Looking Sideways: 10 Things
No new episode this week, so here at this week's ten things I thought were worth sharing
1. My company All Conditions Media is also on Substack, and we just posted a blog of our 2022 highlights, featuring work for Arc’teryx, Yeti, Db, Belstaff and adidas. Read it here.
2. “To call Ronaldo the highest-paid footballer in the world is like calling Tom Cruise the highest-paid fighter pilot”. Barney Ronay is, to my mind, one of the finest writers in the country, and his magisterial column on Ronaldo’s move to Saudi Arabia is about so much more than just football.
3. I find the whole idea of Doggerland - the land bridge that connected Britain to Europe until it was finally submerged by rising sea levels 6000 years ago - completely fascinating. So I really enjoyed this podcast about how Britain has always been geographically and culturally defined by its relationship with the English Channel. Listen here.
4. The new Duels concept is a brilliant format tweak for this year’s Natural Selection series, especially now the match-ups are being announced. Personally I’m looking forward to Torstein versus John J - check the full list being dropped every day over at the Natural Selection Instagram, above.
5. Thanks to reader and forthcoming 10 Things contributor Melissa Belongea for sharing this interesting Torment Mag piece on loneliness and depression in ski towns.
6. The wintry depths of January was the perfect time to watch The Pale Blue Eye, the new Christian Bale-starring Gothic slowburner, in which he teams up with Edgar Allen Poe to solve a murder case in mid-nineteenth century New York. This piece explains how the film explores the inspirations behind Poe’s The Murders in the Rue Morgue, considered to be the first detective story. Warning: spoilers.
7. For the last few years, I’ve been holding workshops for companies in which I chat through my approach to creativity, storytelling and podcasting. These have gone so well that I’m going to launch them as an online course for listeners and readers.
To help me roadtest and finalise how this is going to work, I’m looking for five guinea pigs to take part in the first course for free. If you’re interested, drop me a line by replying to this email telling me why you’re interested. Cheers!
8 Hat tip to friend-of-the-show Tim LeRoy, a prolific recommender of stories for this newsletter, who pointed me in the direction of this blog by Danish restaurant Noma, which details how they’re going to ‘redefine what it means for us to be a restaurant, and to build a lasting organization for our team to thrive in."
Anybody going against the grain of growth at all costs, which has been on my mind a lot recently, should be applauded. Read it here.
9. I just had a brilliant conversation with illustrator, author and activist Nick Hayes for a forthcoming episode of Type 2; he recently also just had the honour of appearing on Radio 4’s Great Lives show, where he discussed his love of writer Roger Deakin. Listen above.
10. My creative right hand man Owen Tozer recently collaborated with our friends at the Watergate Bay Hotel. See the work and read the blog here.
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