This week’s Five Things…

1. Don’t you just love it when you discover an amazing new band? Black Pumas on NPR’s Tiny Desk.

2. Nils Frahm has a new live album and accompanying concert streaming on MUBI (you can sign up for a free trial to watch the show). As always it’s very good. My favourite Nils Frahm, is live Nils Frahm.

3. 52 things Tom Whitwell learned this year.

4. One of the best things I read this week, Russ Roberts (host of EconTalk) on self image.

5. And another one of the best things I read this week! Really interesting post by Anton Howes on how London became the Goliath we know today. Fun fact: “By 1700, the city [London] was nineteen times the size of second-place Norwich — even though Norwich’s population had more or less tripled.”

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This week’s Five Things…

1. This is all very strange. A mysterious metal monolith was spotted in a desert in Utah. It then disappeared. And now another one has appeared in Romania?

2. A cool illusion.

3. A fascinating episode of the EconTalk podcast with Virginia Postrel on the history of textiles. This really blew my mind: "... take a pair of jeans, which, in the scheme of things is not that much fabric. Pair of jeans, to weave that amount of fabric, takes about six miles of thread ... nowadays, you can spin in a modern spinning plant that amount of thread in a few seconds. But in the pre-Industrial Revolution period, the very fastest, best spinners in the world were in India; and they could spend 100 meters of thread an hour. And, that means that it would take about 13 days, 13 eight-hour days, to spin the amount of thread in a pair of jeans"

4. What a music video!

5. I've been listening to a lot of Julia Holter this week. Her album Have You In My Wilderness is great.

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This week’s Five Things…

1. How to write an AC/DC song in 30 seconds.

2. OverSimplified make fun videos explaining things like the American Civil War and the Russian Revolution. I have no idea how I've only just heard of them! Definitely recommend if you want to brush up your history knowledge.

3. I'm really enjoying the new Assassin's Creed game. It's huge!

4. New music from Dirty Projectors. Sounds like they've had quite a prolific year!

5. This was a good read. Aren't brains amazing?

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This week’s Five Things…

1. How to practice effectively. Lots of good advice here!

2. Ólafur Arnalds has a new album, Some Kind Of Peace.

3. We just finished watching series 1 of The Sopranos. What a show! If you haven’t seen it I’d definitely recommend it.

4. Joe Wicks is back with a new regular work out series called Wake Up With Joe. A nice way of keeping fit during lockdown.

5. I love The Maccabee's album Marks To Prove It. It would make me very happy if they reformed. Great band!

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This week’s Five Things…

1. I’m not one to usually get excited by batteries, but the future of battery technology sounds pretty cool.

2. I didn’t appreciate that Charlie Chaplin was quite the visual effects pioneer. Nice explainer of his amazing roller skates stunt in Modern Times.

3. Why people believe obviously untrue things.

4. BBC Radio 4's Intrigue podcast is back. I've listened to the first seven episodes and as per previous series, it's very good.

5. Softbody Tetris. I find this oddly calming.

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This week’s Five Things…

1. After endless procrastinating I've finally got around to listening to Phoebe Bridgers. Kyoto is a tune.

2. I find this quite sad: A No. 1 Song Written by a Solitary Songwriter Is Becoming a Thing of the Past

3. It's now really easy to support local book shops when buying books. Bookshop.org has just launched in the UK. As someone who has got into the habit of just buying everything on Amazon, I'll be buying books on Bookshop or Hive from now on.

4. This amused me greatly: The AI Who Mistook a Bald Head for a Soccer Ball

5. ... As did this: Blur - Song 2, but every "woohoo" is done by Mario

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