If anyone was going to get thousands of festivalgoers off their phones, it makes sense that it would be Florence Welch. Right before performing ‘Dog Days Are Over’ at the UK’s Reading Festival over the weekend, the Florence + The Machine singer won fans over with this call to action: “I would like you all to put your phones away. Put them the f*** away. And I know, I know it’s hard, because you came to this festival, and you want to film this f***ing song… but listen: Filming this song will stop you from experiencing this song… did you not come to experience this song with the people that you love?”

You can watch the powerful, albeit fleeting, moment here (filmed by a BBC camera crew, not a smartphone).

“Good.”
Jonathan LaPaglia’s answer when asked by the Sydney Morning Herald for his response to Australian Survivor fans who say they’re boycotting the show without him as host. After 10 seasons at the helm, JLP was controversially sacked by Network 10 last year.

$US20 million ($AU27.9m)
How much money Olivia Rodrigo raised for women’s causes through her all-female festival, Daisy Chain Fields. The inaugural event drew $10 million in donations to nonprofits, matched by a further $10 million from philanthropist Melinda French Gates.

Amal and George Clooney being so Amal and George ahead of the 83rd Venice International Film Festival.

New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art ('The Met') is cancelling its planned exhibition honouring British designer John Galliano, after backlash over his past antisemitic and racist statements.

Here’s the latest.

The Met’s Costume Institute showcases one exhibition per year, launched by its annual fundraising benefit, the Met Gala, on the first Monday in May, for around 500 guests at roughly $75,000 a head.

Last month, the Met announced controversial designer John Galliano would be the focus of its 2027 Costume Institute exhibition.

Galliano was creative director of Dior when racist comments he made to bar patrons – including "I love Hitler" and derogatory remarks to an Asian patron – went viral in 2011. He was fired and convicted in an antisemitism trial in France, before making a comeback at Paris fashion house Maison Margiela in 2014, where he stayed for a decade.

The 65-year-old was set to become only the third living designer honoured with a solo Costume Institute show, titled "John Galliano: Horizons," which promised to address both his "derogatory conduct" and his "extraordinary creative accomplishments."

In a letter to The Met urging them to reconsider, Speaker of the New York City Council Julie Menin wrote: “Our cultural institutions, particularly those that receive funding from the City of New York, have a responsibility to demonstrate that hatred and bigotry carry consequences”.

On Monday, The Met said the exhibition, due to launch with the 2027 Met Gala, will be replaced by another exhibit. “Following thoughtful discussions with John Galliano, we have together decided not to proceed,” said director Max Hollein.

Galliano said it was with “great sadness” that he decided it was “best for the exhibition not to take place at this time,” adding: “I remain fully accountable for the pain caused by my words in the past.”

Menin welcomed the decision, saying the exhibition would have served “as a gut punch to the Jewish community,” amid rising antisemitism.

Vogue’s global editorial director Anna Wintour oversees the gala, and is a longtime Galliano supporter. She called his choice to step aside “very courageous”.

A new exhibition and Gala theme “will be announced at a later date,” organisers said.

Reporting by Emma Gillespie.

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Good evening Faithfuls! It is your fellow faithful, Elliot, reporting from Traitor tower. I mean...from my private bedroom where I am resting and definitely not murdering.

If you’re one of the millions of Aussies tuning in to the latest season of The Traitors Australia, you may be asking, "How the hell do I get on this show?!"

Not to worry, I've done the hard work for you and tracked down the bigwigs responsible for deciding who makes it onto reality TV.

Read on to find out the "recipe" required to make it as a traitor.

The Traitors was born in the Netherlands in 2021 as "De Verraders" and has since been remade in more than 30 countries.

Here's how it works: a group of contestants (22 this year) arrive at a spooky manor. A handful are secretly chosen as "the Traitors," whose job is to blend in and quietly "murder" the rest of the group without getting caught. Everyone else is a "Faithful," tasked with working out who's lying before it's too late. Chaos, mischief and tomfoolery ensue.

Now in its third season, the Australian version has thrown out the old formula of civilian contestants for reality TV royalty: think Australian Idol’s Ian "Dicko" Dickson, Keira Maguire and Alex Nation from The Bachelor, and Cam Merchant from MAFS (and, for some puzzling reason, John Farnham's son Rob is also there.)

So how did this traitorous band come together? I asked the people making the casting calls.

Network 10 Executive Producer Ciaran Flannery has worked across all three seasons. Casting starts up to four months out, though "you're probably still filling spots weeks before it begins, 'cause people drop out, people have personal things that pop up, just life happens," he said.

Normally cast members submit an audition tape, but this season's players already had plenty of "data" out there from previous reality TV stints. Instead of a tape, the process was built around one-on-one conversations to gauge how they'd actually play the game.

So what do producers look for? Flannery says it comes down to a mix of personality types: strategists, emotional players, and wildcards, so the game itself naturally generates drama rather than following a scripted arc. "It's gotta be 22 smart people," he said.

The final call on who becomes a Traitor doesn't happen until everyone sits down with host Gretel Killeen for what the production team calls the "silver chats," the same conversations you catch glimpses of in episode one. From there, producers lock themselves away to land on the right mix.

As Flannery explained it, you can't just stack the Conclave with the strongest players. "You want someone in there who is strategic, who can give some sort of direction to the group, alongside emotive people with empathy, so they find it hard to ‘murder’ people.”

Most importantly, whoever ends up a Traitor actually has to want the job, he said.

Once filming starts, there's no easing in, with the season shot in 12 episodes across 12 straight days, no time off. "We're just filming a real game," Flannery says. "Consider it a sporting event."

Fixed cameras run continuously throughout the manor, so very little is missed. Contestants walk straight into filming after breakfast, and when it's time for a mission, they drive themselves there.

It's a gruelling schedule for the people living it, who Flannery explained are “knackered by the end of it,” both physically and psychologically. Traitors get even less rest, staying up later while maintaining their lie around the clock.

Sometimes it's the Traitors themselves who crack. Alex Nation hit a breaking point when Faithful AJ Antonios confronted her directly, and she didn't even try to defend herself…but Flannery wasn't surprised: "Alex clearly buckles under the pressure. She's not the kind of person who's able to lie to someone's face like that."

With only a few episodes left, Flannery hopes The Traitors keeps coming back "year after year," and isn't fussed on locking in one format – future seasons could pull from reality TV again, mix in outside celebrities, or return to a full civilian cast.

Casting won't be the hard part, either way. Flannery says they pretty much landed their "first pick" lineup this time, with no shortage of people wanting in: "They just wanna come and play the game. It's not even really about being on TV."

Of course, I had to ask him: would they ever consider casting a plucky young journalist? The answer: "Well, maybe."

That's not a no! Let me dust off my cloak.

Reporting by Elliot Lawry.