Margaret

Books

• “Understanding Early Civilizations” Bruce G. Trigger
  I’ve finished the chapter on class & social mobility which shows that class exists in all the early civilisations, with the distinction being a small upper class, a large group of commoners, and a small group of slaves. How precisely the classes are constituted and discriminated varies, with more obvious class markers for the upper class in territorial states coz you might not know who your social equals are from the other parts of the state whereas in a city state chances are you know everyone in the upper class. Slaves aren’t a large part of the economy in any state but are slightly more so in city states. Social mobility and how class cuts across kinship groups varies between the civilisations. I’ve also read some of the family organisation & gender roles chapter – I’m still in the details section of the chapter of which there is much as everyone seems to organise their families differently which makes me think of Kipling’s line “There are nine and sixty ways of constructing tribal lays, / And every single one of them is right.”

Podcasts

• The Bunker
  
  • an episode about cryptocurrency and its intersection with politics
  • an episode about the mainstreaming of far right ideas in UK politics
  • Weekly Wrap Up, with quite a bit about Blair’s intervention & the Millburn report on welfare
  • an interview with someone who used to work in the Secret Service protecting presidents, talking about how it works (on a broad level) particularly with reference to the person who tried to get to Trump at that dinner (about a month ago, when this was released)
  • Start the Week, obviously talked about the new Mandelson papers dropping, and about the Iran war, with a theme in those two of groundhog day …
  • an episode about GLP-1 drugs
• The History of China
  
  • the Taiping Rebellion starts to gain momentum – crop failure due to flooding followed by disease brings many people to the new faith which claims their God will save his people (and to some degree you do get better outcomes because they as a community share food amongst them all and look after the sick). And then they begin to gather as an army, with each person selling their goods and donating the proceeds to the community.
  • as the army marches through China it gains momentum and even a city for a while – it’s becoming something that the Qing can’t ignore and aren’t well set up to suppress. They set themselves up as an alternative dynasty with an alternative calendar & kings & so on. This episode goes through to the death of one of the leaders, who had been the man who handled the logistics & practicalities of this movement (rather than being one of the spiritual leaders).
• Oh God What Now
  
  • The Makerfield by-election and how Reform are trying to talk down Burnham in ways that don’t quite seem to work, plus more on that £5million gift to Farage where he seems to’ve committed a tactical error by saying that the Russians hacked him to release info on it as that makes no sense when put against his original defence (that it’s perfectly fine) and is also something you need to report to the police & so on.
  • talked about the Alan Millburn report on the welfare system – in particular how society is currently failing young people as many are failing to find work and then once they are on benefits the system works to disincentivise finding a job, also how politics today (and a lot of life) has become full of incivility and somehow we all just accept that’s the way it is now (like the Reform candidate for Makerfield who has said vile stuff but it’s being treated like “banter”)
  • the latest drop of Mandleson files & how they are all gossip & no substance (in large part because the substance is part of an ongoing police investigation so is redacted), a new report about how Reform voters actually aren’t just making a protest vote instead they’re actual supports of the party – in essence demonstrating a new split in UK politics between socially liberal & socially conservative that’s overriding a more traditional economic left/right split
• The Rest is Politics
  
  • boggling at the sheer scale of Trump’s corruption, and going through the results of a poll they’d commissioned to look at Gen Z attitudes
  • a bit on what the US is doing to Cuba with its blockade, a section that was supposed to be on Tice being rubbish but turned into Rory dissing the government’s net zero plans (not in a Tice like way, but as part of his having drunk the AI kool aid)
  • first episode of a subscriber series (so I won’t listen to the rest) about the history of Reform/Brexit Party/UKIP and where its money comes from
• The Rest is Politics US
  
  • the Iran war, which they are now saying looks a lot like a defeat and the current negotiations are over the US’s surrender terms, also the economy, in particular interest rates and the unlikeliness of them coming down soon
  • more on the Iran war & on Trump’s apparent cognitive decline (including how you can get him to do what you want if you tell him Obama would’ve done the opposite), a bit on the Texas Republican primary where a Trump preferred candidate has won who probably isn’t great for the real election
• Behind the Lines with Arthur Snell
  An episode of the history of Persia & the West, a little bit of ancient history but then mostly concentrating on the last couple of hundred years of countries like the UK interfering
• Empire
  
  • episode 2 of the Simón Bolívar series, which takes us through the initial part of his political/rebel career (ep 1 covered his early life, full of tragedy), through a failed revolt in Venezuela and his declaration that all Spanish should be killed
  • a short on the Koh-i-Noor diamond as it was back in the news a month ago when this released (they’ve done a 4 part series on it in the podcast before, and wrote a book about it together)
  • episode 3 of the Simón Bolívar series, covering his successful wars against the Spanish, driving them out of several South American countries with the original goal of uniting all of them into a single large state – but in the end that unity as a democracy doesn’t happen and he takes dictatorial powers & falls out with his vice president who was trying to set up a well organised civil society
  • episode 4 takes us through Simón Bolívar’s turn even more to the dark side as the dictatorial power he has corrupts him, but after a failed coup he resigns anyway and dies not long after as his TB catches up with him
  • start of a series on the Dutch East India Company, covering the period where it was set up
• The Rest is Science
  
  • a Q&A episode, with an intro bit about sick bags in planes and why one might be travel sick in a plane
  • an episode about ways to potentially look back into the past – using black holes as mirrors or using the sun as a massive gravitational telescope
  • another Q&A episode, where the intro bit was about how despite Zero Coke saying it has “no calories” it actually has 1kcal per can (in the UK), and moving on to other calorie related questions
• The History of English
  We’re up to the 1630s in the chronology, so the history is the lead up to the Civil Wars in England and in the US he talked a bit about the first 13 colonies and how they came about, the main linguistic point was stress, and how it works in English words both internally to the word & between words in a sentence, and some of the ways that the modern US dialects vary from British dialects in terms of syllable stresses
• The History of England
  The Popish Plot – Titus Oates’s confabulated conspiracy which took off in the real world and led to several innocent people being executed on nothing more than the say so of Oates.
• The History of Philosophy
  An episode looking at the reaction of Scholastic philosophers to the new Cartesian ideas – a mixture of dismissal and incorporation (as the tradition was never as unchanging as its reputation).
• The Rest is Politics Leading
  An interview with Yanis Varoufakis, who turned out to be more personable & interesting than I expected.
• Talk 90s to Me
  An episode about alcopops, many of which I “fondly” remember, and it included Miranda & her guest tasting some and her guest tastes beer professionally so that was quite entertaining (Smirnoff Ice won for him as it takes a journey across one’s palette …).
• The History of Philosophy in China
  Giving an overview of Legalist thought, with an emphasis on how it wasn’t wholly different from the other schools of thought in the Warring States Period.
• Starship Alexandria
  An episode about “Tales from Outer Suburbia” by Shaun Tan, which sounds delightful.

TV

• Later … with Jools Holland
  
  • stand out for me was Mandy, Indiana who were dance-y and a bit French, not sure I’d seek out of more them but fun at the time
  • stand out this week is harder to call, probably Fcukers who were interesting in a sort of creepy way but I’m not sure if they’d turn out to be terribly one note (and someone needs to clip the bit where Jools is introducing them and says “… I’m just going to say it, Fuckers!”).
• Scandinavia with Simon Reeve
  This episode was mostly in Norway with a bit of Iceland at the end, including the oil industry in Norway and the way it has been used to set up a sovereign wealth fund that has benefited all of Norway’s population (unlike the way the UK oil reserves found around the same time & around the same place were used to funnel profits to private companies). The Iceland segment had a disturbing bit on a volcano under a melting ice sheet that may well erupt if the ice that’s plugging it disappears.
• Lost Cities of the Ancients
  Episode 1 was about Piramesse, Ramesses II’s capital city which took a while to be identified once Egyptologists started looking for it – much of the stonework was found at Tanis which couldn’t be the right site, and only towards the end of the 20th Century did people figure out that the right site was Qantir & once the Nile changed course c. 150 years after the time of Ramesses the stones were moved to the new capital. Quite an old documentary – about 20 years ago, so felt a little old fashioned.

Games

• Diablo IV
  Did the big boss fight & banished Mephisto to the void (for at least the rest of this game, I’m sure the franchise will bring him back). Then burnt down the Tree of Whispers as the final scene of the story – of course as it’s a core game mechanic the tree is actually still there … Also did the capstone dungeon for rank 3, and a handful of the new endgame mechanic – War Plans, which are basically daisy chaining other activities together for more loot.

Books

• “Understanding Early Civilizations” Bruce G. Trigger
  Finished the chapter on city states & territorial states, another point he made was that we conflate two sorts of things under the word “empire” – a centralised empire ruled by a single leader like the Roman Empire, and a hegemonic system where one city state subordinates other city states but doesn’t replace their power structures. And when the latter collapses everything quickly goes back to the status quo ante and another city state could rise to hegemonic power. Which is the same sort of thing that Metzger is explaining in the Literature & History podcast episode I listened to this week where he’s talking about how the Sassanian Empire isn’t like the Roman one.
• “She Knows All the Names” Michelle Jabès Corpora
  Sequel to “His Face is the Sun”, which is YA Egyptian-ish secondary world fantasy. It remains convincingly Egyptian-ish in flavour. I think the series is intended to be a trilogy so I’m not particularly expecting anything to be resolved in this book (I’ve not quite finished) but the story is nicely moving along and I’m enjoying it. I especially like the ibis interludes, which are charming.

