Only time will tell whether I’ve chosen the right story to follow that title. It’s not easy to gauge just how much time, but, back-of-the-envelope reckoning, I calculate we will need however long it takes us to figure out how to travel at the speed of light, and then another 124 years.

As the geeks among you will have realized, what I’m alluding to – and, as it happens not writing about this week – is K2-18b, the planet on which a team of scientists based at Cambridge University, using Nasa’s James Webb Space Telescope, have detected signs of two molecules – dimethyl sulphide (DMS) and dimethyl disulphide (DMDS) – that, on earth, are produced only as a result of the activity of marine phytoplankton and bacteria.

The scientific world seems to have become very excited by the prospect of having intelligent near neighbours. And understandably so! Who wouldn’t relish the prospect of driving 700 trillion miles to discuss geopolitics with a piece of seaweed? However, without wishing to put a damper on all this excitement about new folks moving into the neighbourhood, I should point out that the level of probability that where there is DMS and DMDS there is also seaweed is, at time of writing, only three sigmas (99.7%). The standard scientific bar for this kind of discovery is set at five sigmas (99.999999%). So, I wouldn’t start putting ‘K2-18b’ into Waze just yet. Mind you, since it is only 18 months since the team achieved a one-sigma result (68% probability), it is easy to understand the excitement generated.

However, my attention this week has been somewhere else entirely, or, more precisely, three somewhere elses. Just when I was thinking that the time might have come to give up on the idea of finding intelligent life on earth, three items dropped into my mainstream media feeds. You have probably noticed one or two of them, but you might not have thought of joining up the dots as I have.

For the last 90 days, I have watched and read in bemusement and amusement as political commentators have attempted, in blogs and newspaper columns, on radio and television, to justify their salaries. With a considerable vested interest, this unfortunate group of experts have been turned to for daily in-depth analysis of President Trump’s policy. Finally, this week, I see that a number of them have dropped the pretence, and admitted that Trump does not have a policy. He has no strategy, no plan for achieving his goals, no team of guides and advisers. All he has is a constantly ducking and weaving gut-instinct, which he relishes in giving rein to as it leads him to draw directionless and structureless doodles across the map of the world.

I admire these commentators for giving up the pretence of commenting on the style, cut and quality of the emperor’s new clothes and admitting that he is, indeed, stark naked. At the same time, my heart goes out to them, because in admitting this, they are also admitting that their dual functions have no meaning in Trump’s second term. They cannot interpret his actions and analyse the underlying reasoning, because they have just admitted that there is no underlying reasoning. At the same time, there is little point in their offering projections regarding the effect of the President’s latest actions. Before the ink has even dried on their latest op-ed piece, Trump will have done three new and mutually contradictory things, and undone two others, so that their article is only good for wrapping fish.

Moving from the new world to the old, I was shocked to read that the British Supreme Court ruled this week that the legal definition of a woman is based on biological sex. This means that trans women can no longer use single-sex female toilets or changing rooms or compete in women’s sports, and that self-identifying trans women convicted of raping biological women will not be incarcerated in women’s prisons. As I typed that last sentence, the lunacy of the last more than a decade in Britain washed over me again. At a stroke, the Supreme Court seems to have made it possible for ordinary, sane people in Britain to, once again, proclaim the simple truth that ‘woman’ is a biological term.

That is what is so shocking about this entire last woke period in Britain. The grip that officially-sponsored lunacy held on the country, the totality of woke sway, made it possible to believe that the entire country was hallucinating. However, the speed with which almost everyone has celebrated the Supreme Court ruling shows that this was never anything other than a reign of terror, which only a few very principled and brave heroes had the courage and integrity to resist publicly.

Incidentally, Cambridge University, the very institution where astronomers are becoming cautiously optimistic about the prospect of alien algae, was at the forefront of the British woke insanity, scoring 2.38 (0.42 more than its nearest rival) on a scale that scored the following manifestations of woke thinking and action: anonymous reporting; anti-racism training; free speech controversies; official commitments to decolonisation; race equality charter membership; transgender-related restrictions on speech; trigger warnings.

