Month: January 2025

Sure, you keep them clean, at first. But then various factors come into play and your once white fashionable trainers end up more of a dutty off-white, the suede is speckled with mud or the laces are barely distinguishable from the shoe.

Or maybe you do clean your creps with a quick wipe and think you’re a pro.

But either way, Nike’s surprising advice on how often you should be washing your shoes might make you rethink things.

How often should you clean your shoes?

The trainer greats say: “To ensure peak performance of a pair of sneakers over time, it’s important to give them proper care and maintenance, including cleaning.”

And while your cleaning schedule depends on how often you wear your creps and ‘where your feet take you’, the company has some pretty clear guidelines on how often to clean them.

Maybe you remember to wipe them down every month or perhaps give them a freshen up every few weeks but Nike says you should be cleaning ‘every two weeks’.

Or simply, ‘whenever they start to look dirty’.

“Regular maintenance can help reduce cleaning time,” it adds.

Now, while you’re realising you’ve never followed this two-week guideline, Nike has a simple six-step routine for keeping them clean.

But I’d say you’re going to want to put some time aside because it’s not exactly the quickest sounding process – especially if you’ve been neglecting your shoes altogether.

How to best clean your shoes

The first step is to use a dry brush to remove any loose dirt from the outsole, midsole and uppers. If you don’t have one, Nike says a spare toothbrush will work just fine.

Then, you want to mix warm water with a small amount of mild laundry detergent or dish soap to make a cleaning solution. Apply a small amount of this to the (removed) shoelaces and massage them with your hands before rinsing them and dabbing dry with a soft cloth.

The fourth step is to take a soft-bristled brush, toothbrush or washcloth and clean the outsole and midsole of the shoes with the solution.

Clean up every part of the soles before drying with a soft cloth.

Once that’s done, wash and blot the uppers with the solution, again using the soft-bristled brush, toothbrush or damp cloth.

When you’re satisfied with how they look, use a dry microfibre towel or soft cloth to blot and lift as much of the soapiness and moisture from the surface, avoiding rubbing.

Then, you need to leave them to air dry at room temperature, typically taking at least eight hours.

Yep, easy, but a whole lot of time every two weeks for your dutty shoes.

If you haven’t heard from or seen this guy before, then lucky you I guess. But by now, the majority of us know the bloke with this bulky downstairs title is of course Matt Barr.

Having previously spoken out about the downsides of his whopper and why he won’t get a reduction, the Brit spoke with Dr Rena Malik on her YouTube channel for ‘Is Bigger Really Better?’.

Barr is tipped as the record holder for the largest scientifically verified unaugmented penis, measuring in at 14.4 inches in length and 8.5 inches in girth.

Malik referenced points from the previous documentary, My Massive Cock, where Barr had mentioned ‘sexual assault’ and ‘bullying’, with someone trying to get him to have an erection in public or making him use a ‘penis pump before going out’.

He explained to the doctor that those instances happened when he ‘was quite young’ and ‘still growing’.

“It’s that kind of attention that you don’t want,” he said, explaining people think it’s a ‘dream world’.

Barr went on to say it’s an ‘objectification’ that some men think they want because of loneliness.

“A lot of the comments under the documentary were from women saying, ‘Well we deal with this all the time, we deal with being objectified.’ And obviously, that’s a completely valid point,” he continued.

The man then went on to discuss how he finds it very ‘strange’ that from his perspective, as ‘a very average looking man’ to have an element about him objectified.

“People do think of it as being such a positive thing,” Barr said, “when realistically it comes with those drawbacks.”

He previously spoke about the problems he faces, from dating to exercising. The Brit explained he was once asked to leave a yoga class because it was thought he was aroused.

“I was wearing a very baggy shirt and shorts [but because of the] yoga positions, people just got the wrong idea.

“And that’s the way it sometimes goes, but you can dress normally, baggy clothing, and it’s not too difficult.”

