mousetrappling | Entries tagged with talks

Books

“Understanding Early Civilizations” Bruce G. Trigger
Finished the introduction & taking a pause for some fiction before I move on to the meat of the book. The final chapter of the introduction set out what evidence he used & how he interpreted it, so the “methods” section of the book. Essentially he went through the literature for all seven civilisations and compiled a list of their features so far as we know – from archaeological data and from documentary evidence. A lot of the chapter talked about how the data is of necessity incomplete, there’s a lot we don’t know about any of these cultures but the missing parts aren’t consistent so you can still do comparisons of the ones where you do have good data. He also spent time on talking about the biases of scholarship in the various fields, and noting that he can’t claim to be unbiased either.
“The Mercy of Gods” James S. A. Corey
This is a new book by the authors of The Expanse series. Quite some mental whiplash reading this after a couple of Adrian Tchaikovsky books that made me think of The Expanse, coz this book made me think of Tchaikovsky. It’s a far future non-Earth setting with aliens (and the humans don’t remember how they got to the planet, there’s some sort of catastrophe in their history, but they know they’re alien coz of the different biology).

Podcasts

The Rest is Politics Leading
- Interview with Ai Weiwei.
- Interview with Sarah McBride.
Talk 90s to Me
- Interview with an actress who played a long running character on Eastenders, which I’ve never watched. She was a kid in the 90s when she started on the show.
- another episode about something I’ve never watched – a TV drama called This Life which I don’t think I’d even heard of.
The Rest is Politics
- More on the Mandelson scandal, where they both have clearly lost respect for Starmer. Plus more on the Iran war, and a short bit of a reminder about the atrocities happening in the Sudan civil war.
- Q&A episode, covering stuff including Trump v. the Pope and how weird it is to be telling the Pope he’s doing theology wrong if you’re a Catholic (which Vance is, not Trump)
- an episode from a month ago plugging Dominic Sandbrook’s new podcast about books, with a bit of chat with Alastair then an excerpt from their episode about 1984.
The History of Egypt
- Interview with Campbell Price about Khaemwaset.
- Brief overview of the history of the GEM and what museums are left in Cairo.
Empire
- Back to the Mao series. This episode covered the disastrous famine caused by the Great Leap Forward.
- and the next episode was the Cultural Revolution (which tied in well with the Ai Weiwei episode of The Rest is Politics Leading), and then through to Mao’s death & legacy.
- Starting a series about the Arab-Israeli wars in the 60s, 70s & 80s, as a useful background to the current war.
The Rest is Science
- an episode about infinity, paradoxes involving infinity, and calculus.
- an episode about cancer, and cutting edge research that is being done on new ways to treat or prevent it (like there’s a vaccination in development for lung cancer, and there’s methods in development for taking someone’s T-cells out, inserting new instructions for what to target, then putting them back in the body, basically vaccination done in vitro with someone’s own cells)
- another episode about infinity, mostly focusing on different sizes of infinity and the work of Cantor.
The History of Byzantium
Some counterfactuals about how the history of Byzantium could’ve gone differently, and some listener questions.
The Bunker
- An episode about Canada, MAGA and the Albertan Seperatists, and how worried Canada should be (the interviewee was a bit on the fence between very and not so much so long as you start to do something to push back).
- An episode about Orwell & things being “Orwellian” prompted by a new film called “Orwell: 2+2=5” which is part documentary part biopic about Orwell & his work (1984 in particular).
- Weekly Wrap Up, obviously focusing a lot on the Mandelson scandal, but also a bit on the Iran war.
- Start the Week, a bit on the Trump assassination attempt (dwelling mostly on how deadened to it all we seem to’ve got), and a bit on whether or not Keir Starmer lasts much longer as leader (they thought post locals at least).
Oh God What Now
- More on the Mandelson scandal from the perspective of what happens next in the Labour party, also a section with a guest who has written a book about how to prompt AI better (I was pleased to hear one of the panel say she was an AI refusenik, and also pleased to hear the guest say that the point of the book was that he doesn’t think people realise how little you can rely on the answers you get, but less pleased that he seems to’ve bought into the idea that these things have some sort of agency (e.g. referring to them being manipulative)).
- The Trump assassination attempt, and the King’s state visit, plus a look at Reform’s promise to make school history lessons patriotic again.
The Rest is Politics US
- Obviously about the Iran war, and also about the sackings of a variety of senior military people. And a bit about the Democrats redrawing constituency boundaries in a particular state (this whole redistricting/gerrymandering thing feels weird as a non-US person, and like cheating).
The History of Philosophy in China
An interview episode, also with the co-writer of this series (Karyn Lai), as a celebration of reaching 50 episodes of the series. Looked at the schools of thought they’ve covered so far as a whole – Daoism, Confucianism & Mohism – talking about things like how much they were schools, how they overlapped or did not, and also about how looking at philosophy from other cultures not just one’s own broadens the mind even of a professional philosopher.
The History of England
After the Treat of Dover Charles II takes England into war against the Dutch again on the behest of the French, it goes poorly and not only do the English lose the war but Charles loses the respect of his people.
Origin Story
Recording of the live event they did a week or so ago – first half was a takedown of Matt Goodwin, both his career & his most recent book (which Dorian reckoned wasn’t completely written by ChatGPT as it would’ve been blander then which isn’t a compliment). Second half was films that have similar themes to the overall themes of the podcast & then a Q&A.

Egypt with Dan Snow
- Travelogue rather than Egyptology, and really rather shallow even taking that into account. But pretty enough that we’ll watch more than just this episode (which was about Luxor & environs).
- A bit of Nile cruise, and a bit around Aswan including going south to Abu Simbel, it remains rather shallow but pretty. Of particular amusement was them highlighting a cartouche while talking about the Emperor Hadrian as if it contained his name … it did not. It said “per-aa” which is the Egyptian word that has turned into Pharaoh in English, so not a specific king’s name at all!
Arts Most Satanic
Devils in art, and the evolution of the representation of the devil from fallen angel to demonic presence. A little taken aback by him using the Egyptian deity Bes as one of his examples of devils from other cultures, as Bes isn’t coded evil in ancient Egyptian religion.

Games

Diablo IV
Opened up Torment II, and got ourselves up to a Tier 26 Pit. Ticked off a few low hanging bits of the Season Journey but we were too busy & this season was too short for us to’ve got far. Think I enjoyed it more than J as I’d lucked into a character type that suited the season gimmicks.

Talks

“The Arabic Excavation Archive from Qift: Digitization, transcription, and translation of the Arabic Diaries from the Harvard-MFA excavations in Egypt and Sudan, 1913-1947” Arabic Diaries project team
The Egyptian foremen who worked for Reisner whilst he was excavating in Egypt and the Sudan in the early 20th Century kept extensive records in Arabic of the excavations they led. These diaries were rediscovered in the early 21st Century and this team is working on making them available to the public & other archaeologists as a resource and on getting what information they can about the workers etc that is recorded in these diaries.

Books

“Understanding Early Civilizations” Bruce G. Trigger
Got to the end of chapter 2, where I’m taking a break. This was about comparative studies and how he’s used them in this work – for modern cultures you can do statistical analyses of factors across a decent sample size. So you can say things like cultures who feed themselves with a hunter/gatherer method don’t have hereditary monarchies with some degree of statistical significance. For early civilisations there aren’t many you can use so he can’t do as much stats. But he argues that if he can categorise his seven examples into a small number of types then the sample is probably large enough (but if they are all different then it definitely isn’t). Also discussed how he’s picking his examples, which are: Egypt, Mesopotamia, Shang Dynasty China, Classic Maya, Late Aztec, Inca, Yoruba/Benin. Basically there have to be both archaeology and historical records available as you can’t tell everything you need from only one source. So for some this means there’s a narrow window between Europeans starting to write about them & Europeans changing their cultures, but for others they wrote themselves so there’s a wider timespan. This requirement meant he hasn’t got a civilisation from the Indian subcontinent (which he’d like to have) because we can’t read the language of the people who lived in the Indus Valley. He’s also picked civilisations where he can argue that the culture has evolved in place with little outside influence.
“Eyes of the Void” Adrian Tchaikovsky
Sequel to “Shards of Earth”, and picks up pretty much where that one ends and is still reminding me a lot of The Expanse books in flavour.

Podcasts

The History of China
The Opium War continues to escalate from the initial skirmishes – first the Chinese bring in reinforcements but they get defeated, then the English reinforcements turn up and are much more effective.
The Bunker
- An episode about the Iran war from about a month ago (I guess I didn’t notice the topic when it came up in the list). The take home then from the guest was that the thing that’s not been particularly noticed is that it’s already spreading regionally, and even tho that is noticed we’re still not talking really about what’s going on in Lebanon.
- An episode about the actual currently existing AI harms that we should be worried about, using the then recent Grok creating illegal content fiasco as a jumping off point to think about the sorts of things that are already harmful.
- Weekly Wrap Up. Which obviously covered the Iran war & the cease fire situation, but also covered Kanye West being kept out of the UK.
- Start the Week – including the Orban defeat, but also more on the Iran war as well as some domestic politics.
Empire
- episode 4 of the series about Mao, covering the first decade or so post the Communists taking over China right up to just before the Great Leap Forward.
- an episode I’d missed putting on my playlist a little while ago – covering the historicity of Homer & talking about what we can & cannot glean from it.
The Rest is Politics
- Rory Stewart replaced by Dominic Sandbrook this week, so a bit more leaning on history as that’s his thing. All about the Iran war, and recorded after Trump threatened genocide but before the ceasefire. Included some chat about Trump’s mental state, about if he’s fascist or not (Sandbrook still says no but does think other parts of the Trump regime are, like Miller).
- Q&A, still with Dominic Sandbrook, talked about NATO, the World Cup, amongst other thing.
- a short extra bit reacting to the news that Orban lost.
The Rest is Politics US
- a livestream recorded just after the ceasefire was announced, so all about that.
- More on the Iran war, talking about how fragile the cease fire seems, but suggesting it will hold so long as the Chinese want it to. Also talking about how the Democrats have done well in recent special elections, but mostly because the swing voters who hate everyone are more anti-Republican at the moment as the Republicans are in charge.
Oh God What Now
- A bit on the Iran war, some on the rise of the Greens and some on the Kanye West fiasco.
- Mostly covered the Orban defeat, talking about what it means for Hungary but also to Europe & to the far right groups who saw Orban as the leader to imitate.
The Rest is Science
- a Q&A episode, but also a bit of a chance for Hannah to plug the series she’s just made for the BBC that we’re actually watching right now (so being a month out of date on these made it dovetail nicely), so a decent chunk of the episode discussing AI psychosis and how we’re all susceptible to at least a mild form of it.
The History of Philosophy in China
An interview with an expert on the Zhuangzi to round off those episodes. Mostly a compare & contrast with Confucianism but also at the end a note on the similarities with Legalism.
Literature & History
An episode covering the Hadiths.
History of England Shedcasts
Part two of the history of duels, this one covered duels during their heyday and the slow dribbling out of the custom. I hadn’t realised the final death knell was really the First World War, so much death that courting it by duelling people seemed ridiculous.
The History of England
An episode tying in with some nationwide project about objects that are quintessentially English, so Crowther & a friend talked about the 10 they’d pick (which included everything from Cadbury’s chocolate to the Putney Debates).
Journey Through Time
The downfall of McCarthy, in large part precipitated by the fact he wasn’t good in the new age of TV – his ability to manipulate how the print press reported on him didn’t help when the hearings began to be televised.
The Rest is Politics Leading
An interview with the Prime Minister of Spain.

