Free Parking | 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?

This week has been a pretty momentous one!

Firstly, I spent Sunday evening filming my upcoming video about the secret history of Monopoly. I’m really looking forward to getting this one out into the world as I think it’s a fun little video. There’s gonna be some good gags in there but also some interesting discussion of a heterodox economic theory for the nerds among you!

But, most importantly, earlier this week I welcomed a new editor to the team. (Although, it was just me before so I guess it’s now become a team where previously it wasn’t!). Georgia is excellent and you’re going to see a tremendous improvement in the style of future videos. For a while now, I’ve been very much hitting the limits of my editing skills and so it’s really great to have someone on board who really knows what she’s doing!

Being able to hire Georgia would be impossible without your generous support. So, thank you so, so much!

And outside of work?

I had quite a cultured weekend last week!

I began by heading to a climate-emergency-themed craft fair. I was helping out on a stall doing some crafts as a way into talking to people about the environment. It was super duper chill and I got to feel like slightly less of a bookworm than I usually do by using some block prints and fabric paints to customise my cycling jacket!

In the evening, I then went to a friend’s poetry recital which was excellent. It’s been a while since I’ve been to any live poetry and I had a really good time. It’s always a real privilege to get to see talented creative people sharing stuff they’re working on early in their process!

What have I been reading/watching/listening to?

This week, I’ve been catching up on Disney’s Andor. I had started watching this a few weeks back but haven’t had a lot of evenings at home to watch TV recently. Nevertheless, I’d seen a lot of people talking very highly of it on social media and so was keen to find the time to watch it.

I’m not sure I’ve loved it as much as some people have. However, it’s definitely been one of the more interesting Star Wars properties of recent years. It’s really interesting to see the series really digging into questions of fascism and resistance in a slightly more grounded way. Whilst similar questions come up elsewhere, they’re usually a bit more silly; whereas this feels like it at least treats the politics of the in-universe world seriously.

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!!