The official name of this chunk of space rock is 101955 Bennu, which we’ll call ‘Bennu’ for short because the numbers seem rather superfluous in this conversation.

A spacecraft launched in 2016 was able to reach Bennu two years later and searched for a good landing spot on the chunk of space rock hurtling around our planet.

Between 20 October 2020 and 10 May 2021 the OSIRIS-REx craft was on the asteroid where it had successfully collected a sample to bring back to humanity.

On 24 September 2023, seven years and 16 days after it first launched, the spacecraft made it back to Earth with a sample from the asteroid, where scientists had a bit of a job actually opening up the capsule and it wasn’t fully cracked open until 14 January 2024.

According to Astronomy.com, what NASA found in their first analysis of the Bennu sample indicated that water had once flowed through the asteroid.

Subsequent research led by Sara Russell of the Natural History Museum in London found more information about this in the form of a lack of chondrules, little rounded grains of rock found in meteorites.

She said: “The aqueous alteration would have destroyed the chondrules it may have had.”

If you’re wondering what chondrules are, they’re small, microscopic rocks that are named after the Greek word for ‘grain’ and are thought to be part of the foundational building blocks of planets.

Bennu had been predicted to be rich in water but the discovery confirmed that, while the rocks recovered from the asteroid sample are unlike any others found before meaning that the mission to space recovered something truly unique.

The Bennu asteroid was first discovered in 1999 and the name came from the winning entry in a contest to name an asteroid, with a young child called Michael Puzio suggesting the winning name after the Ancient Egyptian mythological bird of the same name.

Studying the asteroid has shown that it is actually speeding up slightly as it spins around in space, as every 100 years the time it takes to complete a full rotation is reduced by one second.

Now we’ll have to see how it does without the chunk of rock we extracted from it, while we can content ourselves with the discovery that water once flowed through the asteroid and there are rocks from Bennu which look like nothing else we’ve ever seen.

The American actress previously said on a talk show that she didn’t ‘understand’ the film as she was shooting it, despite being in a relationship with director Darren Aronofsky at the time.

Released in 2017, the psychological horror confused viewers upon its release, as its themes are largely symbolic, with the focus on tone instead of character development and plot.

Following the flick’s poor reception upon release though, the couple called time on their relationship.

Lawrence opened up on how the film’s performance had a hand in their break-up, and how it may have been ‘unhealthy’ for her to date the director of a film she was in – and how she ‘didn’t understand’ the movie itself.

In a conversation with Andy Cohen on Watch What Happens Live, Lawrence admitted she was still baffled by the movie.

The host asked: “On a scale of one to totally confused, how much did you understand your film Mother!?”

Lawrence responded: “I’m going to be honest. Well, I was sleeping with the director, so I had CliffsNotes. So… five? Or a four. But if anybody needs any tips on understanding their films, you know what to do!”

When Cohen joked back, “F*** the director?,” Lawrence replied: “Yeah!”

Speaking to Adam Sandler as part of Variety’s ‘Actors to Actors’ interview series on YouTube, the actress was candid about her past relationship with Aronofsky.

She explained: “Normally, I promote a movie, you put the work into promoting it, ask people to go see it, and then it’s just kind of out of your hands. I normally just kind of let it go.

“Dating the director is different,” she admitted.

Lawrence explained: “We’d be on the (promotional) tour together. I’d come back to the hotel, and the last thing I want to talk about or think about is a movie.

“He comes back from the tour, and that’s all he wants to talk about and I get it. It’s his baby. He wrote it. He conceived it. He directed it,” she revealed.

But this didn’t mean that she ended the relationship on the spot, saying that she was doing ‘double duty’ as ‘a supportive partner’.

However, she admitted that she thought: “‘Can I please, for the love of God, not think about Mother! for one second?’”

She did reach a breaking point though, as she realised it was ‘not healthy’ when he started reading reviews to her.

