Interviews and Sea Shanties | The Friday Update

Welcome to this week’s edition of the Friday Update, in which I give a little insight into what I’ve been up to for the past seven days.

What have I been up to this week?

The highlight of this week was taking part in a little bit of research.

A viewer had got in touch as they’re undertaking a PhD which is looking at “Platform Journalism”, or, the relatively new phenomenon of people who don’t work for “traditional” media organisations reporting on current affairs on platforms such as YouTube.

I guess they’d stumbled upon some of the videos I’ve made about the media and those which explored the ethical questions which are raised by journalism colliding with the “influencer economy”. And, as such, they asked if I’d be willing to be interviewed.

It’s always an honour to be asked to do stuff like this. It fluffs my ego a bit to be treated as someone whose knowledge is worthwhile! And, having completed a PhD myself, I always find it really interesting hearing about other people’s projects.

It was a really interesting chat and I’m fascinated to see where the research goes next. I’ll let you all know if and when something is published (presuming they don’t might me sharing).

And outside of work?

Last weekend was the International Sea Shanty Festival in Falmouth, which is around an hour and a half from me. My brother lives down that way so my partner and I ventured down into Cornwall to go and hear some songs and drink some cider.

It’s slightly hard to describe as an event. Essentially, the whole town is closed off to cars for the weekend. Every single pub becomes a “stage” (along with several outdoor stages in the town squares). And there’s a whole lot of sea shanty singing.

In truth, a lot of it is just an excuse to get drunk outside. We did go to see a fair few bands but also just really enjoyed catching up with my brother and some friends we met down there. By the time we got the train home, we were ready for a nice nap. And, luckily, the train terminated at our station, otherwise I think we could’ve ended up quite some way away!

What have I been reading/watching/listening to?

This week, I’ve returned to Ellen Meiksins Wood’s The Origin of Capitalism: A Longer View.

As I’ve mentioned a few times in these blogs, I’ve had the idea for a while of working on a project in which I try to do a complete history of capitalism. I don’t know exactly what the shape of that project is yet (whether it’s a YouTube video or a Nebula special or something completely different).

One of the blocks to thinking further about this, though, has been the difficulty of articulating the beginnings of capitalism. For the project to really work, it feels like I need a really concrete way of introducing the origins of capitalism. And, given its title, this seemed like a good place to start!

So far, I’ve mostly been reading through Wood’s evaluation of pre-existing theories. This has been really interesting and I’ve picked up a great few nuggets of info. And, I’m looking forward to getting into the meat of the book!

That brings us to the end of this week’s edition of the Friday Update. I hope you’ve found it mildly insightful.

Thanks as ever for your generous support and I’ll look forward to updating you more next week!!