On 7 May 1915, the pristine waters off the old head of Kinsale became a graveyard. Within just eighteen minutes of being struck by a single German torpedo, the RMS Lusitania – the world’s most celebrated luxury liner – vanished beneath the Atlantic, taking 1,198 lives with her. Historically, this tragedy is framed as a shocking turning point; a brutal act of piracy that shattered American isolationism and catalysed a moral crusade against imperial tyranny.

Yet, when we peel back the layers of standard textbook narratives, the fate of the Lusitania emerges as something far more calculated. Beneath the murky depths of this disaster lies a masterclass in crisis engineering – an intricate nexus of resource warfare, strategic maritime blockades, and the brutal leverage of financial markets.

It was an event transformed behind the scenes by architects of power, including the First Lord of the Admiralty, Winston Churchill, into a mass intelligence test. By deconstructing the chasm between the overt humanitarian narrative and covert geopolitical determinants, we can decode the hidden mechanics of more contemporary conflicts.<

War as an Engineered Industry

In classical political philosophy, war is often defined as an extension of politics by other means. However, a critical reading of political economy suggests a more chilling reality: modern total wars do not break out spontaneously; they are deliberately designed.

For any state to transition from peacetime into total war, it must first break the instinctive social contract of its citizenry. Democratic societies do not willingly sacrifice their youth, wealth, and liberties without an acute, existential provocation. This necessitates a “shock event” – or what strategic literature brands a “false flag” operation. By executing an attack or deliberately manufacturing a vulnerability, ruling elites can fabricate evidence to frame an adversary, thereby legitimising military aggression in the eyes of an outraged public.

The First World War (1914–1918) served as the premier laboratory for this brand of total mobilisation. It was not merely an escalation of armies, but a systemic restructuring. Entire civil institutions and societies were weaponised under totalitarian state control, all masked by the collective war effort. In this grand theatre, the entry of the United States in 1917 represented the ultimate geopolitical pivot.

The war dismantled three great empires – the Russian, German, and Ottoman – leaving millions dead and mutilated in its wake. Crucially, the Russian and German empires stood defiantly outside the orbit of western ‘Money Powers’ – non-elected, transnational network of central banks, Wall Street cartels, and mega asset management firms that controls the global reserve currency and uses sovereign debt to dictate international policies and conflicts to preserve its financial hegemony – whilst the Ottoman Empire occupied a Levant targeted for oil colonization and strategic British realignment.

Yet, this monumental American intervention would never have materialised without the psychological and political groundwork engineered through the wreckage of the Lusitania two years prior.

Geopolitical Background and the Ethnic Context

Prior to the disaster, President Woodrow Wilson’s administration faced a complex domestic quandary. London was desperate for American intervention; the British economy was utterly exhausted, and the Western Front was consuming human lives at an unsustainable rate. For decision-makers in Whitehall, dragging Washington into the trenches was a matter of sheer survival.

However, American public opinion leaned overwhelmingly towards isolationism, viewing the European conflagration as a distant imperialist squabble. Furthermore, Wilson faced a profound demographic dilemma: a relative majority of the American populace was of German descent, with the German language deeply embedded in local schools, press, and communities.

To shatter this domestic deadlock, British political planners recognized that they needed something louder than diplomacy. They required a direct assault on American sovereignty or dignity – an event so emotionally devastating that it would rewrite the collective consciousness and morph into an undeniable moral justification for total war.

Deconstructing the Incident: Myth versus Reality

When the German U-20 boat targeted the Lusitania, claiming 1,198 lives – including 128 American citizens – the Allied media machine instantly weaponised the tragedy. It was branded a savage German war crime against defenceless civilians. However, a century of maritime exploration and declassified documentation has exposed a truth entirely at odds with the official narrative.

1. The Auxiliary Cruiser

The Lusitania was never a purely civilian vessel. She was officially registered on the British Admiralty’s auxiliary warship rosters, designed from her very inception to specifications that allowed immediate conversion into an armed cruiser during wartime. In fact, her construction had been heavily subsidised by military loans from the British Government on the explicit condition that the Navy could claim her when required.

2. The Cargo

Despite vehement denials from British political circles, subsequent investigations and physical expeditions to the wreck proved that the ship’s holds were packed with massive shipments of military supplies destined for the British Army, including millions of rifle rounds, shrapnel shells, and fuses shipped out of New York.

Paradoxically, this lethal ammunition was loaded quite openly. This explains the mysterious, massive secondary explosion that ripped through the vessel immediately after the single German torpedo strike, causing her to sink in a mere 18 minutes. Under international maritime law at the time, the Lusitania was an entirely legitimate military target.

3. The Suppressed Warnings

Operating within strict maritime protocols, the German Chancellery saw through the British plot to use civilians as human shields for weapons transport. In an extraordinary move, the German Embassy in Washington purchased advertising space in major American newspapers – including prominent New York broadsheets – explicitly warning passengers that boarding the Lusitania was a high-risk venture, as she would pass through a designated war zone carrying military material.

Tragically, pro-British interest groups within the United States successfully suppressed the publication of these warning advertisements in several pivotal cities, leaving the civilian passengers entirely in the dark – disposable pawns in a high-stakes geopolitical chess game.

Winston Churchill and Engineered Risk Management

At the very centre of this web sits Winston Churchill, the First Lord of the Admiralty.

Declassified records reveal that Britain’s legendary naval intelligence hub, Room 40, had successfully cracked the German military wireless codes. Consequently, the Admiralty possessed precise, real-time tracking of German U-boats patrolling the Irish coast.