Lawrence admitted: “I finally was just like, ‘It’s not healthy. Neither of us are doing it because if I read it, I start getting defensive.’ Especially because it’s my man,” she said.

“I don’t want to sound in an interview that I’m defending what we’re doing in any way. It’s awesome, what we did,” she stated.

Speaking about the film, she did also admit: “Some people hate it and the people who hate it really hate it. But it’s nothing that needs to be defended and if I read a negative review, I just feel defensive.”

Now though, the 34-year-old is happily married to Cooke Maroney with a second child on the way, so all’s well that ends well.

Matthew starred in the smash-hit film as a trained NASA pilot, Joseph Cooper

The Christopher Nolan film focuses on Cooper’s trip into space for an interstellar trip, leaving his two children Tom and Murphy behind.

Interstellar received a huge amount of praise from critics and audience members alike – with the ending, in particular, blowing viewers away after learning the true ending was finally explained – and currently sits at 73 per cent on Rotten Tomatoes.

McConaughey has appeared on a podcast, Modern Wisdom, and has opened up about how the role of a lifetime has impacted him a decade on.

He also shared how he turned down an almost $15 million role.

“I have a lot of people tell me it’s their favourite movie of all time, and people tell me they went to see it four times, as there’s a lot to take in,” the Dallas Buyers Club star said.

When asked how it changed him, he paused to consider before answering: “The main thing was on the human side of it… for me personally, I was like, oh you don’t leave your kids to go do what your dream is.”

“Then when I changed what your dream is to go do what you’re meant to do, what you were born to do, that you have an ability to do like nobody else…. Then maybe you do leave your kid.” he continues, gesturing as if balancing things up.

He recalled one scene from the film in particular: “That argument, and that leaving, which is that countdown. That’s the scene I’m remembering, is the price you pay, the cost, the consequence of chasing down something.

“My initial thought was “oh, Cooper’s being selfish in the wrong way”, I don’t think you can easily say that. There’s a major consequence with that.”

Matthew revealed how the film impacted the decisions he made in fatherhood: “I’ve got three kids, doing my favourite a job that I think I was born to do.”

“I find an extreme and endless purpose in parenting, but I’m dabbling in different versions of leadership, in the betterment maybe of more people….” he explained how the temptation to take things worldwide and reach more people is real.

“It would come at the consequence of being there and being present for my three children, my wife, my family. I haven’t found anything that I think is worth that sacrifice, and my argument with myself there is that the best exports we can have, if we do it well, is our children.

“There’s no better export you can put out. Hopefully having some healthy children, who see the world in the right way, and hopefully they love the right things.”

Matthew recalled what his wife, Camila Alves, proposed when they decided they were going to have children: “She had one condition which was ‘if you go, we go’.

“We’ve done that, we have a 16 year old, a 14 year old and an 11 year old. No doubt that has a major contribution to how strong our family is. I think our family is very strong. They picked up and came with.”

Shade Martin is a New Yorker who decided to put herself through the unique diet, making the decision after getting intense shoulder pain that physical therapy and medical drugs didn’t help.

Upon reading that alkaline fruits, such as mangos, berries and bananas, can have anti-inflammatory properties, the American decided to change her diet to exclusively consist of the natural foods.

The 36-year-old only had watermelon for the first seven days, followed by grapes for six, with other fruits coming in for the remaining 17 days.

What changed after having a fruits-only diet?

Martin found that she had more energy than normal because of the slower release of natural sugars, also finding that she could think clearer.

As well as this, she admitted that she lost 10lbs (4.5kg) in weight, and that she had almost no period cramps.

It should be noted that she is already a vegan though, having done numerous juice cleanses in the past, so other people may have different results.

But it wasn’t all sunshine and rainbows for Martin, as she admitted that she started coughing up large amounts of phlegm when she only ate grapes, as she admitted: “It just continued to come out… It just blew my mind.”

In addition, she started going to the loo for number twos a lot more, something that was expected due to the high levels of fibre, though it may have been a small price to pay as her skin also drastically improved.

