2024 Wrapped
We used to call it a round up but we're told all the cool kids call it a 'Wrapped' these days.
It’s our annual end of year newsletter. So that means it’s kinda long. But with pictures.
2024 was another big year here at The Cosmic Shambles Network, a lot of which was spent working on some BIG projects that you’ll get to see in 2025 (more about those at the end of the newsletter). So before we get to that little look forward, let’s have a look back at 2024 at some stuff you might’ve missed.
MELONS: A Love Letter to Stand Up Comedy is the brand new comedy special from Robin Ince that we released on Boxing Day. Cut together from six performances across the Edinburgh Fringe it’s a whirlwind tour of how Robin fell in love with, then out of love with, then back in love with, stand up comedy. OneReview gave it five stars and called it “An hour long explosion of the passion he has for comedy” and Voice added four stars saying, “A positively exhausting hour of joy”. It’s available now FREE for all paid Patreon and Substack subscribers, or you can stream the 73 minute special for just £5 from our Patreon store.
We released our second feature length documentary, Curious People: An Incomplete History of Nine Lessons and Compendium in the summer. The documentary tells the history of Robin’s groundbreaking science variety shows that changed the way science is communicated forever, featuring loads of new exclusive interviews and a bunch of on stage and behind the scenes footage never seen before with the likes of Robin, Brian Cox, Chris Hadfield, Helen Czerski, Josie Long, Chris Jackson, Grace Petrie, David McAlmont, Tim Minchin and many more. The full documentary is free to watch worldwide and a special panel event from the world premiere is available for Patreons and paid subscribers.
We put on a whole bunch of live shows as usual in 2024. These included various Robin Ince events, a UK tour for the Allusionist podcast, some live podcast events of our own, producer Trent gave the keynote at the Institute of Physics Conference, we produced a huge number of events at Latitude, Glastonbury and the Norwich Science Festival and, of course, there was Nine Lessons and Carols for Curious People. You can view a gallery of pics from Nine Lessons and read a wrap up of the run of shows on our main site here. There will be lots more events in 2025 naturally (more info below) so make sure you’re subscribed here and to our Instagram page to get the latest news. As ever, Patreons will get pre-sales on a load of events as well!
Both podcasts returned with new episodes this year.
A limited run of Book Shambles episodes were released in both audio and video form (with the video exclusive to Patreon and paid subscribers, audio free for all of course) with more to come in early 2025. Some of our guests in the episodes out so far, joining Robin and sometimes Josie, included Belle & Sebastian's Stuart Murdoch, Alexis Pauline Gumbs, Jakko Jakszyk and Claudia Hammond. Find the episodes wherever you get podcasts like Apple, Spotify or RSS.
A three part An Uncanny Hour limited series was released with the not at all unwieldy name, Stewart Lee and Robin Ince Just Kinda Bang on for a While About Italian Westerns But Not the Really Famous Ones Like 'My Name is Nobody' and 'A Fistful of Dollars' (Catchy Title).
Originally shot as a pilot for someone else back in late 2020 under COVID guidelines, we decided to release it as a special for Patreons this year. Subscribe on Patreon or Substack to watch or listen!
In the Bibliomaniac world we released two new documentary specials; Bookshops: A Home for Diverse Stories and Origins of a Bibliomaniac. The first was shot predominantly in Prague at the European Booksellers Conference where we explored how bookshops play a vital role in elevating diverse stories, particularly from LGBTQ+ communities, and the second film, mostly shot just one week after Robin’s dad died, looks at how Nigel Ince shaped his son’s book obsession. Both documentaries are free to watch on our YouTube channel with a special live comedy event from the premiere of Origins available for Patreons and paid subscribers.
We relaunched our whole social media profile this year. We’ve fully binned Twitter for, well, obvious reasons, and have become much more active here on Substack, on our revamped Instagram page and, more recently, on Bluesky as well.
