Measuring agricultural productivity is easy, right? Kilogrammes per hectare and you're done. But that's almost the least interesting thing the land is producing, or so I thought. Then a tweet passed my way yesterday.

Calories per acre - the new metric to follow.

I saw that because someone I...

In the latest Eat This Podcast, Victoria Young talks about living with, and indeed enjoying, the Specific Carbohydrate Diet™. For those of you who don't know it, this is a very restrictive diet that people claim can reduce the symptoms of ulcerative colitis and Crohn's disease and, with time, perh...

With almost two years of regular podcasting under my belt now, three things emerge.

1. I really enjoy doing this. I would like to do it more and better.
2. Despite my love for the work, or perhaps because of it, a larger audience would be rewarding.
3. In the engine room, things need to change.

The three are, of course, commingled.

Sometimes it feels as if I am the only person in the known world not listening to the mould-breaking podcast Serial. I'm not. In fact only about 1.5 million people downloaded the show each week, but that still broke all records for a podcast. One reason I didn't subscribe is that I'm listening to so much else already that unheard episodes would just pile on the guilt, and one of those other shows I listen to gave me a peculiar, vicarious thrill this morning. Enough of a thrill to rouse me from my blogging torpor.

What's the name of that phenomenon where things with a perfectly good name have to have a new name or a modifier to distinguish them from more recent usurpers? Like once there were books and paperbacks, and now there are hardbacks and books. Or phones and mobile or cellphones turning into landlines...