← The Monocle Daily
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You're listening to the Monocle Daily, first broadcast on 24 July 2026 on Monaco Radio. The UK's new Prime Minister names his favourite album. You'll never guess which city the band who made it come from. Will 50,000 satellite mirrors incinerate human civilization? And why? We're about to find out. And the week the world Turned Spanish. I'm Andrew Muller. The Monocle Daily. Start.
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Foreign.
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A
Welcome to the Monocle Daily. Coming to you from our studios here at Midori House in London. I'm Andrew Muller. Rob Bound will be here for the weekly daily quiz. We'll find out more about the prospect of permanent daylight beamed from space. And we'll have our weekly wrap up of what we've learned. Stay tuned. All that and more coming up right here on the Monocle Daily. You're listening to the Monaco Chronicle Daily. I'm Andrew Muller. It is Friday. Wahoo. And so, as is customary, it is time for the daily weekly quiz. Or the weekly daily quiz, whichever of those two it is, I should write it down. I can never remember. And I am joined as usual, by my fellow contributing editor, that is holder of meaningless vanity ego stroking title, Rob Bound.
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I've got my patent leather shoes on. I'm ready to hear the theme tune. Andrew.
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Okay,
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C
You.
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I always think it's about to turn into some sort of Robbie Williams song. It has. It has rock, DJ vibes.
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C
It does actually, somewhat. I. I believe you've actually got a songwriting credit on that. You sort of play third triangle like, like Andrew Oldham of yore. You. So the. You're gonna, you're gonna take. I know, Take it to the bank.
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A
I'm absolutely coining it on the triangle. So, Rob, it is once again time for the quiz. And for listeners who may be unfamiliar with the format, we ask each other three questions in turn, at the end of which I win. Except last week where it was an honourable draw.
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C
It was a draw. You've been trouncing me this series, so I was pleased to kind of, I don't know, pull myself out of the quicksand last week somewhat.
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A
Let's assume you've won the toss. Do you want to go first? Answer or question? Up to you.
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C
Shall I question first?
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Go ahead.
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Okay. Question one. Andrew Benito Antonio Martinez Ocasio rounded off a pretty successful tour this week. Who is he? Is he A, the real name of a big global pop star who performs under a stage name? B, a triple Michelin starred Mexican chef who's been taking his taco verse, Jerra Mundial to some of the world's fanciest kitchens. C the well traveled Argentinian football fan who's been on a hearts and minds persuading tour of bars and venues across the three host nations of the just finished World cup to say sorry for Argentina, cynical style of play. Or D A distant cousin of the US politician Alexandria Ocasio Cortez, who, and he's written a book about growing up with her in an attempt to boost her election chances and his own coffers. Which of those is Benito Antonio Martinez
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Ocasio I'm ruling out C. Because the idea of an Argentinian football fan apologizing for everything obviously completely inadmissible. Does AOC have a grifting distant relative who is trying to make money off a extremely distant association? Given that they don't actually share a surname, that strikes me it's sort of Trump territory. It is. It's a bit. I mean, I do have, now that I think of cousins with whom I don't share a surname, but I'm saying no. I'm saying no to that. That leaves me with a global superstar and a Mexican chef. Yes, the chef on tour with his tortillas. Sounds like a Rob Boundism.
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C
The taco version is a Rob Boundism
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if ever I heard one. So I'm saying A. If it's any consolation, and it is doubtless none, I have literally no idea who it is.
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C
That makes it even worse. I wish you knew who he was.
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A
Is it Bad Bunny?
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C
It is Bad Bunny. It's Bad Bunny. Bad Bunny. And he's just finished an eight month tour world tour taking in 22 cities on four continents. Which continent didn't he play in?
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Antarctica.
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The United States of America. Because he didn't want his fans to get abducted by ice. Anyway, here is Bad Bunny performing at the halftime show, the Super Bowl.
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I do remember that. And I. I will say why I. It is unlikely I would ever volunteer my own time to spend much of it listening to Bad Bunny's works. Not really my kind of thing. And so forth. I thought that halftime. Fantastic. And it was one of those things that for the curious who don't know much about Puerto Rico, as indeed I don't, if you then read through some of the commentary on the halftime show and learned what all the references were to, it was. It was like a instant history of an entire country.
