The Knowledge

The Week wasn’t for me when it started all those years ago(1994).

I knew I’d love it if I lived abroad and was cut off from the UK media in those pre-internet days but didn’t think I needed it when I could read The Times, FTWeekend and The Spectator. Anyway, The Week didn’t need me and has a circulation of 300,000. Now its founder, Jon Connell, has a new product – The Knowledge – and I’m an early adopter. Usually I’m a late adopter: Downton Abbey (2010) and podcasts. I downloaded the Apple iPod app on Sunday and armed with some suggestions from a friend am plashing through the iPod pond. It’s like having a new wireless station; the nearest thing to another Radio 4. Warning: it is free but podcasts, see I’m picking up the lingo, are interrupted with advertisements. So far I have listened to The Rest is Politics (Rory Stewart and Alastair Campbell chatting) and Full Disclosure.The latter isJames O’Brien chatting to a variety of people. I have listened to Mick Lynch and Miriam Margolyes.

But I digress. The Knowledge is a digest of the news that arrives just before lunch by email. It’s worth reading because it culls stories from the international press, has some quirky items, takes only five minutes to read (less if you skip) and it’s free. So yesterday was about gender identity (skip), Liz Truss’ home life, a women’s football game in 1920, what passengers leave behind in Ubers, the energy crisis, sweating on the New York subway, an infestation of rats in Paris and paddy fields in a Japanese village where the rice is planted to look like famous pictures.

It’s rice art in the Japanese village of Inakadate.