Cultural Geography Blog

Here’s a song that I made using SUNO: a tool which Matt Podbury introduced me to at Practical Pedagogies which uses AI to write a song in whatever style you want, and on a theme.  This was to go alongside one of my favourite lessons, when we explore the story of the Ever Laurel and the 29000 bath toys fell into the North Pacific in 1992 and revealed some of the workings of ocean gyres and their role in concentrating ocean plastics, to which the bath toys added as they disintegrated over the decades since. Of course the frogs, turtles and beavers are always left out of the narrative...  Enjoy the Electronic beats of ‘Rubber Duck Boom’. Sing along to the chorus! Listen on Suno

I saw this book yesterday in Hatchards, and was immediately drawn to the cover, which is excellent, and even before I picked it up I knew that it would be perfect for one of my favourite topics. Publishers' blurb We live in a manufactured world. Unless you are floating naked through space, you are right now in direct contact with multiple manufactured products. How often do we stop to think: where do the things we buy actually come from? There exists a nearly invisible, awe-inspiring global system of manufacturing that enables virtually every aspect of our existence. The things we surround ourselves with take surprising and often byzantine journeys to reach us – be it the thousands of litres of water needed to make a single pair of jeans or the components of our smartphones travelling over six times around the world to reach us. From mega-factory floors, engineering laboratories and seaports to distribution hubs, supermarkets and our own homes, Tim Minshall traces these journeys to...