Hunt for the Oldest DNA
A programme about a project that eventually sequenced DNA fragments from a soil/sediment sample that was over 2 million years old and provided an vision of what the ecosystem was at the time. A story of breakthroughs (first this guy had shown that you could get DNA from dirt at all, then subsequently pushed it back beyond the 1 million year old mark), but also it sounded like his insistence on chasing this had driven several PhD students out of science as they’d been assigned the project then failed to get anywhere with it.
AI Confidential with Hannah Fry
- This episode had a couple of examples of the ways that driverless cars have gone wrong – a crash where a self driving Uber killed a pedestrian whilst it was being tested, and a crash where a Tesla failed to stop at a stop sign, failed to turn a corner and drove straight off the road into a parked car killing one of the occupants. Fry made the point that developing new tech comes with mistakes, but that this class of mistake was avoidable and the companies should bear a significant amount of responsibility for the accidents – in the Uber case the car hadn’t been trained to recognise pedestrians who weren’t on pavements or crosswalks and also didn’t track or take evasive action when it didn’t know what an object was, so how was that remotely ready for real roads. And in the Tesla case it just didn’t do the sorts of things that the advertising said it would, so the logs show it recognised all the things it needed to recognise but didn’t do anything (and the driver was distracted looking for his phone that he’d dropped coz he thought the car capable of driving itself).
- The final episode used the killing of the United Healthcare CEO as the jumping off point to talk about the use of AI algorithms in healthcare (but with nods to the wider use). The specific one that seems to’ve triggered the murder (or at least that everyone talks about as the thing the United Healthcare do wrong) is there’s an algorithm that United Healthcare use to determine when people get discharged from hospital – and there’s little to no flexibility so if you’re not well enough you get kicked out not well enough (and it’s systematically recommending discharge dates earlier than the patient is well enough). Fry also talked to someone with a startup that lets you select among IVF embryos for the “best” ones by sequencing the whole genome of the embryo then using AI to predict things like disease risks, but also eye colour, height, IQ. He was unconvincingly anti eugenics.
Art’s Most …
A series on art presented by Waldemar Januszczak, each episode of which is Art’s Most something, and this first one was Art’s Most Erotic. Covered a pretty wide-ranging selection of explicit art from prehistory through Pompeii, India, Japan, France & England. Some of which was spiritual or about love, some of which was very much not.
Rick Stein’s Australia
Episode 5 was another inland one, in an area between two rivers so nice & fertile for farming – settled mostly by Italians (at least in the places he visited). Most entertaining section wasn’t Italians, it was on an emu farm, where the emu chicks were a bit over-friendly. Nice sounding beef ragu recipe to try.
The Roman Empire by Train
This episode covered some of northern Italy (Parma, Turin) and Nimes in France. We’ve been to Turin, about 13 years ago, so it was kinda neat to see bits of the place that we recognised (as well as a bunch of stuff we didn’t as we were there to see the Egyptian Museum).

Music

“Don’t Bore Us, Get to the Chorus” Roxette
“Scissor Sisters” Scissor Sisters

Talks

“Coffins as Magical Machines: Visualizing Ancient Egyptian Funerary Texts in 3D” Rita Lucarelli
This wasn’t quite what I expected – more about the way she’s using 3D models & VR to bring the study of the texts to life, than about the texts themselves. This is in part a pedagogical exercise – involving students in creating the models, so they photograph & measure the object, and add the annotations to the model or translate the texts. All of which makes them engage with the object & all the knowledge we have about it. It’s also a way of bringing all this information to a wider audience (there’s a website https://www.ocf.berkeley.edu/~bookofthedead/ ). And it’s a way of investigating how the texts worked in practice rather than analysing them solely based on looking at the text in isolation.

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.

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

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.

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.

Book

“The Golden Road: How Ancient India Transformed the World” William Dalrymple

Buddhism is particularly associated with merchants in its early days, in contrast to Hinduism where you lose caste if you indulge in trade. This means it’s carried on trade routes, and this bit of the book talks quite a bit about ancient trade between India & the Mediterranean, not just with Egypt during the Roman Period, but also with Mesopotamia much earlier c. 2500 BCE.

Qarabag FK v. Newcastle (1-6), playoffs in Champions League

Digging for Britain

The northeast of England plus the southeast of Scotland. Quite a lot around the Roman era, including a Pictish settlement and what’s probably a Roman whetstone factory in Sunderland. There was also a bit on Gloucester Museum solving its cataloguing & storage problem by getting volunteers in to help.

Man City v. Newcastle (2-1)

The Great Philosophers

An episode on Husserl, Heidegger & Modern Existentialists, which mostly concentrated on Heidegger. Husserl was cast as rather arrogantly thinking he was the culmination of all that Descartes had started, then Heidegger pushes back against Husserl and that whole branch of philosophy. His basic idea is that you can’t think of us each as subjects that interact essentially from a distance with objects that may or may not constitute a real world, but instead we are out there in the real world and that our attention is often not consciously directed at any object so that’s not an answer to the questions of how our consciousness works.

Podcasts

Oh God What Now

A guest episode looking at the question of if we’re ready for a war with Russia (not really), and a normal panel show looking at could Farage do what Trump has done & also talking about a documentary that’s just aired about Tony Blair (I’ve recorded it but we haven’t watched it). The arrest of Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor (and how the victims of Epstein are still being elided), and the upcoming Gorton & Denton by-election.

The Rest is Politics

Talking about Rubio & Starmer’s speeches from the Munich conference (their consensus was that Rubio’s message was the same as Vance’s last year but masked it more with flattery). A bit of a rant about how Farage gets away with everything, the Thai elections & the Bangladesh elections, more on the Munich conference. The arrest of Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor (without Rory). Trump’s tariffs, more on the arrest of Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor with Rory this time, the proposed SEND reforms.

The Bunker

Weekly wrap up (mostly about the arrest of Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor.) Start the Week. How Russia (and Putin) ended up how they are now when it looked like it might be so different in the 1990s. Pete Hegseth and the US military.

The Rest is Politics US

The arrest of Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor in the context of US domestic politics, the mid-terms. The Supreme Court declaring the tariffs invalid, recorded before Trump put them back on again, and very optimistic about this being the beginning of the end of Trump.

Talk 90s to Me

Britney Spears (only in the context of her first hit really, and her career prior to that).

The History of England

Guest/interview episode, covering c. 1000 years of English history very briskly through the lens of what various factors that meant that things like the Industrial Revolution & the Enlightenment happened here, and the better bits of modernity (prosperity, the welfare state).

Origin Story

A Patreon only Q&A episode, mostly jumping off from the season on Socialism that they’ve just wrapped up.

Empire

Another episode (fifth, I think) of their series on the Indian Uprising of 1857, this time covering the story of Lakshmibai who was ruler of one of the states that the East India Company tried to absorb at about this time and ended up leading part of the rebellion practically despite her best efforts to remain loyal. The sixth episode in this series, about the Siege of Delhi.

The Rest is Science

Randomness, chaos, disorder, the creation of meaning, and the origins of the universe and consciousness (for the latter essentially the idea is that we have evolved to create meaning from what we observe as a way of surviving and this is why we generate a sense of self, and if the universe had inherent meaning we wouldn’t’ve needed to evolve that ability).

Journey Through Time

Wrapping up their series on the Spanish Civil War, and looking at how it didn’t end up with any reconciliation after it ended, then after Franco dies there is a codified “forgetting” which is only now beginning to unravel. Also framing it as having something to teach us in the modern day about when & how to intervene as fascism takes hold.

Exhibitions

Made in Egypt

At the Fitzwilliam Museum. Looking at ancient Egyptian objects through the lens of how they were made. So they were organised by material (stone, pottery, faience etc), and the materials were organised to some degree by production method (pottery, faience, glass all need fire; linen, baskets, papyrus were all plant fibres sort of woven). I’d seen quite a few of the objects before (even the loans) but it was an interestingly different way to look at the them. I also particularly liked the way they used Nina M. Davis watercolour paintings of the reliefs from the tomb of Rekhmire to tie the whole thing visually together – these scenes show craftsmen at work, and they had appropriate bits projected onto the walls near the different sections with some of them animated.

Music

Art Brut live at Cambridge Corn Exchange

Support for Maxïmo Park, I thought I only knew one of their tracks but I think I actually knew two. They were quite fun as the opening act but I still don’t think I need an album.

Maxïmo Park live at Cambridge Corn Exchange

This was the 20th anniversary of their first album, A Certain Trigger, so that was what they were touring. Unlike PRR’s similarly themed show they didn’t play it all in order, instead mixing the songs in with stuff from their other albums. A good gig, they always put on a very high energy show and it’s a lot of fun to watch. We were right at the front again – this time because the audience for Maxïmo Park gigs always seem to arrive comically late, so we got there just after doors should’ve opened and then bought merch & put stuff in the cloakroom and still made it to the barriers at the front.

Various “Now 12”

Talks

“New Discoveries from the City of the Snake Goddess” Nicky Nielsen

Taking us through the preliminary results from the 2024 excavations at Tell Nabasha. There isn’t much of the archaeology left due to modern building, but the two trenches he talked about tell us about two different periods – tower houses during the Late Period (with food production & cereal processing sites) and Ptolemaic occupation of what had previously (still was?) the temple site, which ended with a catastrophic fire.

Games

Diablo IV

It’s been 2 weeks since we played, so a bit of reminding ourselves how these characters worked with a NM dungeon, then a handful of Pits. Mostly at Tier 65, but we did do a Tier 66 at the end so I do now have the credit for one after the disconn incident two weeks ago.

Books

“I Am a Strange Loop” Douglas Hofstadter
Finished today. It’s about consciousness and what it is, and I enjoyed reading it. His central argument is that consciousness, our sense of “I”, is an emergent property of the brain and is essentially an illusion, a stable pattern of perception that arises from how our minds work but doesn’t “really exist”. It’s a product of a particular perspective – the one we usually use when thinking about ourselves and other people (and the world in general), where we engage only on the level of concepts and symbols. But underneath those concepts and symbols of the mind are the firings of neurons and when you describe a brain at that level the “I” vanishes. He totally rejects dualism, the idea that there’s something “extra” that’s non-physical and makes a conscious being conscious. Instead he’s saying that as a mind develops into a more and more complex system that models its perceptions of the world with more & more rich & sophisticated concepts then one of the things it models is also itself and its workings. And this feedback loop of self-modelling is what generates a stable pattern that feels like it is the self.
“His Face is the Sun” Michelle Jabès Corpora
A bit of a change of pace. YA secondary world fantasy in an analogue of ancient Egypt (New Kingdom in feel thus far). I’ve barely read any of it, but I did like that I recognised which myth the prologue was a retelling of, and I’m a bit unnecessarily narked that the map on the endpapers turns Upper Egypt into Low Khetara and Lower Egypt into High Khetara.

