In the age of ‘rizz’ and AI slop, Wodcast wants us to take words seriously
When was the last time you opened a dictionary and looked up the meaning of a word?
Theatre & Literature
Who is Pepper Slit? SNL alum Chloe Troast unpacks her new alter ego
Pepper Slit doesn’t care if you’re in the mood for egg cream.
Sachiko Nakahara on building gods of death from ink, paper and dirt for Death Note the Musical
The manga and anime series Death Note has been turned into clothing many times.
The Barbican’s Death Note knows exactly how to play God
Write a name, picture the face, and forty seconds later they are dead.
What if Bluebeard passed the Bechdel test? (And other ways we retell our oldest stories)
It’s 2026 and the world is obsessed with a 2,700-year-old story.
Why Simon Wroe’s Ghost Month is the ultimate modern London novel
Every September, the spirits of the dead return before vanishing four weeks later in a puff of green ash.
Inside the trans writing school disrupting London publishing
Across sixteen weeks between April and July, a group of trans writers have met in venues as diverse as the…
Not another Holocaust novel: Rebecca Birrell on art, survival, and Venus, Vanishing
Rebecca Birrell walks into the café in canary yellow and chartreuse.
Why women are swapping porn for romantasy and fairy smut
Romantasy has exploded at precisely the moment the internet has made sexual curiosity feel complicated.
Weird books are back: Cold’s guide to the 2026 Booker Prize longlist
“We’re due a return of weird literature”: 13 works chosen from 163 titles, and it seems the prophecy has come…
Ann Scott’s Lesbian Cult Novel, ‘Superstars’, is Finally Available in English
Diaristic, hedonistic, full of sex, drugs and techno music: a group of queer women chasing fame, and love, on the…
Was Leonardo da Vinci Queer? Inside the History That Inspired Phil Melanson’s ‘Florenzer’
In April 1476 a young artist was arrested by Florence’s vice squad, the scarily-named Office of the Night, on charges…
