John is a professor, Alison doesn’t have a bucket list, and Liz is the country’s foremost fan historian.

An uncorrected transcript of this episode is available here. Please email your letters of comment to [email protected], and tag @OctothorpeCast (on X or on Mastodon or on Bluesky) when you post about the show on social media.

Content warnings this episode: More wealth privilege (chapter 2)

• Letters of comment

• Bridget Bradshaw

• Babel wins “Best Translated Work” at the 2024 Xingyun Awards

• John: 0, Alison: 1, Liz: 3

• The Hugo Packet is now available

• John: Sunderland Shorts Film Festival

• Soulmate, Beautiful Things, Ensouled, Finger Food, Bisected, Own Home?, R1CO, The First Time I Never Met You

• Liz’s view on auroras

• Cover art: “Explain 2233” by Alison Scott

• Alt text: Three photographs of the night sky, labelled Newcastle, Bangkok, and “Quite near London” (the labels were written by a Londoner, which is why it doesn’t just say “London”). Text above reads “Octothorpe 110” and below reads “Local Aurora Snapshots”. The Newcastle and London images show photographs of aurora with some minor bits of vegetation intruding; the Bangkok picture shows a skyline of buildings underneath a thunderstorm.