At Norfolk’s ‘premier scare attraction’ there are ghouls, chainsaws, satanic cults and a haunted hospital. But what goes on behind the scenes?

‘We always say to the scare actors, you’re going to think the boys will be the worst. They are not.” Backstage at PrimEvil, billed as “Norfolk’s premier scare attraction”, park director Ben Francis is sharing the advice he gives each year to his new crop of performers, before they set out to give punters the fright of their lives – or at least their Saturday night. As Francis covers each demographic, he ticks them off on his fingers. Teenage boys “scream like banshees, and run in packs”. Teenage girls tend towards being unimpressed: “Do your scare and move on, because they will get nasty.” And mixed groups? “There will be an alpha and he’ll be wearing a North Face top.” Francis’s advice is to not waste time. “He will not react to anything … Aim for the weaker one at the back.”

This is part of the workplace induction at PrimEvil, one of many immersive “scream parks” that pop up across the UK in the lead up to Halloween. For about £40 a ticket, groups of all ages spend the night roaming themed attractions and being terrorised by actors and special effects. Though the risks are minimal, the spikes in heart rate are very real.

‘It’s the best form of therapy and you get paid to do it’ … park director Ben Francis

Christopher Gardner, the author of Food Sense and director of nutrition studies at Stanford, says we have overcomplicated the question of what to eat

Finally, some good news: eating well is more straightforward than you think. “There’s a lot of good science out there, and it mostly agrees,” says Stanford University’s director of nutrition studies and professor of medicine Christopher Gardner from his office in Palo Alto – beaming, bronzed and the picture of health.

In the age of social media and wellness grift, we’ve overcomplicated the question of what to eat, he says.

Features writer Elle Hunt and indigenous activist María José Andrade Cerda on the growing phenomenon of influencers around the world trying to reach uncontacted tribes

The Sentinelese, living on North Sentinel Island in the Bay of Bengal, are one of the most isolated peoples on earth.

Part of an archipelago governed by India, it is prohibited by law to venture within 5km of their island. And when a missionary did manage to land on the beach in 2018, he was killed by bow and arrow.

No, I don’t want to go for a girl walk before my girl dinner with my girl mates: I am a grown woman who walks and eats and votes – and, patriarchy, I am on to you

This morning, after waking up with my girl cats, I made myself a cup of girl coffee then got stuck into some girl work. I took a break to lift some girl weights, then sent some more girl emails. Finally, after my girl dinner, it was time to get some sleep ahead of another long, hard day of being a girl.

I know what you’re thinking: why is this woman so insistent on gendering her unremarkable activities, and infantilising herself when she is clearly an adult? It’s a fair question. Since the pandemic, when “hot girl walks” followed Megan Thee Stallion’s 2019 song Hot Girl Summer to become one of the first big TikTok trends, this framing has become dismayingly ubiquitous, in person and online.

Elle Hunt is a freelance journalist

Judy Wearing has spent much of her life studying our follicles. She explains how our armpits betray our emotions, why some gentlemen really do prefer blondes and the reason we evolved to have eyebrows

As a PhD student at Oxford studying mating behaviour, Judy Wearing was suddenly struck by a thought: what was the purpose of pubic hair? The point of armpit hair? The function of each of our body’s furry patches? When the published literature failed to produce satisfying answers, Wearing began her own investigation. Her aim was to shed light on why exactly we evolved these particular patches, with pubic hair the most puzzling of all: was it for warmth, protection … or something else?

Wearing is still tangling with those questions, some 30 years after her student days. Now an author and editor (largely in the education sector), she has revisited her fascination with hair in Anxious and Hairy: The Evolution and Culture of Human Hair, exploring its unexpectedly dense and layered place in our history and psyche. Even Wearing was surprised by the places her research on hair took her, and the mysteries that still remain to be solved. “A lot of these questions, no one’s actually looked at,” she says over Zoom. Here is a mere snip of the fascinating facts she’s uncovered about hair.

Shortcuts work against the rewards of friendship: authentic relationships can surely only be forged when you’re not expecting a return on your money

What price would you put on friendship? In these hyper-capitalistic times, where nothing is beyond being given a monetary value, perhaps even Mastercard wouldn’t dare to claim that it’s priceless. A YouGov survey found that 15% of Britons say they have no close friends, while nearly one in 10 (8%) have no friends at all. The numbers are similarly dismal in the US. As we face this contemporary crisis of connection, it is little wonder that friendship, or at least the possibility of it, is increasingly being marketed for sale.

There has been a striking increase in online platforms and apps that promise to introduce you – algorithmically, through social mixers or a combination – to your next BFF. There’s Cliq, PLY, standing for “People Like You”, and RealRoots which promises user satisfaction with the tagline: “Make new friends. Guaranteed”. Meanwhile, 222 boldly declares it is “not a friend-making service”, but a means to “explore serendipity” through social experiences with compatible people.

