‘I looked exceptional but I was out of breath’: the bodybuilder who switched to mindful movement

Ten years ago, Eugene Teo was obsessed with lifting weights. But, gradually, he realised his extreme mindset was making him unhappy. So he changed his outlook

Eugene Teo, 34, began lifting weights at the age of 13, looking for validation. “I was short, skinny and I thought it would give me confidence,” he says. “Bodybuilding for me was the ultimate expression of that.”

Now living on the Gold Coast in Australia, with his partner and daughter, the fitness coach spent from age 16 to 24 training and competing. At times, he lifted weights for up to four hours a day, aiming to get as muscular and lean as possible. The ideal he was chasing? “If you grab your eyelid and feel that skin,” he says, “that’s the skin thinness you want on your bum and abs.”

Published: January 18, 2026, 12:00 pm

‘We stick them in shoes and forget about them’: how to really look after your feet

About one quarter of our bones are in our feet. How can you keep them strong and pain free for longer?

Dentists have trained us well to visit them on a regular basis for a check-up, rather than waiting until things start to hurt. Hylton Menz, a professor of podiatry at La Trobe University in Melbourne, wishes we’d do the same for our feet.

“We probably ignore our feet relative to other parts of our body, because we stick them in shoes and they’re a long way away, so we tend to forget about feet,” he says. “It’s only really when they don’t actually function properly – so when they become painful, they don’t do what we want them to do – that we really think about them.”

Published: January 17, 2026, 7:00 pm

‘Without strength training I wouldn’t survive’: the woman who joined a CrossFit gym in her 80s

At 81, Jean Stewart was frustrated by her growing frailty, so she decided to get active. Now 96, push-ups, kettlebell squats and pushing a weight-loaded sledge keep her strong

I see people 30 years younger than me and they’ve given up,” Jean Stewart, 96, says. It’s not an attitude she relates to. “I like to do things for myself.”

Stewart was very active in her youth: she played hockey and softball at school and worked for the Girl Scouts for years. As she got older, however, everyday tasks became harder.

Published: January 17, 2026, 4:00 pm

‘It took time to love my soft, larger shape’: the body-positive writer who recovered from an eating disorder

Megan Jayne Crabbe was diagnosed with anorexia at 14. When she hit her ‘goal weight’ and still didn’t feel happy, a supportive online community showed her a new way to live

Megan Jayne Crabbe’s transformation goes beyond the physical. “My ‘before’ was trying to make myself as small as possible in every conceivable way: my body, voice, emotions, opinions,” she says. “My ‘after’ is allowing myself to be my biggest self, however that looks.”

Crabbe, 31, became aware of diets before she turned 10. As she entered puberty that intensified and she became fixated on magazine articles about how to change her body, eating as little as possible as a way to manage anxiety about school and growing up.

Published: January 17, 2026, 12:00 pm

I adore my husband but I feel a fraud at his church | Ask Annalisa Barbieri

Couples not sharing religious beliefs or going to each other’s places of worship isn’t unusual, but perhaps there’s something else going on here

When I met my husband eight years ago, I knew he was churchy, but as a low-church Protestant, I thought this wouldn’t be a problem. Outside church, I am comfortable with our religious differences. I sort of believe in God, and find immense spirituality in nature, but think Christ was simply a good man, whereas my husband believes it. He respects my beliefs and has never imposed his on me.

The problem I have is with the church we attend. I often feel a fraud as I don’t share the beliefs of the rest of the congregation. I feel alienated by the emphasis on theology over Christ’s teachings, and the hymns and rituals. I resent having to sacrifice my Sundays mouthing words I do not believe.

Published: January 18, 2026, 6:00 am

Six great reads: Mondrian’s hidden inspiration, the friendship secret and heat for Heated Rivalry

Need something brilliant to read this weekend? Here are six of our favourite pieces from the last seven days

Published: January 17, 2026, 6:00 am

‘We could hit a wall’: why trillions of dollars of risk is no guarantee of AI reward

Progress of artificial general intelligence could stall, which may lead to a financial crash, says Yoshua Bengio, one of the ‘godfathers’ of modern AI

Will the race to artificial general intelligence (AGI) lead us to a land of financial plenty – or will it end in a 2008-style bust? Trillions of dollars rest on the answer.

The figures are staggering: an estimated $2.9tn (£2.2tn) being spent on datacentres, the central nervous systems of AI tools; the more than $4tn stock market capitalisation of Nvidia, the company that makes the chips powering cutting-edge AI systems; and the $100m signing-on bonuses offered by Mark Zuckerberg’s Meta to top engineers at OpenAI, the company behind ChatGPT.

