mousetrappling | Tuesday 30 December 2025 to Tuesday 6 January 2026 (Reply)

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.

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).