It started almost at the bottom: my mother’s disease, a stuck relationship, low creativity, finances in tatters, no invitations… then my mom died, there was the funeral, legal complications, then the short relationship ended and I (finally!) hit rock bottom… and in September the sun came up and the gray cloud suddenly lifted from my soul.

In the meantime, I kept myself afloat by running, surfing, swimming, clearing overgrown land, stacking stones… slowly, more and more, by writing on Substack in English, a little bit on my blog in Slovenian, and publishing a few articles and essays in various magazines.

I rode the wave of guest appearance with Ben Fogle and the repeated airing of that show on BBC Earth, which brought me quite a few orders of my book Human: instructions for Use. This helped me keep my chin above water financially. I was happy to write an introduction to the translation of Ben’s book Inspire: Life Lessons from the Wilderness.

My event of the year was the Hearth Summit, organized in Ljubljana by the Wellbeing Project. I wrote an article about it, which many participants appreciated and shared with their circles.

In mid-August, I dressed up for my nephew’s wedding.

I found it funny how many people watched and appreciated my video of hand-washing clothes on social media.

I supported a few events as a cook, a few as a facilitator, and I did a few talks. I participated in the Wild MasterChef at Fesdivjal.

I’ve had a few guest appearances on podcasts, as well as on radio and TV. I had quite a philosophical debate with Miha Šalehar, a fun but deep conversation with Zvezdana Mlakar, still last November I chatted with David Koprivšek, and just on the ultimate day of 2025, my conversation (in English) with Tadej Juran came up as part of his Life Talks series. It’s title is Love and Death.

On November 5th, I celebrated the 20th anniversary of the film V for Vendetta by watching it (again).

In late autumn, I activated the tent sauna, and since then I’ve been heating it up (almost) every Sunday.

There were fewer articles and essays in magazines than I would have liked – it really hasn’t been a good year for writing. I’ve written about the culture, which comes in the beginning, as well as about ends, I’ve philosophized about the strange position of God in today’s society, about the harmfulness of soft shoes for bone health, and about good psychopathy, and finally about the tyranny of the economic equation.

I feel like I haven’t written enough for the printed media, but I did post 30 quite meaningful or in-depth posts on Facebook.

Towards the end of the year I was invited to a roundtable discussion on artificial intelligence and I summarized it in a video on YouTube.

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Since I wasn’t in the best skin to give, I used the time to soak in as much as I could – I started following a few authors on Substack, read a few books, and immersed myself in the world of podcasts. Even if only for my own record, I prepared an overview of the most important ones for me in the various fields that I follow – on the one hand because of the situation in the world, and on the other hand because of my own interests.

Civilization, geopolitics

Chor Pharn: my greatest discovery of recent months; he poetically describes the state of the Earth from great height, but at the same time with microscopic precision: how existing civilizations are merging into an organic planetary civilization of type I (according to the Kardashev scale), which does not yet have a name.

Douglas Rushkoff adds to this a tone of humanity in his conversations with diverse guests.

Alexander Bard offers a tantric/shamanic/Zoroastrian deep archetypal explanation of what is happening in the world without beating around the bush.

Murray Bookchin added a pinch of anarchism and social ecology when he was still alive (his thinking is still very relevant today).

Michel Bauwens, the founder of P2P Foundation, is involved in the commons field and is a generally tremendously knowledgeable person; his writing is complex, and sometimes I can hardly follow him, but how are we supposed to grow if we don’t push our boundaries?

Bayo Akomolafe caresses the ear with the intricacy of expression and poetic metaphors.

Gary Stevenson and Richard Wolf comment on current issues through the prism of the economy; humanely, accessibly, and with purpose.

Simon Michaux zdravorazumsko osvetli problem izčrpavanja naravnih virov kot strokovnjak za rudarstvo; razjasni, denimo, zakaj je EU naredila obrat v ciljih razogljičenja, saj so preprosto nerealistični.

