#pushingthewave

🔥 Why the Left Keeps Losing—and How Mamdani Gets It Right

In this week’s column, I dig into why the left keeps failing across the Western world, from Starmer’s U-turns to the Democrats’ empty promises.

The key? The left has lost touch with real people. Meanwhile, Zohran Mamdani’s grassroots win shows what can happen when you actually engage voters face-to-face.

🧳 Travel, Tutting & Techno: Vienna to Lugano

In this week’s column, I reflect on work travels across Vienna and Lugano. From operetta at the Volksoper to lakeside strolls, from techno beats to Renaissance frescoes—and an Ethiopian restaurant that redefined expectations—this is a journey full of discovery.

Also: why do some people hate cities just because it rained?

Over the past year, I’ve been quietly gathering together the pieces that now make up Pushing the Wave 2024. Some were written in response to things that felt immediate at the time; others emerged more slowly, or only revealed what they were really about when I looked back at them later.

Writing Pushing the Wave week by week has never felt like producing a series of standalone posts. It’s always been closer to keeping a conversation going — with myself, and with the world around me — and it’s only when those pieces are brought together in book form that the patterns begin to show. Questions about attention, uncertainty, freedom, and how we live alongside systems that increasingly shape our choices run through much of this volume, sometimes quietly, sometimes more directly.

Travel plays its part again this year, not as escape, but as a way of thinking. Time spent on the north coast of Northern Ireland, and later in Cuba, sharpened my sense of how place holds memory, contradiction, and resilience all at once. The photographs and drawings included in the book aren’t illustrations so much as another way of paying attention — of holding onto something fleeting before it slips away.

I’ve written a longer piece on the P-Wave Press site reflecting on how Pushing the Wave 2024 came together, and on some of the essays that sit at its heart. If you’ve followed the series over time, I hope it offers a useful way into the new volume. If you’re new to it, I hope it invites you to linger.

Pushing the Wave 2024 will be published by P-Wave Press on 26 March 2026.

🌍 The Dismantling of the Old World Order

This week on Pushing the Wave, I look unflinchingly at the collapse of Western political assumptions, Trump’s abandonment of allies, and why Europe must finally confront the reality of sovereignty.

This isn’t nostalgia for what was lost—but a reckoning with what must now be built.

We Accept the Story Because We Live the Isolation

The murder of Charlie Kirk shocked the world—but in a strange way most of us weren't surprised. In my latest column, I ask: what happens when the improbable becomes expected, and we stop asking why?

This is a reflection on disconnection, on how we accept tragic violence because we’ve stopped believing in a shared reality—and why that might be the real crisis.

🌿 Maid Marian Rides Again

In this week’s Pushing the Wave column, I delve into Peacock’s fierce and funny Maid Marian—now reissued alongside The Misfortunes of Elphin in a new annotated edition from P-Wave Classics.

Peacock's Marian isn’t a sidekick—she’s the strategist. The leader. The one holding the story together while the men play at heroism. And 200 years later, she still feels entirely modern.

🌊 Pushing the Wave 2023 is coming soon! 🌊

A year of essays, recipes, photography, ferry adventures, reflections on liberty, art, and society—all brought together in one book.

Explore how 2023 transformed the Thoughts and Pieces section, expanding its scope and deepening its ambition.

🥜 New Post on Substack! 🥜

The fourth extract from Pushing the Wave is now live! In The Ultimate Peanut Butter Smoothie, I share a humorous reflection on a disappointing smoothie experience and the resulting recipe I created as a solution. A fun and lighthearted read for anyone who loves peanut butter (or smoothies). Check it out!