Air travel, bottled water and pop cons
Which should we feel most guilty about?
Series 2 has landed
We know, we’re sorry. It’s been too long.
Series 1 may seem like a vaguely distant memory but we were never going to leave you for long. With Christmas, New Year and a full series of The Traitors out of the way, What’s Happening Now is back and is happening again.
But what is What’s Happening Now? Good question, we’re glad you asked. And vaguely surprised you’re signed up to our newsletter already.
WHN is a podcast, newsletter and, in the not too distant future, even more wild and adventurous content bringing together journalists and comedians to find out what’s the matter with what matters in, under and beyond the headlines.
For the first podcast episode of 2024, we asked the question that we’re sure has been troubling you as much as it’s been troubling us. With the help of comedian Belle Emilie Gold and UCL’s Professor of Materials and Society Mark Miodownik we found out what’s happening now… with air travel.
What’s Happening Now?
On the pod, we picked out the stories that grabbed us this week, whether interesting, funny, vaguely unnerving or worthy of more attention:
The running dope and the enhanced games.
Slow musical news. One for the kids?
A confident, conservative rebrand. Another angle on that from Peter Geoghegan below.
Mark his words
Sam and James sat down with Mark Miodownik, author and Professor of Materials and Society at UCL, to talk the safety of air travel, whether Sam should hate his holiday and how James’ one rebellious vice could actually be bad for him.
Giving it air time
Remember the first time we all got obsessed with planes? It was bound to happen again. So if this week’s episode has got you in the mood for more, here is our selection of the most interesting air-travel-specific content out there this week.
Sky News visited a private jet conference and met a man with a worrying medical condition. Steve Varsano, the founder of The Jet Business, is “allergic to the word luxury”, apparently. We aren’t medical professionals but he might need to change jobs.
Super Bowl? Super busy local airports, more like. The number of private jets arriving to watch the Chiefs play the 49ers, or to see Taylor Swift watch that, is overwhelming the city. If only the New York Jets had made it this far - then we really would have had a story for you.
Talking of Taylor Swift, because that’s what we all do nowadays, it seems her legal quest to stop her jet being tracked is continuing, even if one of those has been sold. Taylor isn’t the first person to take issue with the approach, after Elon Musk previously objected to the work of Jack Sweeney, who tracks the flights of high profile public figures. While complaints focus on invasion of privacy and endangering safety, Sweeney maintains he shares publicly available data in an effort to aid transparency.
Remember, Mark Miodownik told us about how so many of the world’s flights are concentrated in a small group of users, so the ‘transparency’ conversation might be worth having. Especially in the context of the latest climate news.
We usually prefer to quote different sources for our stories, but this week we hope you’ll understand that Sky News was the only appropriate choice.
Who was happening now?
Sam was joined by his co-pilot, James O’Malley, who you can find more from on his own regular substack.
The WHN regulars were joined by the actress and comedian Belle Emilie Gold who you can find on Instagram here.
The engineer, scientist, author and very helpful man Mark Miodownik, UCL’s Professor of Materials and Society no less, took on the job of educating, inspiring and only slightly worrying us.