This column is from the summer 2025 issue of VICE magazine: The Reasons to Be Cheerful Issue. You can buy the individual issue, or subscribe and get 4 issues delivered to your door each year.

I had just finished listening to a podcast on Thomas Mann’s The Magic Mountain at work, cutting grass at a local district council cemetery in Essex, England. I was beginning to mull the contents of the discussion as I was walking back to my car when I looked up and saw a headstone for two young siblings, one of whom had been named ‘Thomas Man.’

My initial reaction was one of gentle surprise. It was only after a while that the timing and brute simplicity of the coincidence hit me. However, despite feeling as though something meaningful had happened, I eventually had to admit defeat: I had no idea as

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