The Newsletter of (Not Quite) Everything

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Clickbait Will Kill Us All
This week: a brief rant about news values; some stuff that probably shouldn’t be taught in schools; and a journey planner for your trip to early modern…
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Jonn Elledge
9
It’s racist, it’s extremist and it’s immoral
The right is still calling for deportations, and the government is still being cowardly about it. Also: London’s first green belt; some notes on a…
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Jonn Elledge
11
The Two Minutes Hate
Some thoughts on what pile-ons are doing to our brains, because ouch. Also: everything objectively insane about Kash Patel’s “challenge coin”; and meet…
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Jonn Elledge
15
…but with a whimper
This week: the Tories are dying, and it’s less fun than I’d imagined? Also: a new way of mapping urban UK; and some anti-car propaganda from the Walt…
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Jonn Elledge
3
From the Outside
This week: everything I thought about Labour conference while not being there. Also: a deep dive into Cornish separatism and the nature of national…
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Jonn Elledge
24

September 2025

What Do We Have To Lose
If Keir Starmer won’t even make a moral case against deporting our friends and neighbours, then what is the point of him? Plus: some natural borders…
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Jonn Elledge
9
Book Club: What Shape is History?
An extract from The Cultural Tutor: Forty-Nine Lessons You Wish You’d Learned at School, by Sheehan Quirke.
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Jonn Elledge
 and 
The Cultural Tutor
The Answer May Surprise You
This week: is the British right approaching a tipping point? Also, some people who lived longer than you thought; and a century of Sheffield just…
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Jonn Elledge
14
Why is there a universe anyway?
A thematically connected pair of extracts from my new (old) book.
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Jonn Elledge
4
A nation is a shared illusion – so a government has the power to change it
Also this week: who was the first king of England? And my favourite giant semi-aquatic rat.
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Jonn Elledge
10
The Eleventh Plague
This week: I am begging my government to just once try to be normal. Also: a new (old) way of dividing Europe, thanks to the Knights of St John; and…
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Jonn Elledge
14
Borders are Back, Baby: From Trump and Transylvania to Brexit and Bolivia's Navy
Episode 2540: Jonn Elledge's Brief History of the World in 47 Borders
Published on Keen On America • 
38:10
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