The genre-hopping bass virtuoso has backed Ariana Grande and Herbie Hancock, appeared in Star Wars and become a dedicated boxer. Ahead of his fifth album, Stephen Bruner explains his polymath mindset

It is an overcast Thursday afternoon at the end of January, and Thundercat is telling me about the time he tried to interest Snoop Dogg in the mid-70s oeuvre of Frank Zappa. He wasn’t Thundercat then, he explains. He was still Stephen Bruner, bass player for hire, who had fetched up in what he calls a “stupid-as-hell, Rick James-level band” backing the venerable rapper, packed with Los Angeles jazz luminaries who would later contribute to Kendrick Lamar’s To Pimp a Butterfly: Kamasi Washington, Josef Leimberg, Terrace Martin. Alas, their jazz chops were sometimes deemed surplus to requirements. At one point, while Bruner was playing an expansive bass solo on stage, Snoop sidled up to him and flatly announced: “Ain’t nobody told you to play all that.”

So perhaps it was in the spirit of horizon-broadening that Bruner took it upon himself to play Snoop the song St Alfonzo’s Pancake Breakfast, a knotty, marimba-heavy slice of jazz-rock from Zappa’s 1974 album Apostrophe, which switches time signatures three times in less than two minutes, and features lyrics about a man stealing margarine and urinating on a bingo card. “Yeah, I hit him with the rollercoaster,” Bruner chuckles. “He was smoking, and he almost ate his blunt, saying: ‘What the hell is going on?’ I said: ‘My sentiments exactly.’ I think I did a cartwheel after that and left the band: I played Snoop Dogg St Alfonzo’s Breakfast, my job is done here, I have no more work to do.” He thinks for a moment. “Or maybe I got fired: ‘Get out of here dude, you’re too weird.’ I forget. It was a great moment.”

Kremlin’s repeated targeting of infrastructure has left thousands without heating, reliant on shelters and desperate home hacks

Natalya Pavlovna watched her two-year-old son, Danylo, play with Lego. “We are taking a break from the cold,” she said as children made drawings inside a warm tent. Adults sipped tea and chatted while their phones charged. The emergency facility is located in Kyiv’s Troieshchina district, on the left bank of the Dnipro River. Outside it was -18C. There was bright sunshine and snow.

“Russia is trying to break us. It’s deliberate genocide against the Ukrainian people. Putin wants us to capitulate so we give up the Donbas region,” Natalya said. “Kyiv didn’t use to feel like a frontline city. Now it does. People are dying of cold in their homes in the 21st century. The idea is to make us leave and to create a new refugee crisis for Europe.”

Natalia and Danylo near the ‘resilience point’ in Troyeshchyna district

Fournier Beaudry and Cizeron’s Olympic competition is set against backdrop of assault and abuse allegations involving their former partners

The American duo of Madison Chock and Evan Bates, the reigning three-time world champions contentiously missed out on Olympic ice dance gold on Wednesday despite a flawless skate. But the controversy surrounding the event is not merely a debate over artistic and technical merits.

Gold went by a narrow margin to the French duo of Laurence Fournier Beaudry and Guillaume Cizeron. It was a stunning achievement for a partnership that is less than a year old. But the union was forged after the fallout from sexual assault allegations levelled at Fournier Beaudry’s boyfriend and former ice dance partner, while Cizeron is the subject of allegations of abusive conduct from his erstwhile skating partner.

Everyone should get their eyes tested every two years, but there are other ways to optimise your vision, say ophthalmologists – and yes, eating carrots may help

Eye health is often something that we take for granted until we encounter problems. But lifestyle choices such as screen time and smoking can affect your vision. Here, ophthalmologists share their tips on maintaining healthy eyes, from sight tests to sunglasses.

