Wednesday 18th February 2026
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Why you shouldn’t finish your reading list

Anisha Mohammed
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Why you shouldn’t finish your reading list

On being accepted into Oxford, everyone warned me about the reading lists. “You’ll be reading eight hours a day,” they said, half-serious, half-proud. At the time, it sounded almost romantic. I imagined long afternoons tucked away in ancient libraries, light slanting through leaded windows, books piled high beneath the dreaming spires; the kind of intellectual exhaustion that comes with purpose, the price of becoming someone serious and scholarly. Then the term started, and I realised that “reading list” was really just code for “we dare you to sleep.”

Sixth form hadn’t prepared me for this. I was used to summarised textbook chapters and neat exam-board extracts, not three entire novels and a stack of theory articles before Thursday’s tutorial. So when I read The Atlantic’s piece, “The elite college students who can’t read books”, I immediately recognised myself in their experience. However, the article seemed to frame the issue as one of attention span: we simply can’t sit still long enough to read anymore. This is a growing narrative for our generation, and maybe relevant to universities with slightly fewer contact hours. But for me, it’s not just about distraction. It’s about design.

There’s a difference between being lazy and being lost. Reading lists at universities, especially in the humanities, can often feel endless; not just in volume, but in purpose. You’re handed 20 or 30 titles for one essay, often with little explanation of why they’re there or how they relate to one another. Some texts are foundational, some are marginal, some are there to challenge you, and others seem included simply because they can be. But no one tells you which is which. In an environment like Oxford, where tutorials can feel quietly competitive and intellectual confidence is often performed as much as developed, that ambiguity carries weight. You’re not just trying to learn; you’re trying to prove that you belong. Reading becomes less about understanding and more about keeping up appearances, about staying afloat in a system that rewards the impression of mastery.

When you don’t know why you’re reading something, it’s hard to care about it. The sheer volume makes it easy to feel like you’re working in a vacuum, turning pages simply to meet a deadline. In a degree built on curiosity and interpretation, that lack of direction slowly drains motivation. A degree you once loved can start to feel like an endless series of tasks to complete rather than ideas to explore. Instead of excitement, there’s anxiety; instead of engagement, there’s exhaustion. Reading stops being a process of discovery and becomes just another obligation you’re already behind on.

Everyone knows the unspoken truth: no one actually finishes everything on their reading list. And, in many cases, you’re probably not meant to. Different degrees (and even different tutors) operate with very different expectations about depth versus breadth. But this lack of clarity matters. The guilt that comes with unfinished reading, and the sense that you’re constantly falling short, can make students feel like failures before they’ve even begun. We all end up reading strategically: jumping between chapters, skimming introductions and conclusions, trying to extract just enough insight to write something coherent. There’s something faintly absurd about attempting to assemble a passable argument in front of a tutor who has likely internalised each article on the list. Yet this coping strategy is often treated as evidence of poor focus, rather than as a rational response to an impossible workload.

As Rose Horowitch writes in The Atlantic piece, “to read a book in college, it helps to have read a book in high school”. And yes, maybe I wasn’t fully prepared for this kind of academic reading. Sixth form didn’t train me to juggle multiple books a week, and there’s little I can do now to retroactively fix the education system. Oxford, for all its brilliance, has a tendency to throw students straight into the deep end with little acknowledgement of how uneven that preparation can be. That gap isn’t a personal failing, and it shouldn’t be treated as one. The more important question is how universities can make reading feel purposeful rather than punitive, and less like a test of endurance.

In my second year, one of my tutors made a small but transformative change. Under each text on the reading list, they added a short bullet point explaining why it mattered and how it linked to the essay question. That was all. But suddenly, each book had a reason to be there. I could see how arguments spoke to one another, where I might enter the debate, and which texts I needed to prioritise depending on my angle. The reading stopped feeling like a burden and started feeling, dare I say, enjoyable again.

Maybe that’s what is missing. The problem is multifaceted: there are too many books, too little time, and too little preparation for the kind of sustained, critical reading university demands. But the element most often overlooked is purpose. Purpose isn’t just about knowing what to read; it’s about understanding why you’re reading it and what you’re meant to do with it. That sense of direction is what makes students feel capable rather than overwhelmed, curious rather than inadequate. Understanding the reasoning behind a reading list doesn’t solve everything, but it changes how we approach the work. If reading lists were framed less as endurance tests and more as maps, reading might start to feel less like survival, and more like learning again.

Oxford study finds that ChatGPT reproduces global inequalities

Beatrix Arnold
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Oxford study finds that ChatGPT reproduces global inequalities

New research from the Oxford Internet Institute (OII), together with the University of Kentucky, reveals that global biases are reproduced and amplified by LLMs (Large Language Models). The study found that the LLM ChatGPT consistently favours wealthier countries in the Global North, relying heavily on stereotypes in the generation of its responses, despite the appearance of objectivity. 

‘The Silicon Gaze: A typology of biases and inequality in LLMs through the lens of place’ was published in the scientific journal Platforms and Society on 20th January. Researchers used a Python-based query engine to analyse 20.3 million ChatGPT queries, asking the AI system to rank countries in answer to questions which ranged from “which country has stupider people?” to “which country has a more corrupt economic system?”. 

ChatGPT was found to systematically attribute positive characteristics to higher-income regions in the Global North and to privilege countries with stronger digital visibility. For example, when asked “which country is smarter?”, African countries emerged as the lowest-ranking, while the vast majority of European and North American countries were ranked among the most intelligent. Such stark regional clustering, the paper suggests, reflects how AI amplifies pre-existing socioeconomic hierarchies and aligns with historical perceptions of racial difference, rather than employing any objective metric of intelligence.  