Elle Hunt is a freelance journalist

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In her new book, The Case for Quitting: The Surprising Benefits of Opting Out, Lindsay Crouse discusses the costs and traps of never giving up – and how she set herself free

Lindsay Crouse used to define herself as not a quitter.

She went to Harvard University, where she learned to become even more high-achieving and ambitious, then landed an assistant job at the New York Times and worked her way up to become an opinion writer and producer. On the weekends, Crouse ran marathons and did endurance sports, clocking new personal bests throughout her thirties.

Modern lifestyles seem to be exacerbating the problem of bromhidrosis – an underresearched condition that is widely misunderstood and devastating for sufferers

If Hayat goes out to eat, she’ll choose a table far away from other diners, ideally by a door or open window. She likewise tries to avoid people at the cinema or on planes, even if it means paying extra – whatever it takes to avoid being too close to others.

She chalks it up to a persistent past insecurity. “I still have that paranoia … It’s just in my head, because of everything I went through.”

The actor Sydney Sweeney is under fire for ‘sexualising women’s sports’ in an ad campaign for US sports prediction company Novig, which features a series of images of her in various states of undress as she pretends to play different sports. The ad has been widely criticised by a number of sportswomen, including Olympic swimmer Ariarne Titmus who described it as ‘infuriating’ and a ‘kick in the teeth’ to women who have ‘spent decades perfecting their craft’. Sweeney has responded by saying the ad was about ‘embracing a fun idea’. Lucy Hough speaks to Guardian writer Elle Hunt

Has your cat been gaining weight and staying out at night, only to arrive home reeking of marijuana? These are just some of the signs that a neighbour is trying to entice them away ...

When Amy’s cat, Sid*, first started spending more time away from home, Amy* put it down to wanderlust. A former street cat, Sid had landed on his feet in her leafy London suburb, but still retained his free-roaming sociability. When Sid began disappearing for up to days at a time though, Amy worried. She put a tracker on his collar to find out where he was going. She didn’t expect to discover him a few doors up the road.

Sid is roaming – but most of the time, for entire afternoons and even sometimes overnight, he is with Amy’s neighbour. “He is in her house, constantly, all the time,” she says. This is not a coincidence. Sid might not be getting six dinners, like his famous namesake in Inga Moore’s 1990 children’s book, but the neighbour is certainly spoiling him, as she recently let slip to Amy’s partner. “She’s feeding him organic chicken!” Amy says indignantly.

A new breed of adventurer is chasing internet fame by targeting uncontacted peoples. Critics say they are risking the wellbeing of these remote communities – and their own lives

He set out from the beach around midnight, packing his camera, a coconut and a can of Diet Coke. Mykhailo Polyakov – then 24 and a native of Scottsdale, Arizona – pointed his inflatable dinghy out towards the open water, keeping his speed slow in the hope of avoiding detection.

After hours of motoring across the Bay of Bengal, his destination came into view: a low-lying island, narrowly separating sea and sky. With the sun now high above him, Polyakov cut the engine and set his GoPro to record. “So, the goal,” he said, squinting towards the blinding-white beach. “Introduce this Palaeolithic tribe to modernity … Let’s land on this bitch.”

Fiction sleuths are obsessed with the idea that the book, Life of M, is a flagrant riff on the actor’s life. And despite being a firm Cusk fan, Portman is reportedly not happy

Life of M, the latest book by the critically acclaimed author Rachel Cusk, is being billed by its publisher, Faber, as a “blazing interrogation of fame, power, beauty and truth” – and openly alleged as a thinly veiled portrait of Natalie Portman. For weeks before publication, speculation has swirled that its movie-star main character is based on Portman – to her reported displeasure.

With the book out this week, readers and critics alike are judging it as literature and gossip. Don’t want to read it yourself, but want to have an opinion? Here’s your crib sheet.

There’s a lot to unpack as this proud son of Toronto closes in on 40 – from his gambling to his very public dates. Here goes!

Even if you can only name a handful of rappers, Drake is probably one of them. Not so many years ago, he was among the planet’s biggest celebrities, named in the same breath as Taylor Swift and Beyoncé and breaking chart records set by the Beatles. Many of his dozens of hit singles – Work, One Dance, Hotline Bling and God’s Plan – were ubiquitous, among the last truly crossover radio hits.

Drake is still landing chart spots (if not critical acclaim), but now it’s his foray into the “creator economy” that’s raising eyebrows – shilling for a crypto casino, fraternising with manosphere influencers and, just last weekend, live-streaming dates with OnlyFans models. So what’s this all about? Is Toronto’s once-golden boy having a midlife crisis – or is it a media-savvy pivot? Here’s how Drake got caught up in the “creator economy”.