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C
Me too. This is brilliantly what I thought. I'm not. He's not really my cup of tea, but I thought it was amazing.
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A
Well, I start with A musical question as well, because, Rob, as you may have read, the United Kingdom has a new Prime Minister and a few weeks back, Andy Burnham for it is. He was challenged by process of elimination to name his favorite album. Among the also rans were the Queen Is Dead by the Smiths, definitely. Maybe by Oasis, Unknown Pleasures by Joy Division, Power Corruption and Lies by New Order. Does anyone know if he has any connection to Manchester? He's very quiet on that front. And Rum Sodomy and the Lash by the Pogues by way of a non Mancunian, non northern outlier. But what was the winner? Was it A, the Stone Roses? Buy the Stone Roses. Was it B, Singles Going Steady by Buzzcocks? Was it C, this Nation's Saving Grace by the Fall? Or was it D, Beer and Sex and Chips and Gravy by the Maclads?
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C
Well, I would have chosen the New Order one if I had to guess from the. I thought the former were more likely than the latter because the latter contained three quite abstruse records by most by the every man's taste. The only one that isn't is the Stone Roses record. I think it would. Buzzcock's absolutely brilliant. I don't quite. I can't quite see Burnham rocking out to that at Cambridge University. I. The fall are slightly too mad and left field and, I don't know, too fibrous. They're gonna stick in it. The voters crawl, I would have thought. And who's the other one? The man clads.
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The Mac lads from Macclesfield rather than Manchester.
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I think.
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Yeah, I think it would be. I'm gonna go for the Stone Roses. I think it's a good. The white bread choice. I think it suits Andy Burnham. Lovely question, Andrew. Thank you. Are you ready for question two?
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I've never been more ready.
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Okay. Not for the first time. USAI giants Anthropic and OpenAI were recently challenged by a nifty, nimble and cheap new model from a Chinese firm. In this case, Moonshot. AI. This new upstart model shares its name with a Formula One driver. Is it called A, Max, B, Oscar, C, Kimmy, or D Lando?
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I'm. I'm going to nix Max. And Max is partly because I'm sure there must be some sort of AI thing already called Max, partly because that's one of the more obvious, obvious European names. Oscar. I'm. I'm binning for the same reason. So that brings us down to Kimmy and Lando.
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Kimmy Orlando. Yeah.
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D
If you're.
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If your reasoning is correct, yeah, they all could be either. Right? They could all be made up names, they could all be AI names. They could all be make of Hoover. Right.
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They could be the Lando Hoover. I'm saying Lando. Was I. It was I even on the dartboard.
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Was it? You are on the dartboard. It was Kimmy. Full name. Moonshot's AI that has been challenging models from Anthropic and OpenAI this week. Its full name is Kimik 3. It's an open weight AI Andrew, which I won't need to tell you, means it can be plugged into a company's tech stack easier than some of the larger models and for less money. And it is helping moonshot AI towards a $50 billion valuation on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange. It's Kimi K3, the fastest AI in the East.
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Do we know if it is actually named in honor of any Formula One driver in particular?
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I don't know. I mean Kimi. I mean Kimi. The current Kimi Antonelli was presumably named after Kimi Raikkonen. If he'd come into Formula one two seasons earlier, he'd been racing against the man he was named for. Which shows you the rate of knots at which these people are chucked into a sport. Right. Those aren't bananas.
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Yeah. On that terrifying thought, let's move on to my second question.
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Okay, which is this?
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The burgers of the Austrian village of Braunau am Inn.
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I don't like my burgers without an
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H. Have recently refurbished and repurposed the building at Salzburger Vorstatt 15 in the hope of further dissociating it from the child born there in 1889. And before you leap towards your buzzer, yes, it was obviously Adolf Hitler. That is not the question. It is hoped that the building's new designation will deter neo Nazi weirdos from visiting. So what is the building going to be? Will it be A, a library, B, a discotheque, C, a police station, or D, a vegan restaurant?
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To do a small amount of reasoning. I love the idea that it might be a library. The head of the party that burnt books, Fahrenheit 451, all that kind of stuff. It would be wonderful if it was a library. Libraries also can be stocked with the worst type of books. But we are benign. We are benign towards libraries, aren't we?
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Yep.
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I'd love it to be a disco. As in terms of Andrew. Shall I see Dan Hitler's at 9. 9pm? Who are you bringing with you?
