They say absence makes the heart grow fonder, but you know what else they say? Out of sight, out of mind.

After a four-year hiatus, Euphoria (starring Zendaya and Aussie Jacob Elordi) is back. But the HBO hit drama’s loooong-anticipated return has landed with more of a whimper than a bang.

Episode one of season 3 has a 43% critics score on Rotten Tomatoes, compared to scores of 84% and 80% for seasons 1 and 2, respectively. It’s not looking good over on IMDb either, with the season premiere sitting on 6.7/10. Is the show bad, or have we just lost interest?

Whatever lies ahead for the show’s third and final season, a Euphoria without its signature score from Labrinth was always going to be a tough sell for some (me).

“As my mother was passing, she was lonely, and there was only so much the family could provide… that’s when I went, ‘I wish there [were] people in the world that were there to sit impartially and just provide solace and care.’ So that's part of my expansion and one of the things I will be learning.”
Australian actor Nicole Kidman has revealed she will train to become a death doula. Kidman made the comments during a speaking event at the University of San Francisco on the weekend. The 58-year-old said she was inspired to help support others through loss after the death of her mother in 2024.

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The number of Justin Bieber songs that entered Spotify’s Global Top 200 following his Coachella set over the weekend. The stat is a new record for the artist, who racked up 77 million streams the day after his performance.

Harry and Meghan, the Duke and Duchess of Sussex, arrived in Melbourne on Tuesday ahead of their whirlwind four-day Australian visit. Say what you want about the royal(ish?) couple, anyone who can hit the ground running after a 16-hour flight (let alone look that fresh and be photographed approx. a billion times per minute) has my respect and admiration.

‘Call Her Daddy’ podcast host Alex Cooper has asked TikToker Alix Earle to publicly explain her “beef” with her.

It comes more than a year after Earle left Cooper’s podcast network.

If you don’t know what any of that means, hang in there because we’ve got you.

Let’s start by explaining the main characters in this story. 

Alex Cooper is best known as the host of ‘Call Her Daddy’. Cooper originally co-hosted the show with Sofia Franklyn from 2018 to 2020, when Franklyn left over a dispute about whether ‘Call Her Daddy’ should stay on the Barstool network. 

Over time, the show has evolved from light-hearted discussions of sex and relationships to long-form interviews with prominent women, ranging from Cardi B to Monica Lewinsky. 

In 2021, hosting the show alone, Cooper signed a major deal with Spotify. When it expired in 2023, she started her own podcast company called Unwell Network. One of Unwell’s founding shows was ‘Hot Mess’, hosted by influencer and vlogger Alix Earle. 

‘Hot Mess’ went on hiatus under unclear circumstances in early 2025. At the time, Cooper said the hiatus “has nothing to do with Unwell,” noting the network had given Earle the rights to her own podcast. 

In May 2025, Earle told The Wall Street Journal the process of getting the rights was “behind the scenes, a little bit of a hot mess”. That month, she appeared on ‘Dancing with the Stars’, coming second to Robert Irwin. 

Like Cooper, Earle is a businesswoman as well as a vlogger and influencer. She has a number of corporate partnerships and last month launched a skincare line. 

Earlier this month, Earle re-posted a TikTok which called Cooper an “ambulance chaser” who, by interviewing women about their lives on ‘Call Her Daddy’, “wants to be there when you’re vulnerable and broken down and you’re ready to sign over your rights to your life.” 

In response, Cooper posted a TikTok asking Earle to explain herself, saying: “You’re gonna need to get specific and just say what you need to say. There’s no NDA.” 

Earle re-posted the video and commented: “Okay on it!”

Many commenters have questioned whether or not the fight is real, but Cooper clarified in a statement to her Instagram stories on Thursday: “No, this is not a PR stunt.”

“This girl on girl shit needs to stop,” Cooper wrote.

“While Alix tries to get her story together, let me address Brianna Chickenfry, who is adding onto the fake narrative and dog pile.”

Brianna Chicken-who? A story for next time.

Reporting by Lucy Tassell

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Over the next few days, thousands of festival goers will descend on a valley in the Californian desert to attend the sold-out second weekend of Coachella 2026.

The festival is one of the biggest of its kind, with the star power of its global headliners rivaled only by its A-list attendees.