The profound suspicion surrounding the incident lies not just in the sudden withdrawal of a military escort for the Lusitania, but in a sequence of direct, highly irregular directives emanating from Churchill’s personal office:

Step 1: A secret, direct order is issued from the personal office of the First Lord of the Admiralty, Winston Churchill.

Step 2: The order is relayed past standard naval command straight to the Captain of the Lusitania as she approaches British waters.

Step 3: The luxury liner is commanded to reduce her speed off the Irish coast, placing her precisely within the active U-boat nexus.

This final directive flew in the face of all established naval protocols, which dictated that fast vessels must maintain maximum speed and zigzag to evade torpedoes. Internal Admiralty testimonies indicate that Churchill’s own aides confronted him, warning that slowing the ship would drastically increase the probability of an attack. His stern, unyielding reply was:

The order is mine; pass it on.

By confirming the military cargo, suppressing public warnings, intercepting the intelligence codes, and actively slowing the ship into the path of a known submarine, the incident shifts from the realm of tragic military negligence into the territory of deliberate facilitation – the engineering of a catastrophic trap.

Propaganda Mechanisms and the Dehumanisation of the Adversary

The moment the ship sank, the Allied media apparatus executed a meticulously prepared crisis management plan. Empirical military facts were instantly replaced with highly emotional, weaponised vocabulary. Overnight, headlines coalesced into a unified, thunderous battle cry: “The Barbarians Dare Again” and “The Hun Butchers Murder Mothers and Children”.

This wartime propaganda went far beyond mere reporting; it sought the total dehumanisation of the adversary – a psychological prerequisite required to prepare ordinary citizens to kill without guilt. The campaign succeeded brilliantly in shattering American isolationism. While Washington delayed its official declaration of war until 1917, the ghost of the Lusitania served as the emotional fuel and political legitimacy that President Wilson required to successfully market total war to Congress and an outraged American public.

From the Lusitania to the Twenty-First Century: Continuity of the Model

Deconstructing this history is not an exercise in mourning the ruins of the past, but an effort to extract the immutable structural rules of crisis engineering. It reveals that central planners and ruling elites treat mass casualties as mere cost variables in equations of global hegemony. This exact political blueprint has repeated itself across subsequent, well-documented historical milestones:

The Gulf of Tonkin Incident(1964): Washington claimed that an American destroyer fell victim to an unprovoked North Vietnamese assault. Declassified documents later exposed the attack as entirely fabricated and illusory, yet it served as the official pretext granted by Congress to launch full-scale military intervention in the Vietnam War.

The 9/11 Attacks (2001): Irrespective of the details heavily classified under absolute state secrecy, these attacks represented the ultimate modern “shock event.” It cleared the path for totalitarian domestic legislation like the Patriot Act and launched two decades of pre-emptive wars that redrew global energy maps and geopolitical borders at the cost of millions of lives.

The Economic Reality of Systematic Warfare

The ultimate umbilical cord linking engineered conflicts to the global order is forged in finance and credit. During the First World War, Great Britain funded its astronomical war effort by borrowing heavily from Wall Street, specifically the J.P. Morgan banking group. By 1916, British military debts to American banks had ballooned to exceed 10% of the entire United States Gross Domestic Product (GDP).

This massive financial exposure created an unyielding economic chain of events. The accumulation of military debts to the point of exceeding the 10% threshold automatically rendered an Allied victory an absolute matter of domestic national security for the United States. This was essential to protect the banking and financial system from total systemic collapse.

Consequently, America’s entry into the trenches was not a spontaneous, idealistic crusade to protect global democracy. It was an intervention emotionally brokered by the tragedy of the Lusitania to safeguard the investments of the financial elite on Wall Street and secure the ultimate repayment of British sovereign bonds.

Wars as Mass Intelligence Tests

Parroting official political narratives without subjecting them to rigorous geopolitical and critical analysis constitutes a failure of a collective intelligence test. The global financial and monetary elites who steer the international order do not view the world through the lens of sentimentality, national borders, or human cost; they view it through the prism of centralised control and the restructuring of financial systems via the controlled shocks of total war.

Reading the Lusitania incident provides the necessary lens to decipher our current global landscape. The very same archetypes that deployed print propaganda in 1915 are utilizing digital simulation models, viral pandemic narratives, climate emergency rhetoric, and modern energy blockades today to usher in a highly centralized financial and social order. As history repeatedly warns us, the capitulation of the masses to emotional propaganda is a blank cheque signed by the victims for their executioners, ensuring the repetition of the catastrophe in every age.

Featured image via Three Lions/Getty Images

By Mohammad Fakih

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The Labour front bench will not be looking forward to the return of Parliament. On 1 June 2026, after the parliamentary recess, the second set of the Mandelson Files will be released, set to expose the disgraced Epstein-informant’s cosy relationship with senior Labour Party officials.

Mandelson and the Policy Network

Last week, it was revealed that United Kingdom Security Vetting (UKSV) had flagged Mandelson’s bimonthly conversations with Tamir Hayman, a former Israeli military intelligence chief. Earlier this year, we learnt that UKSV’s recommendation that Mandelson not be granted security clearance was overruled by Foreign Office officials.

However, less attention has been paid to Policy Network, the Mandelson-led think tank whose list of former directors reads like a Who’s Who of Labour Party grandees.

The organisation has previously been criticised for obscuring how much it was receiving from specific funders, although David Sainsbury was confirmed as a core donor. Sainsbury has also financed Labour Together, giving £125,000 in March alone.

In 2021, Peter Mandelson’s Policy Network merged with Progress, another Labour Party-linked operation which had received tens of thousands in donations from Mandelson and Tony Blair, amongst others. Progressive Britain is now led by Adam Langleben, a former national secretary of the Jewish Labour Movement.

