BuzzRAG Culture Desk — 2026-09-30

At roughly 5,000 metres beneath the Pacific, filmmaker Eleanor Mortimer’s documentary finds a world that feels both alien and startlingly alive. Marine biologists encounter and classify unfamiliar creatures, including the gloriously odd worm that gives the film its playful nickname. The expedition’s work supplies the film with a natural sense of wonder: discovery happens not in a distant fantasy, but in a real environment whose inhabitants are only beginning to be understood.

That wonder sits beside a harder reality. The deep sea is increasingly threatened by mining, and the film places scientific attention in tension with the rush to treat little-known habitats as resources. Its whimsical approach may make strange life easier to meet on its own terms, while the ecological stakes keep the excursion from becoming mere spectacle. The question is not only what these creatures are, but what could be lost before we learn enough to protect them.

In On the Equality of All Things, physicist Carlo Rovelli moves between science, philosophy and the everyday, building a book whose range is visible even in its crowded index: Francis Bacon, bats, behaviourism, Henri Bergson and the big bang share space. The result, as described in the review, is less a conventional physics primer than an invitation to think across categories that academic and popular writing often keep apart.

Rovelli’s near-mystical register reflects a belief that our understanding of ourselves may be on the verge of a major shift. That ambition gives the book its appeal and its risk: sweeping connections can open up a subject, but they also ask readers to decide where insight ends and speculation begins. In a cultural moment hungry for accounts of how humans fit into a vast, interconnected world, his attempt to join scientific ideas to questions of value is a conversation starter rather than a final answer.

The Dublin group Gilla Band are the subject of a Quietus review titled simply “Pugnello.” The listing provides little detail about the piece itself, but the appearance of a new, individually named work from a band known for abrasive, unconventional rock is enough to make it a useful marker in the group’s ongoing musical life. The title resists easy explanation; the sound and setting are left to the listener and the review to establish.

That open space is part of the appeal of following experimental music: a track can arrive without a neat story attached, asking audiences to encounter its textures before deciding what it means. Gilla Band’s work has often made disorientation feel like a deliberate artistic tool rather than a barrier to entry. The review’s attention signals that “Pugnello” merits that close listening, though the available listing leaves the specifics of its sound and release context unconfirmed. What matters next is how the piece sits alongside the band’s larger body of work.

Twenty artists and scholars have received MacArthur Fellowships, the annual no-strings-attached grants that give recipients room to pursue work on their own terms. The group includes a historian studying racial wage gaps and a saxophonist whose performances bring a chef into the live experience, a pairing that captures the range of practices the fellowships recognize. The grants are worth $800,000 each, offering substantial support without prescribing a single project or outcome.

The fellowship’s model matters as much as its roster: it backs people whose work can cross disciplines, challenge established narratives or resist easy classification. A historian examining unequal pay and a musician remaking the boundaries of performance both illuminate how cultural inquiry happens beyond conventional institutional lanes. The money cannot guarantee lasting influence, but it can buy time, independence and room to take risks. The next story to follow is what these recipients choose to make possible with that freedom.

Colombian group Monsieur Periné have announced that they will split after completing their current tour, bringing nearly two decades together to a close. The news comes only weeks after the band received another Latin Grammy nomination, an awkwardly timed reminder that public recognition and private decisions do not always move in tandem. Their statement, summed up in the phrase “We need this space,” frames the break as a deliberate choice rather than a verdict on the group’s recent standing.

For listeners, the remaining tour becomes both a run of live dates and a chance to encounter the band together before the pause begins. A long-running group’s departure can alter how its catalogue is heard: songs become records of a shared history as well as performances in the present. The split also resists the assumption that a nomination or career milestone must lead to another cycle of work. What follows for the members individually is still unknown; for now, the focus is on finishing the tour on their own terms.

A Guardian quiz invites readers to guess which songs Andy Burnham selected while touring England’s regions. The prompts hinge on the idea that a politician’s soundtrack can be tuned to place: the Clash for London is one question, while the north-west brings a choice between the Pogues and Primal Scream. It is a light format, but one built around a familiar cultural pleasure—testing whether a song feels like it belongs to a city, region or moment.

Music can make a public itinerary feel less like a sequence of official appearances and more like an act of self-presentation. A regional pick may signal local knowledge, personal taste or simply a willingness to play along with the audience’s expectations. That ambiguity is what gives the quiz its cultural hook: songs carry identities that politicians can borrow, but listeners are free to decide whether the selection feels earned. The exercise also offers a small reminder that cultural life travels with politics, often through choices more revealing than a formal speech.