What was it like to experience the changes?

Speaking in a Q&A with health influencer Gillian Berry, she opened up on her lack of period cramps: “I had little to no pain. On a scale from one to ten, it was a one to nothing.”

She also said that her cycle was ‘extremely light’, but it was longer than usual.

As for her ‘extra glowy skin’, she said that the detox allowed toxins to emerge from her skin, with pimples first appearing on her forehead before enjoying the result of skin that looked and felt better.

What did she eat, exactly?

After starting with watermelon and grapes, she enjoyed a plethora of fruits for the remaining two-and-a-half weeks.

Martin would usually start her day with lemon or lime water, followed by a large smoothie which included bananas, blueberries, cherries, and dates.

She also removed set meals, snacking on pieces of fruit instead, though she said it was hard to see her husband and daughter enjoy ‘normal’ foods around her, needing to distract herself to avoid craving anything.

Martin also claimed that the reason behind low fruit consumption is that people wrongly believe that it contains too much sugar.

“We need fruits, fruit should not be limited in our diet,” she highlighted.

“There’s just such a misconception that this is what causes all these health issues and diabetes but yet, we don’t want to bring up the unhealthy fats.”

She insisted that we need to remove ‘refined sugars’ from our diet, and that fruit is key for ‘brain power’ as well as ‘body energy and strength’.

The app went dark in the states today (19 January), with a message currently greeting users: “Sorry, TikTok isn’t available right now. A law banning TikTok has been enacted in the US. Unfortunately, that means you can’t use TikTok for now.”

This came into place following a law President Joe Biden signed last April, giving the app a deadline to separate its US business from parent firm ByteDance, as the government saw the China-based company’s control as a national security threat.

After an appeal was rejected at the US Supreme Court earlier this week, the TikTok ban went ahead. But, with a new President set to come into force, things could quickly change.

Donald Trump’s inauguration takes place tomorrow (20 January), and while he once favoured the ban, it seems the incoming president might reverse it immediately – with one new request.

The President-elect says he has plans to issue an executive order that would give TikTok’s China-based parent company more time to find an approved buyer before the platform is subject to a permanent ban in the US.

He announced this on a post on his Truth Social account as Americans awoke to find they could no longer access the app.

Trump says his order would ‘extend the period of time before the law’s prohibitions take effect’ and ‘confirm that there will be no liability for any company that helped keep TikTok from going dark before my order’.

He wrote: “Americans deserve to see our exciting Inauguration on Monday, as well as other events and conversations.”

The law enables the sitting president to grant a 90-day extension if there is a viable sale under way. However, while some investors did make offers, ByteDance previously said it wouldn’t sell.

Trump wrote in his post that he ‘would like the United States to have a 50% ownership position in a joint venture’. But it wasn’t quite clear from this if he meant the US government or an American company.

“By doing this, we save TikTok, keep it in good hands and allow it to stay up,” he wrote.

“Without US approval, there is no TikTok. With our approval, it is worth hundreds of billions of dollars – maybe trillions.”

While Brits had worried the same ban would come into place here, the UK government said: “This is a matter for the US government. There are no plans to introduce a TikTok ban in the UK.

“We engage with all major social media companies to understand their plans for ensuring the security of UK data and to ensure they meet the high data protection and cyber security standards we expect.”

The actor, 57, gave us all a scare back in April 2023 when reports began to emerge claiming he had been hospitalised and was fighting for his life.

The details of his health woes were shrouded in mystery, with the Django Unchained star’s family deciding to keep his condition under wraps.

Foxx later told fans he had been to ‘hell and back’ in social media post in July last year, before revealing what really went down in his Netflix special, which was released back in December.

In Jamie Foxx: What Had Happened Was, the father-of-two explained that he had suffered from a bleed on the brain and subsequently, a stroke.

