Berlin, May 2018

This week’s Five Things…

1. The Investigation (currently streaming on iPlayer) is very good. The best real life crime drama I’ve seen.

2. Science solves the mystery of why wombats have cube-shaped poo. Without doubt the biggest science news of the year!

3. I love these bubble wrap portraits. Very clever.

4. An a cappella group with a very niche speciality — Windows sound effects!

5. I could listen to this song on a loop for a very long time. Kyoto by Phoebe Bridgers.

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Seville, February 2018

This week’s Five Things…

1. This informative little website has been set up to counter a lot of the COVID-19 misinformation out there — with evidence! Well worth a read.

2. Obviously flooding is never a good thing but this is pretty cool: “Floods in Cambridgeshire highlight shape of English Civil War fort”

3. Max Richter on Tiny Desk

4. A nice interview with Brian Eno. Such an interesting guy.

5. This is fun, a snowflake generator!

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Copenhagen, September 2015

This week’s Five Things…

1. Animals interrupting wildlife photographers

2. What a great word: “Dustsceawung (Old English): contemplation of the fact that dust used to be other things — the walls of a city, the chief of the guards, a book, a great tree: dust is always the ultimate destination. Such contemplation may loosen the grip of our worldly desires.”

3. How lava lamps help to secure the internet

4. Tim Harford has a new podcast series called How to Vaccinate the World . It’s very good!

5. I really enjoyed this Tiny Desk performance by Jon Batiste. He’s one of those annoying people that can seemingly play everything!

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Christiania, Copenhagen — September 2015

This week’s Five Things…

1. “Happiness & sadness are contagious, this study finds. Each person in your network who became happy increases your chance of becoming happy by 9%, an unhappy person drops it by 7%. If a friend who lives within a mile becomes happy, your chance of becoming happy goes up 25%.”

2. A very good explainer of hypnic jerks. A thing I have regularly experienced but not known the name of!

3. Not just any illusion, an award-winning illusion.

4. A fascinating episode of Lexicon Valley on how new words are formed from older ones, and how their meanings drift over time.

5. I didn’t have Sea Shanty’s down as a 2021 trend.

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Split, Croatia — July 2018

This week’s Five Things…

1. Switched on Pop break down Taylor Swift’s second album of 2020, Evermore. The podcast and album are both excellent.

2. I have another episode of Switched on Pop to recommend. This time on Auto-Tune and how it changed music, in particular pop.

3. A Perfect Planet, narrated by David Attenborough, is now available on iPlayer. The first epsiode was great, and looked stunning in 4K.

4. England is back in lockdown which means most of us won’t be moving very far for the next month or so. WindowSwap allows you to explore the world (or at least the view from other people’s windows) without leaving your sofa. Might come handy if you’re feeling the walls closing in!

5. A fascinating long read on Paul McCartney and why, despite being one of the most famous musicians of all time, he’s still underrated.

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