Tuesday 3 March 2026 to Tuesday 10 March 2026

[mousetrappling]

Books

• “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