Podcasts

The History of English
The nautical terms that entered the general English language during the 1620s (plus the history of England in that decade).
Empire
The photographer Julia Margaret Cameron, a pioneering artistic photographer of the 19th Century. The start of a series on the First Indian War of Independence (also known as the Indian Mutiny), setting up the context of 1857 and the triggering event of sepoys forced to bite bullets coated in grease that was rumoured to be pork & beef fat.
Journey Through Time
The last of the series on A Christmas Carol, on how it changed the world and brought Christmas back into fashion. Start of a series on the Spanish Civil War and how it was an important prelude to the Second World War, this episode covered in high level terms the political situation in Spain in the run up, and the political situation in Europe in the run up.
The Rest is Politics
Mark Carney’s speech at Davos as a jumping off point for talking about the state of the world, Starmer preventing Burnhum from standing for election. Minnesota, Suella Braverman’s defection, the new centre right movement Prosper, the problem of technology enabled child sex abuse & what could be done about it.
Behind the Lines with Arthur Snell
An interview with Samir Puri, talking about how the world is changing from a unipolar world focused on the Transatlantic region to a multipolar world focused on the Indopacific region (with minimal reference to Trump because he is not the only reason things are changing).
The Rest is Science
Modelling crowds using fluid dynamics, non-standard dice & non-standard shapes of standard dice (suffered a bit for me only listening rather than watching, first episode where that’s really been the case). Magnetism, what is it, how the Earth is a magnet, how robins seem to see the magnetic field (as an actual visual thing).
The History of Philosophy in China
Animal stories in the Zhuangzi and how they look at the world through other perspectives (and a compare & contrast with the Confucian dismissal of everything not human as not important).
The Rest is Politics US
An interview with the Prime Minister of Norway about Nato, Greenland, Trump. The further release of the Epstein files, what the outlook for the 2026 midterms is.
Oh God What Now
The Burnhum debacle, the Braverman defection, how media censorship works in our modern age, the middle class spending squeeze. A single issue guest episode about what’s going wrong with UK universities.
The History of England
1665-1666, the plague and the continuing war with the Dutch.
The Rest is Politics Leading
Interview with Jimmy Wales, the founder of Wikipedia.
Talk ’90s to Me
Pulp Fiction.
Origin Story
Q&A episode for after their season on Socialism.
The Bunker
A look at how UK domestic politics sit and what Labour needs to do to turn things around (catching up, in world political terms this was post Venezuela but before the height of the Greenland stuff around Davos), Weekly Wrap Up, Start the Week, What Will Elon Musk Ruin Next? (which is actually about the AI hype cycle)
The History of Byzantium
This podcast has finished the chronological run, and now the episodes are sort of wrap up/overview episodes – this one covers 5 people who were influential in the East Roman Empire who didn’t come up as much in the political historical narrative.

The Age of Uncertainty
This episode was a bit of an odd historical artifact – a look at the Cold War from the perspective of someone still inside it, first aired in 1977 and containing a lot of his reminiscences of being involved in the US administration. His analysis was that the Cold War had moved from a religious moral crusade to a pair of bureaucracies whose status & prestige were entirely down to reacting to the perceived threats from each other and creating ever more weapons. A trap that kept the military capability ratcheting up as each reacted to what it thought the other was doing (and often creating the thing they thought they were reacting to).
PSG v. Newcastle (1-1, so they’re in the playoffs for the Champions League rather than going straight through to the next phase)
Digging for Britain Season 13
Scotland & the North West of England, the archaeology of Glen Coe (digging up the houses where the massacre occurred), Roman burials near Penrith (rescue archaeology before the M6 is improved), Roman bathhouse & temple in Carlisle, Somali “village” in Bradford (c. 1904, pretty appalling, these people were an exhibit essentially like they were in a zoo), and a 1970s skate park in Scotland somewhere I’ve forgotten (that was weird to see archaeology being done on something younger than me (it opened in 1978) and I’m also not sure why it was being done).
Liverpool v. Newcastle (3-1)
The Great Philosophers
This episode was unexpectedly entertaining (the others have been informative rather than entertaining), as Bryan Magee started off in his introduction by explaining that he himself had written the best recent book on Schopenhauer, but he could hardly interview himself so he had invited Frederick Copleston who had written one of the other books. Which set the tone for the rest of it, it was quite a spiky conversation and they clearly had significant disagreements on how to interpret Schopenhauer and his ideas.

Games

Diablo IV
Up to a Tier 65 Pit but we failed that, plus ticked off all the Andariels and all the Azmodans. Did not do so well with an Infernal Horde on Torment IV, but did have a good run around in a Helltide.

Talks

“Looking up! Uncovering histories of Egyptology on a journey through Paris” Angela Stienne
A trot through various bits of Paris that have Egyptological connections, some obvious (the Place de la Concorde, the Louvre) and some less so (a house where the first director of the Louvre lived etc). She’s got a book out (in French) that covers more of this.
“Animal cult in Tuna el Gebel: the animal necropolis and the priest settlements in Ptolemaic times” Mélanie Flossmann-Schütze
A look at the development over time of the animal necropolis at Tuna el-Gebel, linking the various phases of building/burials with the phases of building at nearby Hermopolis Magna. And a discussion of the settlements nearby where the priests & other cult workers lived in 5 storey tower houses.

Books

“The Knowledge: How to Rebuild Our World After an Apocalypse” Lewis Dartnell
The last chapters were timekeeping, location, and how to science. Finished Wednesday 7 January 2026. I enjoyed reading this, tho at times my suspension of belief snapped (an odd thing to say about non-fiction, but it leant into its premise of being a handbook for after an apocalypse and sometimes that just didn’t quite work). Having read it once I couldn’t reboot civilisation, but I can see if you had it to hand when you were trying to do so then it would be awfully useful (tho it would likely be good to have hold of it in time to also rescue chunks of the bibliography!). It was published in 2015, so I guess it was more of a distant thought experiment then …

“I Am a Strange Loop” Douglas Hofstadter
Started this in December before I picked up the Dartnell, and am now back to it. It’s about consciousness and one’s sense of a coherent self, and I’m finding it hard to summarise the chunk I’ve read as the initial clause of this sentence is too high level but the paragraph I’d previous written was too granular. Which is apt, as some of what I read this week was about the various levels of abstraction that can be used to talk about what’s going on in the brain. Another key bit was that he’s using video feedback (point your video camera at the TV) as a central metaphor for the book; stable patterns emerge in ways that are opaque to the viewer.

Podcasts
Note that I’m up to date on topical ones, but anything less tied to right now I’m about a month behind.

Empire
Rudyard Kipling, his later life which includes the horrifyingly racist bits

Bunker.
OBR (aired when it was topical, an explainer), weekly wrap up (Venezuela, Minnesota), Start the Week, why more people are single these days, the allegations about Farage’s teenage bullying.

More Jam Tomorrow
Malaya, in particular the final years of British rule.

Starship Alexandria
Still on advent calendar episdes: Babylon 5, Fargo season 5, Sapphire & Steel (which I didn’t know was SF), The Good Life, Scavenger Rain (Reign?), Midsomer Murders, What We Do in the Shadows.

The Rest is Politics
Greenland, Venezuela, Moldova, domestic UK politics, AI, the release of historical government documents, Iran, Yemen, the Arctic.

The History of China
Tibet & Xinjiang vis-a-vis their relationship with c. 1800 CE China.

Oh God What Now
Special on Venezuela, normal panel show also on Venezuela and the lower tempo shitshow of UK politics, interview show with Jason from Sleaford Mods.

The Rest is Politics US
Minnesota, Venezuela, Greenland.

The History of Egypt
Looking at diplomatic relations between the Hittites & Ramesses II post the treaty after the Battle of Kadesh.

The History of Philosophy in China
The Daoist view of rigidly enforcing your view of right & wrong on others as being wrong.

The History of England Shedcasts
A Birth of Britain episode, we’re up to Roman Britain now, with the Romans having to boot up a whole economic/social infrastructure system in Britain to incorporate it into the empire.

The History of England
A guest episode from The Art of Crime, about Anthony Blunt, art historian, MI5 employee, courtier, and Soviet spy.

Journey Through Time
The start of a run of episodes about Black GIs in Britain during WW2.

The Rest is Politics Leading
Interview with Anna Wintour who came across as surprisingly warm & charming, given the reputation I’ve picked up through osmosis.

Talk 90s to Me
Italia 90, which I remember watching bits of (it’s the one where Gazza cried).

In Our Time: The Mokrani Revolt
Algerian uprising in 1871 against the French, the brutal put down & subsequent treatment of the Algerians played a large part in creating a sense of an Algerian nation, and this revolt was woven into the story leading to the Algerian war of independence in the 1950s.

Jools’ Annual Hootenany
We half-watched some of it at New Year, but were socialising more than watching so we watched it properly.

2025 The Year from Space
A surprising amount of stuff where I’d forgotten it had happened in 2025, there has just been too much stuff going on. Nicely leavened by the lighter & happier things they pulled out.

episode 4 of Civilisations: Rise and Fall, about Japan
This one was the opening up of Japan by the US. The key driver here for the collapse was Japan’s prior successful isolation which meant the arrival of the modern world happened all at once. Overall the series was not as good as it could’ve been, and looked a bit too much like the great man theory of history even tho I don’t think that was their intent (too much focus on three key figures in each). The ones I knew more about felt pretty simplified tho not far enough to be wrong, just not very nuanced, so presumably the other two were similar. A bit heavy handed at the end with their references to “can we learn lessons”, but then I would probably have felt better about that if the dumpster fire of the world hadn’t intensified – it’s very clear that those who would need to learn said lessons actively do not care.

episode 1 of Valley of the Kings: Secret Tomb Revealed
Following a team excavating the burial chamber in KV11 (tomb of Ramesses III), interspersed with bits on the history including the assassination of Ramesses III.

Music

Cyndi Lauper “Twelve Deadly Cyns”

The Bangles “Eternal Flame”

Games

Diablo IV
Tier 54 Pit, also ticked off another Season Journey objective so everything in rank 5 & below is done. The Tower (leaderboards) beta opened, did up to a Tier 60 on that which opened up Torment IV (they are supposed to be equivalent levels to the Pit but it felt way easier), as they stand they feel a trifle pointless in game, it’s all for the bragging rights of one’s leaderboard position.

Talks

“All the King’s Men and Women: putting the people into Sais” Penny Wilson
What the slim archaeological evidence at Sais can tell us about the people who lived there.

Two weeks worth this time coz I was busy last Wednesday evening.

Books

Fiction: Finished "The Bonehunters" by Steven Erikson - there wasn't much left so not really anything more to say.

Started "Reaper's Gale" also by Steven Erikson - there's a feeling of several of the narrative threads pulling together in this one (can't be too many though, there are 3 more books), at least several of the more mundane (as opposed to godlike, but that's a spectrum not a binary in these books) protagonists are all in the same place with foreshadowing of convergence. No-one knows the full story of what's going on tho (nor does the reader).

Non-fiction: Still reading "The Making of the Middle Sea", Cyprian Broodbank - the second half or so of the 2nd Millennium BCE is a time of increasing contacts across the Mediterranean, and of the decline and/or collapse of palace centred polities in favour of trading networks, the Sea Peoples, the rise of the Phoenicians, Iberia is no longer as isolated and so on.