Podcasts

• The Rest is Politics
  
  • Interview with Angela Rayner as part of their Gen Z series (she’s there to talk about Labour’s offering to younger people), which is a pay for series but they’ve released this one on the free feed.
  • A reaction to all the rumours swirling around about replacing Keir Starmer.
  • Q&A episode, with some stuff on Trump visiting China, and on the Ukraine war as well as a couple of fluffier questions
  • reaction to the Wes Streeting resignation & the MP stepping down to let Burnham contest a by-election
• The Rest is Politics US
  
  • Trump’s upcoming visit to China, how the Iran war is affecting the US’s perceived power, the failure of Democrat led redistricting in Virginia.
  • mostly focusing on Trump’s remarks about not caring about the American people or their finances, but also mentioned the Trump phone that apparently 600,000 people put down a $100 deposit for that hasn’t materialised and likely never will
  • a reaction to the Trump visit to China & what he’s been saying about it (mostly bullshit)
  • Trump primarying (sp?) Republicans he doesn’t like, demonstrating his grip on the party still & how he essentially doesn’t care about the long term good for his party. Plus some stuff on the effects of the Iran war on gas prices & supplies (which subject feels to me a bit like early 2020 vis-a-vis Covid, there’s no talk about what can be done if the strait isn’t properly re-opened really quite soon)
• Oh God What Now
  
  • an episode that was dated before it aired – focused on Wes Streeting and his potential challenge to Keir Starmer to be PM. He resigned between when they recorded & when it landed, which is the first step, and Andy Burnham persuaded someone to stand down so he could become and MP later on the same day too. Still relevant tho, as it discussed what the panel thought about both their prospects & careers to date.
  • more about the Labour leadership stuff including just how bad it’ll be if Burnham doesn’t win the by-election, but also Ed Davey looking wobbly as the Lib Dem leader, and their guest was the woman who does the Rosie Holt MP skits (she’s got a play on) so some chat about comedy & satire
• The History of Byzantium
  Second half of the history of Trebizond, up to it falling to the Ottomans a few years after Constantinople did.
• The History of Philosophy in China
  Introduction to Legalism.
• The History of England
  The political situation in England post the Anglo-Dutch War, with Charles II somewhat frustrated by Parliament and still taking bribes from the French king.
• The History of Egypt
  Ramesses II marrying a Hittite princess, some 30 or so years after the Battle of Kadesh, as part of diplomacy between the states.
• Talk 90s to Me
  An interview with the editor of Sky Magazine during the 90s, not a magazine I think I noticed but I didn’t “graduate from Smash Hits” on to anything really.
• Empire
  The Yom Kippur War in 1973 – if the Six Day War was when the Arabs learnt to fear an Israeli preemptive attack then the Yom Kippur War was when the Israelis learnt to fear an Arab preemptive attack, even as they had success in the war.
• The Rest is Science
  An episode about the science of some kitchen appliances – mostly fridges, but also microwaves and pressure cookers.
• The Bunker
  
  • Weekly Wrap Up, obviously discussing the Labour leadership, but also some stuff on Trump visiting China and on the Ukraine war
  • an episode about RFK Jr’s attack on public health in the US
  • Start the Week, the by-election that Andy Burnham will be standing in dominated this of course
• Behind the Lines with Arthur Snell
  An interview with a British journalist who has been reporting on & from Ukraine, primarily focusing on the real meaning of the occupation by Russia in terms of how it affects people & their lives (not good, the Russians are committing war crimes in those areas).
• Origin Story
  The last part of their series about European Union, taking us from the 80s through to today – one thing they pointed out that I hadn’t really thought about before was that at the point that we had the Brexit Referendum the EU wasn’t at its best, so it was harder to make the case for staying in than it would’ve been pre-2008, let alone in the 1990s.
• The History of China
  Edging closer to the Taiping Rebellion – the state of China after the First Opium War leaves it particularly vulnerable to a new religious/social movement starting up and Hong’s conviction that he’s the second Son of God is only increasing.
• Literature & History
  Looping back to talk about the war between the Byzantine Empire and the Sassanian Empire in the early 600s, which left the area vulnerable to the Arab/Islamic takeover. Focusing mostly on the Sassanian perspective as that’s the one we don’t usually hear, one of the things he drew out was that the Sassanian Empire was more akin to medieval Europe than the Roman Empire. So for the 20 years while the Sassanians were winning this war everyone was on board, but once it started to shift then the various power players started to look out for their own interests.

TV

• Classic Hits in the Piano Room
  Split into two chunks while watching it, and watched both this week – not entirely what I expected, Classic Hits in this case seems to mean songs from around 20 to 30 years ago most of which are quite quite bland.
• Secrets of the Brain
  Jim Al-Kahlili talking about brains, this episode was a mix of the evolution of the brain from the first bilateral organisms through to the human brain and a primer on how brains work at the level of the neurons (how they send signals, how they respond to pressure etc).
• The Planet of the Plates
  About plate tectonics, which is a relatively new theory (only widely accepted in the early 70s) and really demonstrates on how coming up with the right paradigm shift suddenly unlocks a vast array of explanations – it explains where earthquakes are & why, where volcanoes are & why, and why the landscape is as it is.
• Later … with Jools Holland
  Despite the lineup sounding uninspiring in advance there were actually quite a few interesting songs tho nothing I think I’d seek out for another listen. Of the interviews the one that stood out was Jools asking the singer from Tomora what she liked to do for fun and she said a couple of things then looked him straight in the eye and added that she enjoyed pleasuring herself. Jools didn’t quite know what to do with himself after that!

Games

• Diablo IV
  Hit the level cap, and are now gaining paragon levels – I’d expected the paragon boards to have also been reworked but the first one looks much like it did before. Also did the Capstone Dungeon for Rank II, had left that a bit late, we were so overpowered we got no meaningful XP from it. We’ve also moved the questline along a lot for the expansion, I think we’re nearly ⅘ of the way through.

Talks

• “The tombs of Thutmose II and other recent discoveries in the Western Wadis” Piers Litherland
  An update on Litherland’s excavations in the Western Wadis, next door to the Valley of the Kings. The big news a couple of years ago was that he & his team discovered the tomb of Thutmose II, but it was completely cleared out. There’s evidence to suggest his burial was moved very soon afterwards to somewhere else in the same wadi, and that’s what Litherland has been looking for – no success yet, but they are clearing a large (like more than house sized) pile of conglomerate made of plaster and limestone chips which was made to look like the natural cliff and have found some hints that there’s something to find under that. He also talked through how he thinks that the reburial programme that Thutmose III undertook towards the end of his reign might be about legitimising his reign (burying your predecessor is part of becoming the rightful king), and whilst he did rebury Thutmose I (his grandfather) and Hatshepsut (his father’s wife but not his mother, returning her from Pharaoh to Great Royal Wife status) he wasn’t able to rebury Thutmose II (his father).

Books

• “The Mercy of Gods” James S. A. Corey
  Finished Friday 1 May 2026. Very different in setting to The Expanse, here we’re way far future and Earth isn’t even a myth, the humans on their “home” planet know they aren’t local but nothing more than that. We’re very much in a universe peopled by large numbers of intelligent species many of whom are way more advanced in a technological sense than the humans are (but the humans seem in advance of our tech level too). And the humans can’t just bicker amongst themselves in the face of impending doom like they did in The Expanse. I don’t think it went quite where I was expecting it to go (at any point), and I’m keen to read the sequels to see where it goes next.
• “Understanding Early Civilizations” Bruce G. Trigger
  Moving on to the first of the chapters comparing Trigger’s chosen civilisations, which is about kingship. Which starts with some fairly clear cut comparisons – all seven civilisations have kings (even if the nuances are different) who are still personally powerful but in a framework where it’s the institution that grants power (he’s powerful because he’s king, not that the king is powerful because it’s him). All have a strong preference for male rulers, and only 2 ever have female rulers. All are hereditary in practice with maybe some bits of Mesopotamia not being so in theory. It’s generally not strict primogeniture tho, as the king is still personally involved in running the country so baby kings aren’t a good idea, and even tho sometimes brothers inherit first that’s also not necessarily in strict order as elderly kings are also bad.