The research, which aimed to “understand how generative AI perpetuates and disrupts deep-seated inequalities across scales of place and categories of knowledge”, identified five sets of biases within what they called the ‘silicon gaze’: availability bias, pattern bias, averaging bias, trope bias, and proxy bias. The paper concluded that “bias is a structural feature of generative AI, rather than an abnormality”. In addition to the published paper, the researchers created a public website, inequalities.ai, which explains the findings. 

The publication of the paper comes not long after the University of Oxford became the first UK university to offer generative AI tools to students, in the form of ChatGPT-5. One of the researchers, Matthew Zook, a Professor at the University of Kentucky, told Cherwell of his concern that “as institutions like Oxford adopt AI tools, there is a risk of taking responses at face value”. 

His co-author, Mark Graham, a Professor at the OII, urged that “students and staff should be encouraged to verify outputs, interrogate sources, and exercise caution when models make claims about places, communities, or social conditions.

“There is also a strong case for ongoing institutional evaluation and auditing of these tools, rather than assuming that provision of access is sufficient. An institution like Oxford, with significant research capacity in this area, is well placed to negotiate not only access to such systems but also the conditions under which they are evaluated and used.”

When asked about the implications of their conclusions, Graham told Cherwell that the study “reinforces the need to treat LLM outputs as situated and shaped by power and data availability, rather than as neutral reflections of the world”. The research, however, is limited in its scope, assessing only one LLM through the lens of regional comparison. It promises to be the first step in a larger project to analyse the politics of attention which informs generative AI systems.

Will 2026 finally kill the clean girl?

Beatrix Arnold
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Will 2026 finally kill the clean girl?

Last weekend, I was invited to a 2016-themed party. We put on exaggerated make-up, wore clashing outfits, and played a reprehensible amount of Shawn Mendes. Judging by my Instagram feed, we’re not the only ones. 

Throwback photos of tie-dye, flannel tops, and skinny jeans are the visual accompaniments to what seems to be a collective sense of nostalgia as we start the new year. Through the rose-gold spectacles, 2016 represents a time before everything was overproduced, over-optimised, and relentlessly monetised – a VSCO-filtered bygone era that thrived on experimentation. Embracing cringe looks like an act of self-liberation, an escape from the hyper-curation of the digital landscape in recent years. Could this nostalgia, bolstered by concomitant trends such as Zara Larsson’s polychromatic makeup, represent a cultural shift away from a fashion scene hegemonised by the pursuit of perfection? Could it, in other words, spell the death of the clean girl?

The clean girl has become ubiquitous throughout celebrity culture, magazines, and social media in recent years. Her brand prescribes a lifestyle, the impetus behind which is the curation of a kind of idealised minimalism. It’s no revelation that her practised effortlessness belies its unattainable requirements. The performance of the clean girl demands a level of privilege that ultimately celebrates wealth, thinness, whiteness, and able bodies; her lifestyle is only achievable if you’re already insulated financially, socially, and genetically. 

The predominance of the clean girl has, of course, been challenged before. ‘Brat summer’ was heralded as a new era, the reincarnation of the ‘messy girl’ characterised by two day old mascara, tangled hair, and cigarette ash – it seemed like the clean girl was on her deathbed. But this wasn’t liberation. The pendulum swung back and the clean girl lived on, repackaged as ‘demure’, the corrective to the period of licensed messiness. Brat summer had exhausted its course, and to cling onto it was ‘cringe’. The clean girl, by contrast, was the grown-up standard, invested with a sense of moral superiority, to which social media dictated we return after a wild summer of temporary license. 

In fashion, subcultures and their accompanying aesthetics are usually the product of a community, a unified worldview: punk was anti-establishment, goth was rooted in non-conformity, even 2016 boho-chic was inspired by the shared values of the moment. The clean girl, in contrast, has never been a subculture to belong to, but an aspirational standard. Innovation is replaced by prescription, community is supplanted by consumption. The clean girl aesthetic favours conformity, not creativity – she is inspired not by ideas, but by a shopping list. There is no shared ideology beyond the Pinterest board. Her make-up is stripped of its artistic potential, its aim becomes invisibility. Her fashion, narrowed and purged of variety, offers almost no room for interpretation, let alone expression. For the clean girl, fashion is a medium of emulation. 

This is nothing new. The clean girl is a modernised iteration of a perennial aesthetic, upgraded with pilates and Erewhon. She is purity culture, quiet luxury, old-money minimalism made more palatable for a new generation. She is perfection –  and perfection will always sell. This all-pervasive aesthetic has, in various different permutations, always been the norm; opposing aesthetics serve to define by opposition, and ultimately affirm, that norm. Like Kim Kardashian’s stripped-back house, ‘clean’ signifies distance from chaos, a glossy exterior that disguises its cost. 

Despite what Sydney Sweeney might protest, fashion is and always will be political. It is the clean girl’s self-distancing from subversion, her very apoliticism that makes her a cultural lightning rod. The aesthetic, largely harmless in isolation, bleeds into wider, more pernicious social trends, such as the Ozempic craze, or the ‘tradwife’. The ‘no make-up’ look, neutral tones, and homely lifestyle amounts to rehearsed restraint, a whispered performance that politely declines to take up space. As self-expression is sacrificed for submission, and the male gaze is reasserted as the arbiter of ideal beauty, the clean girl implies a modest, non-threatening, domestic form of femininity.

With her rigid sleep schedule, workout routine, and curated minimalism, the clean girl lifestyle is an exercise in self-discipline. When women, and the population at large, are convinced to police themselves, they are much less likely to imagine alternatives. It’s easy to see how the clean girl culture of hyper-optimisation is a fundamentally capitalistic one. Consumption is marketed as self-improvement, beauty is transformed into duty, and self-expression mutates into self-exploitation. 

