Everyone is an expert now, and almost no one is. In her latest essay, Bonnie Langedijk asks how confidence came loose from competence, why we believe the ring light over the researcher, and whether real expertise can survive a culture that rewards speed over depth.

In 1920s Paris, four women stopped waiting for a culture built to include them and built their own instead. Julieta Ruiz recovers the almost-forgotten word for what held them together, matronage, and argues that a century later, as old certainties collapse again, women are once more remaking the world from the ground up rather than asking permission to enter it.