Podcasts

• The Rest is Politics US
  
  • The Trump assassination attempt, tho this time focusing on the security arrangements (and the fact that the next two in line of succession were at this event too).
  • The King’s state visit and the ridiculous lawsuit against Comey.
  • The Iran war and Trump’s fruitless search for a way out, the way that Trump intends to leave a legacy by sticking his name & face on things (and how he seems himself as a great disruptor of history and thus a great man like Napoleon or Julius Caesar), how the midterms are looking for the Democrats
• The Bunker
  
  • an episode about the possibility that the AI investments are a bubble, which was cautiously optimistic that it might not actually go pop tho I’m not sure I was quite convinced by the guest.
  • an episode about the past, present & future of Apple to mark the company’s 50th birthday
  • an episode about the founder of Deep Mind, and the culture around the race for AGI in general
  • the monthly hot takes episode, which was a crossover with the American Friction podcast this month, which was a shame as I thought they weren’t as interesting or funny.
  • Weekly Wrap Up, including the rise of antisemitic violence in the UK including the stabbings in Golders Green, the King’s state visit.
  • Start the Week, focusing mostly on the upcoming local elections as you’d expect
  • an episode about the manosphere & how it resembles a pyramid scheme & a cult
• The History of Byzantium
  An episode on the history of Trebizond, which was a splinter Byzantine kingdom in Anatolia carved out of the empire by the descendants of a deposed Emperor (so sorta like Taiwan in relationship to China).
• The Rest is Politics
  
  • main episode was about the King’s state visit to the US, the state of the US/UK relationship (poor), the way that Trump gets away with not just lying but detaching from reality, also some chat about their interview on Leading released on Monday with the President of Serbia, which I’ll get to in a few weeks.
  • Q&A episode, which included stuff about Palantir and being dependent on US companies in general, also some stuff on mental health in general (as in what’s being done to provide support) and grief in particular.
• Empire
  
  • continuing their series on the Arab-Israeli wars by going through the story of the Six-Day War
  • and then the aftermath of that war and how in many ways it shapes the situation in the Middle East vis-a-vis Israel even now
  • the Israeli occupation of the West Bank in the aftermath of the Six-Day war and how that shaped Palestinian & Israeli politics and attitudes to each other
• The Rest is Science
  
  • Q&A episode, including how many calories does it take to make back the pint of blood you donate, and a mechanical calculator that Hannah had brought for show & tell (but as I was listening & not watching I couldn’t follow the description of how it worked).
  • another episode on infinity – many different sizes of infinity, and also considering if infinity is something that is real or not. Like is the universe infinite? what would it mean if it was or wasn’t? Can you subdivide distance infinitely or is the universe essentially pixelated?
• Oh God What Now
  The king’s state visit to the US, and Starmer’s predicament with the Mandelson scandal, also whether banning social media for kids is a good idea (which they don’t agree with, in large part because it’s not clear that this does anything except give 16 year olds a worse time when they suddenly get full internet access, and also we should be stopping those companies harming people rather than locking people away from the tech).
• The History of Philosophy
  An interview episode with an expert on Occasionalism, which has been one of the ideas from the last few episodes of the podcast. Basically it’s the idea that the only cause of anything is God – if one object bumps into another then it does not cause the second object to move it just provides God with the occasion to make the second object move. If one imagines a penguin, one doesn’t actually cause the thought to appear in one’s head oneself, the intention to do so provides God with the occasion to make one think of a penguin.
• The History of England Shedcasts
  Part 1 of a history of south east Oxfordshire during the Civil Wars.
• Behind the Lines with Arthur Snell
  Interview with Helene von Bismarcke about her forthcoming book “Fantastic Kingdom: A Stranger’s Notes on a Contrary Country”, which is a book about the UK as it is now written by a German historian (who has specialised in the history of the British Empire). Sounded quite interesting.
• The Rest is Politics Leading
  Interview with Naz Shah, the Labour MP for Bradford, who had quite the unusual (and awful) background – growing up in poverty in a household where her father beat her mother, sent to Pakistan at age 12 by her mother to keep her away from her mother’s next partner (who was even more abusive), married off at 15 to a cousin in an arranged marriage she didn’t want, returns to the UK to support her mother after her mother murders the second partner. And has come out of that with a burning sense of the need for justice, and became an MP a decade ago.
• Talk 90s to Me
  Interview with Judge Jules, a DJ who was massive in the 90s and still is a big name, dance music tho so not really my scene.
• Origin Story
  Start of a new season, with the first part of a three parter about European Union, I guess the other two episodes are going to be mostly about The European Union but this one covered the origins of a unified Europe as an idea with a brisk trot through from the Roman Empire to post-WWI, at which point they slowed down and brought us up to the European Coal & Steel Community in the early 50s.
• The History of China
  The beginnings of the Taiping Rebellion, the life story of the man who became convinced he was the younger brother of Jesus sent by God to sweep away the Chinese order.

TV

• Egypt with Dan Snow
  Last episode, and focused entirely on Cairo & environs. The pyramids & the sphinx, of course, but also little bits of modern Cairo. The series as a whole was quite fun, very shallow and definitely a travelogue rather than an in depth look at the antiquities, but it never pretended otherwise.

Games

• Diablo IV
  New expansion pack landed, Lord of Hatred. Along with two new character types (J’s being a Warlock, I’m being a Paladin) it has proper new story, which feels strange after so long doing fairly rudimentary stories each season. We’ve spent a lot of time playing this last week, and are up to around level 55 with our characters and are a fair way into the storyline.

Books

• “Eyes of the Void” Adrian Tchaikovsky
  Finished Wednesday 15 April 2026. Continues on from “Shards of Earth”, and is still very much reminding me of The Expanse in that there is a vast external threat, so everyone is bickering amongst themselves and ignoring the threat. In fact going so far as to kick off actual wars rather than focus on said threat. There’s a lot in this about ownership, particularly ownership of people (in the broad sense of people), and about how sometimes the deal you make in desperation can have costs that you might find worse than the situation it got you out of. And about consent and agency more generally, can you really consent if your culture puts huge weight on doing what society needs of you regardless of personal preference? What about if you don’t know the costs going in, what then? I don’t know where the next book in the series is going, but I’m pretty sure it won’t be what seems inevitable at this point (genocide would be very thematically at odds with the rest of the series so far).
• “Understanding Early Civilizations” Bruce G. Trigger
  Chapter 3 looks at the question of what counts as an “early civilisation”. Trigger goes through some other definitional attempts, in order to point out that providing a checklist doesn’t work – for instance some previous definitions rule out the ancient Egyptians which would seem ridiculous. Trigger’s preferred framework is that the key point is that an early civilisation has replaced social organisation on the basis of kinship with social organisation on the basis of class. That doesn’t mean kinship has gone away, nor does it mean that there were no classes before, but the primary organising criteria has changed – my brother has an in with the king might get you a better elite job, but you’ll still be part of the ruling elite even if your family isn’t best buddies with the royals. I’m partway through the bit where he’s talking about what separates an early civilisation from a later pre-industrial civilisation. He’s talked about money of some sort becoming the way you measure wealth, and also talked about even more complexity in social organisation. And about a switch from the early civilisation where the nature/society/supernatural realms are all one thing conceptually (which lets the king be a divine intermediary with divinities that are part of nature, whilst still being a man), to a later separation of that conglomerate into three separate spheres (so the king is now clearly a man, but might be divinely anointed or protected, and the divinity that does this is not a part of nature).

Podcasts

• The Rest is Politics US
  
  • The blockading of the strait (which the guest standing in for Katty Kay approved of as a way of putting economic pressure on Iran, whilst disapproving of the entire rest of the war & the way it has been conducted), plus Trump taking on the Pope & pissing off millions of voters.
  • The way the US economy is looking good if you’re an investor and utterly terrible if you are not, and what that means about the way the markets are responding to Trump’s Iran war (after all, volatility means you get more chances to buy low & sell high). And just how out of touch Trump & his administration are, and how little they care.
  • The Iran war is all that there is to talk about … the subject mostly about how to get out and whether the Trump administration is capable of getting out. And they did actually talk about other things namely the way the people in the top jobs of Trump’s administration are incompetent, in light of recent allegations about the head of the FBI routinely getting so drunk that his security detail bring along equipment to force entry into his room in case they can’t wake him.
• Talk 90s to Me
  Leonardo DiCaprio.
• The Rest is Politics
  
  • Much boggling over the idea that negotiations might only take 21 hours (which isn’t long enough to finish the initial throat clearings) and quite a bit of chat about the Zelensky interview that I haven’t got to listening to yet.
  • Question time talked about the Hungarian election as its main topic.
  • A brief extra on the new revelations of the Mandelson affair, it’s been revealed he failed his security vetting before being made ambassador to the US, but that was over-ruled. Neither Rory nor Alastair were impressed by the idea that Starmer didn’t know till this week (either he’s lying when he says that or isn’t competent, was the gist of it).
• Empire
  
  • a break in their Mao series to return to talking about Iran, an overview of the now three Supreme Leaders and talk about what the outbreak of war would mean for Iran (this was recorded around a month ago).
  • an episode about Lebanon, Hezbollah & Israel, where the guest is a woman who lives in Beirut near where the Israelis were striking initially (but she’d moved out to an airbnb elsewhere as her dog is scared of the bombing).
  • an episode about the Iran conflict with a guest who is part of the Iranian diaspora, having left in her late teens after the revolution.
• The History of Egypt
  Retelling a story about Khaemwaset that we have from a Ptolemaic text, which is a fairytale about him finding a book with knowledge from the gods and this nearly bringing ruin to him until he comes to his senses and returns the book to where he found it. The film The Mummy had this as part of its inspiration.
• The Rest is Science
  