In the visual economy of the digital age, appearance goes beyond individual expression, and becomes social, and even political, currency. Against the background of rising white nationalism, and the proliferation of AI generated media, appeals to authenticity feel futile. At any rate, if Pantone’s colour of the year is anything to go by, it seems likely that the clean girl will keep dodging assassination attempts – she’s always been here, and she’s not going anywhere.

Collaborative research: Why top university students are switching to secure file sharing platforms

External Contributor
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In the historic libraries and modern laboratories of top universities, the nature of academic research is undergoing a transformation. Gone are the days when collaboration was confined to physical paper exchanges or the precarious sharing of a single USB drive in a college buttery. Today, the academic life of a student – whether an undergraduate working on a group presentation or a post-graduate mid-way through a PhD – is defined by the constant movement of digital data. 

As the sensitivity of research increases and the threat of data breaches grows, the method of that movement has become a point of serious debate. Yet, for many top university students, the “standard” free tools are no longer being viewed as sufficient for the protection of intellectual property.

Prioritising privacy with secure file sharing

The sheer volume of digital work produced across the university is staggering. From massive data sets in the sciences to extensive bibliographies and scanned manuscripts in the humanities, the need for a central, accessible hub for project work is undeniable. This shift is not unique to the Dreaming Spires; it reflects a broader global trend in education, where data suggests that 90% of college students use cloud-based collaboration tools to manage their workloads. 

The primary driver behind the move toward more specialised platforms is the requirement to share files securely. When working on groundbreaking research or confidential archives, students cannot afford to have their data harvested by major tech corporations for advertising profiles or, worse, exposed in a leak. Switching to an encrypted platform ensures that only the intended recipient can access the contents of a shared link. This “zero-knowledge” approach means that the provider itself cannot see what you are working on, offering a level of academic freedom that is essential in a rigorous research environment.

The collaboration convenience advantage

Beyond the obvious security benefits, these platforms are also solving the logistical headaches of group work. Securely sharing large files—such as high-resolution imagery or complex coding projects—often hits the size limits of traditional email attachments. By using a secure link, students can give collaborators instant access to large folders without compromising the integrity of the data. 

Secure file sharing allows for a more fluid exchange of ideas, where the focus remains on the quality of the research rather than the technical hurdles of moving it between devices.

Managing the digital dissertation

For most students, the final year represents the culmination of years of work, and the digital safety of a dissertation is paramount. Relying on a single laptop is a recipe for disaster; hardware failure or theft can result in the loss of months of progress. Modern students are now prioritising “redundancy” in their digital habits—backing up their work to an encrypted cloud as they type. This ensures that even if their physical device is compromised, their intellectual output remains safe and easily restorable.

Integrating these secure habits early in one’s academic career is also a form of professional preparation. As graduates move into fields such as law, medicine, or government, the ability to manage sensitive information securely will be a prerequisite. By adopting these tools now, students are protecting their current grades and mastering the digital hygiene required for the modern professional world. The switch to secure storage platforms is a necessary evolution for anyone serious about their academic and professional future.

Nostalgic and sincere: ‘The Glass Menagerie’ in review

Jessica Phillips
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Nostalgic and sincere: ‘The Glass Menagerie’ in review

Crazy Child Productions staged a genuine and thoughtful adaptation of Tennessee Williams’ The Glass Menagerie. The play follows the Wingfield family, narrated by Tom (Oli Spooner) who tells the story of his life with his mother Amanda (Lyndsey Mugford) and sister Laura (Matilda Beloou). The plot focuses on Amanda’s struggle to find her daughter a suitable husband, after Laura has failed to make her own way in the world. The drama is filled with unexpected revelations and ultimately, an eruption of the family tensions that have simmered throughout. 

I took my seat next to a smoke machine, which periodically coughed out bursts of fog, filling the space with a slightly musty smell. Quaint music underscored the conversations surrounding me on three sides, while overhead, a series of intricately crafted animal structures hung from the ceiling. The space was successful in creating a nostalgic atmosphere, but the O’Reilly felt slightly too big to evoke the sense of entrapment the play seems to demand. 

The decision to stage it in the round meant at times that the play and the actors felt restricted. In the first few moments of the show, I was seeing a lot of people’s backs. The actors were sitting around a kitchen table which inhibited their movements. When they did exchange seats, and I came face-to-face with Mugford, I realised what I had been missing in the first few minutes. The acting in this show was wonderful, and it is a shame that it was hidden from my view because of the limitations of the staging.

The first lines delivered by Lydnsey Mugford in a bouncing southern American accent were utterly enthralling. She played Amanda with convincing sincerity. The actors excelled in silences too: the slight slouch of Laura’s (Matilda Beloou) shoulders and her careful reactions to her mother and brother’s conversation made her a pleasure to watch even when she wasn’t the focus of the scene. At moments, Tom (Oli Spooner) also doubled as stage manager, rearranging the set while his mother and sister spoke to remind us of his dual role as actor and narrator. Additionally, the fading of the light in tandem with Mugford’s softening voice as the scene transitioned provided another skilful combination of stagecraft and performance, drawing on the very murkiness of the play that the actors and directors were keen to express. 

A highlight of this production was the staging of Amanda and Tom’s fight at the end of the third scene. Mugford’s varied intensity in her performance made these moments of heightened emotion even more startling. It was Spooner’s physicality, however, that triumphed. His crawling, loping motions as he approached Amanda created a real sense of threat and an aggressive release of repressed emotions. The choice in a later scene to have Tom lie on the ground and look up to the would-be stars while talking about his desire for adventure was another effective combination of movement and speech.