Listening

Podcasts: ep 5.6 of the History of India - Kashmir's attempt to conquer India & the whole world.

ep 110-121 of The History of China - we are well into the decline & fall of the Tang now, bandit rebellions all over the place, so-called Governor Generals who are more like autonomous warlords etc etc.

ep Eleanor 10-11 of The History of England Shedcasts - Eleanor and Henry II of England marry, and a look at how much power and influence she actually had during the early years of their marriage.

ep Marshal 4-5 of The History of England Shedcasts - William's father and his King Arthur obsession, then William's adolescence which started with his moving to Tancarville to live with a (distant) relative's household to learn the skills he'd need in later life.

ep 215 of The China History Podcast - second half of a biography of V. K. Wellington Koo who continues to be a big part of the Chinese diplomatic machinery throughout the middle of the 20th Century.

ep 5 (remastered) of The History of Egypt - he's redoing the early episodes gradually, so I listened to this when it got re-uploaded. Covers Sneferu & his three pyramids.

ep 106 of The History of Egypt - moving forward with the last years of Amenhotep III's reign, and looking at international diplomacy & marriage alliances in particular.

ep 121 of The History of English - looking at how English became the language of government in the years following the Black Death for the first time since the Norman Conquest.

bonus episode of The History of Byzantium - about Harald Hardrada who spend his early adulthood in exile and some of that time as a mercenary in Byzantium.

ep 184 of The History of Byzantium - moving the narrative forward in the 1040s where Zoe & her sister are still the routes to power although they seem to have no overt desire to rule themselves instead another new husband of Zoe's becomes the Emperor.

two bonus episodes of The History of England - one an interview with someone about Joseph Lancaster who was a great reformer of education during the 19th Century, and the other a guest episode about trade during the Tudor period (and pirates, like Drake).

Sunday podcast: Listened to an episode of In Our Time about Emmy Noether - the most famous mathematician I'd never heard of (I think). She worked during the first half of the 20th Century and was responsible for some of the bits of maths in Einstein's theory of General Relativity, her own interests were more in the field of pure mathematics than theoretical physics and her work there changed the way mathematicians think about things.

Listened to an episode of In Our Time about Owain Glyndwr who declared himself Prince of Wales and lead a revolt against Henry IV. Although ultimately unsuccessful he had some definite momentum going at first and it took a while for Henry to reassert English control over Wales.

Talks: "Ancient Egypt & Nubian Leather Technology", Lucy Skinner - EEG meeting talk this month, she told us about how leather is made and how Egyptian & Nubian leather is different to European leather, and what & how it was used. Along with some examples of items she's worked on, including some armour from Tutankhamun's tomb.

"Papyrus BM EA87512: Always Look on the Bright Side of Wife?" Koen Donker van Heel - this year's Glanville Lecture about a papyrus of accounts written in abnormal hieratic and what it tells us about the lives of more ordinary people in the 9th Century BCE. He was a very entertaining speaker.

Music: While running I listened to Everything But the Girl "Amplified Heart" (not many solo runs in the last two weeks). To drown out the TV sounds so I could write I listened to more Bill Laswell "Spiritual Beauty: Imaginal Orient" (passed me by a bit more than the other one, might've been my frame of mind at the time tho), and a whole bunch of compilations: a soundtrack to a film I've never seen "The End of Violence" (had a Bill Pullman track on it, quite enjoyed it), Now 31 CD2 (had a Billie Ray Martin track on it, this is around where I stopped buying Now albums and so it part sounds of nostalgia and part sounds of kids these days have no taste), two Imagined Village things (the EP and the first album, both for Billy Bragg songs, I love most of this project's stuff, folk but modern), "Swing Brother Swing" (has a Billy Eckstine Orchestra piece, I keep forgetting we have this compilation), "Come & Get It: The Best of Apple Records" (which has a Billy Elliot track on it, quite liked this CD).

Watching

ep 3-6 of Icons - scientists, entertainers, activists & sports stars. The mini-bios continue to be interesting, and an interesting way to look at the 20th Century, you get to see a lot of different aspects of modern history. The vote bit is still somewhat of a gimmick.

ep 2 of 100 Days to Victory - the birth of modern warfare in the end of the First World War. Overall a bit of an odd skew to the series, you're rather given the impression there were no English or French soldiers on the battlefield anywhere in the last 100 days, and I'm sure there must've been ;)

ep 2 of Pubs, Ponds and Power - another village, this time Lavenham in Suffolk which is a well preserved medieval village that had been very prosperous when the wool & cloth trade was booming then less so after that (hence not replacing all their houses with newer ones over the centuries).

ep 1 & 2 of Nadiya's Asian Odyssey - a bit of a weird gimmick for this series basing it on what a DNA test showed about her ancestry, but it kinda worked even so. Thankfully the "science" aspect was kept to gimmick/framing device, and the actual shows focused on the cooking and travelogue stuff. She came across well, first programmes of hers we've watched.

ep 1 of Babies: Their Wonderful World - about early development of babies/toddlers, in this episode looking at things like how innate are personality traits and biases. But I think for my tastes too skewed towards an audience of people who have babies & are interested in what's happening inside their heads and not towards an audience of people who find human development interesting. Haven't quite decided if we're bothering with the rest.

ep 1 of Our Classical Century - Suzy Klein and Lenny Henry looking at British classical music during the early-ish 20th Century including composers like Holst, Vaughn Williams, Samuel Coleridge-Taylor & Gershwin. Slightly odd choice to show the episodes so far apart, this was aired in November and ep 2 has only just aired so we'll be catching up then waiting for the next one for a while.

Includes some spoilers for Doctor Who at the end...

Books

Fiction: Finished "Memories of Ice" Steven Erikson - it actually wraps up in a pretty satisfying fashion, the long term issues that drive the story don't get resolved but if the series had stopped here as a trilogy you'd not be left with a feeling of unfinished business. Presumably he was initially contracted for three books and it was the success of those that meant he got to carry on with the series.

Started "House of Chains" Steven Erikson - this book starts with what seems to be a completely unrelated narrative thread but gradually it becomes clear how it interweaves with the events of the previous three books.

Non-fiction: Still reading "The Making of the Middle Sea", Cyprian Broodbank - he's now also covered Mesopotamia c. 3500 BCE to 2200 BCE in brief as well, and is moving on to the Levant during this period & how these two increasingly powerful states (Egypt & Mesopotamia) affect it.

Shakespeare: Much Ado About Nothing: Act 1 Scenes 1-3, Act 2 Scenes 1-3 - we've set up the two couples in whose lives other people are to meddle (maliciously in the case of Claudio & Hero and not so in the case of Benedick & Beatrice).

Listening

Podcasts: ep 264-264c of The History of England - he's covering the reign of Lady Jane Grey in a series of mini-episodes released every day over the next two weeks. Not actually a day per day but that gives the feel.

ep Eleanor 2 of The History of England Shedcasts - more scene setting, in this case for Eleanor's family & lineage.

ep 59-63 of The History of China - moving on through the Southern & Northern period, which appears to involve an awful lot of murder in the royal families of both powers (the Northern one institutionalising some of it by having a "family tradition" of the mother of the Crown Prince having to die when he gets the title).

ep 177 of The History of Byzantium - some listener questions about the state of the Empire c.1025 CE.

bonus episode of The History of English - a talk he gave where he was giving an overview of what the podcast is about, using the proto-Indo-european word wer (sp?) as an example of changes through time. It ends up in English in many forms, including things like beware and regard.

ep 210 of The China History Podcast - continuing the story of Jewish Refugees in China, moving into the late 1930s.

Sunday Podcast: an episode of In Our Time about The Long March - the long retreat of the forces of the Red Army in the 1930s and how that march became an integral part of Communist China's foundation myth and a part of Mao Zedong's rise to power.

Music: While running I listened to Guns'n'Roses and Bon Jovi. In the evenings I listened to more Beth Orton EPs plus her album "Trailer Park".

EEG Talk: "The Coffins of Nespawershefyt and Pakepu at the Fitzwilliam Museum" Helen Strudwick - she took us through the construction & decoration of each of the coffin sets, and also talked about what is known about the people whose coffins they were.

Watching

ep 4 of Dynasties - Painted Wolves this time. Perhaps the least charismatic of the animals who have been main features, tho more charismatic than the hyenas who were also featured in this episode.

ep 2 of the Mediterranean with Simon Reeve - continuing round the Mediterranean visiting Cyprus (both sides), Lebanon, Israel and Gaza. Continues to be really rather depressing.

ep 1 & 2 of Egyptian Tomb Hunting - Tony Robinson (of Time Team) visiting several archaeological digs in Egypt which are investigating tombs of various eras. Very enthusiastic television, and made us smile a lot whilst also giving more of an honest flavour of how archaeology works than some Egypt series.

ep 4 of The Hairy Bikers' Asian Adventure - Japan this time. Still making us hungry ;)

ep 2 of Animals with Cameras - watched the first episode ages ago but had almost forgotten we had it on going. The hook in this series is that they are putting cameras on the animals and so we (and more importantly the scientists studying them) can see how they behave with no humans around. Highlight of this episode for me were the cheetahs.

ep 1 of Digging for Britain - it's Digging for Britain time! Tho that episode wasn't as good as they sometimes are, it covered the north and we felt like only a couple of the digs were really interesting. But still some neat things, including some well preserved wooden household objects from the Iron Age dug up from the peat of the Black Loch of Myrton

ep 9 of Doctor Who - ( some spoilers )

Includes some spoilers for Doctor Who at the end...

Books

Fiction: Still reading "Memories of Ice" Steven Erikson - coming up towards the end of it now. If the relationships foregrounded in Deadhouse Gates were all travelling companions one might not've chosen (and betrayal) this book is all about mothers and children (and betrayal). With a strong helping of good intentions being the road to hell.

Non-fiction: Still reading "The Making of the Middle Sea", Cyprian Broodbank - moving on now to the period from 3500 BCE to 2200 BCE. Starting off with the developments in Egypt (which gets unified and runs through to the Old Kingdom in this time period) - even though it's outside the remit of the book he's covering Upper Egypt because it'll have that knock on effect on the Nile Delta & thus the Mediterranean cultures. One thing I'd not realised is that Egypt gets agriculture relatively late (compared to the Levant, for instance, which is only next door). He's stressing the nomadic pastoral origins of Egyptian culture, and how the increasing desertification of the Sahara was a driving force in their cultural development.

Shakespeare: The Comedy of Errors: Act 4 Scenes 3-4, Act 5 Scene 1 - and we're done, the last scene there's finally both pairs of brothers on stage simultaneously so the whole thing unwinds to its conclusion.

jesuswasbatman suggested it fails as a play to read because you need the actors' body language, and that's right I think ... but it's also still one of my least favourite types of comedy.

Much Ado About Nothing: Introductory Material - which (among much else) points out the innuendo in the title, where "nothing" is a euphemism for vagina (no thing, ie no penis).

Listening

Podcasts: ep 263 of The History of England - looking at Edward's plans for the succession now that he's fallen ill, and considering if he was firmly under Dudley's thumb or acting on his own thoughts.

ep Eleanor 1 of The History of England Shedcasts - he's starting up a series of mini-episodes serialising the biography of Eleanor of Acquitane, this one setting the scene a bit.

ep 52-59 of The History of China - which covered the rest of the 16 Kingdoms period, and is just starting on the Southern & Northern period where China is dominated by two large powers.

ep 176 of The History of Byzantium - an interview with the podcaster from The History of Philosophy Without Any Gaps podcast about Byzantine philosophical thought in general and Michael Psellos in particular.

