We think 2016 could've tried harder. Disheartened as we are, this episode looks at the up and downiness of a strange few months, and whether the world is really getting stupider. We also manage to talk about some productivity stuff.

• Charlie Brooker’s yearly Screenwipe
• Even Kanye is mentally beleaguered
• Le Tigre.
• The Village Square
• Alain de Botton's plan for secular churches
• The World Until Yesterday by Jared Diamond
• Tom Waits stopped drinking a long time ago
• Sushi Go! (the board game)
• Exploding Kittens & Bears vs Babies (the other board games)
• Google Photoscan
• Modernist poetry in general
• Refly Editor
• Collaboration on Keynote

"The strain of anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that, 'my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge.'.” -Isaac Asimov