Hey all,

Just a quick note this week: We’re looking for people to participate in a focus group about how they consume science-related content. If this sounds like something you’d be happy to partake in, please fill in this form by 12th March or tell friends who might be keen.

Enjoy this week’s stories and have a great weekend.

Chloe

Ghosts on the glacier: a deadly expedition on Aconcagua (55-minute read)

Tracing the visual legacy of the miners’ strike (6-minute read)

The 100 fights that shaped action cinema (2-hour+ read!)

Exiled Kurdish women fighting for freedom, photographed (11-minute read)

An analysis of title drops in movies (10-minute read)

Copa 71: the fascinating story of the unofficial Women’s World Cup (2-minute read; 2-minute watch)

A political ecology of the repair manual (42-minute read)

Who replaced Avril Lavigne? Joanne McNally investigates (32-minute listen)

The rise of the señora: why Latines are reclaiming ancestral slow living practices (7-minute read)

River swimming in a salmon (10-minute read)

How we can help you

Storythings is the content marketing agency of choice for some of the world’s most forward-thinking B2B brands and organisations. If your content isn’t getting the results you need, let us help you understand why. Here are 3 reasons to get in touch. 

1. Audience Research – We help B2B brands understand modern attention patterns and how they can get more engagement with content.2. Content Strategy – We use our bespoke process to develop unique content formats that hold audience attention, build community, and increase brand salience.3. Content Production – We craft beautiful and diverse stories of impact that capture and hold attention using podcasts, videos, editorial, and newsletters. We do other things too. We're very friendly and always enjoy meeting people, so get in touch for a FREE 30 minute consultation. 

Ghosts on the glacier: a deadly expedition on Aconcagua (55-minute read)50 years ago, eight Americans set off to climb Aconcagua, the western hemisphere’s highest mountain. Things quickly went wrong. Two climbers died mysteriously. In 2020, a camera belonging to one of the deceased climbers was spat out by Aconcagua’s receding glacier – breathing life back into an enduring mountaineering mystery. Mixing video interviews, photography, and vivid reporting, this interactive investigation from the NYT traces everything that is known about this incredible, unfurling story. “Because the story ends up in the realm of myths, you lose all control over it. Every tragedy that hasn’t been fully solved leads to these things. The story will keep being written. And I don’t think it’ll ever end.” 

Tracing the visual legacy of the miners’ strike (6-minute read)The 6th March marked the 40th anniversary of one of Britain’s largest examples of industrial action. The journalist Seumas Milne described the 1984-5 miners’ strike as having “no real parallel – in size, duration and impact – anywhere in the world.” In time for this anniversary, a new exhibition at the Martin Parr Foundation in Bristol (until 31st March!) has compiled photography from the year-long action, as well as badges, posters, and banners reflecting the solidarity within and impact of the strike. This piece reflects on this lasting visual legacy. 

The 100 fights that shaped action cinema (2-hour+ read!)This piece wrestles with more than 125 years of cinematic history to ask: which fight scenes have had the greatest impact on the action cinema genre? With entries from the 1890s to present day, the list illustrates the evolution of the fight scene across time, considering technological advancements, new tropes, and steps forward in the professionalisation of stunt work. It’s a mighty achievement, but if you don’t have time to read through all 100 (there’s enough words to fill an afternoon) it’s well worth ctrl-F-ing your favourites to see if they made it. 

Exiled Kurdish women fighting for freedom, photographed (11-minute read)Kurdish women living in Iran face discrimination for their ethnicity as well as their gender. Photographer Keiwan Fatehi has documented the stories of girls and women who, forced to leave their homeland, have joined the peshmerga military resistance.

An analysis of title drops in movies (10-minute read)When a character in a film says the movie title in their dialogue, the effect can be absurd, self-aware, or cringeworthy. This extensive project has analysed 73,921 films released since 1940 to find out how often these title drops happen, and asks: has the phenomenon gained momentum over time? A great example of going down the rabbit hole.

Copa 71: the fascinating story of the unofficial Women’s World Cup (2-minute read; 2-minute watch)In 1971, six women’s football teams gathered in Mexico to compete for the title of world champions. The final – televised and attended by 110,000 fans – remains the best attended women’s sports event in history. Yet its legacy has been crushed. After the event, the FA and Fifa dedicated themselves to denying its success and punishing the women – including promoting theories that football was bad for women’s health. The first Fifa Women’s World Cup wouldn’t be until 1991. 

Released in the UK today, 8th March, the sports documentary Copa 71 aims to restore the suppressed history of the 1971 world cup, using rich archive footage and interviews with former players. The film serves as a great argument for the fact that a different world is possible; not only that, a different world did in fact exist.

A political ecology of the repair manual (42-minute read)Repair manuals have been increasingly replaced with “setup guides” and warnings that the plastic carapaces of our electronics contain “no user-serviceable parts.” We can’t see or understand what’s happening inside these objects, and we’re not meant to. Simultaneously the climate crisis is compelling us to shift from ‘building the world’ to repairing it. This leads Shannon Mattern to argue that “This seems a crucial time to recover the history, politics, and aesthetics of the repair manual as a didactic genre and creative form”; “manuals can translate between the individualised refurbishment of objects and the collective maintenance of systems, societies, and ecologies.”

Who replaced Avril Lavigne? Joanne McNally investigates (32-minute listen)In 2011, a Brazilian blog called Avril Está Morta (“Avril Is Dead”) began the rumour that Canadian singer Avril Lavigne died in 2003 and was replaced by a body double named Melissa. Forums began sharing evidence of Lavigne’s replacement – from subliminal messages in her lyrics to changes in her appearance. Lavigne herself denies the theory. But that hasn’t stopped the conspiracy from expanding. 

A lot of podcasts might approach the topic with fact-finding diligence, seeking a definitive answer that would put the rumours to bed. But this podcast just isn’t interested. Its comedian host Joanne McNally conducts interviews, yes, and visits Lavigne’s hometown; but she is much more concerned with how stupid the internet is than about getting to the bottom of one particular conspiracy. It’s incredibly funny.

The rise of the señora: why Latines are reclaiming ancestral slow living practices (7-minute read)The routine of a señora – an older Latin woman, typically an aunt, mother, or grandmother – is idealised as slow and restful. It’s a life at odds with the relentless hustle culture faced by immigrants and workers in neoliberal societies where productivity is endorsed above rest. #SeñoraEra has amassed 19.2M views on TikTok, but it is more than a trend – its advocates argue that it is a reminder that rest and slowing down should be fundamental parts of our lives. This piece interviews “señora era” proponents while considering how social circumstances impact sleep for Latines along the US-Mexico border.

River Swimming in a Salmon (10-minute read)Considering the 14th Shanghai Biennale, Cosmos Cinema, this piece dives into a comparison between the contemporary state of curation and traditional cinematic montage. Montage is an essential feature of our image-ridden era; the challenges of curation in this environment are vividly incarnated by AI image generation – which “cuts up, objectifies, immobilises, and mummifies” images-as-data, prompted by a fragmented dataset in which the bourgeois vision of the world is overrepresented. Cosmos Cinema finds a way to overcome this – by decentralising the production of meaning – and this well-written piece provides plenty of food for thought.

We hope you've enjoyed this week's newsletter. I'm sure some of your friends would love to read it. Sharing it would be really appreciated. If you've received this from a friend, you can subscribe below and get it direct to your inbox every Friday.

Thanks for reading. We’ll see you all next week.

Hugh, Matt, Anjali and the whole team at Storythings.