Top of the long weekend to you all. By the time you read this I would’ve indulged in my favourite Good Friday tradition. Maybe you indulged in some horny lesbian cinema instead? Whatever the case, and wherever you are, may your Easter be safe and the following reads be sufficiently great.
1. ‘It was like we’d signed up for a cult’
When Nirvana’s Nevermind broke in 1991, it was like a rising tide lifting all boats. Butthole Surfers were one of the more unlikely beneficiaries, scoring a major label deal and a minor hit with 1996’s Pepper before flaming out in the 2000s.
Given they were more akin to a travelling freak show than a band, with live shows that often devolved into riots, their greatest achievement may be surviving – not just as a band, but actually staying alive. “I did too many drugs. I totally screwed up the deal,” frontman Gibby Haynes laments of what might have been. “It’s my bad. It’s on me.”
One more tour? The band have turned down six-figure offers to hit the road again. “I don’t want to be sending a bandmate home in a body bag,” says guitarist Paul Leary, “or for a venue to burn down.”
How long will it take to read: Four minutes.
Further reading: Nick Cave on love, art and the loss of two sons.
2. How the climate crisis is rewiring our brains
Have you ever noticed your thinking getting cloudier on a particularly muggy day? You’re not alone – students doing exams in comfortable conditions typically perform better than those who are overheating.
The climate crisis ups the stakes, with even children in utero shown to be affected by extreme weather events. Clayton Page Aldern dives into the nascent field of “climatological neuroepidemiology”, which is investigating how global heating affects everything from memory to the formation of identity.
Case study: In Mexico City, a study of 203 brains of people aged 11 months to 40 years old found 202 of them had physical hallmarks of Alzheimer’s as a result of urban air pollution and ozone exposure.
How long will it take to read: Five minutes.
3. Rosie Batty’s decade of pain, trauma and hope
Rosie Batty was thrust into the public eye when her estranged partner murdered their 11-year-old son, Luke, at cricket practise.
A decade later, Paul Daley takes a walk around Canberra with the accidental campaigner against male violence – a dedicated walker who finds treks therapeutic. He learns Batty isn’t afraid to walk her dogs around the oval near Melbourne where Luke was killed. “It’s never seemed weird,” she says. “I don’t feel a sense of horror or dread.”
***
“How can 10 years have gone so fast? And then you realise it has. And you ask, ‘Was Luke ever here at all? And was I ever that mum? And did that ever really happen?’”
How long will it take to read: Five minutes
4. Dalí’s ‘unfilmable’ Hitchcock storyboards
Imagine being an Alfred Hitchcock scholar, stopping by a garage sale, and walking away with storyboards from Hitch’s 1945 paranoid thriller Spellbound – including one drawn by Salvador Dalí.
So goes the story of film critic John Russell Taylor, who went on to write the legendary director’s biography. His finds appear in a new book bringing together Hitchcock’s storyboards – the concept sketches directors refer to when framing up scenes on set, which Hitchcock used more fastidiously than most.
Too surreal: Turns out the dream sequence Dalí conceived for Spellbound was even trippier than the finished product – the original 20-minute showstopper was deemed “unfilmable” and whittled down to a more pragmatic three minutes.
How long will it take to read: About as long as it takes to watch the aforementioned sequence.
5. A millennial faces up to sobering reality
“Through hours of reporting and recording,” Miles Herbert writes of his work on our Who Screwed Millennials? podcast series, “I realised that the life my parents had would never – no matter how hard I grafted – be mine.”
But despite being confronted with a growing economic crisis and looming climate catastrophe, Herbert found two experts with some glimmers of hope for the future.
How long will it take to read: Three minutes.
Further listening: Start at episode one of the podcast series this is pegged on, or skip straight to the executive summary in episode five.
Further reading: From inaction on global heating to an overheated housing market, Greg Jericho argues the deck was stacked against millennials by John Howard.
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