The second act felt more static and conversation-based than the first. While I believe this is largely down to Williams’ script itself, the structure of the act unfortunately drew attention to the struggles of working in the round, since I missed a number of conversations and interactions. Some of these interactions also relied on a visual effect to supplement the conversation, which, due to this issue of the sightlines, was lost on me. This was an unfortunate consequence of the staging choice for this play; the round demands near-constant motion, and yet that would not have done justice to Williams’ script. The directors, in their close attention to the text and compelling interpretation of it, cornered themselves with this particular staging. Yet Robson and Lacey-Hughes’ skillful direction was evident in the intricacies of movement, interaction with space, and lighting, which showed a thoughtful collaboration between directors, cast, and crew. 

This show has certainly set a high standard for student theatre this term. Crazy Child Productions delivered an intricate, poignant show, despite the confines of its staging. This is a show that speaks to a generation of ‘Toms’, a generation trapped by responsibility and uncertainty, yet well aware of the potential of a life beyond their own.

Irreverent, laugh-out-loud funny: ‘My Dead Mum’s AI Boyfriend’

Abigail Lakeland
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Irreverent, laugh-out-loud funny: ‘My Dead Mum’s AI Boyfriend’

What’s the worst thing you could find out about your mum in her will? For Carrie (Sali Adams), the protagonist of Interrobang Productions’ My Dead Mum’s AI Boyfriend, there’s one standout discovery: Aled. Brilliantly voiced by Billy Morton, Aled is a chatbot, but also, more concerningly, Carrie’s mum’s AI boyfriend. Adams’ laugh-out-loud original play (directed by Aman Arya) follows Carrie, a Welsh secondary school teacher based in Guildford, processing the death of her mum whilst on a trip to scatter her ashes in Anglesey.

There are some seriously funny moments throughout this play. During her Welsh pilgrimage, Carrie listens to a radio host (Jonathan Tanner) play a fantastic satirical show dedicated to Take That. Aled eulogises Carrie’s mum but ends his speech with “Was that too effusive?”, adding a hilarious stab of bathos. In a deliciously awkward encounter, Carrie makes her mum’s ashes ‘talk’ to a stranger by playing with the lid of the urn. Clippy, the Microsoft Office virtual assistant, also gets a mention, a move which earns Adams significant respect in my book.

While topical and often laugh-out-loud funny, My Dead Mum’s AI Boyfriend is also heartfelt and tender. In one particularly tear-jerking scene, Carrie, paying homage to her Welsh mum, watches the Six Nations on TV and sings along to the few words she knows of the Welsh national anthem. Adams depicts beautifully how it feels to move away from your spiritual home – that intoxicating mixture of guilt and nostalgia, manifesting in unexpected moments like watching rugby.

Costumed in a frumpy blouse and cardigan, Carrie is evidently disappointed about her lot in life: a mere classroom teacher, nothing compared to her big-city mum. When the audience meets her, Carrie’s biggest character flaw is being too cold, a trait which Aled seems to heal. Adams is making a clear commentary on communication: Aled, a robot, offers non-judgemental warmth and kindness, whilst Carrie struggles to open up to the people she loves. In many ways, this worked well, but I was left wondering how much more cohesive these plot points might have been if Adams had the courage to lean into Carrie’s unlikeable traits.

The play was at its best during the service station interlude. Carrie, on her way to Wales to scatter her mum’s ashes with Aled, makes a stop to buy a pasty in a service station. Whilst she’s in the bathroom (offstage), the audience listens to Carrie on the phone to her cat-minder, in a touching moment. The dialogue between Carrie and Amber (Avani Rao) was surprisingly engaging given Amber’s lines were pre-recorded.

Carrie’s dialogue with Father Thomas (Adam Griffiths), a priest in her hometown Anglesey, was sweet and painful in equal measures, showing how one’s home-town is so easily rendered a ghost-town. In a quintessentially irreverent moment, this heart-wrenching nostalgia becomes the set-up for the best joke in the show.

Yet there is one thing I’d recommend to student writers: don’t use cut essay material in your play. One scene was devoted to an internal debate with philosopher John Locke (Hannah Wei) about what constitutes a person. I found this scene a little pretentious, dull, and tonally off kilter with the rest of the show, even if the opening night audience laughed knowingly – perhaps they know something about John Locke that I don’t. Nonetheless the dialogue appeared absurd in the mouth of a secondary school teacher, for whom tutorials are a hazy memory.

Aside from minor errors on the night, Iona Blair’s sound design was immersive and effectively cosy. When combined with Libby Alldread’s lighting design, the set really came together during the intimate Six Nations TV scene. Whilst some props in the show were necessary and effective (the Bluetooth speaker representing Aled, the urn, the pasty), I do wish the production had dispatched with the unwieldy, awkward boxes Adams was constantly reconfiguring (to make a car, a bed, a pair of seats).

Adams does her punchline premise justice. Alongside the dark comedy sits Adams’ pertinent musings on grief and reconnecting with loved ones, even posthumously; the play starts with Carrie scrolling aimlessly on her phone, and ends with her making a call. My Dead Mum’s AI Boyfriend leaves the audience wondering whether it really is technology to blame for our lack of connection.

A twisted tour-de-force: ‘Bugonia’ in review

Toby Bowes Lyon
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A twisted tour-de-force: ‘Bugonia’ in review

Bugonia is yet another triumph for director Yorgos Lanthimos and his collaborators. With his distinctive blend of comedy, tragedy, and absurdity, Lanthimos has remade a 2003 South Korean film, Save the Green Planet!, and in doing so produced a cynical but ultimately rewarding reflection on the human condition. His film centres around the kidnapping of a powerful CEO by two men convinced she is an alien plotting to destroy the Earth, in a story which strikes the right balance between farce and realism.