Finally, this week, I move closer to home. I fear that some of what I am about to write may be deeply upsetting to some of my readers, but I have to call it as I see it.

As I write this, on Monday, we are at Day 563 of the war, and there are still 59 hostages that have not been returned to Israel: 35 whose families are waiting to give them a burial, and 24 whose loved ones are praying that they will be returned alive. Since October 7, with relentless determination, Israel’s national broadcaster, Kan, has striven to keep an awareness of the hostages at the very centre of the nation’s attention.

In a country where news typically breaks hourly, rather than daily, almost all hourly radio bulletins have contained an item featuring an extract from an interview with, or a speech by, a member of a hostage’s family. Not infrequently, such an item has been the lead or second item in the bulletin. Only rarely have these sound-bites been truly definable as news.

On Day 563, this unequivocally reflects an extreme prioritization that, I would suggest, can no longer be seen as reflecting the objective reality of newsworthiness, but, rather, speaks to the broadcaster’s subjective understanding of its own role and influence. One of the most striking examples of this bias is a weekday daily two-hour current affairs programme, with a human face, from 10:00 till noon.

The presenter, Keren Neubach, features every day a lengthy interview with a hostage family member, in which her empathy and compassion are eloquent. Almost always, these conversations are very upsetting to listen to. With many of these interviewees, whom she has spoken with more than a few times, over the last almost 19 months, Neubach has clearly forged a personal relationship that means a great deal both to them and to her. In her opening monologue this morning, she spoke of how today seems like a routine day:

“Pesach is over; perhaps you’ve taken the kids to kindergarten and gone off to work; Holocaust Day is just around the corner, and then Independence Day. Have you started planning your barbecue? Apparently a perfectly normal day. But nothing is normal, nothing is routine. Because in Gaza, at this very moment, 59 of our brothers and sisters are still being held. Some of them alive, tortured, suffering, threatened, at this very moment; some no longer alive. Their families are waiting as well. And nothing will be normal, or routine, until all 59 come back home. They all have to come back, up to the very last one.” The tone, directness and bluntness of this piece are typical of Kan’s approach until now.

However, yesterday and today, on the programme that immediately precedes Neubach’s, both one of the two co-presenters, and one of the expert commentators, calmly stated that it is by no means certain that the hostages will ever be returned. For the last year and a half, I have dreaded that there is no situation in which Hamas will consider it to be in its interest to return the last of the hostages, but this is not a position that Kan has given voice to over this period, and, in Israel as a whole, it is not an opinion often spoken aloud in public.

Kan published today the result of a recent opinion poll, which showed that 56% of those questioned favoured ending the war immediately in return for the release of all the hostages, while 22% were opposed and 22% did not express an opinion, I was surprised that Kan gave publicity to the survey, which showed far fewer supporting the return of the hostages if the price is ending the war than Kan’s presentation has been suggesting over the last months.

On the same programme, they played a message from a mother speaking directly to her hostage son. (Kan has been featuring such messages since it was first revealed that hostages sometimes are able to hear Israel radio broadcasts,) Interestingly, in the message, the mother states that 80% of the Israeli public support ending the war immediately in return for the release of all the hostages. The survey results suggest otherwise, but the media prominence given to hostage family members and protest rallies has, until now, created a different impression.

I have no idea whether what I see this week as a shift in Kan’s perception and projection of the reality we live in is a temporary blip, or represents a policy change, or is something less formal and more spontaneous. I welcome it as what seems to me a reading of the situation that is more grounded in reality and is, on the whole, healthier, than the “Bring Them Home” mantra that has, until now, suggested that the fate of the hostages lies with the Israeli government rather than their Hamas captors.

All I know for now is that I have identified three (count them: three!) examples of widespread delusion melting after receiving a dose of sanity. I don’t know when I last felt so positive about the future of the human race’s ability to understand the reality it finds itself in. (Not optimistic about the future of the human race, mind you! Let’s keep a grip here.)

I suppose I should also take heart from the fact that, if life on earth ever proves to be untenable, we can always go and live with those nice bacteria round the corner on K2-18b.