Writing Underway! | The Friday(ish) 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.

Just as a heads-up, I’ll be releasing a submission post for the April 2022 Patreon Q&A on Wednesday so keep your eyes peeled and, if there’s anything you’d like to ask, just drop it in the comments to that post!

What have I been up to this week?

This week, I’ve been continuing work on my next video, which will be focussing on “think tanks”. The previous couple of weeks I had mostly been immersing myself in the academic literature upon the topic, trying to establish a really clear understanding of the history of think tanks and trying to collect a few examples of these institutions having a direct impact on contemporary politics.

There have been a couple of examples that I’ve found particularly interesting. Firstly, “welfare dependency” (the idea that unemployment benefits or other forms of state welfare are harmful to those that receive them as they stop those people from becoming self-sufficient) was developed by Charles Murray (yes, also the guy who wrote the The Bell Curve) whilst working at a think tank called the Manhattan Institute. Secondly. I hadn’t realised that Christopher Rufo, the activist behind the moral panic surrounding “critical race theory” in the United States is a long-time “think tanker”, having worked at the Heritage Foundation, the Claremont Institute, the Discovery Institute and the Manhattan Institute.

Having put together many, many pages of notes from that reading, this week I’ve been beginning to assemble a script from that research. And, so far, it’s been going really well. In fact, I’ve probably written roughly half of the script so far and am pretty pleased with how it’s sounding!

Having just made my longest video to date, I’ve been really keen to keep this one a little more concise. As long as it doesn’t mean cutting any corners in terms of research, I’m also hoping that this will mean it won’t be quite so long between videos being released!

And outside of work?

Last weekend, I was able to set aside some time to go and visit a friend who lives just outside London. That meant spending a nice few hours on the train—which I know some people really hate, but I find very relaxing!—doing some reading. We mostly spent the time catching-up but did go to a very bizarre “museum of curiosities” in the basement of a bar in Hackney which had all kinds of strange exhibits (I’ll find a photo to put below!).

While there, he also convinced me to play some Warhammer 40,000 which I haven’t done in a long, long time. There’s a new version of the game called Kill Team which takes much less time than a “full” battle and is really good for a casual dabble. I’ve since been trying to paint-up some of my old figurines so that we can have a rematch next time I see him!

What have I been reading/watching/listening to?

Over the past few weeks, I’ve mainly been trying to catch up on the handful of comics that I subscribe to. I’ve fallen behind quite a bit over recent months and so have been trying to read a few an evening so that I can be back up-to-date.

I used to be a much more avid reader of comics, but have recently lapsed to just reading a bunch of ongoing Star Wars titles, Miles Morales: Spider-man and Superman. When I’ve caught up on those I’ve got in my to-read pile, I’m hoping to start picking up a few more independent comics too as I love reading some of the less commercial stories being told through the form.

That brings us to the end of this week’s edition of the Fridayish 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!!