The Colosseum Was A State Propaganda Machine

Photo by Ceyda Çiftci

In this video, geek architect Dami Lee deconstructs the Colosseum of Ancient Rome, explaining how it operated as a propaganda engine to keep the the city's population distracted from the real issues.

And, yes, she concludes with comparisons to today's mass media...

When Science Meets Fiction, Reality Sinks Atlantis

Photo by Paolo Resteghini on Unsplash

In homage to Pete's recent OUTGUNNED Adventures campaign, in which  our characters found - then sank - Atlantis, I thought I'd share these two videos from geek architect Dami Lee.

Here she uses mathematics and physics to investigate Plato's description of the fictious city, and, unsurprisingly, the numbers don't add up.

But remember, gentle reader, to never let facts get in the way of a good story...

The Problem with Coruscant (Planet Cities Explained)

What happens when a city never ends? No farmland. No oceans. Just a planet-wide urban machine — towers stacked 5,000 levels deep.

This video explores the ecumenopolis, a concept from the 1960s by Constantinos Doxiadis, who believed humanity might urbanize the entire Earth.

Through Coruscant (Star Wars) and Trantor (Asimov’s Foundation) — fully urban planets with over a trillion inhabitants — we ask: is a planet-city truly possible, or destined to collapse?

We break down Coruscant’s layers — from the political Emergent Level, to the criminal Underworld, to heat-choked machine tiers — exposing the brutal logistics of feeding, cooling, powering, and moving a civilization with zero nature.

Doxiadis imagined a fractal, human-scaled ecumenopolis, grown through Ekistics, with walking-distance cores and protected green lungs.

So — could a planet-city work through flexibility over control?

Or would it, like Rome, collapse the moment the grain stops flowing?

Since it was first introduced into Star Wars lore, I've always been fascinated by the idea of Coruscant.

It was even the name of the head table at our wedding, where all the tables were named after Star Wars planets.

Architecture In Middle-Earth

A fascinating pair of videos from geeky architect Dami Lee about the reasons and ideas behind different construction styles in Tolkien's Middle-Earth.

And as a bonus, below, I've shared DnD Hunter's Building Landmarks in D&D Worlds video for some added gaming inspiration: