Margaret

• “The Golden Road: How Ancient India Transformed the World” William Dalrymple
  The later reign of Empress Wu where she made Buddhism the Chinese state religion and the Indian influence on China was at its peak. The spread of Indian culture in the other direction – again by sea trade, this time to south east Asia. Initially Buddhism again, including another way of spreading into China & Japan via these sea routes past Java & Sumatra.

Podcasts

• The Rest is Politics US
  More on the Iran war, plus elections in Texas. More, of course, on the war in Iran, plus a bit on the sacking of Kirsti Noem. The war in Iran, again.
• The Rest is Politics
  More on the Iran war, focusing quite a lot on the reaction in the West and particularly by Keir Starmer (quite the argument between Rory & Alastair). Gorton & Denton by-election. More on the war in Iran, a lot about the way that the US seems to’ve done less scenario planning etc than Iran despite the US doing this as a choice.
• Empire
  The finale of their 1857 Indian Uprising series, the fate of Lucknow (not good, described by one historian as “urbicide”, the destruction/killing of a city). Two episodes on the Iranian revolution of 1979 with a compare & contrast with the protests in January (recorded in January, I’m late to get to this, so it is very much before the current war).
• The Rest is Science
  A Q&A episode (one question was about how small would a hamster have to be if it was to be dense enough to be a blackhole – 1 trillionth the size of a proton but it would be so unstable that it would immediate explode with a force of multiple Hiroshimas). An episode about data & science in sport, and whether that destroys all enjoyment of the sport – citing things like the way F1 car designs basically made the whole thing a foregone conclusion as once you were in front no-one could overtake.
• The Bunker
  The whole Greenland thing, recorded just post Davos (I’m only a month behind with the general episodes of The Bunker, but this felt like it came from a different year so much has happened since then). The Weekly Wrap up (obviously the war in Iran was a lot of it, but also the new rules for refugees in the UK). Start the Week (which was all about the war in Iran). January’s mad opinion column round up (I hadn’t noticed these were topical, some of the more entertaining backpedaling about Trump around about the Greenland stuff at Davos, some of the weirder takes on the Beckham drama). An episode on money laundering and how it has essentially won.
• The History of China
  A letter from the Chinese to Queen Victoria just before the Opium War telling her to make sure no-one came to sell opium in China (no evidence the letter got there). The continuing rattling of sabres after Napier’s untimely death, and the final cultural misunderstanding on the part of China that goes past the point of no return (essentially the Chinese mental model of the universe means they can only see the British traders as being akin to Mongolians raiding the northern borders, rather than seeing that they come from another state).
• The History of Philosophy in China
  Confucius in the Zhuangzi (the Daoist text), mostly being presented as rule bound and unaware of the Dao.
• Oh God What Now
  The Iran War & the Gorton & Denton by-election, plus a bit at the end about the ex-pats in Dubai who are now finding it less of a “safe-haven” than it once was. Labour’s newest immigration policies & how they’re counterproductive, plus how we create monsters from our discomfort with people/things which exist between our neat little categories.
• The History of England
  The rebuilding of London after the fire, more piecemeal than initially desired (in large part because of cost and how long it would take), and how coal was the key to the rebuild and to how London could be so large – it let England escape the photosynthesis trap, no need to turn large amounts of land over to trees for fuel and building material when you could use coal to fire bricks and heat your home.
• Journey Through Time
  The very immediate aftermath of the Chernobyl disaster, where the Soviet secrecy makes things worse both in terms of the people who died from being near the reactor and in terms of the effects on the rest of Europe (as they didn’t let anyone know what was going on).
• The Rest is Politics Leading
  Interview with Bill Browder (who I think I’ve heard interviewed on another podcast), who went from making money in the Russia of the 90s/00s to campaigning for sanctions against Russia to hurt the oligarchs (& Putin) after the death of a lawyer working for him.
• The History of Egypt
  The life of Nefertari, in as much as we know anything about it.
• In Our Time
  The Roman Arena – a trot through the history of the Roman gladiatorial (etc) games, from funerary games in the early Republic to a way that the Emperor demonstrated his power to the people in the later Empire.
• Talk 90s to Me
  Disney villains of the 90s, with a theme of how queer coded they are.
• The History of Byzantium
  The immediate aftermath of the Ottomans taking Constantinople, and who got out and who did not.