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Yep, police station.
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Police station would be slightly too Slightly too official and officious, possibly. And a vegan restaurant. We know Hitler was a vegetarian and we might think that vegans possibly occasionally might have a little bit of a heavy handed attitude towards things. I'm going to go with a. It's a library.
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It is in fact going to be a police station.
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Okay. Okay.
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If. If you need them to come out, you dial 999. I worked on that. There has been. Rob, There has been a certain amount of harumphing in the Village about associations with the authority of the state and the obvious. But I. I think their reasoning is that if people are determined to turn up in brunau am in making jackasses of themselves, they are less likely perhaps to do it in front of the cop shop.
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Yeah.
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So where are we now? Is it one each one all? So in which case, hit me with your third and final okay.
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Last week the emo band My Chemical Romance sold out the 90,000 capacity Wembley Stadium for three successive nights to celebrate the 20th anniversary of their album the Black Parade. And presumably the fact that the band that broke up in 2013 can be so commercially viable in this Gen Z era of feels. Andrew, which one of the following is not a song title from that album? A Dead exclamation mark. B Cancer C the C, the end or D why? Question mark.
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I was never a big. Can I shock you, Rob, my Chemical Romance fan.
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On the grounds we're leaning into the sort of thing they might write.
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Yeah. On the grounds that I am not a mascara smeared 15 year old who thinks everything's just not fair.
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But when people write in for a signed photo, that's the one you send out, I think that's crass and wrong of you to be no hurrying favour with the younger generation.
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So I am going to have to reason my way to this. The first one was dead, exclamation mark.
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Or as I like to call it, dead.
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See, that would be genuinely funny. And I'm not sure that's their thing. A song called Cancer might be a bit on the nose even for your mascara smeared emo group. The End, of course, is a song by the Doors, one of the three or four worst bands of all time.
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Why one of these days I'm gonna actually write this down. Every time you say that and it's true, we're gonna run through it here.
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It is absolutely true. They're certainly one of the three or four worst bands of all time.
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Why?
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I think it might be why. Why being the sort of thing I can imagine one of Their fans being told by their parents when they've been told they can't go to school dressed like that, etc.
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Yes, etc.
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I'm assuming it's Y pronounced why?
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Yeah, exactly. It's Y is the one that I made up. Do you want to hear. Do you want to hear a bit of dead?
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Yeah.
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Okay.
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And if your heart stops beating, I'll be here one day. When did you get what you deserve? The ending of your life. That's enough of that.
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Sounds a lot more Green Day ish than I imagine it does.
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It's actually quite, quite upbeat.
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Not too bad, is it? A bit more like the Offspring and less like. Yeah, okay.
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I don't know how representative of the rest of the album that is and frankly may never find out, who knows? But that gives me. I can't lose from here.
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Okay.
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It's 2:1 to you, so that's good. So the final question for you to get on par, Rob, is to the voluble and altogether understandable unhappiness of many of their colleagues. What are more and more Japanese companies encouraging men to do at work in order to maintain a relaxed demeanor during the summer months? Is it A, kendo, B, wear shorts, C, wear T shirts, or D, wear sandals?
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I feel like I've read this somewhere. I'm gonna opt out of kendo. I don't think that's very relaxing unless you kind of feel like it's a stress busting. That was my thing. Yeah, yeah. But I think the. I think. I think the. The outfit is. Is stress inducing sandals.
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I can't imagine.
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The Japanese love their. Obviously, you know, their smartness. They love their black footwear, their polished footwear, both sexes. So I don't think it's that. I think I'm going with. It's tough to wear a jacket over shorts. I'm going with T shirts. It's shorts, isn't it?
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It's shorts.
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I knew it somewhere.
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It is shorts. Tokyo's governor Yuriko Koiki introduced what she calls Tokyo cool biz, who sound like they might have opened for My Chemical Romance, encouraging summer attire at work. But not everyone is happy about this, especially female colleagues who are often still expected to wear tight and have also begun complaining of sunnihara, which is discomfort witnessing colleagues leg hair.
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Well, that's another one to write down, isn't it?
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Exactly where are you on this, Rob?
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Because I know sunnihara.
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No, there has been discourse about this on Monocle Radio about the propriety of men wearing shorts in the office. As you will be aware. Rob, who I wish to assure listeners is decently trousered. We do have colleagues.
