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It has been billed as “Yorkshire’s Atlantis”. But unlike the sunken city of ancient Greek legend, the disappearance of the city of Ravenser Odd was less down to the sort of arrogance or hubris that angers the gods (they don’t do arrogance or hubris in Yorkshire) and more to do with the shifting and erosion of the Humber coastline.
In its heyday, Ravenser Odd had its own court, jail and chapel and was represented by two MPs. As you’d expect from a city on the banks of the Humber, there was something of a focus on shipbuilding and its townsfolk were not above the odd bit of piracy. Then in 1362 came St Marcellus’s flood, a storm which deluged northern Europe, sinking settlements as it went (it also put paid to the port of Dunwich on the Suffolk Coast). Now modern technology is making it easier to locate undersea ruins and there’s every hope the city of Ravenser Odd will be lost no more.
If you – like me – spend hours a day sitting at a desk, then you’ll know how bad this is for your health. The human body was meant to move about, so spending nine or more hours in the same position comes with all sorts of risks. What’s more, regular bouts of exercise don’t appear to mitigate these risks. Your best bet then is to make sure you move about every 30 minutes or so to give your body a break. Our sports scientist has the story.
One story that particularly caught my imagination this week concerned the Polish uprising of 1830-31. A little like the conflict raging in Ukraine, at first the plucky Poles fighting for their freedom from the oppressive rule of Tsar Nicolas I attracted the sympathy of liberal elites across Europe. But as the conflict became more protracted, the help the Poles needed to sustain their campaign failed to materialise. It’s a cautionary tale for Kyiv’s western allies
who are dragging their feet over supplying Ukraine with military aid.
This week we also marvelled at Finland’s achievement in halving its suicide rate since the turn of the century. We marked 80 years since the publication of Friedrich von Hayek’s The Road to Serfdom by acknowledging that the Austrian
economist was much misunderstood. And we learned about three ways your wardrobe could help you to avoid the overconsumption of fast fashion. (You may feel that writing goodbye letters to garments you are about to
discard is taking matters a tad far but, as we like to say at The Conversation, chacun à son goût.)
From our friends and colleagues in our global network, we wondered what is the nature of the relationship between TikTok and the Chinese government. We thought about strapping on the old rucksack and joining the digital nomad trail.
And, after the tragic and suspicious end of Russian opposition figurehead Alexei Navalny, we considered his death in the context of a long tradition
of self-sacrifice in Russia.
Finally, still on Russia – and as voters head to the polls for an election whose result cannot be said to be in doubt – the latest episode of our podcast The Conversation Weekly looks at the role of conspiracy theories in maintaining Vladimir Putin’s popularity among his followers.
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