Happy weekend, especially to those of you who are one week (or even two) into your working year. To anyone still in holiday mode, I can attest that the return-to-work shock to the system is real. Brace yourselves.
Our newsroom is back in full swing, which means our weekday newsletters have returned. Subscribe to the Morning Mail for the lowdown on what happened while you slept, and Afternoon Update for a quick take on the stories that mattered while you were head down in work.
The great reads are also flowing thick and fast from our Australian team and abroad. Read on for the five that caught my eye and a couple of bonus offerings to boot.
1. ‘My first day was a sex scene’
The further you get into Steve Rose’s investigation of the disturbing history of teen actors and nudity, the creepier some of the things deemed acceptable in “a different time” become. A 12-year-old Jodie Foster playing a sex worker in Taxi Driver, for example, or a 16-year-old Jenny Agutter disrobing for a swim in an outback waterhole in Walkabout. And any number of Brooke Shields’ early films.
The then-teen stars of Franco Zeffirelli’s 1968 Romeo and Juliet adaptation are now suing Paramount for US$500m (AU$717m), alleging they were told by the director “they must act in the nude or the picture will fail”.
Why should I care about this? The practice didn’t end with the 20th century. Teen actors from the British television series Skins are now questioning how they were put in exposing and sexual situations, while young stars of the HBO smash Euphoria have voiced concerns about the show’s proclivity for nudity.
How long will it take to read: Five minutes.
2. Mending broken sibling relationships
Of all the headline moments being generated by Prince Harry’s book tour, his fractured relationship with “beloved brother and arch-nemesis” William is perhaps the most relatable.
They’re not the first siblings to go their separate ways: a recent German study suggests 28% of respondents experienced at least one period of sibling estrangement, and 14% experienced two or more.
It could be a spat over a teenage girlfriend, perceived favouritism from parents or something as simple as a missed Christmas Day phone call. But as Emine Saner discovers, reconciling isn’t always as difficult as it seems.
Notable quote: “Wait for an opportunity – it could be anything from a birthday to an occasion that means something to you both, especially if it is associated with good memories.”
How long will it take to read: Five minutes.
Further reading: Bridie Jabour digs a little deeper into the petty grievances dividing the royal brothers.
3. A year-long project to quit vaping
Alyx Gorman’s first vaping relapse was an ugly one. She found a familiar shaped tube in the back of a cab, slipped it into her handbag without her husband noticing, then quietly slipped into the bathroom back home. Despite Omicron cutting a swathe through Australia’s hot vax summer at the time, hygiene wasn’t top of mind. “I barely bothered to wipe the vape off before I put it to my lips,” she writes. “Inhaling a cloud of treacle-flavoured nicotine, my whole body shimmered from the pleasure.”
Addictions come in many forms (the last one I kicked was fantasy football), and the reasons for quitting are just as varied. For Alyx, it was about shame. But she found a way out, white-knuckle withdrawals and all.
By the numbers: Recent data from Victoria health shows that vaping levels doubled between 2018-19 and 2022, and a quarter of people vaping have never smoked.
How long will it take to read: Four minutes.
4. ‘Almost at war’: shipwreck hunters battle it out
Whether you’re a fan of Indiana Jones, Uncharted or The Goonies, you know that every group of treasure hunters has an arch-nemesis. That binary also plays out in the real world, where shipwreck hunters and maritime archeologists come at the same underwater sites with different goals.
Chuck Meide is one of the archeologists, who see shipwrecks as a cultural heritage to protect rather than a source of plunder. “If the site is discovered by treasure hunters,” he says, “typically it is essentially destroyed for a short-term profit.”
Stranger than fiction: US shipwreck hunter Thomas “Tommy” Thompson (we’re not making this up) went on the run for more than two years after being accused of cheating investors of their share of the gold bars and coins plundered from the wreck of the SS Central America.
How long will it take to read: Four minutes.
Further reading: From what to do when a huge ship sinks to Venice’s lagoon of lost boats, the Shipwrecked series has treasures for all tastes.
5. It’s just not cricket (unless it’s utterly confusing)
The Big Bash League is back in the national conversation after a couple of years in the doldrums, but not because of Chris Lynn’s return to peak #Lynnsanity. No, it’s an unsuccessful “Mankad” dismissal – the height of ungentlemanly behaviour – and a catch involving acrobatics in the field of play, then out, then back in again that have fans and players alike wondering what exactly the hell is going on.
If cricket’s laws seem arcane, it’s because they are. Simon Burnton takes the long handle to a rulebook that is now 34,602 words long: that’s 42% of The Handmaid’s Tale, and 52 times the length of the conversation between Harry Potter and Oliver Wood that establishes the rules of quidditch.
Notable quote: “Like those novels, it attempts to conjure its own, fully realised alternative reality. But unlike them, no editor intervened when the authors’ imagination ran a little out of control.”
How long will it take to read: Two minutes.
Further reading: Cricket also faces a more specific existential crisis: the use of technology to adjudicate on catches.
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