Adam Stoner

Mollie's Diner, Gaia, Geocaching

Listen on

Episode notes

On October 18th, along with 14,000 other people in a sold-out exhibition that lasted just two weeks, I saw Gaia, a seven meter wide re-creation of the Earth by UK artist Luke Jerram at Gloucester Cathedral.

The piece explores the 'Overview Effect' that many astronaughts report after seeing Earth from a distance; isolated, alone, and floating in nothing but darkness. Gaia is accompanied by a soundtrack which features Sir David Attenborough and succeeds in making you feel incredibly small and fragile. We're used to having maps in the palm of our hand, not towering over us.

Attenborough's lines in the Gaia soundtrack come from the new Netflix documentary-cum-autobiography A Life On Our Planet. It's a watch that will have your jaw (and at points, all hope for our future survival) on the floor.

'm no Attenborough but I have been trying to get out before the weather gets in my way. My girlfriend and I went geocaching, the hobby that involves using multi-million dollar satellites to find plastic containers hidden by others in the real-world. It's the first time I've done it properly since 2016 and I've become a little addicted to it; I'm now on 33 finds, 17 this month. We've been along the ridgeway and even explored the Forest of Dean's sculpture trail in quest of them.

My adventures that I mentioned at the opener of the last email have now featured in Activity Quest, the podcast I produce at Fun Kids. Climbing is good fun – an extreme sport, I learned – and something I plan on taking up.

I wrote about how I keep my audio journal on the 19th. It's something I've been doing more-or-less daily for five years now and includes tips on how you can keep your own. It's something I've found incredibly rewarding over the years and probably one of the best things I've ever done. As with all posts on my website, it comes with – you guessed it – a podcast equivelent where you can hear excepts from that diary.

Elsewhere, Mollie's, run by the team at Soho House, sits between Oxford and Swindon on the A420. It's a modern diner and motel, complete with a drive-thru (if you haven't booked in advance). A meal for two cost less than the Five Guys equivelent and was twice as delicious. Milkshakes are mandatory if ever you visit... 

In an effort to consume less rolling news coverage – which is almost always inaccurate and of poor quality, especially if you're getting it from social media – I've been using Guardian Editions. You get the daily newspaper delivered digitally when you wake-up and, importantly, get no further updates until the following day. I've found it very useful especially with the dyad of a US election and global pandemic.

Speaking of the US election, I took out an Amazon Prime Video trial to watch Sacha Baron-Cohen's Borat follow-up, Subsequent Moviefilm, which focuses entirelty on the President, the election, and COVID–19. Like the first, it is crass and vulgar but lands every punch with some real laugh-out-loud moments.

I've also been watching 60 Days In, a reality TV format that sees ordinary folk go undercover in a US jail to help wardens improve the facility, as well as Emily in Paris which is Ugly Betty, if Betty worked for a luxury Parisian marketing firm. I like Netflix's new AI-powered shuffle, their Play Something feature.

Let me know what you're watching by replying to this email. If you have any suggestions for anything else you think I might enjoy, let me know those also.

Alright, that's all for now. 

Over the coming month, I plan to write about the brands I expect to buy from this holiday season, share some tips and tricks I've learned whilst producing podcasts that could help you elevate your own audio production, and share something else that I've been writing and researching for almost a year. 

adamstoner.com is the place to keep checking back for those.