Yesterday I worked on a story about a group of rampageous sports fans. They scrawled insults to their rivals on city walls, squabbled in the streets and even started a full-blown riot. But these weren’t football hooligans – they were ancient gladiator superfans.

If you’ve already seen Gladiator II, you’ll know that these fans came from every stratum of society, from freedmen and women to emperors and nobility. In this fascinating article, historian John Pearce explains that ancient fans had more in common with modern sports enthusiasts than you might think – even visiting themed taverns to celebrate their wins or drown their sorrows after defeat.

From Iraq to the US, women around the world are seeing their basic freedoms eroded. In the last four years alone, Afghan women have lost the right to work, speak in public and go to university. Social scientist Hind Elhinnawy explains how we got here.

And elsewhere, physicists are turning a foundational belief of humanity on its head – the idea that our universe is fine-tuned for life to thrive here.

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And lastly, the deadline for our writers competition closes on November 30. If you’re an academic and have a long-form story and nonfiction book idea that you think agents and publishers will be interested in developing then enter your 2,000-word story for a chance to win £1,000, online publication of your article on The Conversation’s website, and mentorship from a literary agent from Curtis Brown and a Faber book editor. More information about the prize and our judges can be found here.