Tuesday 24 February 2026 to Tuesday 3 March 2026

[mousetrappling]

Books

• “The Golden Road: How Ancient India Transformed the World” William Dalrymple
  Buddhism spreading into China, first via an Indian monk being taken to China, then later at the beginning of the Tang Dynasty by a Chinese monk travelling to India at a point where Buddhism was fading in India, and moving on to the Empress Wu Zetian.

Podcasts

• The Rest is History US
  Trump’s tariffs, the violence in Mexico (from a US domestic politics perspective), still more optimistic that Trump is essentially over than anyone else is. Epstein files and speculating what’s in the bits that aren’t being released, State of the Union address. Special as a reaction to Trump’s new war with Iran.
• The Rest is Science
  Mostly a Q&A, the bit that stuck in my head was a discussion of a psychology experiment where the point was to see if people would be whistleblowers, and the answer was very no (tho I immediately started wondering if the people who took the “job” they thought they’d taken were more likely to be desperate enough for the money to not rock the boat). Also another episode, boredom and can you be bored to death (no, but it can have some seriously bad effects if you’re isolated without stimulation for long enough), as a throw away they mentioned that if you put hamster/mouse wheels in the woods then wild mice will run on them – it’s a sort of irresistible but pointless way of getting stimulation. A bit like the internet.
• The Bunker
  The new rules around food advertising (which isn’t as strong as it first looks, blocking junk food ads on tv before 9pm affects essentially no kids). Weekly wrap up (mostly State of the Union ramble). The Donroe Doctrine, including putting the Monroe Doctrine in its historical context. The use of “Wine Mom” and “AWFULs” as a way of putting down the “wrong sort” of white woman (recorded in the aftermath of the two murders in Minnesota, and it feels like that was a long time ago not just over a month). Start the Week (a lot on the new war, but also the upcoming Spring Statement from Rachel Reeves).
• The Rest is Politics
  A special on the situation in Ukraine right now, marking the 4th anniversary of Putin’s full scale invasion (with Alastair in Ukraine talking to people). Special as a reaction to Trump’s new war with Iran. Another special reacting further to the new war once we knew that Khamenei had been assassinated.
• Behind the Lines with Arthur Snell
  Special on the Ukraine war, also marking the 4th anniversary. Special on the new war in Iran.
• The History of England Shedcasts
  Penultimate Birth of Britain episode. The winding down of Roman Britain, from how Diocletian’s reforms affected Britain to the rise of Constantine from Britain to being Emperor. And the sort of dribbling on of Roman Britain ceasing to be quite so Roman.
• Oh God What Now
  Peter Mandelson’s arrest, the potential ban on social media for under 16s. The Gorton & Denton by-election (extra episode). A cross over with This is Not a Drill, about the new war in Iran. More in depth look at the Gorton & Denton by-election.
• The History of Philosophy
  Interview with a scholar who’s studied Pascal’s Wager in depth.
• Journey Through Time
  Start of a series on the Chernobyl disaster, the first episode was about the flaws in both the design of the reactors and the way Soviet society was organised, and the second was the day everything went wrong.
• The Rest is Politics Leading
  The second half of the Neil Kinnock interview.
• Talk 90s to Me
  Posh & Becks’s wedding.
• Empire
  More on the Indian Uprising of 1857 – the British retaking Delhi (which in part happens because the Indians are freaked out by a lunar eclipse and so think they are doomed and depart), and the atrocities afterwards.
• The History of Byzantium
  Interview episode with Leonora Neville who argues that we shouldn’t silo off the Byzantine Empire into its own thing with that language, it’s much more truthful to think of the long Roman Empire and this as the eastern part thereof.
• Origin Story
  Bonus episode on 15 minute cities, both the actual concept and its history (and very nice in this bit to get a bio of Jane Jacobs who I’ve seen referenced before but knew little about) and the nutjob conspiracy theory that’s completely poisoned the well.

TV

• Newcastle v. Qarabag (3-2, 9-3 aggregate)
• Empire with David Olusoga
  The end of the Empire, from being at its largest post WW1 to going pop just a generation later. Drew out different stories to usual – Partition in India is mentioned but not dwelt on, instead he focuses more on Kenya.
• Digging for Britain
  A bit of an animal theme here, with Norman war horses (more like war ponies, and their small size & manoeuvrability was the point), many dogs (some of which were clearly pets) on an Iron Age & Roman site. Plus plant fossils from 300 million years ago, a fossilised forest in North Wales in amongst the coal seams that their contemporaneous plants turned into.
• The Age of Uncertainty
  Cities, their development and the current (late 70s) problems – 4 types coming roughly in sequence: Royal Household, Merchant City, Industrial City and Polyglot Metropolis. Plus the “camps”, i.e. the suburbs which is where the more affluent flee to once cities stop being beautiful places. One of his points was that as each wave of migrants enters a modern city they’re seen as the other & tensions rise but this is a transient phase not the end of the world.
• The Greatest Philosophers
  The American Pragmatists – the three philosophers they talked about here were all interested in knowledge and meaning and clarification of meaning, which made it all the more bizarre that the guest (Sidney Morgenbesser) seemed not to want to be particularly clear (nor to be clarified by the host). I was particularly struck by the discussion of how they saw science as fallible, in contrast to the mainstream opinion of the scientists of the 19th Century, but in agreement with mainstream opinion of today (in that we see science as putting forward a hypothesis which is discarded in favour of a new one when evidence is found to contradict it, rather than science as putting forwards truths).

Games

• Diablo IV
  Only 9 days till the end of the season & we’re not playing loads at the moment so we mostly had a run around in a Helltide for fun (oh, and a dungeon with Treasure Goblins where J had a Mythic drop).

Talks

• “New Research on the Making of the Narmer Palette” Kathryn Piquette & Mick Oakey
  Another update from Kathryn Piquette about her Narmer Palette research (this is the fourth time she’s spoken to the EEG over the last 11 years). This time the focus was on the experimental archaeology that she & Mick Oakey have been doing – he is a stone carver who’s made some replica Egyptian pieces with modern tools, so this was him using his expertise to work with replica ancient tools (flint & copper chisels) to see what techniques worked and what sorts of marks they left on the stone to compare with the real object.