A gentle guide to the in-between time, when we all lose track of time…
There’s a peculiar stillness to Twixmas (the period of time between Christmas and New Years). The emails stop. The calendar dissolves. You forget what day it is and quietly stop caring. It’s a rare pause - not quite rest, not quite anticipation - where the year exhales before the next one begins.
Rather than rushing to “reset” or optimise ourselves for January, we like to think of this moment as something else entirely: a chance to feel grounded, curious and lightly recalibrated. No manifesting. No pressure. Just genuinely interesting things to read, watch and listen to while the kettle boils and the light fades early.
Here’s what we’re spending time with…
For the Readers
Hannah Ritchie’s Clearing the Air
A hopeful guide to climate action without the noise
Climate writing tends to swing between two extremes: apocalyptic despair or technocratic abstraction. Hannah Ritchie sidesteps both with something increasingly rare, practical optimism.
Clearing the Air makes the case for climate hope, not the blind kind, but the data-led sort that acknowledges how far we've come and how much further we need to go. It's clear-eyed without being paralysing, quietly reassuring without being naïve. The kind of book that doesn't demand you change the world before breakfast, but instead restores something more valuable: perspective.
Perfect Twixmas reading. Thoughtful, hopeful, oddly grounding.
Adam Vaughan's articles
We love the writings of Neemsayer, Adam!
Adam Vaughan is The Times' environment editor, and if you're already a reader, he's one to watch. His journalism is calm, clear, and deeply reported the kind you read slowly, coffee in hand, because it helps you understand what's actually happening rather than telling you what to feel about it.
Whether he's writing about farming, energy, or biodiversity, there's a steadiness to his work that cuts through the noise. If you prefer facts to fury and nuance to doom, his pieces are well worth your time this week. He also has a very good linkedin!
Gillian Tett's article: Green activists need to think beyond carbon emissions
Building climate resilience is just as crucial as cutting emissions, highlighting the need for both adaptation and mitigation.
In this clear-eyed piece, Gillian Tett makes the case for looking beyond carbon alone. Using wetlands and flood resilience as examples, she argues that adaptation and biodiversity aren’t “nice to have”, they’re economic and social necessities. Pragmatic, unsensational and well worth a quiet read.
Worth Watching
The White House Effect, directed by Bonni Cohen, Pedro Kos, and Jon Shenk
How climate consensus unravelled
The White House Effect (Netflix) digs into a “how did we get here?” moment in US climate politics. Using only archival footage, it traces how the Republican party went from acknowledging global warming in the late 1980s to disputing it decades later. Early clips show George H.W. Bush promised to be the “environmental president,” only to be gradually outmaneuvered by corporate interests and political spin, a story that explains much of today’s climate gridlock.
The film isn't designed to comfort. It's meticulous, sharp, and occasionally infuriating, showing how easily good intentions can be derailed. But it also shows how aware citizens can shape the conversation. Perfect Twixmas viewing for anyone who prefers understanding the forces behind the headlines, rather than just the headlines themselves. And if it leaves you shaking your head at history repeating itself? That's rather the point.
Wild Wild Country, directed by Chapman Way and Maclain Way
Shellie's documentary choice (that's me, writing this)
For something less focused on eco and more on history, I bring you Wild Wild Country. Not a new Netflix release, but new to me - and an extraordinary story I never knew existed. This documentary follows the controversial Indian guru Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh and his followers as they attempt to build a utopian city in the Oregon desert during 1980s America.
Filmed from both perspectives, the townspeople and the "outsider" cultists, it's a fascinating study in determination, alienation, and corruption. The deeper you go, the darker it gets. One for those who enjoy history and thoughtful explorations of community, belief, and what happens when idealism curdles.
Listening Time
The podcast: How to Move Away from Fossil Fuels Faster, featuring Bryony Worthington interviewing Michael Liebreich
From paralysis to progress
This episode offers a refreshingly pragmatic take on energy transition, moving beyond ideological gridlock towards what actually works. It covers net zero, energy security, and the real economics of clean tech without oversimplifying any of it. The conversation also explores electrification strategies from both environmental and industrial perspectives, because good policy tends to require both.
There's something reassuring about listening to grown-up conversations at this time of year. Voices that accept complexity and still believe progress is possible.
The Podcast: When Football Ruined My Life
Featuring another Neemsayer, worth listening to for a warm cup of nostalgia (with bite)
For something altogether different, this podcast is a love letter to football before the Premier League era, charming, flawed, deeply human.
Originally hosted by the late Patrick Barclay alongside Colin Shindler and super-agent Jon Holmes, the podcast returned in 2025 after Barclay’s death, retaining its wit, warmth and critical affection for the game’s past.
It’s nostalgic without being sentimental, funny without being cruel, and oddly comforting, like remembering a world that moved a little slower. Ideal listening for winter walks or long drives with nowhere urgent to be.
A quieter way to begin the year
Twixmas doesn’t need to be productive.
It doesn’t need resolutions, reinventions or declarations.
Sometimes, the most radical thing you can do before a new year begins is to pay attention to good writing, thoughtful conversations and ideas that don’t demand immediate action.
Hopefully, there's something here you'll learn from or enjoy.