TV

• The Age of Uncertainty
  What makes a good leader, and why democracy works, and how education is part of the key to the whole thing. This hit quite differently now, you feel Galbraith would not approve of the current situation in the US. One of his essential points is that the big weakness of a democracy is that it all falls apart if people cease to think that the government is theirs, and so pushing power out further towards the people (in the US with primaries that actually matter, and mass participation in elections) is key to making people as a whole feel like they chose the government they have.
• Newcastle v. Man U (2-1, despite being a man down for the whole second half)
• Digging for Britain
  The southwest of England & Wales this episode – some bits in Cornwall (including signs of tin processing on St Michael’s Mount), some bits in Wales. A bit of a “things aren’t always what they look like before you start” theme too (like a clearly Iron Age structure being full of later Roman coins). And some experimental archaeology showing what happens when you put different quantities of tin in your bronze (too much makes it very brittle).
• Newcastle v. Man City (1-3, so they’re out of the FA Cup)
• The Great Philosophers
  Episode on Gottlob Frege & Bertrand Russell, who moved philosophy from being about psychology to being about logic. I only really knew about Bertrand Russell’s Principia Mathematica before, via Hofstader’s “Gödel Escher Bach”.

Games

• Diablo IV
  Did some end of season tidying up of our previous characters. Also ran a Mythic Prankster dungeon & got 5 mythics each, so souped some of them up and had a go at some Pits – up to Tier 69, which is the furthest we’ve got, I think.

Talks

• “Henry Salt and his first collection of ancient Egyptian antiquities” Marie Vandenbeusch & John Taylor
  Henry Salt collected Egyptian antiquities while he was the British consul in Egypt, and subsequently sold them to museums – his first collection was sold to the British Museum and arrived there in 1821. It includes a lot of well known pieces in the Egyptian collection there but arrived before the administrative side of the museum was well set up so the only documentation is a list of 128 objects or groups of objects that Salt provided. This talk was about how they have been tracking down which items were on the list, and are publishing the document with annotations to tell you which ones are identified.

Music

• Joseph and the Amazing Technicolour Dreamcoat
• Starlight Express
• Now Yearbook 74
• Burning Shed – Sampler Three

• “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.

• 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.

• 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.

• 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”
  

• “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.

• 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.

• “His Face is the Sun” Michelle Jabès Corpora
  
  Finished Thursday 5 February 2026. The fantasy ancient Egyptian setting is very well done, she clearly spent a lot of time both learning about ancient Egypt and putting thought into how to make it different but still recognisable. It’s a story with a prophecy and four point of view characters who it becomes clear are part of how this prophecy will work out. They could be stock types (the Princess, the Priestess, the Warrior, the Desert Nomad) but actually are more well rounded than that. Right up until the last couple of chapters I thought everything was very clearly telegraphed & was just chalking that up to “well, it’s YA” and then two things I totally didn’t expect happened, so that was rather well done. A piece of fluff, but I enjoyed it, and will look for book 2 in the library when it comes out.


• “There Is No Antimemetics Division” qntm
  
  Finished Monday 9 February 2026. Quite a mindbending book, and difficult to know how to write anything about it. It’s SFF, and in the same genre space as the X-files and Charlie Stross’s Laundry Files series. There’s an Organisation, that’s a part of the British civil service in the same way that MI5 or MI6 are. But they deal in ideas that are infectious (memes in the original sense of the word dialled up to 11) and ideas that simply cannot be known/remembered. Many (most?) are hostile but how can you fight back if you can’t remember what your opponent is? I enjoyed this, and I should re-read it at some point when I can remember my first read through as I suspect a lot will land differently when you know where it’s going.


• “The Golden Road: How Ancient India Transformed the World” William Dalrymple
  
  Just started this so not much to say, on the Empire podcast he’s positioned this book as not quite a counterpoint to Frankopan’s “The Silk Road” but more of a “yes, and”.

• Empire
  
  Second episode about the First Indian War of Independence, where one of the key points is that for the people concerned it’s about religion even tho there are all the other problems that colonialism brings, it’s the perceived attack on their faiths that triggers the uprising. Third episode, which was about the Kanpur massacre, an atrocity committed by the Indians against the British civilians living in Kanpur, which lived on in the imagination of the British for decades after (and was met by atrocities from the British). Fourth episode, which was the First Siege of Lucknow which they characterise as the best of the rebels vs. the best of the British, so both attack & defence are better organised.


• The Rest is Science
  
  Levitation by sound (so long as you’re a tiny piece of polystyrene that is). Smell, why you can’t smell the inside of your own nose, super smellers. Erdõs numbers, and Erdõs as the most peculiar scientist/mathematician they could think of, is there a way to describe “left” or “right” without reference to anything human e.g. some intrinsic property of the universe (yes, it’s to do with the weak force), Hannah Fry owns the prop used in Devs for the quantum computer.