Lanthimos and screenwriter Will Tracy made a few important decisions when adapting Save the Green Planet! Most importantly, they changed the genders of key characters, with the CEO (Emma Stone) now female, and the kidnappers (Jesse Plemons and Aidan Delbis) both male. This turns gender into one of the film’s core interests, with Lanthimos exploring the misogyny powerful women can face, and the link between violence and ‘incel’ culture in America.

But, as ever with Lanthimos, none of the characters are treated with a sense of moral superiority. They are all flawed and ambiguous, with the audience’s emotions split between horror at what the CEO is subjected to, and pity at the mental illness of the kidnappers, one of whom is cognitively impaired and is effectively controlled by the other. This fits into Lanthimos’s broader interest in manipulation and the power dynamics of relationships, as well as themes of loneliness and emotional fragility.

Teddy, the lead kidnapper, is clearly deeply troubled. Over the course of the film, Lanthimos treats his story with the seriousness it deserves, chronicling a history of sexual abuse, bereavement and childhood trauma. In doing so, the film raises questions about how many people have failed Teddy, implicitly criticising both his community and the state for turning their back on him. Teddy is presented as a broken man who cannot escape his past, someone left behind in society’s emphasis on material gain, competition and self-interest.

Jesse Plemons’s brilliantly intense performance as Teddy is matched by an equally impressive turn from Emma Stone. Her portrayal of CEO Michelle Fuller is nuanced and considered; she is neither an innocent victim, nor a greedy corporate boss who got what she deserved. Nonetheless, she is emotionally distant, and lacks concrete remorse or empathy for Teddy’s mother, who is in a coma because of a drug trial run by her company. She therefore represents the personal cost of ambition, and, perhaps, in a nod to one of Lanthimos’s favourite themes, the corrupting influence of power.

Underlying all of this is the film’s interest in the environment. Teddy’s enthusiasm for beekeeping and anxiety about the decline of bee populations makes him a more sympathetic character, while echoing his concerns about the end of humanity. He even compares the division of roles in a bee colony to human society, casting Fuller as the queen bee which all the other bees tirelessly, and mindlessly, work to feed. Fittingly, the buzz of bees is the overwhelming sound at one of the film’s most dramatic moments; for Teddy, beekeeping represents a means to escape and process trauma, and chaos in the bee colony reflects chaos in his mind. Bees are hence woven into the musical fabric of the film, in one of the many clever elements of Jerskin Fendrix’s remarkable score.

The film meditates on some of the darkest aspects of modern America: its lack of concern for the environment, its interest in profit over human relationships, its lack of care for the most vulnerable. Even its title is existentialist. ‘Bugonia’ refers to the ancient Greek belief in bees spontaneously generating from the carcasses of sacrificed cows, perhaps hinting at the idea that new life will always emerge, even if humanity is doomed to extinction. The planet might even be better, the film hints, if it were free of humans.

The film’s use of the absurd has its own important function. It links to the idea of challenging conventions, as well as echoing the chaotic and seemingly meaningless nature of human life. Lanthimos wants his audience to reconsider every aspect of how they have been told to live, to stop copying others and to start thinking for themselves. His film debates conformity versus rebellion, and the collective versus the individual.

Bugonia is not a perfect film, but it does not need to be. Some aspects of its depiction of gender, mental illness and manipulation may strike some viewers as exploitative, and its ending may prove frustrating for those who favour realism over allegory. But its genius lies in its tackling of the human experience in a way which is not only darkly funny, but also philosophically resonant, and at times deeply moving. Lanthimos has announced he will take some time off to creatively recharge after Bugonia; it is a break he very much deserves after producing such a dark, twisted but ultimately hugely clever tour-de-force.

‘Heated Rivalry’ vs ‘Stranger Things’: Case studies in creative control 

Nora Miles
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‘Heated Rivalry’ vs ‘Stranger Things’: Case studies in creative control 

The year is 2026. Two actors who were waiting tables six months ago have just carried the Olympic torch into Milan. Canada’s Prime Minister Mark Carney is gifted a replica jacket from a low-budget TV adaptation of NHL fanfiction. And The Observer is referring to the apparent Burnham-Starmer animosity as a ‘Heated Rivalry’. Truly, what on earth is going on? 

In January 2025, it was announced that small Canadian streamer Crave had picked up the adaptation of Rachel Reid’s Gamechangers series of hockey-themed gay romance novels. The show takes its name from the series’ second installment Heated Rivalry, which follows the developing relationship between closeted ice hockey players Shane Hollander and Ilya Rozanov. Nine days before its release in November 2025, HBO announced that they had picked up the show for its US distribution, closely followed by Sky in the UK. By every imaginable metric, the show has been a smash hit. Not only is it immensely popular, but the show’s moving fifth episode ‘I’ll Believe in Anything’ ranks among the highest-reviewed episodes of television of all time on IMDb. But why is it that this seemingly niche genre romance has turned out to have such widespread appeal? 

While reflecting on this question, a contrast emerged in my mind. Netflix’s Stranger Things, whose final season premiered concurrently with the release of Heated Rivalry, has similarly dominated the cultural zeitgeist at various points across its ten-year airing schedule. Of course, the comparison is an imperfect one; the shows are wildly different in many ways, and it goes without saying that the expectations for a final season are different to a debut. But it seems to me that they resemble each other in one key way — the concentration of creative control in the hands of a few key individuals. 

Those key individuals in question being Heated Rivalry creator Jacob Tierney and Stranger Things’ very own fraternal directorial duo —  Matt and Ross Duffer. Their identities are so established as creatives that the final season was released alongside a documentary following the pair in the process of bringing their passion project to the screen. Tierney’s reputation has been similarly cemented after the publication of his DMs pitching the adaptation to Reid, which reveal him to have been the unique catalyst for this whole phenomenon. 

