Plenty to think about: watch, read, listen (05.07.2025)

What I’m watching

I’m trying to wean myself off the television but it isn’t working. You know how it is. After a long day, you want to sit down and be entertained. I stopped sharing my sister’s Netflix account a while ago in the hope of some discipline, but my cousin in Argentina has just featured in a Netflix series so I need to get online and pay my subscription.

In the meantime, I flip between BBC iPlayer and Channel 4, and really recommend The BBC’s The Bombing of PAN AM 103. It is quite excellent. I remember the Lockerbie tragedy from childhood but I never really grasped what happened, so I was keen to learn more about it.

Some have criticised the series for its inaccuracies but I can’t really comment as I’m not emotionally connected to the events or Lockerbie itself.  Instead, I’m happy to be taken by the narrative.  After all, it’s a dramatised retelling of the events not a documentary, and it captures the essence of the tragedy. Moreover, it treats the disaster with respect and sensitivity, giving us a ‘problem to solve’ (who did it?) as well as following the families through their grief.  It balances horror with hope as we watch the volunteer group in Lockerbie clean, sort through and care for the victims’ belonging. The friendships that form between the people of Lockerbie and the grieving families is an important thread that runs throughout the series.

My only struggle is with Eddie Marsan. I can’t quite accept his American accent, but who am I to criticise. I can’t do accents to save my life!

What I’m reading.

I have a pile of books on my bedside table and another on the floor. They’re a mix of fiction and non-fiction. Some I haven’t yet opened and others are half-read. Ludovic Slimak’s The Naked Neanderthal has one chapter to go and Anil Seth’s Being You: a new science of consciousness, is one chapter read.

The Naked Neanderthal is a fascinating and poetic investigation into this extinct hominid. As a paleoanthropologist who has spent the last thirty years studying these people, Slimak challenges conventional thinking about these people (either as inferior or fully human) and so, at the same time, demands we understand ourselves a little better too. Instead, he encourages us to see the Neanderthals as totally different: hominids, intelligent with their customs and rites, but truly themselves. If we stop using ourselves as the reference point, he argues, we can set them free to be who they were.

Anil Seth’s Being You on the other, requires more concentration. I need to read carefully to grasp what he is arguing, but Chapter One has already shown that it is worth the effort. I first came across Seth’s work while teaching the mind-body problem. I was interested in a contemporary neuro-scientist’s take on the question of consciousness, and having read many of his articles and listened to his lectures, I decided to get his latest book.

He approaches the problem of consciousness from a brain-science perspective, seeking to get rid of the ‘hard problem of consciousness’ (how we bridge our subjective experiences of and an objective study of the brain). He divides the question into three parts and proposes that our brains provide a ‘controlled hallucination’ of the outside world through predictions, sensory signals and subjective experience. If you want an introduction to his work, then watch his excellent Ted Talk, ‘Your brain hallucinates your conscious reality’.

When it comes to novels, I have just finished three books in a detective series based amongst the Navajo people in the US. A friend lent them to me, knowing my first degree was in Anthropology and feeling there was a strong cultural element to my own novel, The Accused (based in Guernsey). I took them with me on holiday to the Scilly Isle and thoroughly enjoyed both the story-lines and the facts I learnt about the Navajo people. The author is Tony Hillerman.

What I’m listening to

I love podcasts! They keep me company while I work on my parents’ home. I can be sandpapering and listening to a range of fascinating discussions, from history to politics to crime to philosophy. My only concern? I don’t remember as much as I do when I read. Still, I’m entertained and more informed (I’m sure) than I was before. My morning routine is listening to Trump 100 from Skye News while I make my morning tea. Then I’ll check what is being discussed on The Rest is Politics and The Rest is Politics US. If I’ve got a lot of sandpapering to do, I’ll listen to The Rest in History (I love their banter) or the Rest is Classified (fascinating series on the hunt for Bin Laden). Before you think I’ve bought shares in the Goalhanger podcast platform, I also love In Our Time, Legacy and a whole range of other chats. I even got into Uncanny until I decided it was too spooky for life alone in an old house!

Music is missing in my life right now, which is a shame. I have piles of CDs and old records, and I need to transfer them into a digital format. I’ve even find a box of tapes I had from my teens, which I would love to listen to again. Spotify? I need to sign up but I can’t decide between Spotify and Apple Music, and being easily distracted, I haven’t done anything about it. In fact, I’m signing off now to make a decision.