Sunday Podcast: an episode of In Our Time about Hope, or more descriptively about the philosophy of Hope. Which is more complicated than one might initially think. The programme started out from the Greek story of Pandora's box, where hope is left behind in the box after the evils are released - so is it a caged evil, an evil kept for mankind, a caged good, or a good kept for mankind? The Greeks were inclined towards it being an evil that Zeus intended kept for mankind to run afoul of. The Christians made it a virtue but then there's a tension between Hope & Faith because hoping for one's eternal salvation implies one doesn't have faith that it will happen. And Nietzsche thought it was a delusion that kept one alive (early Nietzsche thought that was a bad thing, later Nietzsche thought it might not be so bad after all).

Music: While running I listened to the "Greatest Mod Ever" compilation. In the evenings I listened to a couple of Beth Orton EPs plus the second disc of the "INCredible Sound of Jo Whiley" compilation (as there's a Beth Orton track on it).

Study Day: "Egypt's Shifting Capital" was the title of the Egypt Exploration Society's Study Day:

"Predynastic 'Central Places': Naqada and Neken at the Dawn of the Egyptian State" Grazia A. Di Pietro - she's been re-examining data from previous excavations and has put together a timeline for how both sites were used over time.

"Amarna (Akhetaten)" Barry Kemp - an update on what's going on with the Amarna excavations, he seems to've been focusing on road networks, and thinking about how the Egyptians conceived of the layout of the site (and the roads).

"The Memphis Survey After Thirty Years - Where Now?" David Jeffreys - I found this a little incoherent and struggled to follow the thread between the various sites he's excavated at Memphis over the last 30 years.

"Ancient Egypt in Islamic Cairo" Doris Behrens-Abousif - how the ruins of Ancient Egyptian culture around them did & did not have an impact on architecture in Islamic Cairo. On the did side, building in stone was clearly the way to be remembered, on the did not side was any detail of decoration or architectural style (unlike the re-use of Greek & Roman columns in mosques which had a bit impact on later Islamic stone work).

Museums

I Am Ashurbanipal exhibition at the British Museum - looking at the life & times of Ashurbanipal, mostly his conquests (gleefully recorded in his palace wall reliefs in gruesome detail) and his library (preserved by fire at Nineveh and now (mostly?) in the British Museum). Very well done, I particularly liked the use of lighting to colourise some of the reliefs and to tell the story on one of the large battle scenes. I'm now wondering if entertainments at the palace would include storytellers who used the reliefs as visual aids.

I, Object exhibition at the British Museum - fun, but rather slight. I'm glad we didn't make a particular trip to see it but instead tacked it on to another visit, but I'm also glad we did make it in to see it.

Early Egyptian room at the British Museum - I had a couple of objects I particularly wanted to see, and I also like looking at the Predynastic stuff, so I hung out in here for a bit while J looked at coffins.

Watching

ep 3 of Dynasties - Lions this time. The overall theme really is "nature red in tooth & claw". No pussyfooting around with cute shots of fluffy animals here, instead a tale of life on the edge between survival and disaster.

ep 1 of the Mediterranean with Simon Reeve - new series where he travels round the Mediterranean coast, starting in Italy and Albania. His normal format is to show you something cool or beautiful or awe-inspiring then tell you how humanity is fucking it all up. This episode was mostly skipping straight to the "how we're fucking up" stage. For instance the bit of southern Italy that is pretty much not part of the state of Italy and the local mafia "governs" it as a separate fiefdom.

ep 2 of The Lakes with Paul Rose - Derwentwater this time, still mostly a piece of fluff.

Discovering ... Gershwin's Rhapsody in Blue - I think this will be a series, but not shown all at once. First 3/4 of the programme was talking about the piece - putting it in context, talking about the structure etc and listening to bits in rehearsal. And the last part was a full performance of the piece so you could hear what you'd just learnt about. I rather liked it.

Egypt's Lost Princess - about the tomb discovered in the Valley of the Kings in 2012, which didn't contain treasures like Tutankhamun's but did have all sorts of interesting things. It was originally the tomb of an 18th Dynasty princess and had been robbed and reused after that in the Third Intermediate Period. Voiceover man made me wince a bit at times, but it was a well done & interesting programme in general. (Tho as we'd heard Susanne Bickel talk at the EEG about the same tomb earlier this year there was nothing I didn't already know.)

ep 8 of Doctor Who - ( some spoilers )

Includes some spoilers for Doctor Who at the end...

Books

Fiction: Finished "Deadhouse Gates" also Steven Erikson - the story is gradually widening past the narrow focus of the first book, with more non-human characters and a greater sense of time. It's one of the things I remember fondly from reading it in the past - Erikson has an ability to convey how short human lifespans and memories are compared to the age of the world (OK, it's a fantasy world not the real world, but this is one that has history on geological timescales).

Started "Memories of Ice" also Steven Erikson - not very far into this yet, just the prologue & a return to some of the characters of the first one.

Non-fiction: Still reading "The Making of the Middle Sea", Cyprian Broodbank - not very much this week though. He's just starting to talk about evidence for possible trade networks c.5-7 thousand years ago.

Listening

Podcasts: ep 261a of The History of England - an interview with Diarmaid MacCulloch about his new book about Thomas Cromwell.

ep HoS 30 of The History of England Shedcasts - catching up with the Western Isles, and looking at the beginnings of the highland/lowland divide in Scottish culture which really takes shape during the 14th Century.

bonus ep of The History of Egypt - the full interview with Campbell Price which moves beyond Amenhotep son of Hapu and into talking about Price's new book Pocket Museum: Ancient Egypt.

ep 40-44 of The History of China - more of the Three Kingdoms period.

Music: While running I listened to Tracy Chapman "Tracy Chapman", Laura Marling "Alas I Cannot Swim" and a little bit of Everything But the Girl "Home Movies".

Talk: we visited the Ashmolean Museum with the EEG, and Liam McNamara gave us a tour of the Early Egypt Gallery, focusing on the items they have from the Main Deposit at Hierakonpolis, in particular the ivory figurines and other items. Afterwards J & I also looked at some of the other things in the museum including the Mesopotamian gallery.

Watching

ep 3 of A Dangerous Dynasty: House of Assad - covering the period from the Arab Spring onward, basically the civil war, how it started and how appalling it's been. A good series, in the depressing current affairs genre. Tho I'm not sure I learnt anything really new about either the Syrian civil war nor the Assads, just a few details but still a good overview of the situation.

ep 1 of The Lakes with Paul Rose - a series of short programmes about the Lake District, very fluffy (mostly) and a good antidote to the gloom of the Syrian situation.

ep 1 of Dynasties - the new David Attenborough series, each episode will look at a family group from a different species starting with chimpanzees. Followed a few months in the life of a group where the alpha male was challenged. Very good, tho as always with nature documentaries I do wonder how much the story was the real story and how much the story was what they could put together from the footage they had.

ep 6 of Doctor Who - ( some spoilers )

Includes some spoilers for Doctor Who at the end...

Books

Fiction: Finished "The Gardens of the Moon", Steven Erikson - I think I said most of what I wanted to say last week, it sets the scene for the rest of the series, while still being a satisfying story in itself.

Started "Deadhouse Gates" also Steven Erikson - so far it's all travelling, generally a forced journey and each group with companions they might not've freely chosen. And perhaps "be careful what you wish for" as a theme too. I remember not being so fond of this one when I first read it, coz I wanted more of some of the other characters from the first book and at least one of the plot threads from this one is rather grim & dark ... but it's grown on me as a book.

Non-fiction: Still reading "The Making of the Middle Sea", Cyprian Broodbank - the current chapter looks at the period from 5500-3500 BCE, and his theme is how varied the cultures of the Mediterranean were during this time and the sense that it's merely historical accident that leads us to the world we know rather than inevitability.

The Complete Works of William Shakespeare: Comedy of Errors: Act 1 Scene 2, Act 2 Scenes 1-2 - a constant stream of comedy based on one man being mistaken for another, so far we've had one master beating both slaves in turn as he mistakes them for each other, and the other master's wife thinking this one is her husband. I'm not overly fond of this sort of comedy, and do rather feel that dear old mum or dear old dad should've told their respective children that they had been half of a set of twins before disaster struck ...

Listening

Podcasts:ep 261 of The History of England - Mary in fear for her liberty but not quite decisively fleeing England, which will have consequences for Dudley's future actions.

ep 174 & a bonus episode of The History of Byzantium - continuing his 1025 CE round up of the state of the empire with a look at the economy.

ep HoS 29 of The History of England Shedcasts - a look at the Wolf of Badenoch and what his "career" as a rapacious lord tells us about the political society of Scotland at the time (c.14th Century CE).

ep 101b of The History of Egypt - mostly an interview with Campbell Price, about statues of nobles set up in temples, and in particular the statues of Amenhotep son of Hapu.

ep 32-40 of The History of China - out of the Han, who descend into bickering factions behind increasingly powerless emperors, and into the Three Kingdoms period (which is exactly what it sounds like, a divided China).

Sunday podcast: ep 2 of I, Object - looking at satire, both modern western things like Spitting Image, and also from other cultures & times.

Music: While running I listened to both the Travelling Wilburys albums, and also The Ting Tings album.

Talk: "Papyrology and the EES: Riches from Rubbish Tips" Margaret Mountford - given at the EEG November meeting. A mix of the history of the EES and some examples of texts from the Oxyrhynchus Papyrii (discovered by an EES funded expedition) showing the variety of sorts of things that were found. Also a practical demonstration of the difficulties of piecing together fragments of discarded papyrus.

Watching

ep 2 of Origins of Us - looking at how our gut & our food preferences have shaped our evolution. Definitely remembered some of these one from a previous watch through, in particular the demonstration of the effect cooking has on how long it takes to get calories out of food.

Simon Schama's Rough Crossings - a documentary about a piece of history I'd never heard of before: the settlement in Sierra Leone of some ex-slave Africans who fought on the side of the British against the Americans in their War of Independence. Mostly, sadly, the story of their betrayal time after time by the British who promised them independence & freedom and failed to keep their word.

Indie & Beyond with Shaun Ryder & Alan McGee - part of a set of programmes again trawling through the BBC's archives of music footage, this time the format is two people from the subculture in question picking music and talking about it. Some good tunes. Funniest bit was Shaun Ryder watching the Happy Mondays playing Kinky Afro on Top of the Pops (one of Alan McGee's picks) with a dumbfounded expression all the while muttering "I don't remember playing this on Top of the Pops".

ep 1 & 2 of A Dangerous Dynasty: House of Assad - the story of the current Syrian president, focusing on trying to unpack how he went from an unassuming eye-doctor in West London, to a dictator responsible for the deaths of thousands of his own people.

ep 5 of Doctor Who - ( some spoilers )

Includes some spoilers for Doctor Who at the end...

Books

Fiction: Still reading "The Gardens of the Moon", Steven Erikson - the climatic battle has happened and I'm into the wrap up. Don't think I noticed on any of my previous reads about how it's all about being used/being tools of other people/powers/whatever ... despite it hitting you over the head with the theme repeatedly.

Non-fiction: Still reading "The Making of the Middle Sea", Cyprian Broodbank - something I'd not consciously thought before is how the rise of farming is a clear demonstration of how evolution is driven not by what is good for the individual but by survival of offspring to breeding age. Broodbank says that there's little evidence for hunter-gatherer groups taking up farming (other than the initial development obviously), it spreads round the northern Mediterranean by farming communities moving into an area and settling there. And why would the hunter-gatherers do so when times are good - it looks like an awful lot more work for a less healthy life. But as it supports a larger population, more children survive to breed and so the farmers out compete the hunter-gatherers.