• Journey Through Time
  
  Second & third episodes about The Spanish Civil War, the make up of the International Brigades – the volunteers who came to fight the fascists, I hadn’t known that one of the key problems for the Republicans in the war was that the part of the army that had military experience was the part that were with Franco. And then the beginning of the war proper. I don’t think I’d known before that this was also the beginning of Kim Philby’s spying career, he’s ostensibly here as a journalist embedded with Franco’s forces, but is also working for the Soviets already. Fourth episode is about Orwell’s time in Spain, where he is with a different group that are against Franco.


• The Rest is Politics
  
  The Epstein files, with a particular focus on how even if you set aside the vile sexual predation this was a network of corruption on an incredible scale. Iran, whether the Americans will intervene and whether that will be a good idea, the Melania film. A mini extra episode of Alastair Campbell reacting to the whole Mandelson thing. A broader exploration of what the Mandelson part of the Epstein scandal says about how the world is run.


• Behind the Lines with Arthur Snell
  
  The geopolitical situation in the Arctic.


• The Bunker
  
  How the War in Ukraine is going from the Russian perspective, and how it’s essentially the same as it was this time last year. Weekly wrap up (with a lot about the fallout of Peter Mandelson’s Epstein connections). A look forward to 2026 in Trump’s US (aired shortly after Venezuela). Racism in Britain (aired not long after the Farage allegations). Start the Week (more about the fallout from the Mandelson revelations).


• Starship Alexandria
  
  Back to their normal episodes, this one is an in depth look at the film Godzilla Minus One.


• Oh God What Now
  
  Peter Mandleson and the latest release from the Epstein files. An extra episode about the resignation of Morgan McSweeney.


• The History of China
  
  The build up to the first Opium War, trade imbalances that upset the mercantile nature of both England and China, and the English turn to selling drugs.


• The Rest is Politics US
  
  The Washington Post, more on the Epstein files, hints that the Trump regime is losing support by losing touch with what normal people think about what they’re doing.


• The History of Philosophy
  
  Pascal’s Wager, and some of the push back it receives.


• The Rest is Politics Leading
  
  An interview with the President of Moldova, who came across very well.


• Talk ’90s to Me
  
  About TFI Friday (which I never watched back in the day).


• The History of England
  
  1666, the year London burned and more of the Anglo-Dutch war.


• The History of England Shedcasts
  
  One of the Birth of Britain episodes – Britain after the Romans were established, how much different areas integrated, how religion worked & how much it integrated, the way that Britain became a great place to launch your bid for becoming Emperor.


• The History of Byzantium
  
  The second set of five influential people in the Byzantine empire.


• Origin Story
  
  The history and politics of the Blue Labour movement (Maurice Glasman sounds both nuts & somewhat reminiscent of Matt Goodwin’s radicalisation).

• The Age of Uncertainty
  
  An episode about corporations and how their power structures have evolved into a thing of committees where the individual people are more interchangeable than the myth of the one guy at the top directing operations. I quibbled about this afterwards, but J pointed out that all my counter-examples are essentially a new layer of corporations who are still in the earlier phases, the ones Galbraith is talking about still exist the way he was talking about them.


• Digging for Britain
  
  The East of England and the Southeast – the highlights were a carnyx & boar standard dug up at an Iceni site, and the many different finds at Sizewell where the new nuclear power station is being built. Most of the programme was about the latter, and they have found stuff from 40kya all the way through to the Second World War.


• Guitar Heroes at the BBC
  
  Episode 6, which is the last one. This is basically an hour of music performances previously shown on the BBC, loosely fitting a theme of “has a good guitarist” (or perhaps just “has a guitarist you’ve heard of” and sometimes that’s for being a guitarist). With the occasional bit of commentary via captions (sometimes snarky, sometimes just a factoid to make you boggle, like the woman who is now a chainsaw artist). Fun, shallow, and often most entertaining for the “what is he wearing‽” nature of the 70s.


• Empire with David Olusoga
  
  Episode 1 – the beginnings of the British Empire, as merchants form joint stock companies to trade in the east and colonists set sail to make homes in the west. I know this history but haven’t previously quite framed it as the two things happening simultaneously. It all ends up the same though, exploiting other places for profit ­ growing cash crops in the Caribbean (sugar) and Virginia (tobacco) using slave labour, and ruling over parts of India extracting goods & taxes and failing to look after the people who are producing the wealth.


• The Great Philosophers
  
  This episode was about Nietzsche and you could see from this discussion exactly why the Nazis had been fond of Nietzsche, and the overall impression I had of his philosophy was that it was rather unpleasantly self-centred. But Magee and Stern were arguing both that the fascist reading of Nietzsche was too shallow & misinterpreted, and that there was quite a lot of value in his ideas even if you didn’t agree with all of it.

• Diablo IV
  
  Did actually manage a Tier 66 Pit (tho I got disconned near the end of it and you can’t get back in the game during Pits, so J finished up on his own). Getting further now is mostly a question of grinding away at the Pits trying to edge up, plus looking for any gear that might be a bit of an upgrade.

