The Third Half Weekly
Cheese heists, a surgeon rebuilding lives and legacies, Derby’s next big thing, 700 million streams and a quiet life, and what happens when the bottom line doesn’t say profit.
The Cheese Files
Turns out we’ve been making cheese for four thousand years and still can’t explain why Swiss cheese has holes. Also: it’s the most stolen food on earth, Italian organised crime treats Parmesan like currency, and hip-hop aged Emmental beats Mozart on taste. Scott Hamilton went down a dairy rabbit hole and came back with an unexpectedly moving question, what were you listening to when you became who you are? 🧀🎶 https://www.thethirdhalf.uk/p/the-cheese-files
TTH Blueprint Episode 20: Bhavin Visavadia — The Surgeon Rebuilding Faces, Careers and the Next Generation of the NHS
A maxillofacial surgeon at the top of his field, rebuilding faces and lives for people who’ve been through the kind of trauma most of us can’t imagine. But the word Bhavin reaches for again and again? Team. Then he talks about mentoring the next generation of NHS surgeons, the arm around the shoulder, the pressure when it’s needed, and a legacy he never actually calls a legacy. One of the most moving conversations TTH has put out. 🏥🫀 https://www.thethirdhalf.uk/p/tth-blueprint-episode-20-bhavin-visavadia
TTH Blueprint: On The Turntable — Marseille
Derby. Post-lockdown. Five friends, a shared love of Madchester and Motown, and a band name with an accidental connection to a 70s glam rock act involving Neil Buchanan from Art Attack. Marseille sat down with Scott to talk songwriting, the grassroots circuit, and why making music you love is the only rule worth following. Their new single Hallelujah (My Baby’s Free) is out now. You heard it here first. 🎸🎵 https://www.thethirdhalf.uk/p/tth-blueprint-on-the-turntable-marseille
TTH Blueprint Episode 18: Peter Sandberg
Hundreds of millions of streams. Music on Stranger Things. ADHD. 3:30am disasters. And a new album called Temporary Coexistence of Humans that asks us to slow down and notice more. No hype, no hard sell — just a properly grounded conversation about creativity, routine, and what it actually takes to make something beautiful. Stick it on. Let it play. 🎹🌍 https://www.thethirdhalf.uk/p/tth-blueprint-episode-18-peter-sandberg
TTH Blueprint Episode 17: Chris Brocklesby — When Systems Matter
Chris Brocklesby has run technology for airlines, telecoms, national infrastructure, the kind of systems that fail at 3am when nobody wants them to. Now he’s CTO at the British Heart Foundation. And there’s one line that lands hard: the bottom line doesn’t say profit, it says funds available for research. That shift changes everything. He also talks openly about navigating serious health challenges while operating at exec level. Quietly, honestly, without drama. The best kind of leadership conversation. 💻❤️ https://www.thethirdhalf.uk/p/when-systems-matter-a-conversation
one more thing Forward this to the friend who’d steal an artisan wheel of Parmesan given half a chance, the colleague who thinks “the system’s fine” until it isn’t, and anyone who needs reminding that behind every great organisation there are people carrying more than you’d guess.