The Complete Works of William Shakespeare: Comedy of Errors: Act 1 Scene 1 - the father of the twins who'll drive the comedy tells his tale of woe & separation.

Listening

Podcasts:ep 260 of The History of England - the fall of Somerset, the background & early career of Cecil and the rise of Dudley.

ep 17-32 of The History of China - in which he's finished off the Warring States period, covered the Qin (important but short lived dynasty) and has gotten to about halfway through the Han.

Sunday podcast: ep 1 of I, Object - to tie in with the current BM exhibition which we've not been to yet, Ian Hislop looking at objects of dissent throughout history & the world. This one about objects that hide their dissent in plain sight.

Music: While running I listened to some of Little Boots "Hands". And to drown out something J was watching I listened to the rest of "Greatest Mod Ever CD3" (which has two Benny Spellman tracks on), "BBC Music Vol 10, No. 9: the Romantic Cello" (which has a Berg piece on it) and started "BBC Music: Christmas Through the Ages" (despite being out of season, as it has a Berlioz piece on it - not, I'm sure, the only Berlioz we have but the only one tagged quite like that I think).

Study Day: made a last minute decision to go to the first study day organised by Ta-wer, "Aspects of Abydos". Well organised & interesting :) All four talks were given by Paul Whelan & covered a great sweep of Ancient Egyptian history:

"The Foundation of a Cult Centre" - looking at the predynastic & early dynastic cemeteries, and how Abydos developed into the religious centre of Ancient Egypt

"The Symbiosis of King and Cult in the Old Kingdom" - looking at evidence for whether or not Abydos was important in the Old Kingdom, and how looking at it through a royal lens gives you one story and through the non-royal evidence gives you another one. Also the first mentions of Osiris and some interesting discussion of Whelan's idea that Osiris is a deification of the process of mummification.

"Middle Kingdom Pilgrimage to Abydos" - Abydos is definitely a key place in the religious life of the Middle Kingdom, covered the shrines and stelae created to overlook the processional route for the festival of Osiris.

"Taharqo and his Nubian Osireion" - skipping over the New Kingdom and looking at how the 25th Dynasty Pharaoh Tarharqo wasn't just a promoter of the cult of Amun but also had reverence for the cult of Osiris at Abydos, down to building his own copy of the Osirieon for his tomb in Nubia

Watching

ep 2 & 3 of Magic Numbers: Hannah Fry's Mysterious World of Maths - continuing through the 18th & 19th Centuries and up to the modern day still looking at each development of mathematics through the lens of whether maths is something we discover or something we invent. An interesting series, I enjoyed it (and it made me want to re-read Hofstader's "Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid" due to the discussion of Gödel's ideas).

ep 2 of The Hairy Bikers' Asian Adventure - in Thailand, still making us hungry, still making us note that they're a lot more hyperactive in this series than the only other one we've watched.

Roots, Reggae, Rebellion - Akala looking at the history of Reggae and of Rastafari and its connection with rebellion and political activism in both Jamaica & the UK.

ep 1 of Origins of Us - an Alice Roberts series looking at human evolution and what we're adapted for (like long distance running). I thought we hadn't seen this before, but J was sure we had right from the start of the episode & he's probably right coz I did get deja vu at some bits. Still enjoying the re-watch though :)

ep 4 of Doctor Who - ( some spoilers )

Includes some spoilers for Doctor Who at the end...

Books

Fiction: Still reading "The Gardens of the Moon", Steven Erikson - despite being about 3/4 of the way through this book it's still the preamble for the series as a whole, it's satisfying as a story in itself but with the benefit of hindsight you can see how he's introducing a lot of stuff that's going to be more important later.

Non-fiction: Still reading "The Making of the Middle Sea", Cyprian Broodbank - just read the chapter looking at how modern humans spread round the Mediterranean at the end of the last Ice Age and am now in the chapter about how the warming climate & the development of farming increase the human populations and change their lifestyle. Two things I was surprised by were the late development of seafaring in the Mediterranean (no signs of it till 10s of thousands of years after we know other humans were colonising Australia) and also how gradual the development of farming was.

The Complete Works of William Shakespeare: Measure for Measure: Act 5 Scene 1 - the Duke takes great delight in making everybody think that Claudio is dead, Isabella deflowered & Angelo will get away with his behaviour but then reveals the truth to end the play. Whilst casually punishing the foolish fop who'd insulted him whilst he was disguised.

Comedy of Errors: Introductory material - mostly talking about the play/trope on which this is based.

Listening

Podcasts:ep 101 of The History of Egypt - starting up the narrative again with a discussion of Amenhotep son of Hapu.

bonus ep of The History of Byzantium - looking at the question of how the people on the ground would've thought about the changes of empire ruling them.

ep 4.K of The History of India - another supplementary episode looking at the art & architecture of a historical site relevant to the period the narrative has got to.

ep Sea 4 of The History of England Shedcasts - pirates (mostly from Devon and Cornwall).

ep 208 of The China History Podcast - starting a series of podcasts looking at Jewish Refugees in China from the 18th Century onwards.

ep 11-17 of The History of China - moved on to the Eastern Zhou period, including a couple of episodes on Confucius and on Sun Tzu.

Sunday podcast: an episode of In Our Time about the historical plays of Shakespeare "Is Shakespeare History? The Romans" which was a companion episode to the last one (both special episodes to celebrate 20 years of In Our Time). This one considered how historical Shakespeare was (and was aiming to be) with his Roman plays.

Music: While running I listened to some of U2 "U22" which is a live album from 2012. And to drown out a film J was watching I listened to the rest of "The Very Best of Jazz Funk CD1" (it has a Benny Golson track on it), "Swing Brother Swing" (two Benny Goodman Orchestra tracks) and started "Greatest Mod Ever CD3" (which has two Benny Spellman tracks on).

Live Music: we went to see U2 play at the O2 in London - this is the tour for the album "Experience" and is effectively the second half of their autobiography (the first half being the "Innocence" album & tour three years ago). I really enjoyed it, they're great live.

Study Day: "Amenhotep III & His Funerary Temple: A 'House for Millions of Years'" - Petrie Museum Friends study day, concentrating on Hourig Sourouzian's excavation at the site of Amenhotep III's funerary temple (best known for the Colossi of Memnon, which were once thought to be all that was left). 5 talks during the day:

"Amenhotep III: Reign of the Sun King and His Building Programme through Egypt and Nubia" Anna Garnett - gave us the context for the funerary temple both in terms of Amenhotep III's position in history and the other things he built.

"Beyond Memnon: Milestones to a Dramatic History of a Site" Hourig Sourouzian - the site of the funerary temple through history including its destruction by an earthquake in Merenptah's reign, the Colossi of Memnon as a tourist attraction in antiquity, and an overview of her own excavation.

"Rebuilding the King: The Revival of Scatter Statues" Hourig Sourouzian - a reprise of the second part of her preceding talk, but in the form of a TV documentary (made by the team but not, I think, picked up by any channel). A good counterpoint to the more academic talks before it.

"Interconnected Cultural and Floodplain Lanscapes of the Holocene Nile Valley at Ancient Thebes" Willem Toonen - looking at what the geography of the site was through history, using evidence from soil cores. Once the temple would've stood on a hill next to a branch of the Nile, quite a different setting to the more flat modern landscape.

"The Colossi of Memnon & Amenhotep III Temple Conservation Project: Archaeology & Challenges of Conservation" Hourig Sourouzian - more detail on Sourouzian's own excavations.

Watching

ep 3 of Can You Feel It: How Dance Music Conquered the World - about the cult of superstar DJs, an eyerolling end to an eyerolling series. Once again traced the history of the phenomenon and described in approving tones how the scene had sold out and become all about the money instead of the music. I normally like the BBC's music programmes, but this series felt like the accurate subtitle was "Everything That's Wrong with the Music Business".

ep 1 of Magic Numbers: Hannah Fry's Mysterious World of Maths - start of a series about maths and the history of maths, thinking about whether maths is discovered (and inherent to the universe) or invented by us (so all in our heads and thus possible to do differently). Rather good, not sure we agreed with all of it but we also kept pausing it to talk about it.

The Pharaoh in the Suburb - documentary about the recent discovery of the torso & head of a colossal statue in Cairo, dating to the reign of Psamtik I. Tried a bit too hard to sell it as a game changer in Egyptological studies, but did provide a nice overview of the founding of the 26th Dynasty by Psamtik who pushed out both the Assyrians and the Nubians to do so.

ep 3 of Doctor Who - ( some spoilers )

Books

Fiction: Started "Starpilot's Grave", Debra Doyle & James D. Macdonald - sequel to "The Price of the Stars", definitely not an obvious heist plot this time, still very space opera. Enjoying it, tho not in a way that's giving me much to say about it. Definitely owes a big debt to Star Wars, and is fun in much the same way.

Non-fiction: Still reading "The Mind in the Cave", David Lewis-Williams - just read a couple of chapters about closer to modern rock art where people from the cultures who made it can be talked to (or were talked to, in the 19th/20th Century): the San people of Southern Africa and the Native Americans of the West Coast of North America. His thesis is that the rock art is bound up in the cultural/social interpretation of altered states of consciousness, and that that is something that is distinctive about H. sapiens.

Still reading "The Rise & Fall of Ancient Egypt", Toby Wilkinson - still in the Old Kingdom chapters, reading about the 5th Dynasty's remodelling of kingship to further separate king from people (in order to re-centralise power).

The Complete Works of William Shakespeare: The Merry Wives of Windsor Act 4 Scenes 4 - the wives (and their husbands) plot to serve Falstaff his comeuppance.

Listening

Podcasts: ep 1-10 of The History of England Shedcasts - this is the members only podcasts for the History of England podcast, which I was gifted a year's subscription to for my birthday by my sister-in-law & her family :) It's a mix of things like biographies of people who appear in the main narrative, or a couple of episodes on whether or not England can be considered a nation in 1500 (he comes down on the side of yes, it probably can with some reservations). And has a History of Scotland series within it. Enjoying it :)

Sunday Podcast: an episode of In Our Time about George & Robert Stephenson - which was less about the two chaps and more about the early development of railways which they played such a key role in.

Music: While running I listened to INXS "X", John Lee Hooker "The Best of John Lee Hooker", Dream Theater "Falling Into Infinity" and Simon & Garfunkel "Bridge Over Troubled Water", which was quite the mixture and I'd forgotten how over the top Dream Theater are. I also listened to the rest of "David Gilmour & Friends" and part of a BBC Music magazine CD (Vol 12, No. 3) called "The Pity of War" as it has a piece by Benjamin Britten on it (hadn't quite got to that track when I stopped listening this time tho).

Talk: "Egypt's Origins: The View from Mesopotamia & Iran" Paul Collins - about the cultural contacts between pre & early dynastic Egypt and the cultures in Mesopotamia (Uruk) and Iran (proto-Elamite) of the time. Mostly a one way process where the motifs of Uruk & proto-Elamite culture entered Egypt with exotic trade goods such as lapis lazuli and were incorporated into the artwork on elite status objects but without their original meanings. A demonstration of status through access to "special" and "exotic" things, rather than interest in or knowledge of the exotic culture itself.