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Yeah.
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Who will insist on turning up wearing
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shorts, I think, when it's extremely hot, like when we're in our 35s. I think I came in in a pair of. Pair of shorts, but I generally would argue against it.
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Quite right too, because I don't like
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to put the fear of Sonny Hammer into people.
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We're not monsters. Rob Bound. Thank you for joining us.
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Thank you.
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This is the Daily on Monocle Radio. Now, since the beginning of time, as someone once said, man has yearned to destroy the sun. A variation on that dream may be approaching fruition. The United States, which seems increasingly to have replaced its national motto of E Pluribus unum with sure, why not? What could possibly go wrong? Has approved the launch of a satellite mirror, the purpose of which is to direct sunlight. It is called Earendil 1, after the J.R.R. tolkien character nerds. And it is the work of Californian startup Reflectorbital, which hopes to put 50,000 such craft into orbit by 2035. The idea is to provide constant sunlight to solar power panels and perhaps facilitate construction projects and rescue operations. Among those aghast are astronomers and enjoyers of a decent night's sleep. Sleeps. Sleep. I'm joined with more by Tyra Shubart, journalist and fellow of the Royal Astronomical Society. Tira, welcome back to the Daily. First of all, before, before we get into how insane this may or may not be, do we understand basically how this is going to work?
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E
Yes, I can tell you. This is going to be launched later this year, the first of reflect orbits reflecting orbital satellites and it will go up into low Earth orbit. That means it'll be placed somewhere around the Earth, somewhere between 160km and 2,000km above the planet, and it will unfurl its into a size of about 60ft, that's about 18 meters. And it will be going pole to pole in geosynchronous orbit with the sun. That means it will go over the same parts of the Earth at the same time every day and it will be able to be directed down to, as you were saying and as they say, in their perspective, to help search and rescue operations and also to light a street so that they're safe from crime and to make crops grow faster and stronger. I'm quoting from their website.
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This is presumably not a cheap or easy thing to do. I mean, there is clearly money and considerable expertise has gone into this. So why do they think this is
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worth Doing well, they say that it, they are pushing it as more clean tech that will help phase out fossil fuel on Earth by reflecting the sun. And it will reflect at the power of this light will be, they say, four times the power of bright full moonlight. But whether or not, I mean, if we look at what's happening right now with global warming and crops are kind of withering and a bit too dry, do we really want them? Will more light make them stronger and grow faster? I don't know, but this is what they claim. But there's many arguments against this.
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Well, let's get into a few of those because as I said in the introduction, among those very much unimpressed by this are astronomers. And I don't think you need to be too bright to be able to figure out why. But aren't astronomers basically unhappy about anything that gets launched into space and pretty much any street light that gets switched on on Earth because all of this makes their job more difficult.
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E
Light pollution is a big problem both on Earth and in space. But in space you have these mega constellations. You have all of the tens of thousands of starlinks. You have the oneweb mega constellations. These are all communications satellites. Amazon is about to launch mega constellations and the Chinese, who are launching a lot are going to be launching two sets of mega constellations so appear sometimes in a sort of string. And astronomers are furious at this because we're at a point when we can grow, that we can build these incredibly powerful and fantastic telescopes that look up into space. And yet what we're catching if you look at some of the photos, is these mega constellations. However, they are starting to do something to help the light pollution that they cause. They're putting visors on their constellations and so that the satellites don't reflect as much and they're painting the little sat cubes, satellite cubes, with non reflective paint.
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Are there other potential hazards possibly attached to this? Because listeners I'm sure by now will be thinking that this reminds them of possibly more than one overcooked James Bond or adjacent film they might have seen in which some or other evil genius launches some sort of power source into orbit and dominates the world therewith.
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E
Ah, you're bringing back memories of Moonraker.
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That's the one.
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Moonraker, which created one of the arch villains, created something that swallowed up a bad satellite, swallowed up a good satellite. Well, I think, actually, I think some of the Bond fans would wish that Moonraker's bad satellite would come along and eat some of these up. But there's two more big problems. There's. Besides the, besides the light pollution. For astronomers, there's light pollution on Earth. When these satellites reflect down on Earth, as they claim they're going to do, it's going to create a pattern that upsets insect life. Now, insect life is already diminishing at a very rapid speed on the planet. We know about that. So that's one big problem and another one is polluting Earth's atmosphere. Now you grew up in Australia and I'm sure you remember the problem with the ozone lay. Now the more things that are in space, things in space, things that go up, come down and especially if they're in low Earth orbit and when they come down, they burn up and they create heavy metals. They burn off with heavy metals that damage the ozone layer. And the ozone layer is what protects us from the harmful UV rays. And you must have grown up with some of the warnings about ozone layer, holes of ozone layer. I think there was a big one over Australia, wasn't there?