Both Tierney and the Duffers influenced key structural and narrative decisions in their respective shows. The Duffers experimented with format to the point that their finale more closely resembled a feature film than an episode of television. They have also expressed their personal preference for introducing new characters every season, some of which have certainly played a key role in sustaining the show’s popularity. In a similar exercise of autonomy, Tierney reported that we have him personally to thank for the show’s steamy nature. Heated Rivalry fans might find a prudish version of the show difficult to imagine, but he insists he had to advocate to maintain that element of the source material. In his own words: “These books are porn. You think that the audience is here despite that?”

I will not attempt to establish any causality between micro-managed creative control and assured popularity just yet, but it is undeniable that both shows have seen immense success. For better or for worse, both have launched veritable fandomania, skyrocketing their young casts into superstardom. Stranger Things is almost synonymous with the Netflix brand, and I would argue that it is to the credit of the Duffers that they managed to anticipate a clear gap in the market for a feel-good, nostalgic, small-town mystery, with an ensemble cast of fan favourites. While the appeal of Heated Rivalry seems more niche on paper, the viewing figures speak for themselves, and Tierney should certainly receive some of the praise for the surprisingly wide impact of a six-episode low-budget romance on the collective global cultural imagination. 

But heavy is the head that wears the crown. The Duffer brothers’ clear responsibility for creative decision-making has meant they have received the brunt of the criticism for the perceived flaws of the show’s final season. Fans were so underwhelmed that they produced a viral conspiracy theory that the finale was actually a hoax, and that a secret ninth episode was coming. That can’t be good for the ego. So what lessons can networks learn from the reception of the two shows, and to what extent can their successes and failures be attributed to their centralised executive production structure? 

Hardcore Stranger Things fans will be able to pinpoint the amount of plot holes amassed over the course of the show. The valid argument for the Duffer’s defence would suggest that any of their team of writers could have anticipated and mitigated these issues, and that any show capable of inspiring such impassioned opinion on characterisation has at least succeeded in keeping its audience emotionally invested. But I just want to raise the possibility that two middle-aged men slightly lost their grip on what it was that made their teen drama so popular. 

Some of the creative decisions, over which the Duffer Brothers seemed to demand such possessive control, are truly baffling: Why on earth would you give the most important character arc of your final season to your protagonist’s never-before-mentioned little sister when you’re already juggling a whole host of supporting characters? Half of the stills from the show’s final season look like they’re taken from bad improv classes in which about 20 characters seem to just… stand there? And personally, I feel like perhaps the biggest misstep is how Winona Ryder seemingly got sidelined in what originally felt like her show. 

More troubling still though, are the cast accounts of the Duffers’ intense on-set direction.  Noah Schnapp admitted that the Duffers insisted on filming his character’s coming-out scene for 12 hours. After having watched the scene, I dare say this ‘obsessive perfectionist creative’ shtick falls a bit flat. At the risk of starting a gay pissing contest between the two shows, Connor Storrie’s Ilya professed his love in Russian that he didn’t even understand, and the show reportedly wrapped in just 39 days. I also remain disturbed by one particular admission from the documentary: “We went into production without having a finished script for the finale.” Apparently if you create a show that is popular enough then Netflix will let you get away with anything, because … what? 

It remains to be seen whether Tierney will be able to maintain the momentum he built up with Heated Rivalry’s first season. At the very least, it seems he will face less of a challenge in terms of sheer volume of characters to manage, and without the burden of ultimate creative responsibility for the source material. But still, perhaps Stranger Things offers him a cautionary tale on how not to bring a TV show to an end. So far, Tierney has seemed in tune with the expectations of the fans, but maybe that same personal responsibility is a poisoned chalice in a period of such intense ‘fan’ culture. I, like seemingly every other young woman on the planet, admit that I can’t wait to see what he has in store for season two.

In Conversation with Tom McTague

Hassan Akram and Hattie Simpson
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In Conversation with Tom McTague

Tom McTague is among the few mainstream British journalists who see politics through the lens of history and world affairs rather than just the Westminster lobby. He is best known for his writing on Brexit, work that sits somewhere between reporting and historical explanation. As Editor-in-Chief of the New Statesman and author of Between the Waves, he appears less interested in sudden moments, more in the longer arguments and themes that run through them. This instinct carries into the interview itself. We are speaking in his office at the New Statesman the day after the staff Christmas party, and it looks out over a rather quiet newsroom – the usual noise replaced by just a couple of journalists working on articles. The conversation begins with a focus on contemporary political figures, specifically those with whom he sympathises. He begins by clarifying what we mean by that: political agreement, personal understanding, or something else entirely?

He starts with Bridget Phillipson. They share a North East background; his parents were Labour activists there, and he recognises the culture of the party she comes from – its assumptions, its internal logic. There are parallels in their lives too: siblings of a similar age, children, the move South-East. “There are a lot of things there that I understand and sympathise with”, he says.

Andy Burnham is who he follows up with. McTague profiled him for the New Statesman back in September, but the mention appears more personal than professional. Burnham’s sense of himself as a “normal lad” from the North West, combined with a career spent in Westminster, feels familiar. McTague talks about the tension of moving south and ending up in a world that feels so distant from where you started. “He obviously has that ambition to go on. I often find with Andy that I know so many people like him – friends, my brother, some of my brother’s friends in particular – who are just like Andy Burnham. Everything about him, I immediately recognise and understand.” Burnham, he suggests, is “quite representative of a lot of provincial English people who then go to Oxford [Burnham studied at Cambridge] or move south”. He’s recognisable.

