When a Drug-O-Lympic Whimsy Becomes Reality...
Fun, Friendly, Factful Newsletter #211
Our article is a reflection on how in just 25 years, journalistic whimsy about the Drug-O-Lympics has become reality, and what it tells us about climate inaction.
Our video is Ep 6 of Ben Law’s Woodland Year. Ben’s apprentices are ‘out of the woods’ after their gruelling winter, and learning how to build sustainably.
Our podcast kicks off a new podcast series, Teetering, when an oriental superpower threatened American supremacy, in 1993.
Main Article
A quarter of a century ago, almost to the day, in between TV jobs, See Thorough News Network founder Robert Stern dashed of a bit of journalistic whimsy for the International Herald Tribune.
What if, he satirically mused, there were a Drug-O-Lympics, where anyone could swallow, inject, or smoke whatever they wanted?
When My Olympic Drug Joke Turns Real, It’s High Time To Get Serious reveals the author's thoughts, 25 years later, as the ‘Enhanced Games’ are about to become a reality.
In particular, what do the track records, and motivations, of the billionaire right-tech bros backing the project tell us about the forces obstructing carbon drawdown?
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Video
Ep 6: 'Learning Curve', takes Ben’s two apprentices in a new direction.
With the summer imminent, and the coppicing grunt-work over, Ben's apprentices Claire and Mikee are - sort of - out of the woods.
With their chainsaw qualifications and felling experience in Prickly Nut Wood, they're now employable woodspeople. Now, with they days getting longer and the temperature rising, they can expand the range of woodland skills Ben has to teach them.
Learning Curve follows the progress of their woodland year's roundwood timber framing project - the 'Roundhouse' outdoor facility they're building at the bottom of a local primary school playground.
When Ben first revealed his plan, with it stunning reciprocal roof timber structure, in the depths of winter, it seemed like an impossibly distant dream. Now, Mikee and Claire are part of the crew building it - and getting the children to play their part in building their new outdoor classroom/theatre/playground, after they'd helped design it.
Ben Law's Woodland Year is filmed over four seasons at Prickly Nut Wood, the Sussex home and workplace of Britain's best-known woodsman.
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Podcast
The first episode of Teetering - how a Hawaiian beach bum held my career in the balance starts in one tea-drinking island nation, and end in another.
In Japan in 1993 a young Londoner, with an ill-defined ambition, abandons a career as a high-flying salariman, moves to the most expensive city in the world in search of a meaningful environmental job, and ends up a lowly TV news Ass Prod.
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