The Guardian • 29th October 2023

Concussed: Sport’s Uncomfortable Truth by Sam Peters review – rugby’s shame

Professional rugby branded Sam Peters a pariah. It was he who spearheaded the Mail on Sunday’s concussion campaign against the sport’s ruling bodies in 2013. And a decade later – at the end of the Rugby World Cup 2023 – the shadow of a mass lawsuit concerning concussions continues to hang over World Rugby.

The Guardian • 2nd October 2023

Hearing aids opened my ears to a new world of sounds. Then I quit wearing them

Like most people, I’d had a preconceived notion of who or what a “deaf” person was. So, when I was 15 and a mysterious woman came into my school, pulled me from a lesson and told me I’d been mishearing things my entire life, I was confused to say the least. She was an assigned “teacher of the deaf” from South Tyneside council – the seaside area where I grew up just outside Newcastle – and my GP had informed her that I had substantial hearing loss.

TLS • 19th July 2023

The British government's doomsday preppers

Two things become apparent in Attack Warning Red!, in which Julie McDowall traces the history of Britain’s preparations for nuclear attack during the Cold

Delish • 19th July 2023

From Forks to Taylor Swift: Here’s What Everything Means in The Bear S2

The Bear S2 brings us back to The Beef, Carmen Berzatto’s (Jeremy Allen White) downtown Chicago sandwich shop - except this time they’re tearing it down and re-opening as ‘The Bear’. In a race against the clock, they have three months to bring in new business, otherwise Uncle Jimmy (Oliver Platt) will collect on his now $500k+ loan.

whynow • 17th May 2023

McGregor Forever review | Action-packed documentary series shows the resilience of MMA’s biggest star

McGregor Forever presents Conor McGregor as an unstoppable force. Read our full review.

TLS • 17th May 2023

How Tocqueville was shaped by his travels

In Travels with Tocqueville Jeremy Jennings offers a sweeping account of the nineteenth-century French aristocrat.

TLS • 3rd May 2023

Making sense of the Taliban 3.0

When the Taliban took power in Afghanistan in 2021, an outcome only a few expected, it was not, according to Hassan Abbas, a return for the militant

The Spectator • 18th April 2023

Reinhard Heydrich and the bugged Berlin brothel

Kitty’s Salon is the only English-language book about the eponymous wartime Berlin brothel, which was rigged with microphones and surveillance equipment by the SS to capture the secrets of foreign ambassadors, political rivals and high-ranking government officials. Led by ‘the man with the iron heart’, Reinhard Heydrich, it is one of the last Nazi operations still shrouded in mystery.

The Guardian • 14th April 2023

‘I could have made the same money at McDonald’s’: the Power Rangers on fame, regrets and their shock reunion

In the mid 1980s, the Israeli-American media mogul Haim Saban was stuck in a Tokyo hotel with nothing to watch on TV. Until, that is, he came across five spandex-wearing masked superheroes battling outlandish rubber monsters – and decided to adapt Japanese show, Super Sentai, for US TV, as Mighty Morphin Power Rangers.

BBC Sport • 18th February 2023

Heavyweight globetrotter's long route to the top

It has been five years and nine months since heavyweight Phil de Fries last tasted defeat. KSW is one of Europe's biggest promotions alongside the likes of UK-based Cage Warriors. De Fries became the organisation's heavyweight champion in his second fight. Five years later, he has made the most successful title defences (seven) in the promotion's entire history as well as being on a 10-fight winning streak.

TLS • 11th January 2023

Crime and punishment in a Canadian PoW camp

The city of Medicine Hat in Alberta was the site of Canada’s last mass execution.

Prospect Magazine • 6th October 2022

The risk of nuclear disaster grows every day - Atoms and Ashes review

From Three Mile Island to Chernobyl, the story of atomic energy is littered with catastrophes.

Washington Post • 23rd August 2022

YouTube’s Nerdwriter, Evan Puschak, takes his essays to the page - Escape into Meaning review

Why will Quentin Tarantino only make 10 films? Because he’s thinking of his “oeuvre,” of course. That’s the “hard-to-pronounce French word for ‘body of work,’ ” writes Evan Puschak. The 20th-century Irish poet William Butler Yeats thought that way too, apparently.

Huck Magazine • 25th July 2022

The story of RaD Magazine, UK skateboarding’s seminal title

If you were a British skateboarder in the late ’80s, early ’90s, then you probably read RaD magazine. Or, its previous incarnation: BMX Action Bike. For Tim Leighton-Boyce, RaD’s editor, skateboarding was always the primary interest. A photographer himself, he felt that skate photography offered more than its BMX-leaning equivalent. Issue by issue, he began sneaking more skateboarding content into the magazine. “Effectively, we were hijacking a BMX magazine for skateboarding,” he remembers.

New Scientist • 23rd June 2022

Plastic surgery's first pioneer - The Facemaker review

BBC Sport • 2nd June 2022

How Mortal Kombat & video games shaped the UFC

In the early 1990s, the arcade fighting video game genre was exploding. Against this backdrop, UFC 1: The Beginning took place at the McNichols Sports Arena in Denver, Colorado on 12 November 1993. The event featured an array of fighters, each with their own unique martial arts discipline, competing in a one-night tournament to see which fighting style would be the most effective.

The Independent • 16th April 2022

I let social media ads define my music taste – here’s what happened

Algorithm overlords grow stronger every day. Now more than ever our lives are being driven by artificial intelligence, targeted ads and machine learning.

The Spectator • 14th April 2022

Was Thomas Edison guilty of murder? | The Spectator

In September 1890 a Frenchman called Louis Le Prince left his brother in Dijon and boarded a train to Paris, with the intention of connecting to London and then to Leeds, before finally joining his wife Lizzie and family in New York. But the weeks turned into months, and to his wife’s astonishment and dismay he never arrived or saw his family again. He had disappeared.

New Humanist • 9th March 2022

Book review: Video Games, Violence and the Ethics of Fantasy

I’m standing in an elevator in Zakhaev International Airport, Moscow. As I brace myself for the opening of the doors, my comrade stoically utters, “Remember, no Russian.” What follows is brutal slaughter. I light the place up with my fully automatic PKM light machine gun and the tourists flee in terror. With the airport in ruins, I casually stroll over the bodies.

NME • 7th February 2022

Dean Hall on Redefining the Survival Genre: 'DayZ' at 10

What were you doing in the balmy summer of 2012? Bopping to ‘Call Me Maybe‘, Carly Rae Jepson’s memeworthy hit? Thinking the superhero fad was done now it had hit its climax with The Avengers, The Amazing Spider-Man, and The Dark Knight Rises? (Clue: it hadn’t) Well, if you were a certain type PC gamer you likely didn’t care about any of those things: 2012 was the summer of DayZ.