1943.
You are Yakov, son of Stalin.
Your father is one of the most powerful men on earth.

You languish in a German prison camp.
The Nazis offer to exchange you for a captured German field marshal.
Dad says no.
You die a few months later.

Ouch.

Father’s Day this Sunday.

For some people: a tie, a card, a pub lunch.
For others…more complicated.

I wasn’t close to my dad. No prison camps, but he was old-fashioned in the “mostly found in a pub” sense.
Then, for a while, we actually lived in one.
You can imagine how that went.

No big fatherly chats. No kicking a ball around the park.
Plenty of silence (although lots of free crisps).

Which, I’ve realised, is probably why I overcorrect with my daughters.
(And still eat way too many crisps).

Psychologists call it “ghosts in the nursery" – the idea that our parents’ patterns, fears, habits, and emotional scripts follow us around.

Oedipus. Hamlet. Luke Skywalker. Macaulay Culkin.

Daddy issues travel well, until we notice them.
Then we get a choice.

Repeat the script, or rewrite it.

The rewriting is harder.

I chose it. Results pending…

💡 PRO TIP: If it comes up, keep it gentle. Try: "Is Father's Day a big thing in your family?" Gives them the space to say, "Yeah, we're doing a big lunch" or "Not really", without forcing them to unpack thirty years of therapy over coffee.

“Fatherhood is great because you can ruin someone from scratch."
(Jon Stewart, American comedian and host, 1962-present)

👇 Answer at the end

Turn headlines into talking points

Elon Musk just became the richest human in recorded history.

$1.3 trillion.
(WSJ has this visualiser – a trillion is not a ‘bit more’ than a billion...it's mind-boggling.)
Since he started his first company 31 years ago, that’s roughly $1330 a second.
Every…single…second….
That’s about $800,000 by the time you finish reading this newsletter.

Father of 14, by the way.
His own dad? Married his stepdaughter.
Generational trauma, but make it a rocket company.

Anyway, while Wall Street drools at one man becoming a money planet, a few quieter stories are actually worth your attention:

Oh, and somebody used a 5,000-year-old mummy to bake sourdough.

So yes, trillionaires are loud.

But the real future might be quieter: fewer cancers, repaired nerves, less disease, and possibly mummy toast, which probably tastes like Marmite.

💡 PRO TIP: Nobody can picture a trillion. Everybody can picture $1,330. Find the per-second or per-day, and people will actually listen.

💬 FOLLOW-UP: "If you could only fund one of those — anti-ageing, cancer prediction, or fixing genetic disease before birth — which one?"

⛔ DON’T SAY: “Science will fix everything.” It won’t. But occasionally, it will make a sandwich from a corpse.

104 matches. 48 teams. 39 days of football. Right now, streaming means logging into a cable account you don't have or paying for a subscription you'll cancel in August.

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Imagine having a trillion reasons people want to talk to you.

Tech bros, investors, randoms with a “quick idea” for life to Mars — everyone wants a piece of Musk.

I get a tiny taste after speaking events.
Once, I excused myself: “Sorry, just need the loo.”
Came out and the guy was still there, hovering like a Victorian ghost.

Some people don't take hints.
When that happens, they need instructions.

Level 1 — Polite, but unmissable:

Level 2 — Direct, if Level 1 fails:

Most people take the hint at Level 1.

The ones who don’t have already broken the social contract — so you’re not the rude one here.

They are.

💡 PRO TIP: Your time and energy are valuable. “I need to go because…” gives them something to grab. “I can only talk for two minutes” works better (works on chatty uncles, co-workers and kids, too).

⛔ DON’T SAY: “I’ll be right back.”
They’ll believe you. Then you’ve accidentally scheduled a sequel.

Stalin didn’t exactly win Father’s Day.

He didn’t technically commit filicide (killing your own child), but refusing to save your son from a prison camp is definitely kill-adjacent.

The ‘-cide’ suffix does a lot of dark work in English.

Matricide: mother.
Patricide: father.
Insecticide: destroying those relentless bugs.

Cheerful stuff.

So, quick quiz — what’s being killed?

⬇️ Answers at the end.

💡 PRO TIP: Timing matters. Don’t drop “patricide” into Father’s Day lunch.
(Even if you’re thinking it).

Meet Beni — a jumping, all-terrain $499 camera robot that auto-follows you everywhere, filming in 4K.

Cute? Absolutely
Useful? Probably.
Will it follow you into the toilet like a tiny wheeled barnacle?

Almost certainly.

A robot for people who thought GoPro needed more stalker energy.
(Guess we now need a ‘cide’ for cameraman? Lensicide?)

💬 FOLLOW UP: Useful sidekick or surveillance goblin?

Gene Hackman fakes terminal illness to wheedle his way back into his estranged family's lives. Cue chaos, and a hilarious stabbing.

💬 YOUR TURN: Who's the worst movie dad you can think of?

Regicide — a king or queen
Felicide — a cat
Tyrannicide — a tyrant, not a tiny-armed dinosaur
Linguicide — a language
Floricide — flowers or plants, not toothpaste

A) ⚽️ Fully in — I've already cleared my diary (20%)
B) 👀 Watching for the drama, not the football (14%)
C) 🍺 Only if there's a pub and a reason to shout (33%)
D) 😴 Wake me when it’s over (33%)

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