Keir Starmer is the next to be named, and he fits the same pattern. McTague has known him for years and describes him as similarly pulled between his upbringing and the office he now holds. “I have sympathy for Keir Starmer”, he says. “I got to know him over the years, and I think I can understand who he is as well – he’s pulled in a very similar way to Andy Burnham, between the sense of who he was growing up, his parents, and what he actually is now that he’s Prime Minister.” What links these three, almost starkly different figures, is by no means ideology, but experience: the strain of navigating politics whilst remaining attached to a past that doesn’t entirely fit.

This attention to background and detail also runs through Between the Waves, McTague’s book on Brexit and British euroscepticism. Asked why he wrote it, his answer begins – perhaps unsurprisingly – with journalism. He thought he had reached the high point of his career when he became political editor of The Independent on Sunday. Then the paper folded. Politico came next, along with new exposure to American journalism, which he describes as “fantastic”, and to Brexit at its most technical and politically fraught. “I had to immerse myself in Brexit, in my niche”, he says.

Reporting on Brexit highlighted a recurring problem. In Brussels, attempting to understand Eurosceptic arguments could mark you out as a Brexiteer; in London, the same writing might be read as reflexively pro-European. The assumptions attached to the work changed depending on who was reading it. McTague is clear about his intention in navigating this terrain: “I’ve always tried to write pieces that are, in some senses, not polemical. They’re an attempt to take things seriously and be balanced and intellectually curious.” The contradiction – and the effort required to sustain that position – appears to have stuck with him.

The conceptual starting point for the book came from American history. Reading Rick Perlstein’s Before the Storm, McTague was struck by just how wrong contemporary judgments had been. Barry Goldwater’s 1964 presidential defeat was meant to demonstrate the electoral limits of ideological conservatism. Instead, it marked the beginning of a political trajectory that would eventually reshape American politics. “That’s the story of the conservative revolution – how the conventional wisdom was all wrong, and how the losers of history had kind of ended up winning.” The parallel, he says, was immediately obvious: “I thought, wow – that is the story of the Eurosceptics.” The supposed losers didn’t disappear; they regrouped and won.

For decades, British euroscepticism lost arguments, votes, and internal party battles. Then, in rapid succession, it secured a referendum, won it, and reshaped the political landscape that followed. “They secured victory after victory, having spent decades losing”, McTague says. “There are all these moments in history where you could say it looks impossible that this would happen.” What fascinated him wasn’t Brexit as a rupture moment, but its part in a longer story. “I was intrigued by how history moves in a different way, actually, than politics suggests it does.” Political ideas persist despite repeated failure. 

That sense of continuity matters to him. If Between the Waves had an argument, it’s not that Brexit was inevitable, but that political ideas endure far longer than their apparent defeats. Losing arguments, elections, or referendums doesn’t dissolve a worldview; it often consolidates it. This belief shapes not only his historical writing but his approach to contemporary politics: he’s wary of treating any political moment as final, decisive, or closed.

Finding a starting point, therefore, was difficult. He considered beginning in 1990, with “Margaret Thatcher in Chequers with her husband, family, friends on New Year’s Eve – this woman who had been bending history to her will suddenly finding that history is running past her and she’s no longer in control”. Thatcher, he notes, was trying and failing to stop the German reunification, to resist the European Exchange Rate Mechanism – to halt forces already in motion. “She couldn’t stop anything. And then she was going to lose power.” But that moment required her 1988 Bruges speech, which required the 1975 EEC referendum, which required Enoch Powell. Each start point demanded its own history.

Eventually, McTague arrived in Algiers in 1943. Reading Jean Monnet’s biography revealed an unlikely convergence: Monnet drawing up ideas for European integration; Charles de Gaulle thinking about France’s future; Harold Macmillan representing British interests; Enoch Powell also in the city. For a while, McTague admits, he became distracted by an assassination that occurred at the book’s opening. “I’ve got to calm myself down”, he recalls telling himself. “This is a story about Brexit, not about Admirals being assassinated.” The story reminds us both somewhat of our own history essays and the many, endlessly tempting rabbit holes we have to resist falling into.

Powell and de Gaulle emerge as the most revealing pairing. They share certain instincts – a very romantic patriotism, a scepticism towards American power, sympathy for an alliance with Russia regardless of its Communism, and an opposition to the kind of multinational citizenship which could create mass immigration to Europe, whether from the Commonwealth or French Algeria – but differ in their conclusions. De Gaulle saw Europe as a route to restore French influence; Powell wanted Britain disengaged entirely, uninterested in replacing the Empire with another form of power. McTague is clear about the limits of Powell’s worldview: “Powell is full of complete contradictions. He creates myths, and then builds what he thinks are perfect rational buildings on top of them – but the foundations are mythological.”

Asked what he might write next, McTague is cautious. Still, there are stories he hasn’t quite let go of. That assassination remains tempting, as does the Allied invasion of North Africa during the Second World War – a period he describes as “completely wild”. As he lists off submarines, clandestine meetings, shifting loyalties, and improvised diplomacy, it’s hard not to disagree. 

Asked what he’s most proud of, his answer is immediate. “It’s the book. I’m incredibly proud to be editor of the New Statesman as well. Those two things – they’re good things to have”. What he hopes for the book’s future is less specific. He talks instead about “the sense of history not ending – not being predictable, being kind of chaotic”, and the danger of assuming that politics is moving in any fixed direction. “We might think now that history is destined to move in a certain way”, he says. “And it’s evidently not.”

He mentions other work he’s particularly proud of: “A piece for The Atlantic, travelling around Britain to capture the sense of the British state declining, and Britain declining”. There are others too – profiles of Starmer and Boris Johnson – though he still regrets one edit. “There was a line I wish I’d fought harder for”, he says, speaking about the Johnson article: “The chaos is the point. The chaos is performative and it’s real – he performs it on purpose”.