Robin’s Book Corner has been a popular regular occurrence over on Instagram where Robin highlights some of the weird and wonderful and just plain excellent books he’s found on his travels.
We also recently posted a much loved advent of Shambles ‘Trading Cards’ introducing people to 25 members of our Shambles family along with their ‘special abilities’.
And we’ve also been sharing lots of behind the scenes pics and videos, plus some clips from the archive too, so make sure you subscribe for the best day to day Shambles experience and the latest news.
Documentaries and Podcasts
We’ve got three big video and documentary projects due to release. The first is the three part series, The State of the Blue Machine presented by Helen Czerski. The bulk of this was shot at the 2024 World Ocean Science Meeting in New Orleans and we will dig into some of the latest science surrounding the ocean and the stuff in it. Look for that at the end of January.
Next up, as you will know if you’ve been following us on Instagram, we partnered with Sekhmet Racing in this year’s inaugural Women’s World Road Racing Championship and UCL Mechanical Engineering as part of a project to give female students work shadowing experience in a real world championship motor racing environment. As part of this, we’ve shot a documentary, presented by Digital Science’s Suze Kundu, looking at the wider picture of women in engineering. That should be out in March.
There’ll be lots of fun new little mini series and collections for Instagram as well including more of Robin’s Book Corner and our Shambles gangs ‘Reads of the Year’.
The Big One
Also, coming towards the end of the year, is Shambles’ biggest ever project. We’ve been casually mentioning this throughout the year but I guess it’s time we gave you a teeny tiny bit more info.
We’ve been working on a major four part prestige documentary series. We’ve been filming for it for the past 18 months and we’re not quite done yet. By the time we’re wrapped shooting we should have close to 300 hours of footage. You might not see Trent for months on end after that…
We can’t tell you much more than that yet but we promise you, it’s going to be epic. Often when we tell people the scope of a Shambles project, they say, ‘Oh, that’s ambitious’. This time they’ve been saying, ‘You’ve properly lost it this time. That’s impossible. Seek help’.
Well, we’re doing it anyway… Watch this space!!
Live Shows
In terms of live shows, we’ve got LOTS going on in 2025. Of course, Nine Lessons will return with a run of London shows and, all going to plan, a couple outside of London once again!
We’ll also be at a load of festivals as ever including something very exciting we can hopefully reveal very soon!
And with Robin’s new book out in May, Normally Weird and Weirdly Normal, (signed editions available for pre-order from the Shambles shop right now!) we’re going to be all over the country with book events and shows. That includes the Edinburgh Fringe and a very special launch event in London with Josie Long and special guests on May 8, tickets on sale now, with a new Robin stand up show attached to the book called The Universe and The Neurodiverse.
We’re also launching a brand new live ‘magazine style show’ that will be taking place in London about every six weeks from early February. These shows are going to be very shambolic, even for us, and will feature science, comedy, music and essentially us trying out a whole bunch of stuff. They’re going to be a lot of fun!
Keep an eye on our socials for dates and details for all of the above. And other stuff we just come up with as and when because you know we will.
We want to to finish by offering a big thank you to all of you! Our Shambles fans and Patreons have been as supportive as ever this past year. All the stuff that we made in 2024, and all the stuff coming in 2025, wouldn’t be possible without your support in whatever form it comes. Whether that is simply watching and sharing our films and podcasts, sending messages telling us how much you’ve enjoyed something, or what you’d like to see us make in the future, and of course purchasing tickets to shows and subscribing on Patreon. We know that times are tough and that support means we can keep making the stuff you want to see without having to plaster it with third party ads or have some TV exec make it less ‘shambolic’, and also it means we can continue to make the bulk of our output free for those that can’t afford to support financially.
So from Trent, Robin, Helen, Melinda, Alice and the whole gang, thank you, thank you, thank you, from the bottom of our hearts, it means the world.
Have a great new year and we’ll see you out there in 2025!