But the Coachella of the past was a very different festival, one born out of a protest led by Pearl Jam, and an artist boycott against Ticketmaster. 

I want to take you back to 1992.

Barcelona is hosting the Olympics, Bill Clinton is elected U.S. President, and Australians are paying around 66 cents for a litre of petrol.

Aladdin, Home Alone 2: Lost in New York, and Wayne’s World are dominating at the global box office.

Grunge is exploding and Pearl Jam is the best-selling rock band in the world.

At the height of their success, the band is locked in an ongoing dispute with Ticketmaster, the industry’s leading ticket distributor.

The fight began when Ticketmaster attempted to charge a $US1 service fee per ticket on a free Pearl Jam concert in Seattle. The band refused to accept the charge.

Pearl Jam also wanted to cap ticket prices to their shows at $18, but Ticketmaster continued raising its service fees. From there, tensions escalated with a boycott and legal action against the provider. The band accused Ticketmaster of operating an illegal monopoly.

The case was eventually dropped after a two-year public battle, but Pearl Jam’s Ticketmaster boycott continued.

At the time, band member Stone Gossard told a U.S. congressional hearing: “Our main concern is, are we entitled to use a different company other than Ticketmaster? And right now, so far we haven't been able to find an alternative that's viable.”

As their fan base continued to grow, more and more listeners wanted to see Pearl Jam play live. However, most major venues in the U.S. were affiliated with Ticketmaster.

If Pearl Jam refused to play Ticketmaster venues, where could they actually tour?

The answer came from a concert promoter named Paul Tollett, who found them an unlikely alternative: the Empire Polo Club, a polo field in Indio, California.

Pearl Jam played there in 1993 in front of around 25,000 people. Frontman Eddie Vedder told the crowd: “You gotta run pretty far to get some space for yourself these days”.

After the Pearl Jam gig, Tollett was struck by how well the open desert setting of the Empire Polo Club worked for a large crowd. He began developing plans for an annual festival on the same grounds.

Six years later, in October 1999, the first Coachella Festival was held, headlined by Beck, Tool, and Rage Against the Machine.

It was hailed as a creative success, but a financial failure, with losses of around $1 million.

There was no Coachella the next year, but the festival returned in 2001. By 2004, Coachella had found its footing, selling out for the first time with headliners including Radiohead, The Cure and The Pixies. The rest is music history.

What started as a somewhat scrappy desert show has evolved into one of the world’s biggest outdoor festivals.

In 2012, Coachella expanded to a two-weekend format. Double the attendees, double the ticket sales.

An estimated 125,000 people attend Coachella per day. Each of them will have spent at least $AU770 to be there, with higher-tier VIP tickets starting at around $1,800. Headliners are now paid a rumoured $7 million per weekend.

The festival generates an estimated $280 million in revenue per weekend. Recent figures from California Governor Gavin Newsom show Coachella and Stagecoach (a country music festival held at the same site) generate a combined $980 million annually for the state’s economy.

A festival conceived in protest against corporate control of live music has become significantly saturated by corporate sponsorships, brand activations, and influencer partnerships.

Variety interviewed attendees on the ground at last year’s festival. Two in three festival goers surveyed said they attended Coachella primarily for the experience and fashion, not the music.

The issue at the core of Pearl Jam’s Ticketmaster fight has persisted.

In 2010, Live Nation (one of the world's largest concert promoters) merged with Ticketmaster to gain control of around 80% of ticketing at major concerts across the U.S.

The U.S. Department of Justice (DoJ) and dozens of U.S. states launched legal action against Live Nation in 2024, accusing it of an illegal monopoly that hurts “fans, artists, independent promoters, and venues.”

Live Nation rejected the claims. However, this week, a New York jury ruled against it.

“A jury found what we have long known to be true: Live Nation and ​Ticketmaster are breaking the law and costing consumers millions of dollars in the process,” New York Attorney General Letitia James said.

The U.S. Federal Trade Commission has ​filed a separate case against Ticketmaster, alleging ⁠deceptive ticket resale practices.

As for Pearl Jam, they’ve still never actually played Coachella, despite the fact that the whole thing exists because of them.

Reporting by Emma Gillespie.