Patrick Diamond

One of Policy Network’s co-chairs was Patrick Diamond, a former Special Advisor to Mandelson.

In the early 1990s, according to Diamond’s Wikipedia page, he spent time living and working at an Israeli colony called Lahav. Strangely, no other reference to his time at Lahav can be found online.

Like the IDF stint of Labour peer Jonathan Kestenbaum, unreported in the British media until my investigation last month, and the list of Labour Friends of Israel parliamentary supporters, scrubbed from the internet during the 2024 general election, it seems that links to the settler state have become less of a boasting point for senior Labour politicians.

Kibbutz Lahav, situated just 5km from the illegal Eshkolot settlement, was originally set up in 1952 by the Nahal, an IDF program that combined military service with the establishment of settlements. During the Gaza genocide, the IDF’s Nahal Brigade was being led by Nochi Mandel, a religious nationalist Israeli settler who called for Gaza to be deprived of aid. Mandel was only sacked, however, after an air strike on a World Central Kitchen convoy killed seven aid workers, including three British citizens.

Roger Liddle

Policy Network’s second co-chair was Roger Liddle, a Labour peer and former Special Adviser to Tony Blair.

In 2010, Liddle’s entrance to the House of Lords was officially “supported” by Mandelson. Later, during Keir Starmer’s first years in power, his “supper parties” would regularly host the Epstein-associate’s network, with Mandelson, Wes Streeting, and Morgan McSweeney amongst attendees. McSweeney’s inner circle would also be present: Matthew Doyle, Matt Faulding, and Matt Pound.

A former Labour frontbencher who served under Ed Miliband told me in February that McSweeney’s inner circle “ruled with a rod of iron” and “talked openly of taking over the Party”. Wes Streeting now wants Starmer’s job. His partner, Joe Dancey, is an ex-aide to Peter Mandelson.

Jonathan Mendelsohn

Jonathan Mendelsohn, an ex-chair of Labour Friends of Israel, was another director of Peter Mandelson’s Policy Network.

Mendelsohn has donated to a string of Labour Party MPs (sometimes through his Red Capital Ltd. operation), which includes ex-Health Minister Wes Streeting and current Foreign Minister Yvette Cooper. He also funded former Prime Minister Gordon Brown.

In 2007, the Jewish Chronicle lauded the lobbyist’s influence, saying:

At ease in the corridors of power, Mendelsohn has the contacts and know-how to advance Israel’s case in his [Labour Friends of Israel] role.

When Gordon Brown appointed Mendelsohn as Labour’s director of general election resources, he was criticised for promoting an individual who had previously lobbied on behalf of the Ladbrokes betting firm.

In July 2008, Brown, a long-standing supporter of Labour Friends of Israel, became the first British Prime Minister to address the Israeli Knesset, declaring proudly:

My father … had a deep and life-long affection for Israel.

Stephen Hockman and Liam Byrne

Other Policy Network alumni include Stephen Hockman, one of the three UK Lawyers for Israel patrons accused of “using their professional seniority” to intimidate others in a legal complaint issued last week.

There is also Liam Byrne, a parliamentary supporter of Labour Friends of Israel who has previously accepted transportation paid for directly by the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

The Labour Party hierarchy are now desperate to distance themselves from the Prince of Darkness, but the true extent of his influence is a story still waiting to be told.

Featured image via the Canary

By Jody McIntyre

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Lots of toddlers seem to go through a phase where they reject one of their parents – and oh boy can it hurt.

Taking to Reddit, one mum going through it said her two-year-old only wanted her dad. “I know this is ‘normal toddler behaviour’ and that kids go through stages like this, but it’s been going on for a few months now and it’s starting to really get to me,” said the parent.

“Today I was outside with her and she got hurt. She was fine, but then she acted mad at me and wouldn’t let me comfort her – just wanted dad. It crushed me. I try so hard to be present and loving, but right now it feels like I’m not the parent she wants.”

As children try to exert as much independence as possible – moving about unaided, eating their own dinner and playing alone – they might start to lean towards one parent (and away from the other).

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If you’re ‘the shunned one’, you might find your toddler doesn’t want you to hug or touch them, or even read to or play with them anymore. Bedtime can also be a major point of contention.

While it can be pretty soul-destroying, Rachel Melville-Thomas, a child and adolescent psychotherapist, said it won’t last forever. And you’re certainly not alone.

“It is quite common,” she told HuffPost UK. “It’s the task of toddlers to try to make sense of the family world, and who they are attached to. Sometimes they make very fixed decisions!”

Why do some toddlers favour one parent over the other?

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People seem to have differing theories on this. A New York Times article suggested it’s a way of toddlers showing their independence, as they have few outlets for autonomy.

Children are exploring decision-making at this age, and parental preference is one way to test it out, Dr Nia Heard-Garris, a physician at a children’s hospital in Chicago, told the publication.

Melville-Thomas suggested young children are trying to understand how the family works and their role within it. “Some toddlers will be very sensitive to how much attention they receive from each parent – so may react really strongly to a loss of closeness to a particular parent,” she said.

This loss of closeness could be as a result of a new baby, new working situation or other changes. “The reaction then is to save all their focus for the one they see most,” she continued.

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The therapist added that this is indeed a phase and “it tends not to last long, as the child develops and begins to accommodate the patterns of family life”.

By the time your child is three or four years old, they learn to trust that both parents are equally caring and connected.

Gender also seems to play a part in who children choose to side with as they develop, the therapist has noticed.

“Toddlers, at about two years, notice they share the same gender as one of the parents and just want to be with them and do the same things in a passionate process of ‘being the same’,” she said.

