Welcome back to the continent's favourite podcast. How are you doing over there in Amsterdam, Dominic?

I'm fine, although it is apparently winter again, and I'm once again questioning why I live in Northern Europe.

I'm just back from Italy and missing the weather, the mountains, the incredible recycling system they had in

South Tyrol. Really? What was so good about it? Oh, it was just very strict. They kind of put

the fear of God in you that you're going to mess it up and they put chips in the bag so they can

tell that it's coming from your house if you don't separate the recycling

properly. Which is a bit terrifying but also means that you do it properly. I like that. This is a kind

of authoritarianism I can get behind. Yeah, I mean the only thing is I'm always skeptical with

recycling that it's probably being shipped off to the Philippines and burnt in a big heap,

but yeah, I shouldn't be so cynical.

How is everything in France? Are they still burning the rubbish over there?

This is Tuesday, so more burning is predicted, but we're not really sure what's going to happen

later on. I'm actually in London right now and covered in blisters because I went on a woodworking

course this weekend. Why did that give you blisters?

Because I was using some very ancient technology.

First I had to chop the wood with an axe for two hours.

And then I used a foot-powered lathe and a little scrapy tool.

And the bowl is very nice.

I'm very proud of it.

But the whole thing did also make me quite glad that we have electric power tools now. The modern world is amazing. That sounds really fun.

It was very fun. Thank you to my husband for buying it for me as a Christmas present. It was great.

But speaking of the modern world, some parts of the modern world are less amazing than Power Tools,

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