Published: January 17, 2026, 12:00 pm

‘Still here!’: X’s Grok AI tool accessible in Malaysia and Indonesia despite ban

Experts warn use of VPNs makes it hard to limit access to technology that can create nonconsensual explicit images

Days after Malaysia made global headlines by announcing it would temporarily ban Grok over its ability to generate “grossly offensive and nonconsensual manipulated images”, the generative AI tool was conversing breezily with accounts registered in the country.

“Still here! That DNS block in Malaysia is pretty lightweight – easy to bypass with a VPN or DNS tweak,” Grok’s account on X said in response to a question from a user.

Published: January 18, 2026, 9:39 am

He called himself an ‘untouchable hacker god’. But who was behind the biggest crime Finland has ever known?

How would you feel if your therapist’s notes – your darkest thoughts and deepest feelings – were exposed to the world? For 33,000 Finnish people, that became a terrifying reality, with deadly consequences

Tiina Parikka was half-naked when she read the email. It was a Saturday in late October 2020, and Parikka had spent the morning sorting out plans for distance learning after a Covid outbreak at the school where she was headteacher. She had taken a sauna at her flat in Vantaa, just outside Finland’s capital, Helsinki, and when she came into her bedroom to get dressed, she idly checked her phone. There was a message that began with Parikka’s name and her social security number – the unique code used to identify Finnish people when they access healthcare, education and banking. “I knew then that this is not a game,” she says.

The email was in Finnish. It was jarringly polite. “We are contacting you because you have used Vastaamo’s therapy and/or psychiatric services,” it read. “Unfortunately, we have to ask you to pay to keep your personal information safe.” The sender demanded €200 in bitcoin within 24 hours, otherwise the price would go up to €500 within 48 hours. “If we still do not receive our money after this, your information will be published for everyone to see, including your name, address, phone number, social security number and detailed records containing transcripts of your conversations with Vastaamo’s therapists or psychiatrists.”

Published: January 17, 2026, 6:00 am

Readers reply: should speed cameras be hidden?

The long-running series in which readers answer other readers’ questions on subjects ranging from trivial flights of fancy to profound scientific and philosophical concepts

• This week’s question: How can we learn from unrequited love?

What’s the point of having speed limits if camera-warning signs and apps allow drivers to slow down in advance – then just continue speeding? Maybe the UK government in its new consultations on road safety should add the question of hiding speed cameras to their list of concerns. I’m a driver, but also a pedestrian and cyclist and get fed up with seeing cars zooming down local roads at way more than 20 or 30mph. There are flashing lights that tell drivers what speed they’re doing, but there’s no penalty for going over at those points. Amy, Cornwall

Send new questions to nq@theguardian.com.

Published: January 18, 2026, 2:00 pm

How can we defend ourselves from the new plague of ‘human fracking’?

Big tech treats our attention like a resource to be mercilessly extracted. The fightback begins here

In the last 15 years, a linked series of unprecedented technologies have changed the experience of personhood across most of the world. It is estimated that nearly 70% of the human population of the Earth currently possesses a smartphone, and these devices constitute about 95% of internet access-points on the planet. Globally, on average, people seem to spend close to half their waking hours looking at screens, and among young people in the rich world the number is a good deal higher than that.

History teaches that new technologies always make possible new forms of exploitation, and this basic fact has been spectacularly exemplified by the rise of society-scale digital platforms. It has been driven by a remarkable new way of extracting money from human beings: call it “human fracking”. Just as petroleum frackers pump high-pressure, high-volume detergents into the ground to force a little monetisable black gold to the surface, human frackers pump high-pressure, high-volume detergent into our faces (in the form of endless streams of addictive slop and maximally disruptive user-generated content), to force a slurry of human attention to the surface, where they can collect it, and take it to market.

Published: January 18, 2026, 12:00 pm

Why the Lumie Bodyclock Glow sunrise alarm clock is the best wake-up under the sun

Our reviewer loved this wake-up light more than any other he’s tested – it’s even knocked his previous best sunrise alarm off the top spot

• Read the full ranking in our sunrise alarm clock test

Since I first tested sunrise alarm clocks last winter, I’ve come to suspect that there’s no such thing as getting up on the wrong side of bed. What we ought to be worried about is waking up on the wrong side of dawn.

During summer (and other times of the year, for late risers), the sunrise begins to rouse us before we wake up. The brain kicks into gear and sends signals to initiate all sorts of bodily processes, from metabolism to hormone release, which helps us to feel ready for the day. It’s a fundament of our circadian rhythm – and we miss out on it whenever we wake before it gets light.

