Love maps and history? Then let me direct you to the Map Men! Jay Foreman and Mark Cooper-Jones are Map Men — mild mannered media men by day, cartographical crusaders by evening and weekends, a few times per year. …

Very little room for improvement. I don’t enjoy Room Escape games. If I wanted to spend my time randomly prodding at a screen with a sense of impatience and dread, I’d go back to online dating. Everything you have to do feels like admin. And I refuse. Find your own…

These days, we universally love Turkey. Delicious food, lovely climate, beautiful countryside and (yes) world beating toilets. But back in the 11th century, the praise wasn’t quite so universal. European views of the Seljuk Sultanate of Rum were coloured by The Crusades. …

Historical or hysterical? New podcast Countries that don’t exist anymore tries to do both… Countries that don’t exist anymore is a new podcast from comedian and historian Ed O’Meara and radio producer Phil O’Meara. It tells the story of nations that were once high and mighty but have since disappeared…

Armed to the teeth, but is it a repeater? On 26th December, I was at a family Christmas binge in a room full of nieces and nephews needing entertaining. And because it’s the early 21st century they all had access to phones or tablets. And because I don’t have children…

Look, before you leap… —

As automation takes hold, what skills will a future workforce need to thrive? Jobs are under threat. According to a McKinsey Global Institute report, 375 million jobs will vanish across the world by 2030. A 2017 Oxford study predicted job losses of up to 47% within 50 years. As “children…

Ed O’Meara takes a Turkish toilet safari and wipes away preconceptions about the Pottyman Empire. In an era dominated by international humiliation, Britain can claim few things to be proud of. But our toilets have been a source of reliable national pride and are far from bog standard. …

Boring water. Boring, boring water. There are some things in life that are objectively a bad idea but I have to accept, through gritted teeth, that people will carry on with them anyway: burning fossil fuels, factory farming and voting for the Conservative Party. Then there are things that are…