Every Wednesday I share five things I've liked and think you might like too. Here are this week’s Five Things…

1. Prepare to have your mind blown! I love a good optical illusion and this is one of the best I've seen.

2. An interesting and thought provoking article on The War on Reason.

3. If you spend much time on the internet, you'll have probably noticed that on huge swathes of it civil debate appears to be a thing of the past. This Brain Pickings article on How to Criticize with Kindness might come in handy. — "let your aim be to come at truth, not to conquer your opponent. So you never shall be at a loss in losing the argument, and gaining a new discovery.”

4. Socrates would like a quick word: Philosophy Infomercial.

5. This week's music recommendation is actually a podcast about a piece of music. In this week's episode of Song Exploder, Annie Clark (aka St.Vincent) breaks down her song New York. (A warning, it contains some explicit language!) 

That's all for this week. If you enjoyed it, subscribe and you'll get the next one delivered to your inbox.

ps. I'm taking a week off next week as I'll be on holiday. But fear not, Five Things will return the following week!

The Man

Every Wednesday I share five things I liked and think you might like too. Here are this week’s Five Things…

1. I was going to do this anyway... Ignore the Snobs, Drink the Cheap, Delicious Wine
    
2. A fascinating long read on the events that'll be triggered when the Queen dies. I'd never considered the complexity and how incredibly strange it'll be when she does. — 'London Bridge is down': the secret plan for the days after the Queen’s death [here's the audio version]
    
3. Here's some timeless (and timely) wisdom from the philosopher Bertrand Russell on how to avoid having foolish opinions.
    
4. ... And from one great philosopher to another. A fun animated video from The School Of Life on Plato and his thoughts on how to live a more fulfilled life.
    
5. This week's musical recommendation is Go! by Public Service Broadcasting. I was lucky enough to see them play at a tiny venue in Amsterdam last year. If you get the chance to see them, I'd take it!

That's all for this week. If you enjoyed it, subscribe and you'll get the next Five Things delivered straight to your inbox. You can check out previous Five Things posts here.

Martham Ferry Boatyard

Every Wednesday I share five things I liked and think you might like too. Here are this week’s Five Things…

1. We all have those days when we struggle to get out of bed in the morning. The Roman emperor and Stoic philsopher Marcus Aurelius has some words of motivation for you.
    
2. Katy Ann Gilmore might just be my new favourite artist — Where Math and Nature Meet Art
    
3. A fun, animated video by The School of Life on Ludwig Wittgenstein and how to avoid some of the muddles we get into with words.
    
4. Musician Ólafur Arnalds on five things he learnt in his twenties. I particularly relate to his thoughts on live performance, which I embellished on in a blog post titled "The Beauty of Live Performance".
    
5. You might have heard of the acronym "FOMO" (the Fear Of Missing Out). It's a problem for many people that's exacerbated by our constant exposure to everyone else's "perfect lives" via social media. There might be a solution, JOMO, the Joy Of Missing Out. The excellent Note to Self podcast did an episode on this that they rebroadcast last week.

That's all for this week. If you enjoyed it, sign up to receive future posts or check out my previous Five Things posts.