He said the whole saga started with just a ‘bad headache’, but he quickly realised something more sinister was going on before he was rushed to Atlanta’s Piedmont Hospital.

Foxx underwent life-saving surgery upon his arrival and spent nearly three weeks in a coma as his body recovered, while rumours circulated that he was ‘paralysed’.

According to the ‘Slow Jamz’ singer, doctors still have no idea what brought on the stroke to this day.

And neither does he, for that matter – as during an appearance on The Graham Norton Show on Friday (17 January), Foxx recalled how he told one of his pals: “Come on bro, I’m Jamie Foxx – Jamie Foxx don’t have strokes!”

While sat alongside his Back in Action co-star Cameron Diaz as well as actress Michelle Yeoh and Bridgerton star Jonathan Bailey, the actor discussed what happened when he woke up in hospital.

“When it happened, I didn’t remember it happened,” Foxx said. “I had a brain bleed that led to a stroke. Me! Like, that don’t happen to me!

“I didn’t even realise what had happened, because I had missed 20 days of my life. When I came to, I said, ‘Yo, what am I doing in this wheelchair?'”

The Collateral actor was left unable to walk and had to learn how to use his legs again, seeing him undergo specialist rehabilitation in Chicago.

The comedian explained that one of his pals had warned him not to attempt and get out of the wheelchair due to this issue, but Foxx ended up finding this out the hard way as he admitted that he tried and ‘fell’.

Revealing his first words post-coma, he continued: “I said, ‘What?! Where is Ashton Kutcher, like is this…am I being Punk’d?”

Foxx said he soon realised he needed to concentrate on his recovery after the initial shock of the stroke had wore off – and he reckons laughter really is the best medicine.

“The only way I did get back was, kind of being funny,” he told talk show host Graham Norton. “I kept saying, if I stay funny, I can stay alive.”

The funnyman revealed that he decided to flex his comedic muscles while he was still in hospital, as he teased the medical staff who came to check on him.

Foxx laughed: “I never answered like…I was never myself, I would always be somebody else. For three days, I was Denzel [Washington].”

Reflecting on his health scare, Foxx also added: “I had a bad situation happen – but I’m back now, I feel good.

“But at that time…like I tell people, you don’t dream of tragedy when you dream.

“You just dream the best – I’m going to have the house and the cars and everything, but you don’t dream that something bad is going to happen.

“And when something bad happens, you need people that really really care about you and love you to get you through that.”

Over 20 years ago, when his wife Sunrise Coigney was pregnant with their son Keen, the Marvel actor dreamt he had a brain tumour. And unfortunately, that health scare ended up being reality.

During an appearance on Jason Bateman, Sean Hayes, and Will Arnett’s Smartless podcast, Ruffalo explained that he had about a week left filming The Last Castle.

But he woke up one day from ‘this crazy dream’ that was unlike ‘any other dream’ he had ever had.

“It was just like, ‘You have a brain tumour’ It wasn’t even a voice,” Ruffalo recalled. “It was just pure knowledge: ‘You have a brain tumour, and you have to deal with it immediately.’”

The Bruce Banner actor didn’t have any symptoms at the time but did point out that he had an ‘ear infection that night’ that had been causing him some discomfort.

So, he decided to go to see a doctor working on set anyway, just in case, and ended up being sent for a scan.

“I said ‘Listen, this is going to sound crazy, but I had this dream last night that I had a brain tumor’,” he said.

“[The doctor] said ‘That is crazy. But there’s no reason that you should have to worry about it. I’ll order you a CAT scan, and we’ll go after work today’.”

That scan proved to have shocking results, as Ruffalo recalled the appointment: “The nurse calls the doctor out, and I could hear them talking in the other room, and she just comes in, and she’s a zombie.

“And she says, ‘You have a mass behind your left ear the size of a golf ball, and we don’t know what it is. We can’t tell until it’s biopsied.’”

With Ruffalo’s wife due to give birth, he decided to hold off telling her, and waited until about a week after Keen was born.