  • Cognitive ghosts, all the weird ways our minds demonstrate they don’t work the way we think they do, like deja vu, or the way it can feel like you’re going to jump off if you’re high up near an edge (your brain notes you’re scared and confabulates a reason why you’re so scared when it’s not that scary), or how there are people who have brain damage that means that they are blind but still process vision then act on it unconsciously (then confabulate stories for why they did whatever).
  • a Q&A episode, also with some of Michael’s favourite science books. Included a discussion of the optimal way to open the windows in a car to blow air through while you’re driving (front driver’s side a little bit & the one diagonally opposite).
• Oh God What Now
  
  • Their guest was Peter Chappell who has just published a book that games out what might happen if Reform wins (based on what they say they’ll do, and what he predicts would be the results of this).
  • quite a bit on the Mandelson scandal (essentially whilst it’s perfect believable that Starmer didn’t know Mandelson had failed his vetting that says nothing good about Starmer’s operation), plus their guest was the author of a book about the completely fictitious Report from Iron Mountain which is now underpinning the rightwing US conspiracy theories of today.
• The Bunker
  • An episode about the history of (not using) the atomic bomb.
  • Weekly Wrap Up, a bit about the local election campaigning where Labour are leaning in to Reform’s poor track record on “women’s issues”, but also some on Trump v. the Pope & on the Iran war.
  • an episode about Muskism, with the authors of a book on that subject – essentially he seems to think that everything in society, politics etc is downstream of the computer, so controlling the computer means you can shape everything else.
  • an interview with the author of a new history of Europe, his key thing is treating Europe as a cohesive whole even if it’s been politically fragmented, there is a sense of shared values across the whole continent over the last few hundred years & there’ve been multiple attempts to create some sort of unified Europe.
  • Start the Week, the Mandelson scandal again, plus a bit more on the Iran war.
• The History of Byzantium
  The legends that grew up around the death of the last Roman Emperor – Arthur-ish tales of how he would come back and restore Constantinople.
• The History of England Shedcasts
  Another episode where Crowther talks to friends about objects that are quintessentially English (different friends to the one on the main podcast feed, different objects too).
• More Jam Tomorrow
  British Guyana, and the way it gained independence (less violence here than other similar stories but a lot of rigged elections after the first guy elected had strong communist sympathies).
• The History of China
  The Opium War moving into a new phase where the British man in charge is much more enthusiastic about the war than his predecessor, and is also encouraged to hurry it up as Britain as a whole is distracted by the disaster in Afghanistan. The treaty that is eventually signed makes no mention of opium despite that being the trigger point, and the two sides have drastically different views of what was actually agreed.
• Origin Story
  The story of the General Strike of 1926, which I had heard of but it turned out I knew very little about it – not actually successful unlike what I’d assumed (the TUC called it off and capitulated before it fell apart but it wasn’t clear to everyone it would fall apart), and actually seemed to energise the fascists in Britain at that time.
• The History of Philosophy
  Malebranche’s occasionalism, which is the idea that the things we think are causal (fire causes burning) are just occasional causes and it’s actually God that causes everything, which has previously been discussed in the episodes on Islamic Golden Age philosophy as it was a core part of some of their ideas too.
• Journey Through Time
  Wrapping up their series on McCarthyism and looking at how there is a direct link to the politics of today – Roy Cohn worked with McCarthy during the Red Scare, and worked for & mentored Trump who very much operates by Cohn’s playbook.

TV

• Art’s Most Horrific
  From gory bible stories, to mindfulness aides involving depictions of rotting corpses, to the brutal imagery of the First World War, to images of hell.
• Rick Stein’s Australia
  Back to the coast, and back therefore to seafood and we won’t be trying the recipes from this one as they were either shellfish or whole fish. Quite a bit about sustainability & the difficulties of climate change.
• Easter Island Origins
  Took us through the standard story (silly natives cut down all the trees to move their great statues then had infertile soil so population collapsed and now we have remnants of a lost civilisation) pointing out how it doesn’t match the evidence on the ground. Rehabilitated Thor Heyerdahl a bit, in that the genetics do show some influence from Columbia pre-arrival of the Europeans as well as the expected Polynesian ancestry, and also they demonstrated that the statues could in fact be walked upright from where they were you just needed to have the base shaped at the correct angle (like the ones found halfway to their destination). The deforestation is chalked up to the rats they brought with them – if you do slash & burn agriculture and then the rats eat the new growth then the forest doesn’t regenerate so eventually you run out of forest, but I wasn’t quite clear why this happened here but not wherever they brought their agriculture & rats from, perhaps it was just the difference in climate that tipped the balance.

Games

• Diablo IV
  Had a longer break than intended, and likely won’t get the pet this season (there’s about a week left at time of posting). But we did blat through the capstone dungeon for Rank III, a bunch of Pits (up to Tier 22, could do 25 and open Torment II I reckon (J is more pessimistic)).

Exhibitions

• Ramses and the Pharaoh’s Gold
  Exhibition of items from the Egyptian Museum in Cairo (mostly, some had accession numbers from there but were from Sharm el Sheikh or Saqqara museums). Ramesses II was the king they used as their narrative thread, but the exhibition also included a lot of Middle Kingdom jewellery and a lot of later coffins too. Plus some of the newly discovered animal mummies from Saqqara which felt a little shoehorned in but were neat to see (they include a lion cub and scarab beetles tho they only had boxes those were found in). Highlights for me included the falcon headed coffins of Sheshonq II (one silver, one which had been gold on cartonnage but the cartonnage had (mostly?) rotted so the gold leaf was reconstructed on a modern backing). Also they had the sarcophagus lid of Merenptah which was usurped by Psusennes I, which was rather well displayed with a mirror below it so you could see the image of Nut. There was also a rather fun ostraca with a drawing of a cat herding geese. Overall it was a well displayed exhibition, and when we went it wasn’t that busy so we could spend time looking closely at things. The labels were a bit on the brief side tho. We did the “VR experience” afterwards, which was kinda cheesy but also neat to see two places we’ve been (Abu Simbel & Nefertari’s tomb).

Books

• “Understanding Early Civilizations” Bruce G. Trigger
  In the introductory chapters Trigger is setting out what he’s doing in this book & why. I’ve only read the first one so far, which is setting out the two positions on comparing cultures. The rationalist one, which says that all human behaviour is driven by environment & biology and any given person would react in the same way to the same circumstance with just a bit of cultural flavour sprinkled on top. And the relativist one, which says that all human behaviour is driven by culture and so reactions to circumstances will be different depending on culture with no commonalities between different cultures. He says no-one is really at the extreme end of either of those positions, but that the literature does separate into these two camps. It’s a bit like the nature v. nurture debate in biology, and I suspect he’s leading up to the answer being “both, and”.

Podcasts

• The Rest is Science
  
  • A Q&A episode, which included a question about could bees be trained to be a universal Turing machine (no, but there’s a crab species that swarms that has been used to build a logic gate), and a Holocene Calendar website.
  • Categories, and how the words we use shape how we think about things, and how the categories we use are made up not inherent to the universe – using vegetables as the example, thinking about what vegetable is the most vegetable, and talking through various definitions.
• The Bunker
  
  • An episode on Elon Musk saying he’s going to merge SpaceX and XAI and build datacentres in space. The interview guest was a bit too keen to give Musk credit for being clever, but even so it wasn’t a terribly flattering to Musk episode.
  • Weekly Wrap Up, mostly about the Iran war.
  • Start the Week, almost entirely about the Iran war and Trump threatening war crimes, but tucked away at the end was a bit about the changes in employment rights which are coming into effect this week.
  • An episode about inheritance tax, which has become something everyone in the country is up in arms about despite fewer than 10% of estates being affected by it. The expert guest took the view that the best thing that could be done is to make it simpler so there aren’t the incentives to look for loopholes if you’re really rich, and progressive so it feels fairer overall.
• More Jam Tomorrow
  MI5, its history & current operation (in general terms, obviously), with a particular attention to how it used to be completely secret & not established in any legal sense.
• The History of Philosophy
  Nicolas Malebranche’s thinking on how God causes everything but in a general way not a particular way – he doesn’t intervene except in very special circumstances that aren’t comprehensible to mortals, but instead has set up the world to operate by rules he has chosen. I was left thinking that Malebranche had shoehorned God into a system that had no place for God simply because he believed in God.
• The History of England
  The story of Nell Gwynne, also Pepys the sexual predator, and attitudes to slavery & Africans in this time period. And how politics was affected by the way the king was led around by his … pleasures.
• The Rest is Politics
  
  • the Iran war & funding of UK political parties – and how the same problem underlies both, that the people concerned (the US & the big ex-pat/foreign crypto donors) suffer none of the consequences of their actions.
  • Q&A episode, including more on Trump in Iran and the way he’s treating so called allies, whether or not the King should do the state visit to the US given the things Trump is currently saying, some cultural recommendations.
• Journey Through Time
  Episode 4 of the McCarthyism series, looking at some of the high profile Hollywood cases, and the movies & plays that come out of this period (like High Noon & The Crucible) which are about the issues.
• Oh God What Now
  Discussion of how the zeitgeist is to hate politicians and whether this is new or just more intense & various ideas about what may be responsible. Also a bit on Liz Truss launching a MEGA movement.
• The Rest is Politics US
  
