Did you hear the one about the brain worm? It’s got Australia’s foraging community freaking out. And with the week’s absolute must-read story out of the way, here are some deeper dives to help erase it from your memory.
1. ‘To his followers, this man is a messiah!’
Forgive me for not having heard of Andrew Tate until Greta Thunberg spectacularly owned him on Twitter late last year. Turns out he’s not just terrible at the internet but a rotten egg in general: (bad) influencer, serial misogynist and alleged trafficker of minors.
“US, Australia, India: he’s huge all across the world,” says documentary-maker Matt Shea, who has been on Tate’s tail since 2019. Ahead of Shea’s new Tate doco, he shares one of his latest findings – that Tate’s organisation is peddling an ideology that centres on enslaving women.
How long will it take to read: Five minutes.
In case you missed it: Rebecca Solnit on Thunberg’s all-time Twitter takedown.
2. What it’s like to be a ‘villain’ on The Bachelor
When Alisha Aitken-Radburn was cast opposite Nick “The Honey Badger” Cummins in the 2018 series of The Bachelor, she realised early on she wasn’t being considered a real romantic option. So to try to buy herself some more episodes, she offered “spicy” takes on her castmates and their appearances.
A reality TV “villain” was born, and Aitken-Radburn addresses her Bachelor stint – and lifelong feelings of inadequacy – in a new memoir.
Career poison: After landing the gig, Aitken-Radburn was forced to resign from her day job in then opposition leader Bill Shorten’s office.
How long will it take to read: Four minutes.
3. ‘I am so sick of being a good parent’
Tegan Bennett Daylight reckons she’s been a good parent, or at least “good enough” – and occasionally just OK or even shitty. With the third of three children on the home stretch of high school, she’s pondering what comes next and ruminating over what came before.
To the parents out there fretting about whether their kids are doing drugs, or have no friends, or have drug-taking friends, she has some advice: “You know what? Let them sort it out.”
“Kids are frequently dickheads. But you are too. Go forth, babies, and be dickheads; the world will let you know what it thinks of that.”
How long will it take to read: Two minutes.
4. How the experts handle sleep deprivation
You know how you can’t get out of bed weekdays but come 6.42am Saturday your brain just goes ding! Unfortunately I can’t help you with that. But if you’re suffering from sleep-deprivation, you’ll want to know how the experts deal with it. Though apparently there’s no cure for being a tired, irritable jerk …
How long will it take to read: Four minutes.
Further reading: Doosie Morris discovers how to nap like a genius.
5. TV’s ‘great cancellation’ claims a local scalp
In my past life, walking the crossroads of the Movie World studios, I often mused that television shoots produced several hours of entertainment and a plethora of landfill. Now sets are largely computer-generated and months of work aren’t even guaranteed of going to air.
Nautilus, filmed on the Gold Coast, is the latest to feel the axe – courtesy of Disney+. Stuart Heritage assesses the damage to content creators and the viewing public, who were sold the dream of “streaming platforms as bottomless archives for everything that has ever been made”.
Nothing is safe: Even Westworld, which briefly filled a Game of Thrones-sized hole in our lives, has been deleted from the Warner Bros Discovery servers in the US.
How long will it take to read: Three minutes.
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