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“Then the opposite gender parent can be seen as different, and ‘not like me’ and can be pushed away. In same gender couples, the toddler might identify with the parent most like them – for example, the lively physical parent, or the quiet cuddly one – and then pull away from the other.”

But when children reach about three years old, the reverse can happen, she added – so the opposite gender or different personality parent might become very exciting all of a sudden.

StefaNikolic via Getty Images

How to cope if you’re the rejected parent

While it’s nice to know it’s nothing personal, it can still suck if your child won’t even let you cuddle them.

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“Try not to take it personally and see the big picture of a toddler’s view of the world – it will change,” said Rachel Melville-Thomas.

So what can you do in the meantime? Dunya Poltorak, a paediatric medical psychologist in Michigan, told the NY Times we should listen to our child’s preferences, so if they refuse to hug you, just accept it. It’s really important to not take it personally or to show it bothers you.

You can also see the plus side. A child showing they’re comfortable rejecting a parent means they’re securely attached – so your child knows the love you have for them is unconditional, according to Dr Heard-Garris.

If you’re the parent who’s currently flavour of the month, there are things you can be doing to support your partner.

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Accept the situation for the time being, advised Melville-Thomas, while speaking warmly of the other parent, and gently encouraging the toddler to enjoy some time – whether that’s storytime, singing or play – with the other parent.

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Bafta-winning screenwriter Russell T Davies has another critical hit on his hands thanks to his new show Tip Toe.

The unflinching new drama stars Alan Cumming and David Morrissey as two neighbours who find themselves in a feud that quickly spirals out of control with disastrous results, while diving into thorny issues like online radicalisation, prejudice against the LGBTQ+ community, misinformation in the digital age and generational conflict.

During a recent interview with HuffPost UK, Russell called Tip Toe an “urgent” and “necessary” reflection of a world that is “out of control” and “at war with ourselves”, which critics have certainly agreed with so far.

Ahead of episode one’s premiere on Sunday, reviews have near-unanimously praised the series – the latest TV offering from the creator of shows like Queer As Folk, Years And Years and It’s A Sin – which they’ve hailed as “chilling”, “devastating”, “terrifying” and “unforgettable”.

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Here’s a snippet of what the critics are saying about Tip Toe…

“This is urgent, state-of-the-nation stuff from one of our shrewdest screenwriters […] Tip Toe isn’t just sobering; it’s visceral and chilling viewing for all queer people and everyone who loves and supports us.”

“At times it feels as subtle as a brick in the face. But when Davies steps down from his pulpit and lets his characters breathe, his storytelling is visionary, devastating, passionate and humane. And we should listen.”

“Alan Cumming is extraordinary in this terrifying, landmark queer drama […] While this series is a fiction, and one that makes its arguments with sledgehammer grace, it is sadly not absurd, or abstract.”

“Tip Toe, the latest gut-punching drama from Russell T. Davies – his first since the life-altering It’s A Sin – is an alarming, though not inaccurate, portrayal of what it’s really like to be unapologetically gay in a Britain that hates us […] Tip Toe is Davies at his most impassioned; a wake-up call that this is not a time to be complacent.”

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“Television writers will tell you that they never want to come across as preachy, and that good drama should ask teasing questions and then step away. The sense in Tip Toe is that Davies is done with this kind of pussyfooting around, and is up for a scrap.

“It makes for a drama that takes wrong turns but is never less than bold and, in the round, deeply stirring. TV polemic is back, loud and proud.”

“Tip Toe may be an extreme example of how frenzied that intolerance can become. Its dialogue, with long, culturally-charged monologues, can also be a little tiring. But it should be all of these things […] A word of warning, though, from someone who literally watches TV for a living: by the end, this is the most distressing series I’ve ever seen. It’s not rewatchable, but it’s unforgettable.”

“[Tip Toe] lacks the discipline that made his other state of the historical/future nation pieces, Years and Years or It’s a Sin, so powerful and moving, but the strands begin to interweave, momentum builds and if the extremity of the conclusion still doesn’t quite ring true, everyone has worked hard to get it as close to authentic and emotionally credible as possible.”

The first two episodes of Tip Toe are now streaming on Channel 4, with the final three following on Sunday 7 June.

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After the Atlas Lions stole the show at the 2022 Qatar World Cup, becoming the first Arab and African team to reach the semi-finals, Morocco enters the 2026 edition with aspirations that extend far beyond repeating their historic achievement.

Having transformed from the tournament’s surprise package to one of the world’s leading teams, Morocco now faces a new test: was their Qatar triumph a one-off, exceptional moment, or the beginning of a new era for Moroccan football?

Morocco face Brazil in first World Cup game

Since the end of the Qatar World Cup, Morocco has continued its path of development and technical stability. The team has maintained its core structure while integrating promising young players who have strengthened the squad’s depth. As a result, the team has become one of the best in the world in the FIFA rankings, confirming that its success in 2022 was no fluke.

Morocco still relies on a group of key players who made the achievement in Qatar, led by captain Achraf Hakimi, alongside Nayef Aguerd, Noussair Mazraoui, Sofyan Amrabat and Azzedine Ounahi.

Brahim Diaz is one of the most prominent attacking weapons thanks to his ability to make a difference and add individual solutions in the final third.

But the most significant difference between the 2022 and 2026 World Cups lies in the emergence of a new generation of young talents, giving the national team wider options and more diverse solutions.

A mix of experience and youth

Among these names are Ayyoub Bouaddi, one of the most promising young talents in European football. There is also Bilal El Khannous, who has established himself as one of the team’s key midfielders, as well as Chamseddine Talbi and Ismail Sibaari, who add considerable dynamism and speed to the forward line.