“When I told Sunny about it, first she thought I was joking,” the actor said. “And then she just burst into tears and said, ‘I always knew you were gonna die young.’”

Fortunately, his tumour turned out to be benign, and he underwent a surgery to remove it.

Ruffalo awoke from this completely deaf in one ear, which is still the case for him to this day.

He initially suffered facial paralysis on the left side but this eventually resolved within a year.

“Take my hearing, but let me keep the face and just let me be the father to these kids,” the star recalled thinking.

Contrary to what you might think, it wasn’t whether or not he might have left the iron on that morning – as he had more pressing matters at hand.

The action star, 62, is renowned for completing his own death-defying stunts in films, including riding a motorbike off a very tall cliff and scaling the Burj Khalifa.

Instead of relying on body doubles or special effects, he prefers a more hands-on approach, hence why he was seen clinging onto the side of an Airbus A400 travelling at speeds of 140mph in 2015.

Cruise put himself in harms way for the sake of the thrilling scene in Mission Impossible: Rogue Nation – and if you thought the final cut was great, wait until you see the behind-the-scenes stuff. Take a look at this:

The actor’s iconic character, Ethan Hunt, finds himself stood on the side of the aircraft hanging on for dear life as it takes off during the fifth instalment of the Mission: Impossible franchise.

A featurette about the movie spilled the beans on what went into Cruise’s stomach-churning stunt – which he completed a whopping eight times.

The star explained he had a lot of input into the scene, which was filmed at the UK air base RAF Wittering.

Recalling the moment he gave the green light for the four-engine military transporter to take off, Cruise said: “I give the thumbs up to camera, they’re inside the airplane and I’m telling them, ‘Let’s go, let’s go, let’s go!’

“He [the pilot] is pushing that throttle forward and we are hammering down that runway. Like holy sh*t, the force of it.

“I was just trying to keep my feet on the ground, as I always had in my mind the image of when the airplane took off, my feet are going to come off.

“And the force of that wind…I’m trying desperately to keep my feet on the floor. That feeling man, it just…the airplane left the ground and I couldn’t hold my feet on the side of that airplane anymore.”

The Jack Reacher star said he then began to feel ‘the force going up in his body’ as he eventually lost his footing and could only grasp onto the plane.

So, we’ve heard what was going on in his body, but what about what was going on in his mind?

Cruise went on to explain he was preoccupied by the ‘timing’ of everything, as he wanted to make sure he got the perfect shot.

Recalling his thoughts, he said: “How high are we above the ground? Now do I say my line? They want the line at a particular time where the lighting is good, where I’m not in shadow.

“So, all of these other things are really occupying my mind. [After] we landed, I was like ‘Good, I’ve got that out of my system’.

“It’s always the first [take]. It’s like alright, everyone feels a little calmer, everything’s fine.”

Visual effects supervisor David Vickery admitted he thought it was a ‘one-take’ kind of situation, but Cruise had other ideas, as he went on to do the plane stunt another seven times.

“I just said to the camera, ‘Let’s go again, I’m ready’,” the stunt maestro continued. “Every time was like, holy sh*t. I wanted to make sure we had that shot.”

Cruise was kitted out with a full-body harness for the stunt as well as being ‘cabled and wired to the plane through it’s door’, according to the film’s Director of Photography, Robert Elswit.

Elswit told The Hollywood Reporter: “Inside the aircraft was an aluminum truss that was carefully bolted to the plane, which held the wires that went through the door, which held Tom.

“He was also wearing special contact lenses to protect his eyes. If anything hit him at those speeds it could be really bad.

“They were very careful about cleaning the runway so there were no rocks. And we took off in certain weather conditions; there were no birds. And he’s sort of protected by the way the air moves over the wing.”

The star’s harness and any other safety gear was later digitally removed from the shot.

The crew had just 48 hours at the air base to pull off the incredible scene – which was more than enough time for Cruise.