Watching

ep 5 of Hairy Bikers' Mediterranean Adventure - Mallorca & Menorca, with a bit of modern politics thrown in via cooking & eating with the British ex-pat community there.

ep 5 of Andrew Marr's History of the World - the rise of capitalism & the very first speculative bubble going pop in Holland, the Spanish conquistadors in the Americas and all the greed of that conquest.

ep 4 of Mark Kermode's Secrets of Cinema - Science Fiction, which seemed a bit of a forced fit as the genre is more defined by trappings than by the beats of the plot in my opinion. We'd seen waaay more of the films he referenced in this one than in the previous 3 (J has watched more than I have, of course, but I also recognised many of the ones I've sat on the other side of the room doing something else during).

Goth at the BBC - one of the Beeb's trawls through their archive of music performances, themed on goth. Some good tracks, some tripe ;)

Books

Fiction: Still reading "The Remorseful Day", Colin Dexter - the odd thing about this being the only Morse book I've ever read is that it's culmination of a long term relationship between many of the characters so I can tell that various things have more weight than it seems but I don't have the background to tell what that weight is.

Non-fiction: Still reading "The Great War for Civilisation: The Conquest of the Middle East", Robert Fisk - still in the aftermath of 9/11, but looking now at the sleight of hand that gets us from punishing the perpetrators to invading Iraq.

Abandoned "The Artist's Way", Julia Cameron after a little more skimming. Not. For. Me., and perhaps actual bobbins, tho I do like the Morning Pages concept.

Started "7 Habits of Highly Effective People" Stephen R. Covey - another book I've seen references to over & over, so when I spotted it on the shelf in the library I figured I may as well read it. Not read much, but so far less woo but perhaps all just common sense.

The Complete Works of William Shakespeare: The Merry Wives of Windsor Act 3 Scenes 1-2 - really not keeping the narrative thread in my head for this play, too much reading the footnotes.

Listening

Podcasts: ep 93-100c (Q&A) of The History of Egypt - up to date with this now, he managed to time the episodes just right to have a description of Amenhotep III's sed festival be his 100th episode.

ep 197-203 of The China History Podcast - mostly a 6 part series covering China-Vietnam relations over the millennia, so a sort of potted history of Vietnam but lightly skipping over stuff that wasn't related to their relationship with China.

Sunday Podcast: an episode of In Our Time about the Almoravid Empire, these were the North African tribes who came together under the banner of a more pure form of (Sunni) Islam and conquered what is now Morocco and also Spain in the 11th-12th Century CE. Another example of how inviting the "barbarian" mercenaries in to protect you (as the successors to the Umayyad Caliphate did) is an unwise thing to do.

Music: While running I listened to Bon Jovi "Cross Road" and Tracy Chapman "Tracy Chapman"

Talk: "Flies, Lions and Oyster Shells: Military Awards or Tea for Two" Taneash Sidpura - golden flies & lions and (real) oyster shells have been assumed to be Ancient Egyptian military awards, but Sidpura told us that when he actually researched who these objects are buried with and what textual references there are to them it became clear that they aren't. Instead they are examples of precious things that were given as gifts by Pharaoh and it's that it was the fact they were such a gift that makes them important to the recipient rather than the form indicating a particular virtue of the recipient.

Watching

Egypt Unwrapped: The Pyramid Code - purporting to "explain" the pyramids, but was really mostly a bit of a look at the history of pyramid building in the Old Kingdom. Skipped straight over the Middle Kingdom to talk about the Valley of the Kings as the successor to the 5th Dynasty pyramids. Not as good as other Egypt Unwrapped shows.

Egypt Unwrapped: Secrets of the Sphinx - also a bit disappointing for an Egypt Unwrapped episode. A look at the competing theories for when the Sphinx was built & for whom, but it lack coherency (and had ludicrous computer reconstructions) and even pulled my least favourite trick where before the ad something is one person's theory and when we come back after the ad break it's accepted amongst "all Egyptolgists" (and no, really, I don't think everyone does believe the Sphinx was built in the Second Dynasty).

ep 2 of Hairy Bikers' Mediterranean Adventure - this one was about Sardinia, and despite a lot of the food being not quite to our tastes (the dishes with too many eyes & legs were out yucked by the Sardinian style black pudding) it seemed like a good place to have a holiday sometime.

ep 1 of Burma with Simon Reeve - on one of his round the world following an arbitrary line series he snuck into Burma/Myanmar when it was still under an autocratic regime, now it's a democracy he could go in openly. Still depressing tho, this episode spent a lot of time focusing on the appalling treatment of the Rohingya which the government is at best doing nothing about.

ep 2 of Big Cats About the House - the jaguar cub is growing up, and although not quite past the health scare of episode 1 she's doing a lot better.

Books

Fiction: Still reading "The Dark is Rising Sequence" Susan Cooper - I'm into the last of the 5 books now. I'd forgotten how much the books actually talk about how the Light might be Good but it's not necessarily comfortable or friendly. There was also a bit that seemed suddenly topical (as well as, of course, topical for 1977 when originally published), where the protagonist is reflecting on a bit of racist bullying he/his family had intervened to stop: "The mindless ferocity of this man, and all those like him, their real loathing born of nothing more solid than insecurity and fear ... it was a channel. [...] the channel down which the powers of the Dark, if they gained their freedom, could ride in an instant to complete control of the earth."

Non-fiction: Still reading "The Great War for Civilisation: The Conquest of the Middle East", Robert Fisk - reading about the astonishing increase in cancer amongst the populations in Iraq who live where depleted uranium weapons were used. And how this was made more devastating by the sanctions & the refusal of the US & her allies to admit any culpability.

The Complete Works of William Shakespeare: The Two Gentlemen of Verona Act 2 Scene7, Act 3 Scenes 1-2, Act 4 Scene 1 - Julia decides to go to Verona, Proteus acts to remove his rivals for Silvia's love (still no idea what Silvia thinks), and Valentine joins with the bandits as a sort of Robin Hood because they were looking for an erudite young man to lead them (!? this kinda came out of nowhere).

Listening

Podcasts: ep 177-196 of The History of England - the later parts of the Wars of the Roses, Edward IV who so nearly settles the whole thing down, Richard III who opens the wounds again (and catastrophically so for York), the Princes in the Tower! And now onto scene setting for the Tudors with the state of Europe at the time (which reminds me to learn about Russian & Spanish history some day) and the state of England.

Sunday Podcast: ep 27 & 28 of Living with the Gods - societies which attempted to run without religion (the French & Russian Revolutions) and how that failed to satisfy people's need for community (because it was imposed from the top down I suspect rather than just coz people like having a religion per se). And the outlawing of minority religions (like Christianity in Japan), mostly as a way for authoritarian states to demonstrate their authority.

Music: While running I listened to Wham's greatest hits & The Cure's greatest hits. To drown out a film J was watching (so I could write) I listened to Belly "Dove", and the third disc of "Best of the Eighties CD3" which had a track by someone called Belouis Some on it (and it turned out I did know it despite recognising neither band nor title (Imagination)).

Talk: "A Middle Kingdom Mortuary Ritual Reflected in Writing" Ilona Regulski - looking at what just a couple of pieces of papyrus discovered at Asyut can tell us about the religious beliefs & practices of the Middle Kingdom. Particularly interesting were the many layers of metaphor in the text written on these pieces, and also that she could build up a picture of how the text was added to over time & how many different scribes wrote bits of it by looking at the handwriting & the alterations to the text.

Watching

The Story of Skinhead with Don Letts - tracing the origins of skinhead style & culture as part of the fusion between black/Jamaican and white culture that also produced Ska. And its subsequent co-option by the far right from which it became the visual style of racist white youth. But also how some people are still skinheads in the old sense and so the better aspects of the movement are still there (tho I wasn't really sold on the idea that this was really anything more than a bunch of older people desperately trying to turn back the tide of a changed culture).

ep 3 of Africa: A Journey Into Music - this one was about Mali, which managed I think to be rather more optimistic about the ongoing conflict there than is warranted by the actual situation. A good series overall, gave us a glimpse into some different musical cultures with some stuff I knew and some I didn't.

ep 4 of Africa's Greatest Civilisations - also about Mali & West Africa during roughly the 14th/15th Centuries. Including, of course, Mansa Musa - a king so rich he could destabilise a city's economy just by tipping the people he met.

ep 1 of Royal Institution Christmas Lectures 2017: The Language of Life - Sophie Scott giving this year's lectures & talking about language. This episode covered using sound to communicate in a broad sense, how ears work, what sort of sounds animals use etc. This lecture series is aimed at kids, but it didn't feel dumbed down.

World Cup Football - saw some of the last of the group stage (Japan vs. Poland 0-1 and a bit of a damp squib; England vs. Belgium 0-1 and just as well we didn't need to win). Watched most of the first round of the knockout stage, just missed Sunday's matches and the afternoon one yesterday. So saw: France vs. Argentina (4-2), Uruguay vs. Portugal (2-1), Brazil vs. Mexico (2-0), Belgium vs. Japan (3-2, poor Japan :/) and of course England vs. Colombia where I'm sure you're aware that we won the penalty shootout 4-3 which is historic on several levels and the best England have done in the World Cup for a long while. I'm pessimistic about Saturday, it has to be said ... tho I haven't seen any of Sweden's games so maybe I shouldn't be.

Books

Fiction: Finished "2010: Odyssey Two", Arthur C. Clarke - enjoyed this, not sure I remembered very much of the story at all, not even a sense of familiarity so I can't've read it often as a child. I should track down the next two in the library and read them - pretty sure I've read 2061 but not 3001.

Read "Childhood's End", Arthur C. Clarke - one of my favourite books as a child, and although I wouldn't say that any more I'm still fond of it. I do now think he shouldn't've written an extra chapter 1 for the new edition in the 90s which punts the setting out into the 21st Century without also editing the rest to stop it being a very 1950s society that the plot happens in.

Read "The Lion of Comarre & Against the Fall of Night", Arthur C. Clarke - two stories which aren't connected except thematically. Lone young man with a thirst for knowledge pushes against the decaying grandeur of his world to find truth or bring change. Something about Against the Fall of Night really struck me this time, I found it very evocative & it conjured up a mood of nostalgia and of people who were aware they were living after the best days had been & gone. (I'm also pretty sure I've read "The City and the Stars", which is a re-write of it, but I don't seem to own it)

Read "Expedition to Earth", Arthur C. Clarke - a collection of short stories, some of which worked for me & some didn't. Covered quite a lot of genres/common tropes whilst all still being SFF - like a war story told by a retired soldier (but the action set on Phobos), like a version of The Cold Equations, another was explorers/surveyors visiting a new planet & meeting the inhabitants who are revealed to be our distant ancestors. And an earlier version of 2001 ("The Sentinel").

Read "Islands in the Sky", Arthur C. Clarke - boys own adventure story IN SPAAAAACE! Contains mild peril. It's definitely a kids book, I think I used to find it rather fun when I was closer to the protagonist's age but now it's just a bit childish.