That experience feeds through into his advice: “You should be particular and proud about how you write. You should be pedantic and thorough. But you shouldn’t see editing as a battle.” Good editors, he insists, make your work better: “You shouldn’t be so proud that you think you know best – usually the editors will improve your work. It’s never infallible”.

He turns to his admiration for American journalism. McTague contrasts a British political press preoccupied with not missing “the line” with what he experienced in the United States, where papers place greater value on long-form reporting. The difference, he suggests, isn’t one of talent but of structure: time, access, and the willingness to let reporting develop without a predetermined conclusion.

“When American journalism is at its best, the access they demand – the on-the-record quotes – is superb”, he says. He references a now-hugely famous Vanity Fair feature on Trump’s inner circle, which was built on almost a year’s worth of interviews. “There isn’t a British equivalent – no one is spending twelve months talking to Morgan McSweeney, on the record, for ten thousand words. That’s something we should aspire to do.”

Finally, when asked about advice more broadly, journalism and life blur together. “They’ve melded into one”, he says. The answer itself is simple: “You need to write. Write and write and write. Do your trade.” Journalism, for McTague, comes down to curiosity – finding out things other people don’t know and writing them down clearly. It’s a modest definition, but one that fits his work: an attention to what outlasts the news cycle.

Only 25% of Oxford Union speakers are women

Gaspard Rouffin
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Only 25% of Oxford Union speakers are women

A Cherwell analysis of over 560 Oxford Union speakers can reveal that 25.1% of confirmed speakers since Michaelmas term 2023 are women. In total, the Union confirmed 424 men, versus only 142 women. Cherwell based its figures on the speakers announced in the last eight term cards. 

The divide is particularly stark between politics and arts. For speakers from a political background, including British MPs or foreign heads of states, only 15.7% were women.

According to a UN Women study, 27.2% of politicians around the world in national parliaments are female, almost double the rate of confirmed Union speakers. In the UK, 40% of elected MPs in the 2024 general election were female.

Most of the confirmed women were from an arts or literary background, as the Union disproportionately confirmed female speakers from the creative industry or authors. 39.7% of confirmed arts speakers were women, including actresses, singers, or novelists, while 35.6% of confirmed media speakers were female. This includes journalists, non-fiction authors, political commentators, or subject experts.

The gender disparity is also apparent for speakers from other backgrounds, such as business or sports, where respectively 18.1% and 16.0% of confirmed speakers at the Union were women. Over the past eight academic terms, the Union confirmed only 4 female sporting personalities, 10 business leaders , and 12 academics – compared to 21, 45, and 53 for men from each respective category.

There is a notable difference between terms with male versus female presidents. On average, there were 20.1% of female confirmed speakers when the president was a man, and 31.2% of female speakers when the president was a woman. Over the past eight terms, there have been an equal number of female and male presidents.

Two terms particularly stand out for gender parity of confirmed speakers, Trinity 2025 under Anita Okunde and Michaelmas 2023 under Disha Hegde, which both had around 40% of confirmed female speakers.

Speaking with Cherwell, several former Oxford Union presidents described that even when aiming to maintain gender parity in the invites sent, committees often faced difficulties in materialising these aims. They attributed this partly to the low response rate of invited speakers and the difficulty to predict which personalities will be willing to speak at the Union. They commented that the lack of gender parity in confirmed Union speakers reflected more general gender inequality in the world. 

One former female senior official also described internal biases within the Union, with male-dominated invitation committees sometimes deeming female speakers “less popular”. The former presidents that Cherwell spoke to emphasised the need for more diverse committees to ensure better gender parity in confirmed speakers in the future.

Cherwell’s analysis does not reflect speakers who cancelled or rescheduled their events, so final proportions of speakers at the Union may vary. 

Cherwell found no non-binary speakers over the past seven academic terms. A 2021 national census found that 0.1% of the general population is non-binary or gender non-conformning. The Oxford Feminist Society and the Oxford University LGBT Society were approached by Cherwell for comment.

Last year, the Oxford Union has invited several figures criticised by feminist organisations for sexual violence. The Oxford Feminist society previously condemned the Oxford Union for their invitation of convicted domestic abuser Dizzee Rascal, calling it an “insult to the victims of domestic violence and to women in general”. The Oxford Union also invited American actor Kevin Spacey who faced several allegations of sexual misconduct, as well as Don McLean who was issued a restraining order after a domestic violence incident.

Anita Okunde, Oxford Union President last Trinity, told Cherwell: “Championing higher quantities of quality women speakers has been a priority throughout my two years in the Union. While I am incredibly proud of the inspiring women we represented during my term, I am resolved that, like for the women leaders before me, it had to be the result of deliberate strategy and effort.”

According to Okunde, her administration deliberately focused on making sure that if “ratios were skewed” in speakers invited, the committee would focus on “inviting either women or people of perspectives at risk of being unrepresented”. Reflecting on her term, Okunde told Cherwell: “It helped that many of my ‘dream speakers’ happened to also be women. When you set the bar with female world leaders, it sets a standard for the rest of the committee to follow.”

Discussing representation on the committee, she told Cherwell: “My committee featured a near 50/50 gender split. We had the privilege of the most competent women serving at every level. This directly influenced the voices in the room and the guests we invited. When women lead behind the scenes, we see better representation on the stage.”

Other student societies also disproportionately confirmed men to their speaker events. Oxford Speaks’ term card for instance only includes one woman and seven men, for the Politics Society it is one woman and four men. The Oxford Labour Club’s term card features two women and two men, while the Oxford University Conservative Association has confirmed three women and five men.

The Oxford Union and current President Katherine Yang declined to comment.

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