Rome, Stock, Emu, Future, Beef


Ancient Rome In 20 Minutes

Arzamas | YouTube | 30th May 2017

Tracing Rome from its decadent heights ("a 500-meter basin was dug at the very center of the Capitol, where 3,000 gladiators mimicked sea battles on real seagoing vessels") to its ignominious nosedive ("Rome, founded by migrants, would fall to the onslaught of a new wave of refugees"). Not in-depth, but an engaging crash course for the uninitiated (20m 58s)


The Great Gamestop Stock Shock

Ordinary Things | YouTube | 10th February 2021

Funny, frenzied recounting of this month's stock market upset—Gamestop, struggling from its "painfully outdated business model of existing in the real world", was revived by r/wallstreetbets, a "glorious community made up of folks who like to use naughty no-no words and post videos of themselves losing several thousand dollars"— narrated by an increasingly haggard investor  (17m 29s)


The Great Emu War

Disrupt | YouTube | 6th February 2021

Stories of the Australian bush. The first, in which the military lost a 1932 war against its own emu population, is especially fascinating: "Each pack of emus seem to have their own leader now; one of these leaders is dubbed Big Black. Standing at nearly six feet high, he keeps watch while the others graze, and lets out a warning cry when he spots the soldiers" (15m 09s)


The Outsider

Yuan Gao | YouTube | 10th February 2021

Kafkaesque short about a man progressing through an increasingly bizarre bureaucratic hellscape on a quest to remake himself. The style, apparently an amalgamation of stop-motion and live-action, conjures up a jittery, disquieting atmosphere, and the absurdist set design paints a dark picture of what the future might look like (5m 57s)


Cosy Video Of The Week

Cooking beef Wellington has never been so warm and satisfying


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