  • The Iran war, but also the birthright citizen case & the sacking of Pam Bondi.
  • The Iran war again, this time the unhinged social media post about Iran needing to reopen the Strait or the US would commit war crimes, and about the rescue of the crew member from the downed plane.
• The Rest is Politics Leading
  Interview with the President of Finland.
• Talk 90s to Me
  Talking about Jeff Buckley’s brief career and his death & legacy.
• Starship Alexandria
  Discussion about The Demolition Man by Alfred Bester. Which I may’ve read as a teenager & not really got on with, but that’s such a hazy memory that I’m not sure if I read it or just saw it in the library.
• In Our Time: The Columbian Exchange
  The discovery & subsequent colonisation of the Americas by Europeans ended a millennia long period of isolation for the Americas which had significant & far reaching effects on both Old & New World. Mostly the effects on the New World were negative: human population die off, ecosystem disruption by invasive species. The effects on the Old World were more positive – new foodstuffs which lead to a population explosion, and from there a boom in technology & science as there were more people with more time to devote to this. There was even a global effect on the climate – a current hypothesis is that the drop in population in the Americas lead to so much less agriculture that a significant amount of carbon was sequestered by reforestation, and this lead to the Little Ice Age.
• The History of Egypt
  Discussing the burials of the Apis bulls – one that Khaemwaset presided over in the reign of Ramesses II, which was still in the tradition of burying them in separate tombs, but this is also the point when the Serapeum began to be constructed.
• Empire
  Episode 3 of the Mao series, talking about what happened after the Long March for the Communists, and also about the Second World War in China.
• The History of Byzantium
  What happened to the last Roman Emperor when Constantinople fell – there aren’t any definitive accounts, so he was piecing together what’s said by a whole range of contemporary sources and came to the conclusion that it’s most likely that the Emperor fell in the final breach of the walls by the Ottomans, and was subsequently beheaded and his head taken to the Sultan so that it could be displayed.

TV

• The Roman Empire by Train
  
  • Episode 2 was still based near Naples, this time she was visiting Herculaneum (in particular a villa where a large library was discovered) and Capua (of Spartacus fame).
  • A very brief bit of Rome, then she moved on to look at the Via Apia & some Etruscan remains (which make it clear that a lot of “Roman” stuff started with the Etruscans). Then on to Florence & environs.
• AI Confidential with Hannah Fry
  Using a high profile case of a young man who tried to assassinate the Queen in 2021 as its jumping off point this episode looks at AI induced psychosis, in general as well as via chatbots that are explicitly set up to be your romantic partner. And also how this tech just isn’t properly covered by the laws we have (if that young man’s chatbot had been a person it would likely have also been charged with treason or some other serious crime, but the people who made the software aren’t held responsible at all). I thought Hannah Fry did a good job of letting the subject & the people she interviewed reveal itself/themselves as deeply fucked up. Tho it’s possible that’s in part me projecting as some of the examples gave me a visceral feeling of horror – both the founder of Replika and the found of another tech start up whose name I forget started off by wanting to be able to talk to someone who had died, and so made a chatbot based on that person. And the idea that I might talk to a fake version of my dead mother is, as I said, really quite viscerally horrifying.
• Rick Stein’s Australia
  An episode in the interior of New South Wales, on farms and in the outback. One roast lamb recipe, but more interesting was the orange & almond cake.

Games

• Diablo IV
  Did the dungeon for the end of Season Rank II, we’d timed it about right – left it long enough that it wasn’t much of a challenge but not so long it was tedious. Unlocked Torment I difficulty level and are now past the level cap, and have got up to Pit Tier 15.

Music

• “Honey Lingers” Voice of the Beehive
• “Don’t Bore Us, Get to the Chorus” Roxette
• Scant Regard (live)
  Supporting EMF – his merch aesthetic was 50s biker but skulls, and that sorta fit the music. He was playing guitar with backing tracks, and wearing a leather jacket & shades. Fun, tho we didn’t feel the need to buy anything.
• EMF (live)
  EMF are turning into one of my top 5 live bands I think, seen them twice now and even tho I don’t know much of their catalogue other than the big hits they are a blast live. This time it was a teeny-tiny venue with less than 100 of us in there, so you could see that they hadn’t walked straight out of the 90s on to the stage but they still brought that sense of joy & energy like the last time we saw them. A lot of fun.

Books

• “The Golden Road: How Ancient India Transformed the World” William Dalrymple
  Finished Tuesday 24 March 2026. A good & interesting book. Dalrymple argues that India has had an enormous influence on the rest of the world, both in terms of what might be called an Indosphere similar in scale to the Hellenised world that Alexander the Great created (only via trade rather than conquest), and in terms of gifting the West the numerals & mathematical principles that let their merchants & accountants take over the world. It’s overlooked in part because the influence on the West was mediated via the Islamic world in particular Spain, and in part because it all came crashing down around 800 years ago via a combination of Turkish invaders and the Mongols (who actually didn’t invade but it was a close run thing).
• “Shards of Earth” Adrian Tchaikovsky
  Only just started this and have only read the Prologue, so all I really know so far is it’s far future space opera.

Podcasts

• The History of England
  An interview with the author of “The Rage of Party”, about 18th Century politics & the formation of the Whig & Tory parties.
• Literature & History
  The history of the Abbasid Caliphate – coming up here just after I’d got to it in my book.
• The Rest is Politics
  
  • More on the Iran war, in particular Trump having been rude to all his allies then expecting them to be enthusiastic allies, also a bit on GB News and Ofcom’s failure to regulate them, and a bit on the appalling mess that is the water industry here.
  • The Question Time episode this week had a guest on – Karim Sadjadpour – who answered questions on the Iran war from a more expert perspective than Rory & Alastair could provide.
• Journey Through Time
  
  • Starting a new series on McCarthyism with an episode covering the first Red Scare before the Second World War.
  • The second episode covered the House Un-American Activities Committee before McCarthy gets involved, it’s already in the witch hunt & show trials mode at this point.
• The Rest is Politics Leading
  
  • An interview with Robert Malley, involved in negotiations between the US, Israel & Palestine, and also with some thoughts on Iran (recorded before the start of the war).
  • An interview with Olaf Scholz, the former Chancellor of Germany.
• The History of Egypt
  Telling one of the legends about the goddess Iset (Isis) which is found on a medical papyrus as part of a recipe for curing venomous bites.
• Talk 90s to Me
  About Björk, mostly during the 90s phase of her career. Lads Mags, mostly about Loaded as the interviewee was the chap who started Loaded (and it did start the genre).
• Oh God What Now
  
  • The Lib Dems suddenly being pro-nukes, Richard Tice’s remarks about tax and the dodging thereof, the new Manosphere documentary (a Louis Theroux one).
  • Have Reform peaked (too soon to tell but maybe), and more generally the rise of both Reform & the Greens.
• The Rest is Politics US
  
  • More on the Iran war (pretty depressing tbh, their analysis is that the window for deescalation is shut, although they don’t think it’ll spin into a world war coz no-one else has jumped to join in with the US & Israel, but boots on the ground, perhaps for a while, and conflict across the region with repercussion for the rest of us), plus some stuff on the domestic US politics talking about the bill about voter ID that probably won’t pass but even then that can get used as the reason excuse for “why Republicans lost the House”.
  • And more again on the Iran war. They aren’t quite as convinced it’ll inevitably escalate but still aren’t sure Trump & co are capable of deescalating.
• The Rest is Science
  
  • Can animals (other than humans) lie? Which involved a lot of discussion of what do we actually mean by the question – e.g. what counts as lying, does camouflage count? Also covered things like what does it mean to have a theory of mind.
  • A Q&A episode that covered stuff like what does space smell of, autologous & heterologous words (is heterologous itself heterologous or not?), whether or not science & religion are actually at war.
  • Another episode about how do we know where we are – both as in the way we can tell things like which way is up & how we navigate, and as in where do we think we exist within our bodies.
• The Bunker
  
  • Weekly wrap up (some domestic politics about Angela Rayner’s intervention, but also more about the Iran war).
  • A programme about how Russia isn’t doing as well in the Ukraine war as you might assume (and listening right now (a month later) it felt very resonant with Trump’s Iran war which he’s started assuming swift & total victory).
  • An interview with the author of “The Rage of Party”.
  • A discussion about the future of work if AI begins in a decade or two to do the things they say it will (and makes the point that even if it doesn’t it’s a scenario that politicians should be concerning themselves with in case).
  • Start the Week (obviously the Iran war featured heavily here).
  • A discussion about the purges at the top of China’s military about a month ago.
  • An interview with a UFO nut in the wake of Obama’s remarks (not the nuttiest of nuts but nonetheless a nut, I was a little surprised they interviewed him).
• The History of Byzantium
  
  • Continuing with the aftermath of the fall of Constantinople, covering how the conquest changed the Ottoman empire from a community ruled by custom to a community ruled by law.
  • And another episode covering what happened to the Christian inhabitants of Constantinople (some flee, some remain enslaved, some pivot to rise up in the ranks of the new regime).
• Behind the Lines with Arthur Snell
  A programme on what’s going on in Yemen, via an interview with someone in the STC who have essentially just been invaded by Saudi Arabia who they thought where their allies.
• The History of Philosophy
  Antoine Arnauld & Pierre Nicole writing about logic & incorporating the ideas of Descartes.
• More Jam Tomorrow
  About motorways, when they were built, why they were built & why we don’t do it any more.
• The History of China
  The Opium War begins in earnest – and the Chinese start to find out just how dreadfully they have underestimated the British (their analysis was that no ocean going ships can sail up rivers so we’re safe from water attack, plus trousers mean you can’t fight on land).
• Empire
  