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A
There was. This was a recurring them, yes. But is there a wider point we should perhaps be taking away from this about what is still the Wild west aspect of space? Because it does seem weird that a private concern can just decide, yeah, we're going to launch 50,000 things into orbit.
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E
That's a really good point because there isn't really any international space law. There's national regulations. For example, this Orbital Reflect Orbital has gotten their permission from the American fcc, the Federal Communications Commission that allows them, that says yes, you have a safe rocket and yes, there's not going to be any horrible things that fall on American citizens. But there's no coordination with the other big space countries. There are several dozen that launch satellites regularly. The Chinese are big launchers of satellites. The European Space Agency is another one. Russia to a certain extent. So there's really no coordination between the different space powers in the world. And this is a big problem. There's no real effective space law.
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A
So do we know how soon or otherwise we will find out if this thing is going to work or perhaps be the beginning of the end of human civilization as we know it?
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E
Well, I think there's other candidates that may speed on the end of civilization or they're more worrying. ReflectOrbit is a commercial company and they are a startup and they have been pulling together seed money for the last couple of years. They're very fairly young and unless they has a commercial successfully commercial successful commercial aspect, are they going to get investors? I don't know, I mean, do we actually need more sunlight? I say having having cycled through the late afternoon sun, which was pretty warm today.
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A
Tira Shubh, thank you for joining us. You're listening to the Monocle Daily. I'm Andrew Muller. And finally, on today's show, our regular attempt to assess how much the wiser we are when measured against seven days ago. We learned this week that we are all, with the exception of our Argentinian listeners, who may prefer to skip the opening stanzas of this week's monologue. Spanish. We learned this from the obligation to pick a side in last Sunday's World cup final between a Spanish team who, while no great giddy joy to watch, could probably be presented to mothers and maiden aunts without fear of upset, and an Argentinian one who appeared not to have apprehended that football hooligans are supposed to be in the stands rather than
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on the pitch as they celebrate. There is a little bit of afters in the middle of the pitch. There are substitutes fighting. Paredes is laying punches in the middle of the pitch. It's seriously kicking off, though.
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We had learned earlier in the tournament that even after winning a semi final final, Argentina was still able to find a way to present as sore losers.
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But this is what has really riled many England fans.
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A banner unfurled by the Argentinian players saying the Falkland Islands or the Malvinas were theirs. Still, give or take the black writing, the flag was the same colour as the one they eventually hoisted over Port Stanley back in 1982. Hey, they lowered the tone first, am I right? Anyway, we learned that Spain were world champions. Alright, settle down. But we learned that even in this, their moment of triumph, Spain were not going to get the spotlight entirely to themselves. The FIFA World Cup Final in New Jersey this morning, when he presented the trophy to Spain, but then refused to get out of the picture until the FIFA boss finally almost had to manhandle him out of the shot. Using your skill and judgment. Guess to whom the bemused newscaster is referring.
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Oh, no.
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Oh yes. We learned, however, that the presidential interloping was nothing an amount of judicious photoshopping could not fix.
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FIFA took it upon themselves to do some cropping. Now, thankfully or unfortunately, from the President's point of view, where he was standing, it was pretty easy to kind of crop him out.
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And anyway, we sort of incline towards a sympathetic view of the President's behaviour as all things considered, it must have been nice for him to get some idea of what it feels like to have undertaken an interminable attritional struggle against an unchivalrous opponent and emerged victorious because. We learned that the other thing was still going obdurately non well.
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B
And that's with this skirmish we have going on. I call it a skirmish. This is with this skirmish we have with the Islamic Republic of Iran. And I call it that because, let me tell you, they're getting hit so hard and they want to make a deal.
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We learned that, yes, after five months and dozens of claims of victory and or an imminent deal, they want to make a deal.
