Best of The Ruffian 2024
Catch-up service:
The Enigma of Luigi Mangione
Are Young Voters Turning Right? (Pod)
How Did Politics Get So Weird? (Pod)
My Ten Favourite Books Of the Year
It’s been a fine year for The Ruffian, which started the year with twenty thousand subscribers and ended it with thirty-three thousand. I published 74 posts plus three podcast episodes. Here are the top ten most popular posts, by views, in order:
I guess people like lists! To this one, I’ll add three more posts that linger just outside the top ten (partly because they’re more recent) and which are favourites of mine: Are You Charismatic or Charming; The Orangutan Theory of Intelligence; Maybe Your Opinion Is Just a Feeling About a Story.
I was delighted to launch the Ruffian podcast with a conversation with James Marriott about Jordan Peterson. There will be more conversations in 2025 with various brilliant people.
You should go back and check out the rattle bags, secretly my favourite parts of the Ruffian, perhaps yours too. For full access to them, plus exclusive posts - and now podcasts - become a paid subscriber. You’ll get the best of The Ruffian and you’ll also have the satisfaction of knowing I couldn’t do this without you. (Next year, in the run-up to publication of John & Paul, there will be quite a bit of exclusive Beatles-related content.)
No rattle bag this week but a spot of easy listening for you. I’m not an avid consumer of new music but I do like reading end-of-year lists and checking out what I’m missing. That’s how I came across Jessica Pratt, described as hypnagogic folk music (‘hypnagogic’: between awake and asleep) in this review of her 2024 album, Here In The Pitch. Below is the album’s opening track, which features a drum track that reminds me of Guess I’m Dumb (she’s a big Brian Wilson fan). In new classical recordings, I’ve been listening to Yunchan Lim’s album of Chopin Etudes - check out this one.
I hope you enjoyed The Ruffian in 2024 and will get even more out of it in 2025. It’s been a privilege to have you with me. Please recommend and spread the word.
Happy New Year!
I will second your self-nominated favourite of the Orangutan Theory of Intelligence. Like last year’s Octopus article it has become something I constantly refer to, both at work and home!
Hi Ian…I’m really looking forward to the new book.