Take Five: Stories beyond the news cycle
The relentless onward turn of the cycle rolled right over a number of politicians this week on both sides of the ditch as the USA Trumpifies ever further and principles get crushed along the way. Meanwhile it seems people here in our country wouldn't mind a bit of Trumpian bulldozing from our overly meek PM and his government.
But all that nonsense was slammed into perspective by the tragic death of Portuguese Liverpool player Diogo Jota and his brother in the early hours of yesterday. Not that we haven't seen way too much senseless and often essentially anonymous death in 2025, but somehow this story is one of those that stops you in your tracks. The shots of Jota so happy just literally days ago at his wedding are suddenly breathtakingly sad. Life truly is madly fragile and we really do need to embrace it to the full, each and every day.
Anyway, to distractions...
Firstly somewhat related to the above, in reverse almost, this is interesting from The Observer on 'the man in seat 11A and our obsession with sole survivors': https://observer.co.uk/style/features/article/the-man-in-seat-11a-and-our-obsession-with-sole-survivors
An interesting deep dive from Keith Houston on the history of emojis: https://longreads.com/2025/07/01/emoji-language-keith-houston/
Another excellent one from Dan Snow on his History Hit podcast, particularly for everyone who'll be in Greece this summer, on the real story of Sparta: https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/dan-snows-history-hit/id1042631089
A proper treat this - Gyles Brandreth goes deep with Gary Oldman on the latest Rosebud podcast: https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/rosebud-with-gyles-brandreth/id1704806594
And lastly, rather more soberly and very much related to the topics covered in the excellent PRmoment AI in PR event this week - The Wall Street Journal reported this week that CEOs are now starting to say the quiet part out loud, that AI is going to hammer white collar jobs: https://www.wsj.com/tech/ai/ai-white-collar-job-loss-b9856259?mod=hp_lead_pos4
Cheers,
Will, PRmoment Leaders