In contrast, the squad is missing some names that were present in Qatar’s achievement, most notably Youssef En-Nesyri, Hakim Ziyech and Sofiane Boufal, who represent the end of one phase and the beginning of another that relies more on young players seeking to write their own history.

Realism and ambition

The new format of the World Cup, featuring 48 teams, gives stronger teams a better chance of advancing from the group stage, but the competition will become much tougher in the knockout rounds. Therefore, reaching the quarter-finals seems a realistic goal for Morocco, given the quality of the squad and the experience players have gained in recent years.

Repeating or even surpassing the semi-final achievement will require a combination of consistent performance, mental fortitude, and a bit of luck against top teams. While Morocco may not possess a single ‘superstar’ who can consistently decide matches, they compensate with a cohesive team structure and tactical flexibility that make them a formidable opponent for any national team in the world.

A project that goes beyond results

Morocco is no longer merely a representative of Arab and African football at the World Cup; it has transformed into a comprehensive sporting model based on planning, stability and investment in talent. The Moroccan experience has proven that competing with the world’s best is no longer a distant dream, but an achievable goal when vision and sound management are in place.

Whether the Atlas Lions succeed in repeating or surpassing the achievement of 2022, their participation in the 2026 World Cup will remain an important milestone in the rise of Moroccan and Arab football. It is also a new opportunity to prove that what happened in Qatar was not a passing exception but rather the beginning of a new chapter in history.

Featured image via Alex Livesey/ Getty Images 

By Alaa Shamali

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A mask-required reading of After the Whales Spoke, a new play written and directed by Molly Brennan, will be performed Saturday 6 June 2026, from 7 to 9 p.m. at The LAVA Center in Greenfield, Massachusetts, as part of LAVA’s fourth annual On the Boards New Play Fest. The story is described as follows:

Street medics have found a solution to the problem of anti-abortion, anti-trans legislators in a post-plague world where some people received instructions from whales.

The reading will star Ash Richardson-White, Foster Finch Schrader, Birdy Elliot, Drum Fernandez, Asa Rowan, Soe Noire and Nancy Brennan. It will be masks-required, with masks provided. Accessibility measures include captioning, audio description, space description and content description.

The reading takes place during the transnational expansion of COVID-conscious theater as its own genre.

Inspire: A Performing Arts Festival by and for the Airborne Aware

In April 2026, Inspire: A Performing Arts Festival by and for the Airborne Aware ran as a free, fully virtual Zoom festival featuring music, theater and comedy by COVID-conscious artists for COVID-conscious audiences. Its program included scenes from The Left by COVID-conscious playwright Caridad Svich, Ron Placone’s comedy special, the Long COVID Kids Choir and an open mic for emerging talent.

Recent COVID-conscious theater projects include Wake Up and Smell the C*VID, a hybrid monologue performance by Holy Erotic Propaganda Arson (HEPA), which premiered in New York and on Zoom on 24 April 2025 as a fundraiser for artists living with Long COVID.

Premiering the same evening was Anna RG’s AIR CHANGE PER HOUR, a Brooklyn performance structured around air purifiers and testimony from members of the arts community living with Long COVID.

COVID-conscious comedian Guiness Pig’s A Covid Christmas Carol, an audio play satirizing the Charles Dickens classic, was performed in December 2025.

Serina Estrada’s A Pan***ic Play, a 50-minute one-person show featuring stories from people whose lives have been impacted by COVID, was performed 21–22 January 2026, at The Art School in Glasgow as part of the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland’s Emergence Festival.

From Home Fest

Also in January 2026, From Home Fest, a virtual theater festival, included Equity, a COVID-conscious play by Stephen Fruchtman performed as:

a Private Equity take on the La Ronde formula.

Fruchtman is founder of Ongoing Pandemic Theater, which describes itself as:

championing and producing art that endeavors to keep the people making it safe amid an ongoing pandemic.

Theater and advocacy

COVID-conscious theater has also developed alongside advocacy for clean air as an access issue in the arts.

Performer and advocate Ezra Tozian has written for HowlRound about COVID protections in theater and the impact of the industry’s removal of precautions on disabled theatermakers. Tozian’s 2025 essay, “How to Negotiate COVID Protections“, is a practical guide for theater workers negotiating protections such as HEPA filtration, N95 and KN95 masking, remote auditions and on-site testing. Tozian also published “Challenging the COVID Status Quo“, about disabled theatermakers pushing back against the normalization of unprotected theater spaces.

In the UK, Dr. Sally Witcher OBE, founder of INN the Arts, has published Indoor Safety in the Arts, a framework for best practices aimed at reducing airborne infection risk in theaters and venues. Witcher’s work has been part of a wider push for clean air in live performance.

Protect the Heart of the Arts, a grassroots advocacy group sounding the alarm on the devastating impact COVID and Long COVID are having on the performing arts, has also organized public actions around arts events. In February 2024, the group coordinated a Long COVID awareness ribbon giveaway on the BAFTA red carpet, offering ribbons and masks to attendees and calling for solidarity with performers living with Long COVID. In December 2024, after a series of illness-related cancellations during David Tennant and Cush Jumbo’s Macbeth at the Harold Pinter Theatre, the group organized a festive mask and test handout outside the theater during the production’s closing weekend. The run saw four cancellations and reliance on six understudies.

There are also organizations hosting and providing infrastructure for clean air events. Clean Air Club in Chicago provides free air purifiers to artists, touring musicians and organizers. Positive Deviance in New York uses portable HEPA air purifiers, testing and respirators for COVID-safer events.

COVID-conscious performance

COVID-conscious performance has also developed through music, comedy and community events.

In comedy, Judah Friedlander continues to perform Zoom livestream stand-up shows.

