Agent Palmer

Jonathan Douglas asked the question, “Is it possible for an average bloke to ride all 21 stages of the Tour de France?” That question and the answer to it can be witnessed in the sub-hour documentary “One Day Ahead” by Silver Eye Films.

In it, we follow eight New Zealanders in their attempt to complete the 2018 Tour de France, one stage at a time, one day ahead of the actual professional race, in order to raise money and awareness for the Mental Health Foundation of New Zealand.

Time capsules aren’t often great at relevance, but this book as “a construct amassed from American High School Yearbooks” by Pierre Huyghe and Douglas Coupland is a time capsule that endures.

School Spirit is “an excursion through the soul of a dead and disembodied student lost inside the memories and infrastructure of a California High School.” That’s the premise, but as explained in the book, Kelly, our dearly departed guide, can visit other high schools.

I know that I’ve written about the Edge of the World Broadcast before, but it deserves ongoing discussion because each time a new season drops, Joel Mengel raises the bar on what radio dramas are compared to where they used to be. Season Three is no different.

In Season One, I called the show “wondrous and mysterious,” and in Season Two I said it was “even more engaging and engrossing.” Season Three starts with a great recap of those two seasons…

If you want to go back to school to learn all there is to know of the known and unknown universe, you can’t do much better than the 365 pages of Cosmos by Carl Sagan.

“The Cosmos television series and this book represent a hopeful experiment in communicating some of the ideas, methods and joys of science.” This, at least in print form, is completely accomplished.