Six great reads: the ‘misogyny slop ecosystem', Attenborough at 99, and the pain of Ticketmaster

The Guardian

10-05-2025

David Attenborough may have inspired millions around the world to love and appreciate the natural world, but if you ever bump into him in a lift, it's better to ask him about rugby. This fascinating, moving and star-studded tribute from 99 admirers is perhaps the birthday present anyone would wish for if they made it to such a grand age.
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It's a year since teachers in St Albans, a city just north of London, asked parents not to give younger children smartphones. How successful have they been? Amelia Gentleman visited the English city and found that while it is still far from a smartphone-free city for under-14s, something small and potentially significant has shifted.
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Taken from Ian Mayes's new history of the Guardian from 1985-95, this extract looks back at how reporters such as Maggie O'Kane and Ed Vulliamy covered the grim events in Bosnia in the early 90s, and how what they saw made them question the idea of journalistic 'neutrality' – and even led one of them to later testify in the Hague.
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'Everyone loves a good celebrity dust-up, but having begun as just another Hollywood feud destined to be adapted into a prestige miniseries a decade hence, the Lively/Baldoni saga is morphing into something larger and possibly more ominous.'
Why has this case, asked Steve Rose, such attracted an inordinate amount of attention from rightwing political figures in the US? Combine that with the dark arts of celebrity public relations and we are seeing a disturbing blurring of lines – between genuine and manufactured 'public opinion', and between celebrity and political discourse.
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'You may know the drill. You get online at 10am, several months before the show, and receive a place in the virtual queue. Perhaps you notice with dismay that your number is larger than the capacity of the venue. Perhaps you then lose your place because you've been misidentified as a bot, or the site crashes altogether … '
Last summer's Oasis ticket fiasco in the UK cemented Ticketmaster's reputation as many music fans' bête noire. Dorian Lynskey explores the history of how one company commands such influence over how we buy gig tickets.
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'Heavy Metal is an album as intriguing as its creator,' writes Tim Jonze of an intriguing new musical presence. 'It boasts vivid lyrics, amorphous arrangements and, thanks to the single Love Takes Miles, a bona fide pop banger. It's been compared to works by Bob Dylan, Leonard Cohen and Tom Waits, although for me it shares its greatest affinity with another canonical classic: Van Morrison's Astral Weeks. Not so much in its sound as in the sense of a young man, wise beyond his years, attempting to reach some kind of other-worldly transcendence through music.'
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