In music, artists including Purity Ring perform in masks and work with volunteers to distribute masks at shows. Other musicians and performers have built COVID precautions into live performance, including Drew Empire, who performed at Positive Deviance’s debut COVID-safer hip-hop event in Brooklyn. phytocene, a Paris-based musician, has organized mask-required concerts in France. Car Seat Headrest frontman Will Toledo has asked audiences to wear N95 masks and has spoken publicly about Long COVID. Other artists including Jensen McRae, Deerhoof and Zoe Boekbinder have also requested or organized mask wearing and other airborne safety precautions for their performances.

There are also celebrities who continue to wear masks and advocate for mask wearing, including Nancy Sinatra, Stevie Nicks, Wil Wheaton, Morgan Fairchild, Serj Tankian and Matt McGorry.

Amidst this flourishing of COVID conscious theater, we’ve asked playwright and director Molly Brennan about the play, its inspiration and development process, and Brennan’s vision for COVID-conscious theater.

What was the initial question that made you know this had to become a play?

The initial question that led to After the Whales Spoke was:

Where is the pandemic leading us?

I wrote the first scene in 2020. I was living in Chicago. Two plays I had been cast in were cancelled: Be More Chill and American Idiot. I had no idea what I was going to do for money.

I had been a professional stage actor for 25 years, and a Clown and Acting teacher. I was reading about the 1918 Flu and the rise of fascism and nazism. I was observing, even in those first months, there were people in my life not social distancing or following COVID-safer protocols.

When George Floyd was murdered in May, I joined the folks protesting. There was a high level of care: people wearing masks, people providing water, medical aid, etc. I was moved by the show-up. As a person who has done a lot of direct action and demonstrations and protests, it was great to see a robust population of participants. Additionally, the networks of everyday care that were happening: sharing food and resources and medicine.

As tough as many things were, there was such a bright light of solidarity and care that was happening. The play started there, but got more cynical as the pandemic wore on, and the question changed:

What will happen to those of us who are refusing to be bought back by capitalism?

And:

What will happen to those of us who don’t ever go back to brunch?

The play is set in a post-plague future. What did that future allow you to explore that a present-day setting would not? How does the play understand the word “post-plague”?

The post-plague future of After The Whales Spoke allows a setting in which “The Virus” is no longer infecting people, and what those who did not stop wearing masks or following shared air practice feel about those who gave in.

A spoiler plot point, written before my current understanding of Long Covid, was that those who never got “The Virus” became victims of organ harvesting by billionaires.

I often wonder what my relationships will be to people if there ever is proper prevention and cure for SARS-CoV-2 infection and other airborne pathogens. What will it be like for me to not wear a respirator around people who haven’t worn a mask since 2021? Will my feelings of resentment ease?

How did your own COVID consciousness shape the writing of the play? Not only its content, but its form and maybe awareness of theatrical space?

My COVID-consciousness is the newest addition to my practice of disability access and community care, and so becomes integral to my creative process.

Before 2020, I was making projects that integrated ASL, captions, audio description, and sensory-friendly adjustments at the beginning of the creative process, making them part of production, rather than being an addition taken on by front of house/audience services.

The add-on of imagining actors in respirators, having productions mask-required, with Far-UVC, HEPA filtration and ventilation with CO2 monitoring wasn’t a stretch.

There was previously a staged reading of the play. What did you learn from hearing it with actors and an audience? Did anything change?

I did a Zoom reading of Whales, presented by MaskedNH and Breathe Free or Die, last year. I learned from feedback I was on the right track, in terms of making work for actors who have a strong shared-air practice and a decent amount of rage.

I also observed a disconnect between some “CC” [COVID-conscious] people and the suggestion of action against tyranny the play makes. I learned that some “CC” people are motivated by their self-preservation instead of shared care, and do not have a vested interest in other kinds of action.

Some “CC” people are single-issue, and it’s important to me to work with artists and collaborators who have a unified approach to justice. This idea of having a holistic approach to liberation is spoken aloud by Caspian in Whales. It challenges liberal check-boxing and encourages solidarity across oppressed groups.

What has it meant to develop this work in western Massachusetts, e.g., the mutual aid and COVID-conscious communities, the arts scene, general COVID awareness and receptivity to safety precautions?

The Franklin County region of Western Massachusetts has a relatively robust shared-air awareness crew. There are a decent amount of mask-required events, and it’s common to see people in public wearing respirators.

My wife and I actually chose to move here because of Last Ditch: a mask-required lesbian bar. We source & distribute masks and other public health items, crossing paths and working sometimes with local mask blocs.

The artistic spirit is quite unique in this area. There’s a lot of “art without permission”. People just doing things. Like making statues on their property of found items, doing decorated tractor parades, having a town scarecrow contest, disco bean shelling, stuff like that. Very art-for-the-people. Lots of farms and lots of farm-based art! The show-up for auditions of queer people who mask was awesome! Also, my “CC” mom is in the show, doing a drag version of Mitch McConnell.

What COVID safety measures will be in place for the performance?

After the Whales Spoke at LAVA Center’s On the Boards Festival will have HEPA filtration CO2 monitoring, and Far-UVC tech. Actors will be masked, and audiences will be required to mask as well. I will provide a variety of n95s and kn95s at the door.

There will also be captioning and audio description, and we are working on streaming the event. The building is ADA compliant, but the front door can be a bit tricky for mobility devices, so I’ll make sure to have someone posted out there to assist.

Two of the cast members use wheelchairs and have been helpful in figuring out what needs to happen to welcome the larger disabled community.

What role can playwrights play in keeping public memory alive when institutions are often eager to move on?

