It’s been a little while since our last newsletter but there’s good reason for that. So here, chock full of reasons/excuses, is a newsletter.
Obviously, the biggest news of late is that our second feature length documentary has been released. Curious People: An Incomplete History of Nine Lessons and Compendium is out now, free for all on YouTube. A fairly comprehensive look at how Robin Ince had a stupid idea 20 years ago that ended up changing the shape of science communication and entertainment. It features never been seen show footage and brand new interviews with the likes of Robin, Josie Long, Natalie Haynes, Chris Hadfield, Grace Petrie, Chris Jackson, Helen Czerski, Matt Parker, Jen Gupta and many more. You can watch it here.
Two Patreon and Paid Tier exclusives have been released as well. Part Two of the Italian Westerns An Uncanny Hour special featuring Robin chatting with Stewart Lee and also the live Q&A panel with Robin, Natalie, Joanna Neary and Trent Burton, recorded at the Curious People premiere, is also out now. The video editions of these are out now, podcast editions will be out this week.
You can access these specials by signing up to the paid tier here or supporting us on Patreon.
A month without a newsletter demands an explanation.
Latitude
The truth is, we’ve barely been at Shambles HQ since the last newsletter because we’ve been out and about working on a number of different projects for you to enjoy!
First up, it was delightful to see and meet so many of you at the Latitude Festival at the end of July. We did over 12 hours of Shambles shows at the festival.
For the first time ever, all the shows were recorded in both audio and video and they will be available soon. Guests included Alexei Sayle, Reece Shearsmith, Kevin Fong, Ayọ̀bámi Adébáyọ̀, Stewart Lee, Claudia Hammond, Adam Buxton, Ankita Saxena and many more.
We also produced a few shows for the UCL Festival of Engineering, including the The Wonders, an evening of groundbreaking engineering hosted by Helen Czerski and Mark Miodownik. The show also featured entertainment from some of our favourite Shambles people including Foxdog Studios, Ben Moor and Joanna Neary and some brilliant scientists making a Shambles show debut including Qasim Rafiq, Claire Walsh, Lucy Todd and astronaut Dan Tani!
It was great to meet some new Shambles fans at these shows too!
Paris 2024
A few of the Shambles Team were straight off from Latitude to Paris to support our pal, and regular Shambles contributor, Helen Glover in her quest for her third Olympic medal in the rowing.
Helen and her team came away with an incredible silver medal, missing out on gold but just over a tenth of a second. Team Shambles lost their voices screaming over the last 100m and we can’t be sure that Steve Backshall didn’t actually briefly black out.
Catch up with Helen on a recent episode of They’ve Made Us right here.
Shambles Doc #3
It was straight from Paris to an undisclosed location in Germany for some filming on what we’re calling, for now, #ShamblesDoc3. Our third major documentary is, unquestionably, our biggest ever project at Shambles. After we made Rapid Motion back in 2023 we were over the moon with the response to the film and a lot of you, particularly Patreon subscribers, had told us how delighted you were that we’d branched into big, proper science based documentaries given the dearth of them being made in the UK anymore. So we’ve taken that to heart and been all over the place working on a new film.
We can’t tell you too much about it yet but rest assured, this is definitely the biggest project we’ve ever undertaken at Shambles. Once again, we’re teaming up with an incredible charity as part of the film but most importantly, it wouldn’t be possible without your support. We’re incredibly grateful as ever to you for it, and we hope you enjoy the final product which, EXCLUSIVE REVEAL, should be released in the third quarter of 2025.
Directly after our German shoot, we were off to New York to do a bit more filming for the project and also to help out with a charity event to celebrate the US launch of our good buddy Matt Parker’s new book, Love Triangle. Make sure you grab a copy! There’s some pretty fun maths in it about the time we stuck him on the MotoGP bike for the Rapid Motion film too!
There’s also lots of other new bits and pieces coming out soon including the final part of our Italian Western series, plus some more An Uncanny Hour and Book Shambles specials, plus our oceans series with Helen Czerski.
We’re busy, busy, busy!
The Allusionist is about half way through their UK tour which we are very proud to present. Upcoming dates include Oxford, London, Bristol, Birmingham and Edinburgh. Dates and tickets are here.
And the London run of Nine Lessons is on sale now! We’re back for four shows (including the now traditional matinee) at Kings Place on Dec 13, 14 and 15. As ever, Robin Ince will be hosting all the shows and some of the confirmed guests already for this year include some Nine Lessons favourites like Chris Lintott, Lucie Green, Miranda Lowe, Helen Czerski and Chris Jackson, plus first timers like Kate Stables, Gilly Forrester and Anna-Maria Mandalari. Tickets for all shows on sale now.
A lot of you have been asking if there will be a non-London show this year as well. We’re hopeful and working on it. Watch this space.
We’re said it above, and we say it all the time, nothing we do is possible without your support so sign up at Patreon or below. THANK YOU!
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