrong? Long after Maven was deployed in Ukraine, it was still producing ten incorrect detections for every square kilometre it assessed. Now, as well as operating on distant servers, the algorithms developed by Maven sit inside weapons. The book describes two little-known weapons intended to overwhelm and slow down Chinese forces in any war in the Pacific. “Goalkeeper” is a loitering munition, or suicide drone; “Whiplash” is an explosives-laden jet ski, whose early versions were smuggled into Ukraine by the CIA for testing. Each type could be sent to find and attack targets on its own.