Tuesday 30 December 2025 to Tuesday 6 January 2026

[mousetrappling]

Books

• “The Knowledge: How to Rebuild Our World After an Apocalypse” Lewis Dartnell
  One of my Christmas presents. The conceit is answering the question of how would you rebuild a technological civilisation in the wake of an apocalypse, so it’s explaining how a lot of the tech that underpins life actually works. I’m near the end of the book, so currently reading about thing that would come later on, like photography (where you don’t actually need terribly complex chemicals or resources, you more need to know it’s a thing you could do).

Podcasts

• The Rest is Politics
  End of year wrap up, looking forward to next year and an extra episode after Trump derailed their predictions for 2026 by invading Venezuela (certainly not the reason, but it makes as much sense as anything). Depressing.


• Empire
  Two episodes on Rudyard Kipling, covering his early life & works.


• Starship Alexandria
  Several of their advent calendar episodes, all will be TV shows so I’m listening but not keeping track.


• The Bunker
  One about Peter Thiel. Also depressing. And their Start Your Week for this week (not exactly cheering).


• Behind the Lines with Arthur Snell
  An older couple of episodes about the Russia/Ukraine war & that awful “peace plan” that the Russians handed Trump. Plus one about the Venezuela invasion, which gave quite a bit of background to Venezuela.


• Origin Story
  End of season 8, wrapping up the story of Socialism with a look at where it is now.


• The Rest is Politics US
  Two episodes, covering the Venezuela invasion. They are oddly less horrified than the rest of the stuff I’ve listened to about that.


• Journey Through Time
  Last of the Harriet Tubman episodes (I had no idea she worked for the Union Army in the Civil War).


• The Rest is Science
  An episode that used the story of Ramanujan as its jumping off point (also, amongst other things, their favourite & least favourite elements).

Games

• Diablo IV
  Closing in on completing all the chunks of Season Journey in Rank 6 (except the stretch goal ones).

Comments

[magid]

I’m impressed that you could manage to consume all that challenging media in a month!

[mousetrappling]

I listen to podcasts when I'm doing housework or cooking, and sometimes while cross stitching, so I tend to get through quite a bit in a week (and I'm quite probably not giving everything the attention it deserves! :) ).

[magid]

I hear that on quantity, but I’d be hard pressed to listen to so many things I’d find somewhat upsetting….

[mousetrappling]

Oh, I see what you mean. This is probably heavier on the topical/political stuff than a usual week – a combination of being away for a chunk of it so not having as much listening time and of the Venezuela invasion sparking a selection of extra analysis episodes. So normally there's more history and literature and science mixed in with it, and whilst the history can be terrible it's not got the same psychic weight as current affairs.