It’s likely you already know who Alex Honnold is. In January, he climbed up a skyscraper without any safety ropes. Maybe you were one of the six million people who saw it live on Netflix.

It was, without a doubt, very impressive. I saw Free Solo on the big screen in 2018 and consumed all the related climbing films I could find. (If you want some recommendations, check out The Dawn Wall and Valley Uprising).

But was I the only one looking around for the “making of” documentary? Where was the behind-the-scenes stuff?

To me, the bookends of this story weren’t Alex Honnold in a van at the foot of Taipei 101 and him at the top taking a selfie. There was much more to it. I wanted to know:

How did they get all the cameras set up?

What was the security like?

What happened with the crew and all the equipment when the climb was postponed 24 hours?

What did he have for breakfast?

How did he sleep the night before?

Does he always wear the same shoes?

How much powder is in the chalk bag?

Were people in the building told to please keep the noise down and not bang on the windows?

Did he go down the normal lift afterwards?

Did he celebrate or just have a nap?

All these details spell out not just the shiny headline achievement but the small stuff. You can tap open your social media or news app of choice and see people celebrating some sort of great achievement. That stuff’s everywhere, but the details and the process – the authentic little did-you-knows – that’s still valuable.

Likewise, the Winter Olympics. Yes, there were wins and records and fist-pumping, but I’ve already forgotten who got which medal. What I really remember – and the stuff I talked to people about at the time – are the little details and human stories sprinkled between the sport. There was a proposal, a confession of regret, a car park camper van and two kids in a team photo. There was a rapper, a president and a party planned for Vegas. And did you know all the curling stones are made with rock from one teeny uninhabited Scottish island?

Why are these details what we look for and what sticks? They’re not the wins or even the elements that made the team or person win – they’re just there, the oddly human thing floating around the big headline. What makes them the shiny trinkets we gather like a magpie?

First, we remember scenes better than summaries.

When we remember something visual, we store two things: the image and the words that describe it. These bits of information are stored in two separate but connected systems, so they’re more likely to be recalled. Psychologist Allan Pavio called it “dual coding” back in 1968, and it’s also known as the “picture superiority effect”.

Winning a medal is an idea, but an extra detail like a tour of freestyle skier Kirsty Muir’s campervan (that she likes to heat to 24 degrees apparently) is a scene. When something comes with colour, texture and movement, our brains encode it more richly than something abstract. It has more hooks to hang onto.

Second, emotion strengthens memory.

When a piece of information carries feeling – joy, regret, grief – it’s also more deeply embedded in our memories, triggering a more “integrated state” in the brain.

Ad-makers have, of course, been fine-tuning this for years, but in a time where we’re all wading through AI-generated stories and information, leaning into human emotions doesn’t just add a veneer of “nice,” it makes the story memorable.

Third, novelty gets prioritised.

Our brains are prediction machines that run on patterns based on what we’ve experienced thousands of times before. When something slightly unexpected appears – like how curling stones are extracted from a craggy Scottish island – it creates a small jolt of surprise and dopamine.

Neuroscientists call it reward prediction error. In customer experience jargon, it’s “surprise and delight.”

Fourth, we’re wired to share these details.

In a time before Netflix, human survival depended on exchanging information within small groups: who did what, where something happened and what unusual thing occurred. Gossip built alliances and reinforced belonging.

The neural systems that light up around tribal bonding still respond when we trade “did you know…” facts. Sharing a specific, slightly intimate detail activates reward pathways in the brain and we feel connected and knowledgeable. It makes us part of the story.

“Who won?” ends a conversation, but “Did you know…?” starts one. For example, did you know that Alex Honnold ate eight chocolate dumplings at Din Tai Fung in Taipei 101 the night before the climb? You’re welcome.

So, when you tell a story – whether gossiping to a friend, livestreaming a skyscraper climb or constructing a narrative at a B2B SaaS company – do include the unexpected and emotional details. It’s what will get your story remembered and shared. And it’s the stuff that AI can’t do better than you.

The call is coming from inside the house.

The house is yours. It’s a four-story London townhouse complete with pool, sauna and wine cellar. The caller is your nanny/manny/son’s girlfriend. They’re not like you. They’re from the wrong side of the tracks.