Simon Michaux speaks with common sense about the problem of natural resource depletion as an expert on mining; through his analysis, for example, it makes sense why the EU has softened its decarbonization goals, as they are simply unrealistic.

Ken LaCorte tackles “elephants in the room,” illuminating them as neutrally as possible from different angles.

Palestine and Israel

Ahmed Fouad Alkhatib is my discovery of the year because of his deep, heterodox reporting about this striking conflict that has strongly marked the last two years.

Hussein Aboubakr Mansour looks at the broader Abrahamic cultural environment in his Substack Abrahamic Metacritique and analyzes it, as would be expected, metacritically. I appreciate his commentary on the developments in Palestine, too. He talks about post-Christianity and post-Islam. Here is a recent post on Christmas and an even more recent one on the connection between Marcionism and Islam.

Islam

Raymond Ibrahim and Robert Spencer critically analyze Islam and Islamism throughout history and in current political realities.

I follow the intense verbal battles between Islamic preachers in the West and their opponents, who are often ex-Muslims, such as Apostate Prophet, Jasmine Mohammed, Harris Sultan, Apostate Aladin, Mosab Hassan Yousef, Nuriyah Khan, Sarah Haider, Luai Ahmed, etc.

The banter goes in all possible directions and can go from serious academic exchanges, respectful conversations, heated debates, primitive screaming, childish whining…

A nice documentary, Islam, about building bridges has recently been released between Sam Harris and Maajid Nawaz.

Religion and atheism

Among the more serious, academic authors who dissect the Bible and Christianity in general, Richard Carrier and Dan McClellan appeal to me the most. Of course, one of the most famous experts, Bart Erhman, is also interesting.

Christian apostates who expose the problems of this religion also broaden my horizons, especially Matt Dillahunty in Darante LaMar, to mention just two, but it’s always enlightening to listen to Stephen Fry or Dan Barker.

Metamodernism

I started going down this bottomless pit first through the original authors, but now, I appreciate Greg Dember’s accessible and understandable writing about this new cultural era.

Otherwise, Thomas Flight provides a really plastic description of metamodernims in his video Why do movies feel so different now?

(De)transition and queer theory

Genspect is an organization with a podcast of the same name that addresses the challenges of gender transition from all possible angles.

Andrew Doyle and Peter Boghossian are two more authors that I like to read and listen to. They cover very broadly the state of Social Justice (i.e. woke) in Europe, Britain, and the US.

Billboard Chris fights against hormone blockers being given to youth.

I follow these phenomena closely because they are unfolding on the ideological battlefront, where progressive movements are radicalized, which in turn radicalizes conservative movements, and the tensions are intensifying. The symptoms of social diseases, similar to individual diseases, manifest in a different place than where their cause is: as a rash, nausea, swelling … considering that many serious diseases are transmitted sexually, it is not surprising to me that social pathologies also find expression in the realm of sex (and gender).

Artificial intelligence, AI

zelo plastično pojasni Kaj je to inteligenca? (v knjigi s tem naslovom).

Chor Pharn writes a lot about AI, and many of the people above mention it too.

Blaise Aguera y Arcas explains it very vividly in his book What is Intelligence?

I am fascinated by how quickly AI has become a global investment sink; we are betting everything on AI as if we believed it would free us from our own stupidity, by which our societies found themselves in deep trouble. The stakes are enormous, and if the investments don’t start paying off soon, the civilizational crisis might become even worse than it already is.

Miscelaneous

Louis Rossmann inspires me with his fight for the right to repair and his critique of intentionally crappily manufactured devices and machines. Technology will have to get free from producers’ control if we are to make more efficient use of available resources. The obsession with control undoes the progress we’ve made thus far.

Adam Wilson brought tears to my eyes with Radical Neighbouring. His soul is the seed of the kind of community that should exist everywhere in the world.

I wrote a long essay, informed by all the above topics and authors. It is too long to be the epilogue to this overview of my key influences in 2025. You’ll have to wait for me to finish the essay and translate it into English. In the meantime, just click on one of the links above and comment below if you find any of them useful.