Published: January 18, 2026, 7:00 am

What happens to accidental heroes when the headlines fade? ‘You get your award and then there’s nothing’

After traumatic events we look for reminders of humanity’s good, and flashes of courage from ordinary people become symbols of hope. But it can be hard to wear the hero’s crown

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The smell of burning flesh and pulverised concrete is seared into the psyche of Anneke Weemaes-Sutcliffe. On 22 March 2016, the Australian expat was due to check in for a flight when Islamic State suicide bombers detonated two nailbombs inside Brussels airport. Miraculously unharmed, she sprinted to the exit after the second blast exploded metres away from her – but then, risking her life, decided to turn back.

Screams, wailing alarms and a thick blanket of dust choked the air. The ceiling had caved in. “It turned from buzzing with life to a war zone. It’s horrific, absolutely horrific,” Weemaes-Sutcliffe says.

Published: January 17, 2026, 7:00 pm

Nasa moon rocket creeps to its launchpad in preparation for astronaut flight

First journey around moon with astronauts in more than 50 years could blast off in February

Nasa’s giant new moon rocket has moved to the launchpad in preparation for astronauts’ first lunar fly-around in more than half a century. The trip could blast off in February.

The 98-metre (322ft) rocket began its 1mph (1.6km/h) creep from Kennedy Space Center’s vehicle assembly building at daybreak. The trek of 4 miles took until nightfall.

Published: January 18, 2026, 9:44 am

Revolutionary imaging of black hole aims to prove they are not ‘evil vacuum cleaners’

Newly appointed Cambridge professor says feat would accelerate scientific knowledge by an order of magnitude

Dark, hungry and inescapable: black holes are often portrayed as the ultimate cosmic villains.

But now astronomers are preparing to capture a movie of a supermassive black hole in action for the first time, in observations that could help reveal another side to these elusive – and perhaps misunderstood – space objects.

Published: January 18, 2026, 7:00 am

Nasa readies its most powerful rocket for round-the-moon flight

Artemis II mission could launch on 6 February, sending astronauts on a 685,000-mile journey

Nasa is preparing to roll out its most powerful rocket yet before a mission to send astronauts around the moon and back again for the first time in more than 50 years.

The Artemis II mission is scheduled to launch from Kennedy Space Center in Florida as early as 6 February, taking its crew on a 685,000-mile round trip that will end about 10 days later with a splashdown in the Pacific Ocean.

Published: January 17, 2026, 6:00 am

Rare twins born in DRC raise cautious hope for endangered mountain gorillas

Virunga park ranger says babies are well cared for by mother Mafuko but high infant mortality makes first weeks critical

It was noon by the time Jacques Katutu first saw the newborn mountain gorillas. Cradled in the arms of their mother, Mafuko, the tiny twins clung to her body for warmth in the forest clearing in Virunga national park, in eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC).

Katutu, head of gorilla monitoring in Virunga, has seen dozens of newborns in his 15 years as a ranger. But, he tells the Guardian, even he was touched by the sight of the fragile infant males, who face serious obstacles if they are to become silverbacks one day.

Published: January 17, 2026, 6:00 am

Weight-loss drugs do nothing to address the troubled relationships we have with our bodies | Susie Orbach

The food, beauty and pharmaceutical industries poison our self-image. GLP-1 drugs will only make them richer – and strengthen the hold they have over us

Fifty years ago, I started thinking about the demand for women to look a certain way and the rebellions against the narrow ways in which we were supposed to display (and not display) our bodies. For a while, there was a conversation about the strictures. Some young women refused to conform. Some women risked being in the bodies they had rather than embodying the dominant images of being Madonna or the whore. But troubled eating abounded, even if it wasn’t always visible, stoked by the food and diet industries and their bedfellows in the beauty and fashion industries. These industries targeted appearance as crucial to girls’ and women’s identity and their place in the world.

Today, a new kind of troubled eating is stalking the land, entirely induced by the new GLP-1 weight-loss drugs produced by pharmaceutical companies and promoted by their willing agents on social media. It is totally understandable that people want relief from obsessive and invasive thoughts about their bodies and food. The explosion of GLP-1 drugs has provided a kind of psychological peace for many who feel less frightened of their appetites.

Susie Orbach is a psychotherapist, psychoanalyst and social critic. She is the author of many books, including Bodies and Fat Is a Feminist Issue

Published: January 18, 2026, 10:00 am

Can you solve it? Are you cut out for these puzzling slices?

Or will they have you in pieces?

Today’s puzzles are all geometrical, and all from the mind of the UK’s most enduring and eloquent popular maths writer, Ian Stewart.

1. Bonnie Tiler

Published: January 18, 2026, 7:10 am