They’re calling to say they see your lavish lifestyle: the yacht, the Spanish villa, the sleek car crunching up the gravel driveway; they see it all, and they’re angry. They’re livid. They’ve been plotting for years, figuring out how to worm their way into your life, to become welcomed, trusted, one of the family. Then they’re going to unleash their devilish plan that involves destroying your career and dismantling all your fineries before finally killing some combination of you, the dog and your husband.

But why?

Why are they so angry, and why is this being played out in a recent cluster of wildly popular class-divide-revenge TV shows? Just look around [contains spoilers]:

Amazon Prime’s The Girlfriend is a classic tale of boy meets girl, except the boy’s wealthy gallery owner mother (Robin Wright) discovers that her son’s girlfriend – whose parents are a butcher and builder – once put offal in her ex-boyfriend’s wedding cake and really isn’t suitable marriage material at all. The mother is eventually drowned for her trouble.

The Girlfriend: Don’t cry over spilled Margaux

That series was swiftly followed on the same platform by Malice, which has a similar cast of characters (right down to the Black female best friend), plus Jack Whitehall as the mega-rich family’s tutor-slash-psycho-killer. Jack jumps the class divide in pursuit of his prey and this time it’s the venture capitalist head of the household, played by David Duchovny, who meets a sticky end.

Then there’s All Her Fault. Marissa and Peter Irvine are, respectively, a wealth manager and a commodities trader. Cue lots of glossy drone shots of downtown Chicago skyscrapers and suburban gated communities. When their son goes missing, it’s the nanny who dunnit.

And spare a thought for Julianne Moore’s “socialite and raptor conservationist” in Netflix’s dark comedy Sirens, who floats about breathlessly for five episodes but is ultimately usurped by her social-climbing PA.

How did we get here? Why are we all binging these shows?

Perhaps the recent spate of series was kick-started by 2023’s Saltburn. Despite receiving mixed reviews, it became one of the most talked-about films of 2024. A collection of viral scenes and a hit soundtrack helped, but the template of infiltrating and destroying the uber-wealthy – this time, the British landed gentry – was established as a gleefully winning formula.

Whether we’re following class warriors Barry Keoghan’s Oliver in Saltburn or Olivia Cooke’s Cherry in The Girlfriend, we become voyeurs not just of the lifestyles of the rich and the famous but – like rubberneckers on the road – of their slow and painful demise. This is no longer the wealth porn of Succession and White Lotus – we’re now in eat the rich territory and it’s the have-nots holding the knife and fork.

Saltburn: Pleased to eat - I mean meet - you

Is it because the rich folk deserve it and we want to see the tables turned? Well sure, sometimes they’re not nice people and justice is served.

But are so many of these shows also being made now because studio heads are tapping into a sense of injustice and impotence in These Tough Economic Times™? The wealth gap has grown steadily wider. In 2010, the total wealth held by the US’s richest 1% was $17 trillion. Fast forward to 2025 and – largely thanks to a rise in the value of their property and shares – that had ballooned to almost $55 trillion. If we put this in individual terms, it’s an increase of $26 million per household. That buys a couple of holiday villas, a small yacht and leaves you with change for a handful of staff.

For most of the people streaming these shows, things also changed in those 15 years. The bottom 50% of US households saw their collective wealth grow significantly from $0.3 to $4.35 trillion. But that’s only an increase of $57,000 per household. Given high levels of debt, low asset ownership, and the soaring costs of everything from healthcare to food to fuel, it amounts to not much more than the cost of a Prime or Netflix subscription.

So the average viewer can never attain the megayachts and mansions, but those who already have them have seen their wealth grow effortlessly. At the same time, people in the 50% bucket are recoiling at the cost of eggs, watering down baby formula and putting off dental, home and car repairs they can’t afford.

It shouldn’t be a surprise that so many people are watching these shows from under their heated blankets (which are considerably cheaper than turning the heating on). We can enjoy the glossy lifestyles from our sofas, and then we can enjoy watching them be destroyed piece by piece, taken down by a hero who – psychotic and murderous tendencies aside – is just so identifiable.

For people on the wrong side of the widening wealth gap, the anger is understandable. But the effect of these shows isn't to incite rebellion but contain it, offering a safe, shiny, fictional release for rage that has nowhere else to go. This catharsis asks nothing of us once the screen goes dark.

Alex Honnold, the Winter Olympics and chocolate dumplings: Why the small stuff makes the story

Why eat-the-rich infiltration thrillers are everywhere