Tuesday 21 July 2026 to Tuesday 28 July 2026

[mousetrappling]

Books

• “Understanding Early Civilizations” Bruce G. Trigger
  Reading the chapter on land ownership now, which can be split into three types, all of which show up in all the civilisations – collectively owned land that stays in the group (family or whatever), institutional land (e.g. belongs to temples or the king as an institution), private land (that you get to sell or buy as you please). I’m not far enough through the chapter for the conclusions yet, I’m still in the mass of detail for each civilisation.

Podcasts

• Oh God What Now
  
  • Emergencycast, with initial reactions to the cabinet announcements many of which were not what was being widely predicted in the press, they seemed to think that various of the people being put into post might be prepared to do more radical things in their new jobs.
  • regular episode about Burnham’s announcements to date plus more discussion of the cabinet, and discussion of how AI is transforming the jobs market – their guest is Secretary of the TUC so was explaining the union perspective on both of those segments
• The Bunker
  
  • an episode about how the breaking down of social cohesion should be constituting a national emergency, and working to build that back up would help to fix some of the problems we currently have or at the very least help us navigate these uncertain times better
  • an interview with a Northern Irish journalist about the rioting in Belfast (about a month ago now)
  • Weekly Wrap Up, obviously focusing on how Burnham’s first week in government has gone.
  • episode about Kim Jong Un and what might happen to the North Korean regime if he dies
  • episode about Trump’s fetish for tariffs
  • Start the Week, starting with the climate crisis & the awful fires in France & Spain in particular (tho also Scotland), also something on Burnham’s week 2 where he’s apparently going to tell us about some bigger policy directions
• The History of Byzantium
  
  • another round of listener questions, continuing to wrap up the loose ends of the podcast as this is the penultimate episode.
  • last episode of the podcast, wrapping up by making an argument that you can’t understand the modern world without understanding Byzantium. I think he’s convincing that it’s an important part of shaping the world we live in.
• The Rest is Politics
  
  • talking about Burnham’s cabinet appointments and first policy announcements and what that says about his direction & strategy
  • Q&A with quite a bit about Chinese AI models & how they’re using their tech to bolster their soft power (unlike the US), also some stuff on Ukraine & the sacking of both a defence minister & a general.
• Empire
  
  • start of a series about the daughters of Duleep Singh, beginning with Sophia who grows up to be a suffragette.
  • the story of Catherine who ended up living in Germany with a woman who was once her governess but who she had a long lasting relationship with (precise nature unclear), during the Nazi years she was involved with smuggling Jews out of Germany before having to leave herself once her partner died.
  • the third daughter they discuss is Bamba, who moves back to Lahore, in the kingdom her father never ruled and ends up an old rather bitter woman who is the “last Sikh in Lahore” after Partition (note, like her sisters she’s not Sikh, she’s Christian).
• The Rest is Science
  
  • a Q&A episode, included a question about what would happen if the sun vanished for 72hrs then reappeared (we’d likely get through the 3 days of dark OK, but nothing would ever be right again coz our orbit would shift, probably only life in geothermal vents would survive)
  • partly about archaeology & partly about land ownership and its limits, using as its unifying jumping off point that there are only a handful of archaeological sites that aren’t within the territory of a state, but also covering things like manuports (things that aren’t made by people but are transported by them, including a pebble from 3 million years ago that looks like it has a face on it and had been transported at least 30km from where it would’ve been naturally found), and the deepest borehole (it’s Russian and was 12km deep and they stopped coz it got way hotter than expected and the material properties of the rock changed which made it hard to drill)
  • Q&A episode that started with a “space pen” Michael bought as a kid, which does indeed write upside down, and ended with a question about the Kardashev Scale (which is a theoretical measure of a civilisation’s level of technological advancement, which Michael & Hannah point out is pretty much speculative fiction)
  • episode on audio & optical illusions, I’ve not finished listening to it yet but I think they are working up to the way that you don’t perceive reality so much as invent it
• The History of Philosophy in China
  Interview with an expert on Legalism.
• The Rest is Politics US
  First half was about the Iran War and the likelihood of a ground invasion of at least Kharg Island over the weekend (by the time you read these words we’ll know if it happened), and the second half was about how Trump is trying to cast doubt on the integrity of elections ahead of the midterms and what the Democrats are trying to do about it
• Talk 90s to Me
  Episode about Paula Yates.
• The History of Egypt
  More rounding up of Ramesses II with another interview with Peter Brand.
• The History of China
  The northern expedition that the Taiping Rebellion send out, which stumbles and falls just shy of Beijing. Beaten in part by the weather, in a similar fashion to Napoleon’s ill-fated expedition to Russia, but also in part because the Qing are finally learning how to deal with them.
• Origin Story
  Paranormal Investigations, which had quite a bit of resonance with their two-parter on Evangelicals, particularly the way things change with the rise of TV & films. In this case you go from a Victorian era of a mix of charlatans (& true believers) and people who want to figure out if there’s any truth to this, to a collection of am-dram re-enactments of The Exorcist (egged on in many cases by a pretty unsavoury pair of exorcists/true believers who make a lot of money from book & film treatments of their “cases”).
• More Jam Tomorrow
  About the Poll Tax, which came between rates & council tax as a way of funding local government, and was so unpopular that it was a contributing factor to bringing Thatcher down.
• The History of England
  Another At A Gallop summary episode, this time covering the second half of Charles II’s reign where he falls out with Parliament in his turn and buddies up with France.
• This History of Philosophy
  Another playwright, Racine, whose tragedies are a counterpoint to Decartes’ (and before him the Stoics’) idea that we can control our passions with reason if we only try hard enough.

TV

• Voyage to Mars: The Longest Goodbye
  Split this into two chunks as it was pretty long. It’s about the human difficulties of going to Mars – it’s bad enough for astronauts on the ISS but they are in a much better position than anyone going to Mars, they have real time communication with their families and the missions are measured in months. There was a little bit at the end with scientists who are trying to work out how to make hibernation work (but the psychologists seemed to think that’d make the whole thing even worse once you woke up at the other end).
• Evolution
  Chris Packham presenting a series about evolution, using 5 different animals as ways into the subject – this episode was the elephant and the aspect he was focusing on was going from single cells to multicellular to animals to big animals (tho that wasn’t all it covered). It has a visual style/trick we’ve seen before (in another Chris Packham series, Earth) where the CGI is in a letterbox aspect ratio and the live action is full screen. You’d be able to tell the difference anyway but I like it as a conceit.
• Greatest Guitar Riffs
  Series finished off with Nancy Wilson of Heart, who was a bit less awkward in front of the camera than the other two. J’s comment on the series was that it would’ve been nicer if the music had had more space as we really only got snippets of things, which I do agree with. A fun series to watch anyway.

Games

• Diablo IV
  We’ve ticked off the capstone dungeon for Rank II, and made it up into the Paragon levels. Completing Rank II also opened up the Pits, so we got up to Tier 10 & opened up Torment I. We’re probably not far off the capstone for Rank III.