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And they want to make a deal so badly. They want to make a deal so badly. I do see a deal in Iran. It's looking very good that we're going to make a deal. This process should go very quickly. We're going to end that war very quickly.
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Both victory and a deal remained non imminent while the human and financial cost to the United States mounted. Do you have a new estimate about what the war has cost us so far in this, the fifth month of the first year of this war in Iran, Senator? The estimate we have as of today is 37.5 billion. But we learned that grand scheme of things, this was all no big deal, what ifs.
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G
The President has posted a lot, as he always does, but one post has caught a lot of people's attention where he kind of goes through the numbers of dead service members. Afghanistan war, 20 years, 2,000 dead, Iraq war, nine years, 4,600 dead. So on he ends it with Iran military conflict, 4 months, 18 dead.
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And fair enough. But we learned when we ran some numbers ourselves, and not wishing to put any kind of downer on anybody's Friday, that the first four months of the US intervention in Afghanistan cost 21 troops. So maybe let's come back to this in 19 years and eight months early in the first term of president Baron Trump and see how we're tracking because we learned that this might yet be with us for a while.
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You will not answer whether your statement made on the 14th day of the war that Iran's military had been, quote, destroyed and made combat ineffective was a truthful statement to the American people as you sit here and ask for 10
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civilians more for the senators time has had a historic and effective military campaign against the largest state sponsor of terrorists. More concerningly, we learned that the United States was menaced by enemies within as well as without, specifically these guys. We learned further of the dastardly plans hatched by America's communists in whichever phone booth they currently convene their Annual National People's Congress, and of the disaster that awaits America once the scarlet standard is raised over the White House. The statue in the Lincoln Memorial is replaced with one of Lenin, and the reflecting pool in front of it runs red with the blood of landlords and bureaucrats. Assuming the Bolsheviks can get it resurfaced.
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It's squalor, it's poverty, it's death, it's destruction.
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Sounds bad, but there's worse.
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B
You know, the Communists want to take it down. They try taking Mount Rushmore down. They want to blow it up. They want to take it down. They shouldn't be up there.
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We learned, yes, that America's communists. And a big hello to Stan, Ian and Amelia, if you're tuning in.
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B
Hello.
- [31:56]
A
We're plotting to blow up Mount Rushmore, which you would think President Trump would be heartily in favor of, as it can be readily imagined that he would have some firm views on the refurbishment, views which indeed he has previously adumbrated.
- [32:11]
D
Should Donald Trump's face be carved onto one of America's most famous monuments? He seems to think so. Donald Trump himself has shared AI images of his face on Mount Rushmore. Some of his supporters have called for it, too. There is even a bill in front of Congress directing the National Park Service to study whether he could be added.
- [32:29]
A
So we learned basically that if some spectacular mishap was to befall Mount Rushmore in the near future, and heaven forefend, obviously, the feds might only need to amble a few blocks west from their headquarters on Pennsylvania avenue in Washington, D.C. to find at least one plausible suspect. But you got to know, know when to hold up, know when to fold up. We learned that even amid geopolitical chaos abroad and general brouhaha at home, one enterprising American had found a way to profitably leverage the peculiarities of the present situation. And indeed, administration sources telling us that
- [33:13]
G
Trump's longtime teleprompter operator is accused of using inside knowledge to cash in on prediction markets, allegedly making more than $100,000 by betting on what the President would or would not say.
- [33:25]
A
Though we learned, of course, that this White House would simply not tolerate this calibre of bare faced grift from anyone holding a position of public trust.
- [33:36]
D
The White House has extremely strict ethical
- [33:39]
G
guidelines with respect to issues like this.
- [33:42]
A
How is the office irony meter holding up just now? However, here at the weekly what We Learn news review on Monocle Radio, we hold ourselves clearly to a lower moral standard than Donald Trump. And so we're hanging this out there if any listeners know of a prediction market which will offer odds on words likely to appear in next week's what We Learned news review on Monocle Radio. Get in touch. We've got an idea. And we'll cut you in for 20%. And that is all for this edition of the Monocle Daily. Thanks to our guests today, Rob Bound and Tira Shubart. Today's show was produced by Christy o' Grady and researched by Nkayle Martin. Our sound engineer was Steph Chungu. Amandra Muller here in London. The Daily is back at the same time on Monday. Thanks for listening and have a great weekend.
- [34:41]
B
It.