Old Friends & New Projects | The Friday Update

Welcome to this week’s edition of the Friday(ish) 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 bulk of this week has involved continuing to make progress on my upcoming video about the energy crisis and privatisation in the UK.

On Monday night, I filmed the longest section of the video which involves me donning my Karl Marx pyjamas (as previously seen in my video about the “metaverse”) and a dressing gown to explain the intricacies of the Energy Supply Industry. It’s also the most technical part of the video with a fair bit of jargon and organisation names to remember. However, it also involves a lot of chat about beans on toast which I think helps to keep it lively!

In the days since, I’ve been dedicating my mornings to adding some punch and humour to the next section of the video. However, in the afternoons, I’ve been turning my attention to a new project which we’re working on that I’m very, very excited about…

Over the next couple of months, we’re going to be working on launching a podcast.

My motivation for wanting to start a podcast came from two places: Firstly, there are many, many more topics which grab my attention than I have time to make full videos about. Secondly, the format of my “main” videos doesn’t give me as much opportunity to collaborate and chat with other creators as I would like.

As such, the podcast—which is currently going by the working title of Induction—will involve me chatting to a different creator or expert each fortnight to unpack a topic which is circulating in the discourse.

I’m really excited about this project; it’s been a little while since I did something new and it’s proving to be a really great to excuse to talk to lots of fascinating, intelligent people. We’re keen to get a little ahead with episodes before we start launching them so I hope you’ll be patient. However, I think it’s going to be a lot of fun!

And outside of work?

This week has been relatively quiet outside of work. That being said, I did find the time to celebrate Burns Night. My partner’s mum is Scottish and so, as we often do, we headed to a local pub for some haggis and bagpipes!

With life having got quite a bit more expensive in the UK over the past six months or so (and the expensive Christmas period to recover from!), we’ve not been going out to pubs and bars quite as much recently. It was therefore really nice to spend an evening chatting away over a couple of pints!

What have I been reading/watching/listening to?

For this week’s recommendation, I wanted to suggest you check out a YouTube video that I was recently recommended from Zoe Bee. The video is about “adjunctification”; or what we often refer to in the UK as “casualisation” in academia. Many universities in the UK, US (and I imagine other countries) are increasingly replacing their permanent staff with lecturers/professors on extremely short term contracts. And this has a huge effect not only on the lives of those lecturers but also on the quality of the education they’re able to provide.

This was an unavoidable trend whilst I was doing my PhD and Zoe does an excellent job of explaining it. With my experience having been exclusively within the UK, it was also fascinating to hear how the same practices are being used on the other side of the Atlantic.

Link: https://youtu.be/lrN0NG67gno 

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!!