It’s important to name that my shared-air practice, which is wearing an N95 everywhere except at home and in specific outdoor situations, is only one element of my commitment to community care. And C19 is only one pathogen that is floating around and killing and disabling people.

I think there are different ways for playwrights, and other artists and writers, to communicate what is broken about our society, and I don’t hold playwrights responsible for “keeping public memory alive” about COVID. The problems we face are intersectional. If a theater piece focuses on racial disparity, gender, disability, poverty, it tells the story of struggle, oppression, and maybe how to fight it or grow out of it.

I believe it is the responsibility of all of us to do our best to make sure everyone has a path to life, liberty and pursuit of happiness. That includes wearing a respirator in public spaces, but not every play has to be about that specifically.

What would you hope a COVID-conscious audience member feels when they encounter this production? What would you hope someone who has not thought much about COVID in recent years takes away from it?

I would hope that a “CC” audience member feels safer to exist in the room without a looming threat of illness, in terms of being in the physical space. I hope that they would see themselves in the play.

Someone who has not thought about COVID recently, I hope they engage in the post-reading discussion, and take some free masks and wear them.

How do you imagine the future of COVID-conscious theater?

The future of “CC” theater relies on a complete restructuring of the structure. The LAVA center is a small, community art space, so this does not apply to them. They’re doing a good job. Large, professional theaters need to be worker-owned, and center the art and the audience instead of Boeing, Chase, Excellon, and the other earth-destroying funders.

The future of “CC” theatre is the future of theatre. If the structure is a people-based structure, community care of all kinds is a militant and inextricable element.

Tickets and Zoom stream info can be found at after-the-whales.mmm.page.

More info about Molly Brennan and After the Whales Spoke can be found at monsterclowngirl.mmm.page.

Featured image via…

By Protect the Heart of the Arts

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Former TV executive Lord Grade has just stepped down as chair of Ofcom. He tells Noah Vickers about his eventful career, enforcing the Online Safety Act and why critics of GB News are secretly ‘embarrassed’

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Lord Grade is a titan of British television. Over four decades as an executive at ITV, the BBC and Channel 4, he greenlit and oversaw some of our most cherished programmes, including the launch of EastEnders and Casualty, the importing of Friends and Neighbours onto UK screens, and the broadcasting of Bob Geldof’s Live Aid concert in 1985.

The 83-year-old peer has re-taken the Tory whip after sitting as a non-affiliated member for the last four years while serving as chair of Ofcom. Appointed to the role under Boris Johnson’s government in 2022, his term concluded in April this year.

But despite his extraordinary career in television, he says that what drew him to the job was not in fact its role regulating the world of broadcasting.

“What interested me about the Ofcom job was I started to worry about online safety,” he says, “and there were the beginnings of talk about a bill coming.”

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The Online Safety Act, passed by Rishi Sunak’s administration in 2023, is enforced by Ofcom. Companies in breach of the legislation can be fined up to £18m or 10 per cent of their qualifying worldwide revenue, whichever is greater.

Ofcom is up against “very powerful companies who have unlimited access to the best legal brains, and will challenge everything we do”, says Grade, who acknowledges concerns that the regulator moves too slowly.

“When you’re regulating, and [despite] the strong powers that Ofcom has, we’re not a star chamber. Its processes have to be fair and defensible in court.”

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The legislation, he argues, is just one part of a wider global regulatory effort to which the big tech companies have been forced to respond.

“I’ve got kids and grandkids and they’re on their screens all day long. The tech companies are beginning to wake up to the fact they’ve got to change. The mere fact of the legislation, and Ofcom’s engagement with the big tech companies, has created quite a bit of change – some of it voluntary.”

Grade’s term at Ofcom also began less than a year after the launch of GB News. The regulator is still regularly accused of failing to hold the channel to the same standards of impartiality as other broadcasters. “The same rules apply to GB News as apply to the BBC, Sky, ITN, whoever,” he insists.

 “All news programmes are the result of editorial choices made all along the line. What story are we going to cover? How are we going to cover it? Who do we interview? What are we going to ask them? What are we going to use? Where does it go in the running order?

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“Everything’s a choice, all the way up. Because GB News make different editorial choices necessarily on each news day from the BBC, ITN or Sky, doesn’t make it wrong.”

GB News “haven’t always played by the rules”, he admits, but it has been penalised accordingly. He adds: “They’ve actually got better and better. It’s not difficult to comply – sometimes it’s only a sentence in a script.”

Does that mean GB News’ critics should really be angry with how the rules are written, rather than the way Ofcom is enforcing them?

“No, I just think,” he says, before pausing for a moment. “I can now speak [freely], as I’m not at Ofcom. I honestly think they’re embarrassed by the fact that there is a news organisation that has a different news agenda to them, that speaks to the agenda of the majority – if you look at the polls, a large swathe of the voting population, who have no voice on the BBC.

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“Immigration, Brexit, these are all issues that don’t get the weight on the BBC, or haven’t been able to, that GB News will give, so what’s the problem?”

To unite that “large swathe” of voters, speaking as a Conservative peer, does he think the Tories and Reform UK should do a deal to win the next election?

“No, I think they’ve got to slug it out to the election,” he says. “If there’s a hung parliament at the end of that, then that’s the time, maybe, for Reform and the Conservatives [to work together]. You can do a confidence and supply agreement, you don’t have to have a coalition – see who’s got most seats.”

Grade is proud of his tenure as a TV executive, his face lighting up as he recalls there being “nothing better than backing a hunch, and the show goes on and it’s beautifully executed, the audience find it and love it, and critics love it”.

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His time at London Weekend Television (LWT), a regional franchise of ITV, saw the broadcast of The Fosters in 1976, which featured Lenny Henry in his first regular TV role. It was the first British sitcom to have an all-Black cast, adapted from the American sitcom Good Times.

