From our UK edition
28 min listen
On this week's episode, we’ll hear from Lionel Shriver on how the Biden Administration’s border policies are a gift for Trump and the Republicans. (00:52)Then Kit Wilson on what we can expect from Mark Zuckerberg’s Metaverse. (09:53)Third, it's Peter Hanington talking about his love of haikus. (18:48)And finally, Robert Porter’s notes on the bagpipes.
From our UK edition
Many people love to hate bagpipes. Everyone from William Shakespeare to Alfred Hitchcock has held them in contempt. For some, they are almost a form of punishment. Last week, a frustrated motorist blasted bagpipe music in the faces of Insulate Britain protestors on the M25 before he was stopped by police. Most pipers will tell you they are sick of hearing that the definition of a gentleman is someone who knows how to play the bagpipes and doesn’t. Equally, someone once told me the joke that the bagpipes are an ingenious breathalyser test: you blow into the bag and if the noise that comes out doesn’t want to make you kill yourself, you aren’t drunk enough. Despite bagpipes’ supposed unpopularity, though, bagpiping is in its ascendancy in Britain.
From our UK edition
Fish tanks were probably first conceived in the distant past by the Chinese, but in many respects, aquariums are a distinctly British phenomenon. The first public one opened at Regent’s Park Zoological Gardens in 1853. The word itself seems to have been first used in Philip Gosse’s 1854 book The Aquarium: An Unveiling of the Wonders of the Deep Sea. And the glass-fronted version was patented by Edward Edwards in 1858. All that Victorian ingenuity definitely benefitted our underwater cousins. It’s hard to determine if keeping fish is trendy. On the one hand, there’s not much to be said for goldfish in a bowl; on the other, a James Bond-style mega aquarium with sharks sends a thrill down the spine.