  • Moving on into the Bronze Age Collapse proper, they’ve got Eric Cline on as a guest (I read his book 1177 sometime ago), so are discussing this collapse as the interconnected system failing to cope with multiple shocks arriving at once and collapsing. He casually says in passing that if the 2008 financial crisis had arrived in 2020 instead we might’ve faced civilisational collapse ourselves, which isn’t a settling thought given that Trump’s idiocy in Iran in combination with all the LLM stuff (which is bad if it works and bad if it’s just a hype bubble) has set up us for perhaps similarly bad levels of all sorts of shit happening at once.
  • The second episode of the three was about the collapse and the immediate aftermath, what vanished and how life would’ve changed.
  • And then the third of these is looking at the building back which happens afterwards (so sort of hopeful but only if you’re not thinking about the people living through it).
• In Our Time
  An episode on The Code of Hammurabi: The Code of Hammurabi sets forth a compendium of laws but it’s not clear if those were applied in practice or were instead a way of indicating that the king cared about justice with individual cases still being judged individually. It tells us a lot about the society of the time if one reads between the lines, and other evidence of law cases shows us that the principles were applied to actual events even if they don’t reference the list. This brought back memories of learning Akkadian – I did translate some of the laws, they also go off on a tangent (ish) about omens, which I also remember translating examples of (they are horrid because they don’t make sense without all their cultural context so it’s harder to be sure you’re getting the words right).

TV

• The Age of Uncertainty
  Still watching the last episode, the second chunk we watched had them speaking over dinner, and getting quite a bit more snippy with each other, but also making some points that felt still pertinent – like the effect the newspapers & TV have on society which felt quite like modern discussion about media polarising subjects or going for the most sensational stuff. Then the following day they were discussing nuclear weapons rather more seriously (primarily the Soviet government advisor & Henry Kissinger).
• Barcelona v. Newcastle (7-2, 8-3 on aggregate, so they’re out of the Champions League)
• The Race for Ancient Egypt in Colour
  A two part series which we’ve watched all of this week. It mostly covered the discovery of Tutankhamun’s tomb, in the context of what was going on in Egypt at the time, plus bits on the discovery of the burial goods of Hetepheres and the kings who were buried at Tanis. In the first episode it didn’t seem quite sure what it wanted to be – showing off the colourised photos which bring the period a bit more to life? telling us about the discovery of the tomb? telling us about the Egyptians seeking independence from the British? But the second episode settled down rather more into a critique of Western attitudes to Egypt (both ancient & modern) primarily in the 1920s & 1930s but also continuing on to the modern day.
• Rick Stein’s Australia
  Continuing to travel around the broader area that Sydney is in, with a focus this week on the Australian outdoors & how that affects their lives & cooking.

Games

• Diablo IV
  Completed the dungeon to finish Rank I of the Season Journey, I still really don’t like the mechanic in it where it’s too hot so you have to move between cooling refuges. Continuing to level up & tick things off the Rank II objectives.

Music

• “Let it Bee” Voice of the Beehive
• “Monsters & Angels” Voice of the Beehive

• “The Golden Road: How Ancient India Transformed the World” William Dalrymple
  The later reign of Empress Wu where she made Buddhism the Chinese state religion and the Indian influence on China was at its peak. The spread of Indian culture in the other direction – again by sea trade, this time to south east Asia. Initially Buddhism again, including another way of spreading into China & Japan via these sea routes past Java & Sumatra.

Podcasts

• The Rest is Politics US
  More on the Iran war, plus elections in Texas. More, of course, on the war in Iran, plus a bit on the sacking of Kirsti Noem. The war in Iran, again.
• The Rest is Politics
  More on the Iran war, focusing quite a lot on the reaction in the West and particularly by Keir Starmer (quite the argument between Rory & Alastair). Gorton & Denton by-election. More on the war in Iran, a lot about the way that the US seems to’ve done less scenario planning etc than Iran despite the US doing this as a choice.
• Empire
  The finale of their 1857 Indian Uprising series, the fate of Lucknow (not good, described by one historian as “urbicide”, the destruction/killing of a city). Two episodes on the Iranian revolution of 1979 with a compare & contrast with the protests in January (recorded in January, I’m late to get to this, so it is very much before the current war).
• The Rest is Science
  A Q&A episode (one question was about how small would a hamster have to be if it was to be dense enough to be a blackhole – 1 trillionth the size of a proton but it would be so unstable that it would immediate explode with a force of multiple Hiroshimas). An episode about data & science in sport, and whether that destroys all enjoyment of the sport – citing things like the way F1 car designs basically made the whole thing a foregone conclusion as once you were in front no-one could overtake.
• The Bunker
  The whole Greenland thing, recorded just post Davos (I’m only a month behind with the general episodes of The Bunker, but this felt like it came from a different year so much has happened since then). The Weekly Wrap up (obviously the war in Iran was a lot of it, but also the new rules for refugees in the UK). Start the Week (which was all about the war in Iran). January’s mad opinion column round up (I hadn’t noticed these were topical, some of the more entertaining backpedaling about Trump around about the Greenland stuff at Davos, some of the weirder takes on the Beckham drama). An episode on money laundering and how it has essentially won.
• The History of China
  A letter from the Chinese to Queen Victoria just before the Opium War telling her to make sure no-one came to sell opium in China (no evidence the letter got there). The continuing rattling of sabres after Napier’s untimely death, and the final cultural misunderstanding on the part of China that goes past the point of no return (essentially the Chinese mental model of the universe means they can only see the British traders as being akin to Mongolians raiding the northern borders, rather than seeing that they come from another state).
• The History of Philosophy in China
  Confucius in the Zhuangzi (the Daoist text), mostly being presented as rule bound and unaware of the Dao.
• Oh God What Now
  The Iran War & the Gorton & Denton by-election, plus a bit at the end about the ex-pats in Dubai who are now finding it less of a “safe-haven” than it once was. Labour’s newest immigration policies & how they’re counterproductive, plus how we create monsters from our discomfort with people/things which exist between our neat little categories.
• The History of England
  The rebuilding of London after the fire, more piecemeal than initially desired (in large part because of cost and how long it would take), and how coal was the key to the rebuild and to how London could be so large – it let England escape the photosynthesis trap, no need to turn large amounts of land over to trees for fuel and building material when you could use coal to fire bricks and heat your home.
• Journey Through Time
  The very immediate aftermath of the Chernobyl disaster, where the Soviet secrecy makes things worse both in terms of the people who died from being near the reactor and in terms of the effects on the rest of Europe (as they didn’t let anyone know what was going on).
• The Rest is Politics Leading
  Interview with Bill Browder (who I think I’ve heard interviewed on another podcast), who went from making money in the Russia of the 90s/00s to campaigning for sanctions against Russia to hurt the oligarchs (& Putin) after the death of a lawyer working for him.
• The History of Egypt
  The life of Nefertari, in as much as we know anything about it.
• In Our Time
  The Roman Arena – a trot through the history of the Roman gladiatorial (etc) games, from funerary games in the early Republic to a way that the Emperor demonstrated his power to the people in the later Empire.
• Talk 90s to Me
  Disney villains of the 90s, with a theme of how queer coded they are.
• The History of Byzantium
  The immediate aftermath of the Ottomans taking Constantinople, and who got out and who did not.

TV

• The Age of Uncertainty
  What makes a good leader, and why democracy works, and how education is part of the key to the whole thing. This hit quite differently now, you feel Galbraith would not approve of the current situation in the US. One of his essential points is that the big weakness of a democracy is that it all falls apart if people cease to think that the government is theirs, and so pushing power out further towards the people (in the US with primaries that actually matter, and mass participation in elections) is key to making people as a whole feel like they chose the government they have.
• Newcastle v. Man U (2-1, despite being a man down for the whole second half)
• Digging for Britain
  The southwest of England & Wales this episode – some bits in Cornwall (including signs of tin processing on St Michael’s Mount), some bits in Wales. A bit of a “things aren’t always what they look like before you start” theme too (like a clearly Iron Age structure being full of later Roman coins). And some experimental archaeology showing what happens when you put different quantities of tin in your bronze (too much makes it very brittle).
• Newcastle v. Man City (1-3, so they’re out of the FA Cup)
• The Great Philosophers
  Episode on Gottlob Frege & Bertrand Russell, who moved philosophy from being about psychology to being about logic. I only really knew about Bertrand Russell’s Principia Mathematica before, via Hofstader’s “Gödel Escher Bach”.

Games

• Diablo IV
  Did some end of season tidying up of our previous characters. Also ran a Mythic Prankster dungeon & got 5 mythics each, so souped some of them up and had a go at some Pits – up to Tier 69, which is the furthest we’ve got, I think.