“What we’re at risk of losing is big drama designed specifically for the British audience”

“Encouraging a lot of Black actors in a lot of shows that we did was a big step forward,” says Grade.

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“The critics rounded on it and said, ‘We don’t understand this show – this could have been played by a white family,’ and I said, ‘That’s exactly the point.’ That drove me crazy, but that was great fun.”

Finding TV hits could be the “hardest thing in the world”, he recalls.

“My first boss at LWT, who brought me into television, was the late Cyril Bennett. I said, ‘How do you get a hit, Cyril?’ He said ‘90 per cent luck and 10 per cent accident’,” Grade chuckles.

“You’ve got to know what’s not going to work. You have to know exactly what has got no chance at all – after that, it’s up to the audience. The audience decide what’s a hit and what isn’t.”

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As controller of BBC One in the 1980s, Grade almost axed Blackadder after its first series – which had been shot, expensively, on location.

Grade also found it unfunny, so he made the programme’s renewal conditional on its producers moving it into a cheaper studio format, with an audience to react to the jokes.

“Very grumpily, they put it in a studio and the rest is history. You watch the first series – it’s a mess. They [the audience] knew what was funny and what wasn’t funny.”

He made a more committed attempt to kill off Doctor Who, forcing the series to go on an 18-month hiatus and to swap its lead actor from Colin Baker to Sylvester McCoy. Does he expect fans will ever forgive him?

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“No, no, no. That show was well past its sell-by date in my time.”

Grade complained that the visual effects were terrible compared to Star Wars and Close Encounters of The Third Kind. He credits Russell T Davies, who resurrected it in 2005, for performing “a miracle with a great brand”.

 

But he adds: “I have to secretly admit, which I don’t normally admit – I’m not a big fan of sci-fi in any event. I know that’s a blind spot of mine, so I’ve always had to be very careful not to let my own taste intervene.”

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Case in point, perhaps, came when he flew out to California to decide which American shows to buy for Channel 4. In a Hollywood screening room, he and his colleagues watched the pilot for a new sci-fi series.

“We all looked at each other and said: ‘This is garbage, it’s hard to stay awake.’ You know, jetlag and everything else… so we turned down The X-Files, which was a big miss.”

Later at Channel 4, the station’s head of comedy presented another pilot episode to him. Grade found it “mindless” and “really stupid in places”, but said to carry on if there was enough belief in it. That series was Father Ted.

These days, Grade warns that British TV is in a perilous place. He shares the concerns raised last year by Wolf Hall director, Peter Kosminsky, that it is becoming increasingly unaffordable for public-service broadcasters to produce high-end British dramas.

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“I’ve had many discussions with Peter, who I admire enormously,” he says. “Something’s got to happen, because what we’re at risk of losing is big drama designed specifically for the British audience.

“If it has a life after that, internationally, fine. I think ITV were very surprised that Mr Bates vs The Post Office sold in as many territories as it did, because it was a very domestic story.

“But Happy Valley, Wolf Hall, those sorts of shows are very much at risk. The answer is, the BBC has a secure income, [and] it needs to continue to have a secure income so it can play its part.”

Kosminsky called for a levy to be put on US streaming services, with the proceeds collected into a British cultural fund. A similar proposal was put forward by Parliament’s Culture, Media and Sport Committee, but was turned down by the government.

“That’s been rejected, and it’s a hard sell,” says Grade, who argues it might be possible for the private sector to instead create a one-off fund, which the BBC and others could come to for support in making their more expensive series.

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The intellectual property of programmes produced from it would stay in the UK, but the fund’s private backers would be the first to benefit from international sales.

He doesn’t see any feasible alternative to the licence fee as a way of funding the BBC – and he cautions that a subscription model would discourage producers from taking risks on shows which might not sell.

Grade also warns, however, that the corporation is still too big and says cuts should be made so that the licence fee can be re-based at a lower amount.

The rise of working from home, he suggests, means the BBC could free up some funding by selling off some of its physical estate: “When you go to some of the BBC headquarters outside London, you just can’t believe the scale of them.”

He argues, too, that the licence fee should be made progressive by tying it to income in some way.

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“It’s wrong that I pay the same as a single mum with three kids in a rented room somewhere – it’s just wrong.”

The peer is optimistic about the corporation’s new director-general, Matt Brittin: “I’m excited and encouraged that they’ve brought in someone from the outside, which I think is what the BBC needs. He seems to be making all the right noises…

“I’m very hopeful that we’ll see some radical change at the BBC, definitely. He’s got to appoint a deputy who’s going to control the journalistic minefield, so they don’t have another editorial crisis – of which there have been too many.”

The last government’s decision not to privatise Channel 4, he argues, was a missed opportunity – despite having fought previous attempts at privatisation when he was the station’s chief executive under Margaret Thatcher and John Major.

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“It’s wrong that I pay the same [licence fee] as a single mum with three kids in a rented room”

“There were only five channels in those days. It was a very different world,” he explains. “The question is, can Channel 4 make a virtue out of being small? That’s the challenge. There’s a new team in there, a great new chairman, a very exciting chief executive – let’s see if they can make a fist of it.”

Asked to rate, out of 10, how hopeful he feels about the future of British TV, he gives a score of two. Perhaps two and a half.

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“I am very, very worried. Part of it is being kind of misty-eyed about the golden age of which I was privileged to be a part.

“But also the creative industries are one of the most important growth sectors of the economy, and have been for the last decade. The bedrock of that is public service media, and if we lose public service media, eventually that will ripple through into our position as a major provider of international exports, soft power. It’s gobsmacking what we achieve.” 

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