Unusual Practice

You’ve watched something online that made you feel sick… and then kept watching.

Not because you enjoyed it. Because you wanted to know what happened next.

That tiny gap between “this is awful” and “I’m still here” is where the internet makes a lot of its money.

In Part One, we descend into the hidden communities where violence becomes content, humiliation becomes entertainment and audiences become part of the machinery. From the online networks exposed by CNN to the tragic world of trash streaming, we ask an uncomfortable question:

When does watching become participating?

The internet didn’t invent cruelty. It gave cruelty a crowd, a camera and a payment system.

And once you see that, you may never look at your screen in quite the same way again.

Content warning: This episode discusses sexual violence, non-consensual images, humiliation and death.

Why are hundreds of thousands of people taking to the streets of France? And why does the protest reveal far more than anger about prices or politics?

In this episode of Unusual Practice, we go beyond viral clips, claims of an “immigration crisis” and the easy search for a villain to explore why France’s streets may function as its real parliament.

From the October 17 anniversary of the 1961 Paris massacre of Algerian demonstrators to youth protests over failing schools, political distrust, colonial memory, social media misinformation and the cost-of-living crisis, this is a compelling guide to what is really happening in France, and how to think more clearly when the internet wants you to react before you even understand!

Something happened in a government building this month that proves, better than any think piece could, exactly how much smarter the machines have gotten than us. It has nothing to do with chatbots.

For centuries we had one reliable fact to hide behind. We were the smartest thing in the room. This week that fact got tested twice, once by a machine, once by the people supposedly still in charge of it, and only one of them passed.

We go looking for the last thing that's supposed to make us special. We don't find what we expected.

Why do otherwise rational people spend all this time and money on something that eventually becomes expensive pee? Bianca Bosker, Cork Dork

Does expensive wine actually taste better? Or did you hear the price first and decide to enjoy it?

Somewhere in Paris, a table full of adults is holding glasses of something they quietly dislike, nodding along while a man in a linen jacket calls it "austere." Nobody says a word, because "I don't like it" is how you fail an exam nobody told you about.

This week we look at how a drink became an intelligence test, why your opinion suddenly needs a vocabulary before it counts, and who exactly decided any of this. The answer is uncomfortable and has very little to do with grapes.

Pour something you actually like and drink it in silence, like the rest of us.

You've taken the test. Lion, otter, golden retriever, beaver, or some version of it with an eagle and a peacock instead.

Every offsite has one. Someone hands you a laminated card, you circle the words that sound most like you, and you walk away pretty sure you're the lion.

This episode isn't about that test. It's about what that test was quietly built to avoid telling you, and what your body actually does in the ten seconds before you get a say in anything, whether you're in a boardroom, a group chat, or standing across from someone you can't afford to disappoint.

If you've ever caught yourself agreeing to something you didn't agree with, or gone completely silent in a meeting when you had the best idea in the room, this one's going to feel specific.

You already know the feeling. The job you used to defend at dinner parties now makes you change the subject. The goal you'd have sold a kidney for a year ago barely registers. And your brain, being unhelpful as usual, has decided the problem is you.

This episode makes the case that it isn't, using a two thousand year old translation error, a very tired monk, and a word the church has been mistranslating since roughly forever. If you've been quietly wondering whether you're falling apart or just finally seeing things clearly, start here.

A machine now gives better comfort than your therapist. Better feedback than your editor. Beats you on a creativity test more often than not.

This episode makes the case that losing to it might be the best thing that's ever happened to you, and by the end, you'll understand exactly why nobody should be relieved to hear that, and exactly why you should be. 

You didn't choose your apartment. Or your skincare routine. Or the restaurant you're about to book. Something else did, and it's been running the same script on millions of people at the exact same time, while convincing every one of them it was their idea.

This week: the mechanism behind why everyone suddenly looks, talks, and lives the same... and the one uncomfortable question that tells you how much of "you" is actually left underneath it.

How a Lie Becomes a TED Talk!

The most-watched TED talk of all time is a lie. So is the marshmallow test. So is basically everything you think you know about willpower. This is the episode that ruins your favorite psychology facts, one receipt at a time.

You've been sold a lie wrapped in olive oil and slow drone footage.

For twenty years, “Blue Zones” have been the gospel of the wellness world - five magic regions where people supposedly live to 110 on beans, purpose, and good vibes.

We follow a UCL demographer who did the one thing nobody else bothered to do - check the paperwork - and unravel a story that runs through a mummified man collecting his own pension for 32 years, a 2025 “Mrs. Doubtfire” scandal in Italy, and the reason Scandinavia never needed a Netflix documentary to prove it's doing something right.

This one will change how you read every “secret to a long life” headline for good.