Talks

• “Henry Salt and his first collection of ancient Egyptian antiquities” Marie Vandenbeusch & John Taylor
  Henry Salt collected Egyptian antiquities while he was the British consul in Egypt, and subsequently sold them to museums – his first collection was sold to the British Museum and arrived there in 1821. It includes a lot of well known pieces in the Egyptian collection there but arrived before the administrative side of the museum was well set up so the only documentation is a list of 128 objects or groups of objects that Salt provided. This talk was about how they have been tracking down which items were on the list, and are publishing the document with annotations to tell you which ones are identified.

Music

• Joseph and the Amazing Technicolour Dreamcoat
• Starlight Express
• Now Yearbook 74
• Burning Shed – Sampler Three

• “The Golden Road: How Ancient India Transformed the World” William Dalrymple
  
  Buddhism is particularly associated with merchants in its early days, in contrast to Hinduism where you lose caste if you indulge in trade. This means it’s carried on trade routes, and this bit of the book talks quite a bit about ancient trade between India & the Mediterranean, not just with Egypt during the Roman Period, but also with Mesopotamia much earlier c. 2500 BCE.

• Qarabag FK v. Newcastle (1-6), playoffs in Champions League


• Digging for Britain
  
  The northeast of England plus the southeast of Scotland. Quite a lot around the Roman era, including a Pictish settlement and what’s probably a Roman whetstone factory in Sunderland. There was also a bit on Gloucester Museum solving its cataloguing & storage problem by getting volunteers in to help.


• Man City v. Newcastle (2-1)


• The Great Philosophers
  
  An episode on Husserl, Heidegger & Modern Existentialists, which mostly concentrated on Heidegger. Husserl was cast as rather arrogantly thinking he was the culmination of all that Descartes had started, then Heidegger pushes back against Husserl and that whole branch of philosophy. His basic idea is that you can’t think of us each as subjects that interact essentially from a distance with objects that may or may not constitute a real world, but instead we are out there in the real world and that our attention is often not consciously directed at any object so that’s not an answer to the questions of how our consciousness works.

• Oh God What Now
  
  A guest episode looking at the question of if we’re ready for a war with Russia (not really), and a normal panel show looking at could Farage do what Trump has done & also talking about a documentary that’s just aired about Tony Blair (I’ve recorded it but we haven’t watched it). The arrest of Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor (and how the victims of Epstein are still being elided), and the upcoming Gorton & Denton by-election.


• The Rest is Politics
  
  Talking about Rubio & Starmer’s speeches from the Munich conference (their consensus was that Rubio’s message was the same as Vance’s last year but masked it more with flattery). A bit of a rant about how Farage gets away with everything, the Thai elections & the Bangladesh elections, more on the Munich conference. The arrest of Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor (without Rory). Trump’s tariffs, more on the arrest of Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor with Rory this time, the proposed SEND reforms.


• The Bunker
  
  Weekly wrap up (mostly about the arrest of Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor.) Start the Week. How Russia (and Putin) ended up how they are now when it looked like it might be so different in the 1990s. Pete Hegseth and the US military.


• The Rest is Politics US
  
  The arrest of Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor in the context of US domestic politics, the mid-terms. The Supreme Court declaring the tariffs invalid, recorded before Trump put them back on again, and very optimistic about this being the beginning of the end of Trump.


• Talk 90s to Me
  
  Britney Spears (only in the context of her first hit really, and her career prior to that).


• The History of England
  
  Guest/interview episode, covering c. 1000 years of English history very briskly through the lens of what various factors that meant that things like the Industrial Revolution & the Enlightenment happened here, and the better bits of modernity (prosperity, the welfare state).


• Origin Story
  
  A Patreon only Q&A episode, mostly jumping off from the season on Socialism that they’ve just wrapped up.


• Empire
  
  Another episode (fifth, I think) of their series on the Indian Uprising of 1857, this time covering the story of Lakshmibai who was ruler of one of the states that the East India Company tried to absorb at about this time and ended up leading part of the rebellion practically despite her best efforts to remain loyal. The sixth episode in this series, about the Siege of Delhi.


• The Rest is Science
  
  Randomness, chaos, disorder, the creation of meaning, and the origins of the universe and consciousness (for the latter essentially the idea is that we have evolved to create meaning from what we observe as a way of surviving and this is why we generate a sense of self, and if the universe had inherent meaning we wouldn’t’ve needed to evolve that ability).


• Journey Through Time
  
  Wrapping up their series on the Spanish Civil War, and looking at how it didn’t end up with any reconciliation after it ended, then after Franco dies there is a codified “forgetting” which is only now beginning to unravel. Also framing it as having something to teach us in the modern day about when & how to intervene as fascism takes hold.

• Made in Egypt
  
  At the Fitzwilliam Museum. Looking at ancient Egyptian objects through the lens of how they were made. So they were organised by material (stone, pottery, faience etc), and the materials were organised to some degree by production method (pottery, faience, glass all need fire; linen, baskets, papyrus were all plant fibres sort of woven). I’d seen quite a few of the objects before (even the loans) but it was an interestingly different way to look at the them. I also particularly liked the way they used Nina M. Davis watercolour paintings of the reliefs from the tomb of Rekhmire to tie the whole thing visually together – these scenes show craftsmen at work, and they had appropriate bits projected onto the walls near the different sections with some of them animated.

• Art Brut live at Cambridge Corn Exchange
  
  Support for Maxïmo Park, I thought I only knew one of their tracks but I think I actually knew two. They were quite fun as the opening act but I still don’t think I need an album.


• Maxïmo Park live at Cambridge Corn Exchange
  
  This was the 20th anniversary of their first album, A Certain Trigger, so that was what they were touring. Unlike PRR’s similarly themed show they didn’t play it all in order, instead mixing the songs in with stuff from their other albums. A good gig, they always put on a very high energy show and it’s a lot of fun to watch. We were right at the front again – this time because the audience for Maxïmo Park gigs always seem to arrive comically late, so we got there just after doors should’ve opened and then bought merch & put stuff in the cloakroom and still made it to the barriers at the front.


• Various “Now 12”
  

• “New Discoveries from the City of the Snake Goddess” Nicky Nielsen
  
  Taking us through the preliminary results from the 2024 excavations at Tell Nabasha. There isn’t much of the archaeology left due to modern building, but the two trenches he talked about tell us about two different periods – tower houses during the Late Period (with food production & cereal processing sites) and Ptolemaic occupation of what had previously (still was?) the temple site, which ended with a catastrophic fire.

• Diablo IV
  
  It’s been 2 weeks since we played, so a bit of reminding ourselves how these characters worked with a NM dungeon, then a handful of Pits. Mostly at Tier 65, but we did do a Tier 66 at the end so I do now have the credit for one after the disconn incident two weeks ago.

• “His Face is the Sun” Michelle Jabès Corpora
  
  Finished Thursday 5 February 2026. The fantasy ancient Egyptian setting is very well done, she clearly spent a lot of time both learning about ancient Egypt and putting thought into how to make it different but still recognisable. It’s a story with a prophecy and four point of view characters who it becomes clear are part of how this prophecy will work out. They could be stock types (the Princess, the Priestess, the Warrior, the Desert Nomad) but actually are more well rounded than that. Right up until the last couple of chapters I thought everything was very clearly telegraphed & was just chalking that up to “well, it’s YA” and then two things I totally didn’t expect happened, so that was rather well done. A piece of fluff, but I enjoyed it, and will look for book 2 in the library when it comes out.


• “There Is No Antimemetics Division” qntm
  
  Finished Monday 9 February 2026. Quite a mindbending book, and difficult to know how to write anything about it. It’s SFF, and in the same genre space as the X-files and Charlie Stross’s Laundry Files series. There’s an Organisation, that’s a part of the British civil service in the same way that MI5 or MI6 are. But they deal in ideas that are infectious (memes in the original sense of the word dialled up to 11) and ideas that simply cannot be known/remembered. Many (most?) are hostile but how can you fight back if you can’t remember what your opponent is? I enjoyed this, and I should re-read it at some point when I can remember my first read through as I suspect a lot will land differently when you know where it’s going.


• “The Golden Road: How Ancient India Transformed the World” William Dalrymple
  
  Just started this so not much to say, on the Empire podcast he’s positioned this book as not quite a counterpoint to Frankopan’s “The Silk Road” but more of a “yes, and”.

• Empire
  
  Second episode about the First Indian War of Independence, where one of the key points is that for the people concerned it’s about religion even tho there are all the other problems that colonialism brings, it’s the perceived attack on their faiths that triggers the uprising. Third episode, which was about the Kanpur massacre, an atrocity committed by the Indians against the British civilians living in Kanpur, which lived on in the imagination of the British for decades after (and was met by atrocities from the British). Fourth episode, which was the First Siege of Lucknow which they characterise as the best of the rebels vs. the best of the British, so both attack & defence are better organised.


• The Rest is Science
  
  Levitation by sound (so long as you’re a tiny piece of polystyrene that is). Smell, why you can’t smell the inside of your own nose, super smellers. Erdõs numbers, and Erdõs as the most peculiar scientist/mathematician they could think of, is there a way to describe “left” or “right” without reference to anything human e.g. some intrinsic property of the universe (yes, it’s to do with the weak force), Hannah Fry owns the prop used in Devs for the quantum computer.