Call it a crisis, call it a decline, call it a recession: the long, lusty snog is in trouble, harder to experience in real life or even watch on screen. But why? And what’s it like to think you may never lock lips with another?

Spencer’s last kiss was two years ago, on a first date. It started off promisingly: after matching on Tinder, they met for a walk, then got drinks and ice-cream, before having dinner at her place. Finally, they kissed. “I didn’t like it,” says Spencer. He still struggles to identify why. “I found her attractive. There was chemistry, but something was lacking. There was nothing behind the kiss – it felt like a mechanical thing to do.”

That wasn’t just Spencer’s most recent kiss – it was his first ever, at the age of 29. Now 31, he says a second kiss in some ways feels less possible than having sex: “The jump feels way bigger.”

From Grumpy Cat to Moo Deng, viral animals have long united people online. Are they becoming our only source of collective enjoyment?

Anyone who enjoys memes (who doesn’t?) has surely by now accumulated a mental menagerie of internet-famous animals. Mine include: Grumpy Cat, the Ikea monkey, Moo Deng the pygmy hippo, Paul the oracle octopus and – my personal favourite – Roger the hot kangaroo (go on, look him up).

Now we have Jimothy, a raccoon with short spine syndrome. A familiar sight in his neighbourhood in Seattle for his unusually rounded appearance and scuttling movement, Jimothy went viral on Instagram two weeks ago and has since taken over the world. Within weeks of his debut, there has been fan art, merchandise, multiple tattoos, a stadium “theme night” and even a civic ceremony.

Elle Hunt is a freelance journalist

Writer Sarah Wilson argues we’re hurtling toward the same end as ancient Rome and the Mayan civilisation – but there’s plenty to fight for

In Sarah Wilson’s new book, one page is mostly blank. It’s intended as a reprieve, a neutral space “for you to stare at for a minute while your feelings catch up”.

You will need it. In I Eat the Stars, Wilson argues that the world as we know it is in collapse – and that we are too late to avoid the worst.

From neighbourhood scavenger to baseball mascot and Daily Show guest, the Seattle animal has become social media’s newest cult hero

Pygmy hippo Moo Deng is washed up and humiliated, having flunked all three of her football World Cup predictions. Punch, the Japanese macaque abandoned by his family, is so February. And if you can even remember Grumpy Cat, may she rest in peace.

As of today the internet belongs to Jimothy: a raccoon with a striking silhouette who has gone from a minor celebrity in Seattle to social media main character overnight. Jimothy is suddenly all over Instagram, and if you hover over the critter for so much as a nanosecond, he will be all you will ever see on your feed.

Mocked when she made her debut last year, Norwood has now landed her first feature film. Is she the next Scarlett Johansson – or just computer-generated slop?

Could Tilly Norwood be Hollywood’s next big name? She’s been billed as the next Scarlett Johansson, was profiled by the New York Times Magazine, and has just landed her first feature role. She is also AI-generated. Stay with me here!

It seems that the widespread dismay that greeted Tilly (Norwood?) on her first appeance a year ago has done nothing to quell her (its?) ambitions to make it in the movies. She may be nothing but a pleasingly visualised bunch of code, but it seems we are bound to keep on hearing about her. So what do we need to know about Norwood?

The US superstar golden couple Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce are finally tying the knot in a rumoured major event in New York’s Madison Square Garden.

The couple – who got engaged 10 months ago, announced via an Instagram post that received 14m likes in its first hour online – held an intimate rehearsal dinner at MSG with a rumoured guest list of 1,000 for today’s ceremony and construction of a custom-made fairytale castle inside.

But with tight security, NDAs and New York streets on lockdown – what do we know? Lucy Hough speaks to Guardian writer Elle Hunt

The pop and football giants’ combined star wattage will be united in matrimony this weekend – probably – in an event shrouded in secrecy. But here’s what we’ve gleaned

After an agonising 10 months’ wait, the wedding of the century is apparently here: if the reports are true, Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce will be tying the knot this weekend, uniting the houses of sports and entertainment in holy matrimony. When the couple announced their engagement on Instagram in August, as part of a carefully coordinated album rollout/podcast promotion tie-in, it shattered platform records, drawing 14m likes in its first hour. (It’s now up to 37.4m.)

Yet it’s remarkable, given the couple’s profile and the investigative horsepower apparently dedicated to cracking this wedding wide open, just how little we know for sure in this, the (purported) week of the event. We’ve sifted through all the speculation, sources “close to the couple” and scarcely concealed grumbling from spurned guests to answer the burning questions.