When I was in China, I was chatting to this guy about the NHS. “That sounds like North Korea,” he told me. So when my dad got cancer, and was going through chemo, we got chatting about what it’s like to go through the NHS system when you’re seriously ill. Spoiler: it’s not like North Korea.

Part two of a No Going Back double-bill, the story of this ancient metaphor, and do drunk people at a party know what it means?

Back in the olden days in Ancient China, a bloodthirsty leader named Xiang Yu was preparing for battle. The command he gave to his army: “break the cauldrons and sink the boats” (破釜沉舟). The message: no retreat, it’s victory or nothing. The phrase lives on as a

Chinese “chengyu”, a 4-character idiom. But modern Chinese generally aren’t warlords, so when is this idiom used? And did Xiang Yu’s gambit pay off?

Welcome to the Manosphere.

Twenty years since The Matrix came out, the battlefield of the Culture War takes place in the parallel world that is the internet. The men of the manosphere are taking on feminism and liberalism with coaching videos, irony and memes. And the gateway to the manosphere? The red pill.

Some of the most famous words ever spoken. I find out how well we know them and ask, did Neil get them right?