• Journey Through Time
  
  Second & third episodes about The Spanish Civil War, the make up of the International Brigades – the volunteers who came to fight the fascists, I hadn’t known that one of the key problems for the Republicans in the war was that the part of the army that had military experience was the part that were with Franco. And then the beginning of the war proper. I don’t think I’d known before that this was also the beginning of Kim Philby’s spying career, he’s ostensibly here as a journalist embedded with Franco’s forces, but is also working for the Soviets already. Fourth episode is about Orwell’s time in Spain, where he is with a different group that are against Franco.


• The Rest is Politics
  
  The Epstein files, with a particular focus on how even if you set aside the vile sexual predation this was a network of corruption on an incredible scale. Iran, whether the Americans will intervene and whether that will be a good idea, the Melania film. A mini extra episode of Alastair Campbell reacting to the whole Mandelson thing. A broader exploration of what the Mandelson part of the Epstein scandal says about how the world is run.


• Behind the Lines with Arthur Snell
  
  The geopolitical situation in the Arctic.


• The Bunker
  
  How the War in Ukraine is going from the Russian perspective, and how it’s essentially the same as it was this time last year. Weekly wrap up (with a lot about the fallout of Peter Mandelson’s Epstein connections). A look forward to 2026 in Trump’s US (aired shortly after Venezuela). Racism in Britain (aired not long after the Farage allegations). Start the Week (more about the fallout from the Mandelson revelations).


• Starship Alexandria
  
  Back to their normal episodes, this one is an in depth look at the film Godzilla Minus One.


• Oh God What Now
  
  Peter Mandleson and the latest release from the Epstein files. An extra episode about the resignation of Morgan McSweeney.


• The History of China
  
  The build up to the first Opium War, trade imbalances that upset the mercantile nature of both England and China, and the English turn to selling drugs.


• The Rest is Politics US
  
  The Washington Post, more on the Epstein files, hints that the Trump regime is losing support by losing touch with what normal people think about what they’re doing.


• The History of Philosophy
  
  Pascal’s Wager, and some of the push back it receives.


• The Rest is Politics Leading
  
  An interview with the President of Moldova, who came across very well.


• Talk ’90s to Me
  
  About TFI Friday (which I never watched back in the day).


• The History of England
  
  1666, the year London burned and more of the Anglo-Dutch war.


• The History of England Shedcasts
  
  One of the Birth of Britain episodes – Britain after the Romans were established, how much different areas integrated, how religion worked & how much it integrated, the way that Britain became a great place to launch your bid for becoming Emperor.


• The History of Byzantium
  
  The second set of five influential people in the Byzantine empire.


• Origin Story
  
  The history and politics of the Blue Labour movement (Maurice Glasman sounds both nuts & somewhat reminiscent of Matt Goodwin’s radicalisation).

• The Age of Uncertainty
  
  An episode about corporations and how their power structures have evolved into a thing of committees where the individual people are more interchangeable than the myth of the one guy at the top directing operations. I quibbled about this afterwards, but J pointed out that all my counter-examples are essentially a new layer of corporations who are still in the earlier phases, the ones Galbraith is talking about still exist the way he was talking about them.


• Digging for Britain
  
  The East of England and the Southeast – the highlights were a carnyx & boar standard dug up at an Iceni site, and the many different finds at Sizewell where the new nuclear power station is being built. Most of the programme was about the latter, and they have found stuff from 40kya all the way through to the Second World War.


• Guitar Heroes at the BBC
  
  Episode 6, which is the last one. This is basically an hour of music performances previously shown on the BBC, loosely fitting a theme of “has a good guitarist” (or perhaps just “has a guitarist you’ve heard of” and sometimes that’s for being a guitarist). With the occasional bit of commentary via captions (sometimes snarky, sometimes just a factoid to make you boggle, like the woman who is now a chainsaw artist). Fun, shallow, and often most entertaining for the “what is he wearing‽” nature of the 70s.


• Empire with David Olusoga
  
  Episode 1 – the beginnings of the British Empire, as merchants form joint stock companies to trade in the east and colonists set sail to make homes in the west. I know this history but haven’t previously quite framed it as the two things happening simultaneously. It all ends up the same though, exploiting other places for profit ­ growing cash crops in the Caribbean (sugar) and Virginia (tobacco) using slave labour, and ruling over parts of India extracting goods & taxes and failing to look after the people who are producing the wealth.


• The Great Philosophers
  
  This episode was about Nietzsche and you could see from this discussion exactly why the Nazis had been fond of Nietzsche, and the overall impression I had of his philosophy was that it was rather unpleasantly self-centred. But Magee and Stern were arguing both that the fascist reading of Nietzsche was too shallow & misinterpreted, and that there was quite a lot of value in his ideas even if you didn’t agree with all of it.

• Diablo IV
  
  Did actually manage a Tier 66 Pit (tho I got disconned near the end of it and you can’t get back in the game during Pits, so J finished up on his own). Getting further now is mostly a question of grinding away at the Pits trying to edge up, plus looking for any gear that might be a bit of an upgrade.

• “I Am a Strange Loop” Douglas Hofstadter
  The way that the sense of “I” emerges from a strange loop within our brains, where the outside world feeds into and generates patterns among the symbols and those patterns look “back” and perceive themselves. And how there’s our own strange loop in our minds, our “I”, but we also model other people, particularly those we are close to, and they in some sense existing within our minds just at a lower resolution that our own sense of self.

• Starship Alexandria
  Miss Fisher’s Murder Mysteries, Farscape, The Detectorists, Andor


• The History of England
  Charles II’s desire to be majestic & the Second Anglo-Dutch War, also the plague that came sweeping in from the east.


• Journey Through Time
  The last episode on Black GIs in Britain in WW2, about how the biggest flash point of trouble was Black soldiers entering relationships with white women. And the British were also divided on this, some had no problem with mixed-race relationships, some regarded that as the line that shouldn’t be crossed. And the couples were never allowed to marry, which made their children illegitimate in situations where white GIs could marry before the child was born. Which left the children visibly illegitimate which carried great social stigma for both mother & child.
  
  A series on A Christmas Carol, and the context in which Dickens wrote it, both in his life and the world in general. Scrooge is the British society of the time, chasing the profits of the Industrial Revolution to the exclusion of all that is human & humane.


• The Rest is Politics
  All Greenland all the time. They are not optimistic about the future of the world. And a brief special on Trump’s speech at Davos which did not improve their outlook. More Davos, should people boycott the World Cup, plus Jenrick’s defection, and Syria. And another brief special (crossing over with The Rest is Politics US) on Trump’s dissing of Nato troops from other countries.


• Behind the Lines with Arthur Snell
  Interview with Dan Kaszeta, covering all sorts of topics about what the next year might hold in a geopolitical sense. Also an older episode on Saudi Arabia & UAE, in the context of Yemen.


• The Rest is Politics US
  A look at Trump’s speech at Davos, much less doom & gloom than the main Rest is Politics assessment. Crossover with The Rest is Politics. Brief interview with one of the Senators that went to Denmark. Minnesota, where they think Trump has flinched.


• Oh God What Now
  Trump and the potential destruction of Nato, should we be de-Americanising our lives and is it even possible? And a guest episode with Peter Apps who has written a book called “The Next World War” which was quite depressing tho at least he doesn’t think that the war is inevitable.


• Talk 90s to Me
  Christmas Number 1s of the 90s. Adidas Gazelles (a mini episode).


• The Bunker
  Weekly Wrap Up (Davos, Greenland). Start the Week (mostly Minnesota, also Starmer blocking Andy Burnhum standing in a by-election).


• Empire
  St Nicholas, his life and his body being stolen after his death. Alice Seely Harris, the photographer who exposed the atrocities of Leopold II’s regime in Congo.


• The Rest is Science
  Also briefly the life and body stealing of St. Nick, but rather more leaning in to was there once a time when a human could’ve visited all the other humans and given them gifts in one night (no). How the smell of Christmas trees that we so enjoy is actually the tree equivalent of screaming, and some tactile illusions illustrating how our perception of reality is really a model in our brains. Calendars & timekeeping.


• A History of Philosophy
  Pascal, a brief overview of his scientific achievements, and his turn to spiritual matters.


• The History of Ancient Egypt
  Roundup of news from current fieldwork in Egypt.


• The History of China
  The pressures in the empire are beginning to show up in practical ways – rebellions by the Miao people, the rise of the Triads, the rise of the White Lotus.


• The History of Byzantium
  Interview with the host of The History of Bulgaria podcast, who has just published a book on the first Bulgarian state, which overlaps quite a lot with the contemporary Byzantine history.

• The Great Philosophers
  Bryan Magee talking to Geoffrey Warnock about Kant and Kant’s ideas. Next episode was Bryan Magee talking to Peter Singer about Hegel & Marx.


• Newcastle v. PSV (3-0)


• The Age of Uncertainty
  Keynes, Keynesianism and its triumphs & flaws.


• The War Between the Land and the Sea
  Finale. Not sure how I feel about that overall, was rather more downbeat than I was expecting which colours my reaction (particularly in juxtaposition with the way this season of reality is more downbeat than I was expecting).

• Now Alternative 80s

• Diablo IV
  Did a Tier 61 Pit, so edging up slowly. Also killing off the Lesser Evils for one of the bits of Rank VII, have ticked off enough Belials, enough Duriels, and 4/6 Andariels and 3/6 Azmodans.