A debating society didn’t want to invite two figures connected to the party to speak. Cue an authoritarian response

It must have seemed the easiest offer in the world to refuse. Would students at Bangor University enjoy a question-and-answer session with Sarah Pochin – the Reform UK MP famous for saying it “drives me mad” to see TV adverts full of black people – and Jack Anderton, the 25-year-old influencer who helped send Nigel Farage’s TikTok account viral among teenagers? No, the university’s debating society decided, it would not.

And had it filed the request in the bin, you wouldn’t be reading this. Until now, Anderton’s A New Dawn campus tour – a homage to the “debate me bro” style of the American rightwing activist Charlie Kirk, killed last year, who was famed for inviting liberal students to take on his arguments and live-streaming the results – hadn’t exactly set the heather alight. Reform is actively pushing to recruit inside universities, but in Cambridge, according to its student newspaper Varsity, only about 30 people turned up to hear Anderton argue that migrants are taking the part-time jobs students once used to do.

Gaby Hinsliff is a Guardian columnist

Guardian Newsroom: Can Labour come back from the brink?
On Monday 30 April, ahead of May elections, join Gaby Hinsliff, Zoe Williams, Polly Toynbee and Rafael Behr as they discuss how much of a threat Labour faces from the Green party and Reform – and whether Keir Starmer can survive as leader of the Labour party
Book tickets here

Everything you need to know about buying ski gear: our fashion expert’s top budget brands for goggles, gloves, salopettes and jackets

• How to dress in cold weather

Skiing is expensive. From your lift pass to your equipment hire, transfers, travel and accommodation, it’s not a particularly accessible sport. Luckily, there are ways to curb your spending if you’re heading to the slopes – one of which is your choice of ski gear.

There are several reasonably priced brands that provide quality for a fraction of the price of luxury labels. Sure, you won’t be buying the most technologically advanced gear – if you’re a seasoned skier tackling extreme weather off piste, a high-street jacket probably won’t cut it – but if you’re a touch more fairweather, like me, these products will do the job just fine. And some brands offer a high spec for a relatively reasonable price, too – the North Face and Tog24 always put performance first, for example.

Chris Wormald steps down ‘by mutual consent’ after a year in post with Antonia Romeo expected to succeed him

Keir Starmer’s attempt to shake up his top team after the disastrous Peter Mandelson scandal began on Thursday, when he forced out his most senior civil servant with a view to replacing him with Antonia Romeo.

The prime minister announced that Chris Wormald was stepping down “by mutual consent” after just over a year as cabinet secretary, with Romeo almost certain to succeed him as the first woman in the job.

City analysts say financial market investors will be worried if cost is deducted from budget surplus

Rachel Reeves is under pressure to reassure MPs over the state of the UK’s public finances, amid concerns that the rising cost of special educational needs and disabilities (Send) could leave a significant hole in the government’s financial buffer.

Meg Hillier, the chair of the all-party House of Commons Treasury committee, said the chancellor should make clear her long-term plans for the £6bn-a-year Send bill as uncertainty grows over how it will be accounted for at the end of the decade.

European leaders divided over how far to accommodate Trump’s ‘wrecking ball’ politics and foreign policy

US Democrats will use a security summit this weekend to urge European leaders to stand up to Donald Trump, with the continent divided over how to keep the unpredictable US president on side.

Democrats at the annual Munich Security Conference will include some of Trump’s most outspoken critics, such as the governor of California, Gavin Newsom, the New York congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the Arizona senator Ruben Gallego and the Michigan governor, Gretchen Whitmer.

Union urges Leonard Blavatnik to scrap Channel 13 deal, saying it is part of Netanyahu plan ‘to capture the media’

Israeli journalists have appealed to a British billionaire not to proceed with the sale of a stake in an Israeli television channel, which they warn would represent a severe blow to the independence of the country’s media.

Sir Leonard Blavatnik, listed by the Sunday Times as the UK’s third richest person, is selling a nearly 15% share in Channel 13, a commercial channel that has run critical news coverage of Benjamin Netanyahu’s government in recent years, including investigations into the prime minister’s financial dealings.