So I read almost all of the above whilst feeling miserable with a stomach bug on Monday, that's why the sudden surge of books. Obviously this is a tiny part of Clarke's oeuvre and it seems to skew towards the early but I'd forgotten how different in mood Clarke's fiction feels to Asimov's or Heinlein's (to take those he's often on a pedestal with). He's definitely a Brit born at the end of World War One - a theme running through much of what I just read was of life after the Empire has gone, after the Golden Age is over. But other things reminded me of Heinlein in particular - like in passing world building details of polyamorous relationships and fixed-term marriages. Though in Heinlein such things are fetishised but Clarke seems to just drop them in in passing to illustrate how this isn't our society.

Started "Coma", Robin Cook - continuing reading the fiction on our shelves, I'm just a little way in to this book and despite assuming I had, I'm pretty sure I've never read it before. J bought it and I must've just got used to seeing it on the shelf. Medical thriller, made into a film I believe, set in the "present day" of 1976.

Non-fiction: Still reading "The Great War for Civilisation: The Conquest of the Middle East", Robert Fisk - read quite a bit of this on my travels during the last couple of weeks. He's up to the aftermath of the first Gulf War & the uprising (encouraged by the West) which failed to overthrow Saddam and was then betrayed by the West.

Listening

Podcasts: ep 116-122 of The History of England - just covered the Peasant's Revolt of 1381, and the brutal aftermath, and now starting on Wycliffe. Continues to be both interesting & entertaining.

Sunday Podcast: ep 21-22 of Living with the Gods - one looking at how having many gods shapes one's society & authority structures, and the next looking at how having one god does.

Music: While running I listened to Imagined Village "Imagined Village".

BSS Study Day: "Tombs and Temples of el Kab: Current Fieldwork & Research" - 4 talks by different people:

"The Major Decorated Tombs: introduction and review", Vivian Davies - overview of all the decorated tombs in el Kab, who they were for & what they tell us about the history & society of the time.

"The Tombs and Temples: recovering history from visitors’ graffiti", Luigi Prada - the best talk of the day, a fascinating look at the Ancient Egyptian graffiti on the tombs & temples at el Kab and what it told us about the people who made it.

"Monuments from the Tomb of Ahmose-Pennekhbet and the Ramesside Shrines: a project of reconstruction", Susanne Woodhouse - a discussion of the bits of stone monument in one of the tombs & where on the site they'd originally been. Followed up with a joint talk from her & Prada about a new decorated tomb that's recently been discovered there.

"Elkab in Oxford", Liam McNamara - many of the archaeologists who did the work at el Kab from the late 19th Century onwards have been associated with Oxford and this was a look at what there is in the various archives & museums to do with this.

Talk: "The Tomb of Tatia at Saqqara", Vincent Oeters - the excavation of a small, relatively recently discovered tomb at Saqqara dating to the 19th Dynasty. This is what Oeters did his Master's thesis on, and he'd done things like figured out a plausible genealogy for the tomb owner (and subsequently revised it when they found something new).

Museum

A brief look in the Bolton Museum & Aquarium which is being refurbished - so the aquarium is (I believe) properly open but the Egyptian stuff is shut. The aquarium was fun, if a little odd to find in the basement of the library. The temporary display while the rest was shut was heavy on the stuffed birds and the gosh-wow child oriented labelling. We'll have to go back some time when the new Egyptian galleries are open.

Had an afternoon in the recently refurbished Egyptian galleries at the World Museum, Liverpool. Rather well done, I thought, with a lot of interesting stuff - worth the visit.

Watching

ep 5 of Secret Agent Selection: WW2 - finishing up the series/training scheme with a mock operation. I'd been dubious going in as it looked like it might be all a bit too reality TV, but it was really good.

Jeff Beck: Still on the Run - biopic of the most famous man I didn't know about. Well, I exaggerate for effect, I did know Jeff Beck was a famous guitarist but he also turned out to've been involved in more music that I knew than I realised and to be a pretty interesting chap. Did feel a bit like a programme the Beeb is banking for when he pops his clogs tho - it's the obituary/retrospective done with his input.

ep 1 & 2 of Pompeii's Final Hours: New Evidence - Channel 5 documentary with Bettany Hughes, Raksha Dave and John Sergeant. The last of whom could've been completely dropped from the programmes & nothing pretty much would've changed about the information presented - he's there as the "pretty face" or "glamorous assistant" whilst the other two do the serious history/archaeology. I've been sniping back at the TV a bit during this but actually it's pretty well done - a straightforward run through of how we think events progressed from T-2days through to the eruption, and a look at new archaeology on the site & scanning of the casts etc.

ep 1 of Africa's Greatest Civilisations - presented by Henry Louis Gates Jr, first of a 6 part series about African history running from the origins of humanity onwards. Felt a bit like he was over-egging the pudding at times, but some of that is that in this ep I'm hearing stuff I already know about only with the opposite biases to "normal".

Books

Fiction: Finished "Seveneves", Neal Stephenson - I find Stephenson a bit hit & miss, this one was (just) in the hit category. I think its flaw was that he was so excited to tell us about the engineering & scientific tricks he'd thought up that he skimped on the characters & plot, mostly using current persons & events and gently filing the serial numbers off (only not quite far enough). But the idea that drove the story intrigued me enough to make it a hit.

Started "2001: A Space Odyssey", Arthur C. Clarke - continuing to read my way through the fiction we own. It's a pleasing coincidence that I ended up reading Seveneves just before this - they're not the same story, but they rhyme.

Non-fiction: Still reading "The Great War for Civilisation: The Conquest of the Middle East", Robert Fisk - still reading the chapter on Israel & Palestine, which is feeling very topical given the move of the US embassy to Jerusalem.

The Complete Works of William Shakespeare: The Tempest: Act 3 Scene 3 - Act 5 Scene 1 - everyone says how sorry they are, they promise to mend their ways and all go home. I don't really like The Tempest as a story, which I suspect is not the point of the play.

Listening

Podcasts: ep 79-97 of The History of England - Edward II has been dispatched, Mortimer too, and we're about to launch into the reign of Edward III.

Sunday Podcast: ep 19 & 20 of Living with the Gods - still on the theme of images, but now images intended to have an effect on you (make you feel an emotion and thus get closer to god) and those religions/sects which banish the image.

Music: While running I listened to Everything But the Girl "Home Movie" & "Amplified Heart".

Talk: "Kings from Kush: Egypt's 25th Dynasty", Robert Morkot - a summary of what we know about the rulers of the 25th Dynasty, and how we know what we know.

Watching

ep 3 of Secret Agent Selection: WW2 - survival training this time, not the living-off-the-land type, but the sneaking-into-guarded-buildings type. Oh, and climbing up a cliff-face on rickety not joined together ladders. I wouldn't've made it that far in the training anyway but can't even begin to imagine climbing up those.

ep 5 & 6 of Britain's Most Historic Towns - Cheltenham as the epitome of the Regency and Belfast for the Victorian era. This was a bit of an odd little series, on the one hand it was Alice Roberts and she's as good as usual being informative without being patronising but on the other hand it felt rather shoehorned into the premise rather than fitting naturally. Having these be the "most" whatever town rather than a representative example seemed to require a bit of verbal gymnastics. And I've no idea why we had the archaeologist(?) in a plane, his sections felt like useless padding.

ep 2 of Syria: The World's War - utterly depressing two-parter about the conflict in Syria and how everyone's getting involved and lots of innocent people are dying but none of the players seem to care. Somehow we managed to watch part 2 first, so part 1 is lined up for tonight.

ep 1 & 2 of Gregory Porter's Popular Voices - looking at singers in 20th-21st Century popular music. Each episode is focussed on a different type of singer - so we've had "Showstoppers" and "Crooners" so far.

ep 1 of Popular Voices at the BBC - series to go along with the Gregory Porter one, where the BBC has trawled through its archives for examples of the type he was talking about. So this one was Showstoppers, including people as diverse as Freddie Mercury, Mahalia Jackson and Adele.

Books

Fiction: Still reading "The Bear & The Dragon", Tom Clancy. Into the endgame - war this time so the people dying are soldiers rather than civilians (it's curiously not actually full of people dying, a very birdseye view of the war).

Non-fiction: Still reading "The Great War for Civilisation: The Conquest of the Middle East", Robert Fisk - more about the early days of the Saddam Hussein regime in Iraq. Which was rather brutally unpleasant.

Hidden Meanings: 10.17-end - finished this book now. It got rather monotonous feeling towards the end, I'd seen a lot of the motifs discussed earlier in the book. Better as a reference than to read, I think.

The Complete Works of William Shakespeare: General Introduction - my next bits book. After a bit of thought I decided that I would read the introductory material, so currently working through the general introduction with some bits of background about both Shakespeare and the theatre so far.

Listening

Podcasts: ep 1.8-14 of The History of England - covering things like Alfred's reign, and the unification of England under his successors, and up to Aethelred the Unready and about to have it all go wrong for England.

Sunday Podcast: ep 13 & 14 of Living with the Gods - the concepts sacrifice and pilgrimage across different religions/cultures.

Music: While running I listened to Queen "Greatest Hits II", Pulp "Different Class" and The Stone Roses "The Stone Roses"

Talk: "New Research in the King's Valley: Amenhotep III Family Tombs in the Valley of the Kings" Susanne Bickel - she & her team have been re-excavating previously excavated tombs to see what more we can discover now archaeology is about more than treasure hunting. Two most exciting discoveries were a new tomb (KV64 with a 22nd Dynasty Chantress of Amun buried on top of an original 18th Dynasty burial (of which little survives)) and the destroyed remains of several burials within KV40. The latter tomb had fragments of 83 people, plus 120 large pots some of which were labelled with names of Amenhotep III's family members (i.e. several King's Daughters).

Watching

ep 6 of Civilisations - David Olusoga talking about art coming out of first contact between different cultures.

ep 2 & 3 of Treasures of Ancient Egypt - finishing up the series, these cover from the Middle Kingdom through to Cleopatra's time. We do like this series, it's nice to see the Egyptian art discussed as art rather than as clues to history for a change.

ep 2 of Britain's Greatest Cathedrals with Tony Robinson - Canterbury this time. So the history included Thomas Becket, of course, and Henry VIII and the break with Rome. I visited Canterbury several times when I lived nearby for a year, but I don't think I ever went in the Cathedral.

ep 1 of Kim Philby: His Most Intimate Betrayal - a look at Philby's career as a spy. The presenter's main thesis is that we tend to portray Philby as a gentleman spy (who just happened to be working for the other side) whereas the truth is that he was far more cold-blooded & sociopathic than that implies. Not sure I buy the thesis, but then I didn't know enough about Philby in advance to have a caricature of him in my head.

Island at the BBC - one of the BBC's trawl through their archives of live music performances to fit a theme, in this case bands signed to Island. Piece of fluff, of course, but fun to watch and the theme meant it was quite varied. It's an older one of the set - it was made in 2009, which I only know because I was surprised it didn't mention Amy Winehouse's early death in the notes on her but it turns out to've been made 2 years before she died.

Here Comes the Summer: The Undertones Story - the BBC seem to be showing quite a few programmes about Ireland/Northern Ireland and the Troubles at the moment. This is one of them, as the Undertones came from Derry. It was an odd programme - I kinda think of the Undertones as a one hit wonder but it turns out that their biggest hit wasn't the only song I know (Teenage Kicks). The programme however was positioning them as the Best. Band. Ever! in terms that might've felt a bit overblown about, say, The Beatles let along the Undertones.

ep 1 of Britain's Most Historic Towns - Alice Roberts' new series, this episode was about Chester as the town where the Roman heritage is most clearly visible.