• “I Am a Strange Loop” Douglas Hofstadter
  The way that the sense of “I” emerges from a strange loop within our brains, where the outside world feeds into and generates patterns among the symbols and those patterns look “back” and perceive themselves. And how there’s our own strange loop in our minds, our “I”, but we also model other people, particularly those we are close to, and they in some sense existing within our minds just at a lower resolution that our own sense of self.

• Starship Alexandria
  Miss Fisher’s Murder Mysteries, Farscape, The Detectorists, Andor


• The History of England
  Charles II’s desire to be majestic & the Second Anglo-Dutch War, also the plague that came sweeping in from the east.


• Journey Through Time
  The last episode on Black GIs in Britain in WW2, about how the biggest flash point of trouble was Black soldiers entering relationships with white women. And the British were also divided on this, some had no problem with mixed-race relationships, some regarded that as the line that shouldn’t be crossed. And the couples were never allowed to marry, which made their children illegitimate in situations where white GIs could marry before the child was born. Which left the children visibly illegitimate which carried great social stigma for both mother & child.
  
  A series on A Christmas Carol, and the context in which Dickens wrote it, both in his life and the world in general. Scrooge is the British society of the time, chasing the profits of the Industrial Revolution to the exclusion of all that is human & humane.


• The Rest is Politics
  All Greenland all the time. They are not optimistic about the future of the world. And a brief special on Trump’s speech at Davos which did not improve their outlook. More Davos, should people boycott the World Cup, plus Jenrick’s defection, and Syria. And another brief special (crossing over with The Rest is Politics US) on Trump’s dissing of Nato troops from other countries.


• Behind the Lines with Arthur Snell
  Interview with Dan Kaszeta, covering all sorts of topics about what the next year might hold in a geopolitical sense. Also an older episode on Saudi Arabia & UAE, in the context of Yemen.


• The Rest is Politics US
  A look at Trump’s speech at Davos, much less doom & gloom than the main Rest is Politics assessment. Crossover with The Rest is Politics. Brief interview with one of the Senators that went to Denmark. Minnesota, where they think Trump has flinched.


• Oh God What Now
  Trump and the potential destruction of Nato, should we be de-Americanising our lives and is it even possible? And a guest episode with Peter Apps who has written a book called “The Next World War” which was quite depressing tho at least he doesn’t think that the war is inevitable.


• Talk 90s to Me
  Christmas Number 1s of the 90s. Adidas Gazelles (a mini episode).


• The Bunker
  Weekly Wrap Up (Davos, Greenland). Start the Week (mostly Minnesota, also Starmer blocking Andy Burnhum standing in a by-election).


• Empire
  St Nicholas, his life and his body being stolen after his death. Alice Seely Harris, the photographer who exposed the atrocities of Leopold II’s regime in Congo.


• The Rest is Science
  Also briefly the life and body stealing of St. Nick, but rather more leaning in to was there once a time when a human could’ve visited all the other humans and given them gifts in one night (no). How the smell of Christmas trees that we so enjoy is actually the tree equivalent of screaming, and some tactile illusions illustrating how our perception of reality is really a model in our brains. Calendars & timekeeping.


• A History of Philosophy
  Pascal, a brief overview of his scientific achievements, and his turn to spiritual matters.


• The History of Ancient Egypt
  Roundup of news from current fieldwork in Egypt.


• The History of China
  The pressures in the empire are beginning to show up in practical ways – rebellions by the Miao people, the rise of the Triads, the rise of the White Lotus.


• The History of Byzantium
  Interview with the host of The History of Bulgaria podcast, who has just published a book on the first Bulgarian state, which overlaps quite a lot with the contemporary Byzantine history.

• The Great Philosophers
  Bryan Magee talking to Geoffrey Warnock about Kant and Kant’s ideas. Next episode was Bryan Magee talking to Peter Singer about Hegel & Marx.


• Newcastle v. PSV (3-0)


• The Age of Uncertainty
  Keynes, Keynesianism and its triumphs & flaws.


• The War Between the Land and the Sea
  Finale. Not sure how I feel about that overall, was rather more downbeat than I was expecting which colours my reaction (particularly in juxtaposition with the way this season of reality is more downbeat than I was expecting).

• Now Alternative 80s

• Diablo IV
  Did a Tier 61 Pit, so edging up slowly. Also killing off the Lesser Evils for one of the bits of Rank VII, have ticked off enough Belials, enough Duriels, and 4/6 Andariels and 3/6 Azmodans.

• “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.

• 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.

• Cyndi Lauper “Twelve Deadly Cyns”


• The Bangles “Eternal Flame”

• 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.

• “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.

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