Orson Fry

Earlier this year, in episode #2273 of the Joe Rogan Experience, the world’s most successful podcaster started sounding off about fluoride, calling it a “neurotoxin” and citing “conclusive studies” linking high levels of fluoride in the water to lower IQs. In a clip that has been viewed more than 1.2 million times, Rogan expressed bafflement to his guest Adam Curry, the entrepreneur and media personality: “We know it’s bad for you in large doses, and yet there are fucking people out there with college degrees who read the New York Times who will get angry if you want to remove this neurotoxin from water because, ‘Look at all the strides its done in preventing tooth decay,’ and you just wanna say hey man fuck you, this is stupid.

It’s been almost 100 years since Arcady Fixon, a refugee from the Russian Revolution, opened the doors of Caviar Kaspia on Place de la Madeleine in Paris, and began beguiling his fellow exiles and the crème of Paris society with the exotic flavors of his homeland: shiny black caviar, served with blinis or potatoes, and ice-cold vodka. After being passed down through family hands, Caviar Kaspia is now owned by the charismatic entrepreneur Ramon Mac-Crohon, who has ensured that the place has lost nothing of its prerevolutionary charm: Nicolas II’s seal sits alongside antique porcelain in a display cabinet, and Nicolas Swertschkoff’s Troika, depicting a Russian horse-drawn sledge moving through snow, still hangs in the dining room.

Biohacking, one of the more bearable buzz words of recent times, refers to the practice of using science, technology and self-experimentation to improve the body’s function and performance. When I was recently invited to experience the Alpina Gstaad’s new three-day wellness program — designed to “biohack your ski trip for improved performance and mood” — I didn’t hesitate. Here was not only a chance to improve my disastrous skiing but also to restore my pitiful liver, which had taken a particularly heavy beating in the festive run up to 2025. What better place to kick off “Dry January” than a five-star spa tucked away in the Bernese Highlands?

What do the musicians Paul Weller and Daryl Hall, the gallerist Iwan Wirth, and the actor Gary Oldman have in common? A taste in tailors. I meet Tom Arena, who's just set up a regular pop-up atelier, in his suite-cum-studio on the Chelsea Hotel’s fourth floor. He has just finished a morning of fittings with “Young British Artist” Liam Gillick and the makeup queen Bobbi Brown. I’m here for my second suit from Arena and the sheer abundance of cloth and swatch books of the world’s finest yarns makes my head spin: Fox Brothers tweeds, Dormeuil cottons, Caccioppoli linens and silks, exquisite Venetian linings and trimmings.

Twice a year, an almost deathly silence falls on the Tuscan city of Siena. It is the moment just before the rope drops in the Piazza del Campo to signal the start of the Palio, the city’s ancient horse race and fiercest rivalry. Siena’s Palio is as mad as it is old. Ten horses and ten riders, representing ten of Siena’s seventeen contrade, or districts, race three laps of the city’s main square at breakneck speed before thousands of screaming spectators, in a tradition dating back to 1633 — the year Galileo was convicted of heresy for insisting that the Earth revolved around the Sun. Every summer, two palii are held: one on July 2, in honor of the Madonna di Provenzano, and one on August 16, the Palio dell’Assunta during the feast of the Assumption. What’s at stake?

"You have a big mountain to climb!" is not the sort of text you eagerly await from your girlfriend’s father. But Billy, a true Southern gent, meant no ambiguity. As dawn cracked the alarms sounded in our Airbnb and six of us bundled into the back of the Dodge. A cool mist hung in the valley as “Baba O’Riley (Teenage Wasteland)” started up on the radio and got the blood running. At 6:15 a.m. we entered the shadow of Emigrant Peak, which at 10,921 feet, commands Montana’s Paradise Valley. Emigrant owes its name to Thomas Curry, a pioneer who struck gold in a creek on the east side of the mountain in 1863.

The drive from Islamabad to Multan takes about eight hours. We passed through fields of citrus fruit and farmers tending weed-burning fires. Boys carried giant bunches of twigs over their heads or zipped by on old Honda 70s, balancing water tubs. All had early-Beatles haircuts and wore the shalwar kameez, the Punjabi suit of lightweight trousers and a tunic. Multanis, distinguished by their good looks and their own musical dialect, are called meethi churiyans by other Punjabis, meaning “sweet knives.” They are charming and generous, serving up piles of warm chapati and mutton chops, before stinging you with a hefty bill.

I’m two miles outside Wanship, Utah, at a remarkable new hotel called The Lodge at Blue Sky. I’ve just met my host in the bar, a bear of a man called John Tuffman, or ‘Tuff’, as I’m told to call him by his assistant. Owing to my delayed flight, we’re running a little behind schedule. ‘Down the hatch’, he says, nodding to my beer while he repositions his Stetson. We climb into a car and are driven up to the barn. A few weeks ago, I received an email which I had every right to believe was a scam or an elaborate catfishing attempt. It was an invitation from an events company in San Francisco to appear as the World Perudo Champion at an executive retreat in Utah. At 6 p.m.