The Flat Earth Movement and the Problem with Scepticism
In May 2018, three men went on the British ITV programme This Morning to explain why they believed the earth was flat. “I think it’s right to be sceptical about…
Share
Culture & Media
267 posts
Masochistic Nationalism by Göran Adamson. Review.
The Swedish sociologist Göran Adamson’s latest book, Masochistic Nationalism: Multicultural Self-Hatred and the Infatuation with the Exotic (2021), identifies two forms of nationalism in contemporary society (white supremacist and anti-white)…
Share
Sensitive Masters and Wheelchair Accessible Torture Chambers: Dungeons & Dragons in the Culture War Era
In recent years, the culture wars have come for roleplaying games such as Dungeons and Dragons. Role-playing communities are split on whether their game platforms are becoming what is often…
Share
Black America: Is There Truth in Advertising?
If you’ve seen any American television advertising of late, you might easily conclude that the nation has undergone an astonishing demographic shift: there are no more white people. All right,…
Share
Where’s My Jetpack! How Future-Oriented Thinking Could Revolutionise Tourism
In Where’s My Jetpack?, Daniel H. Wilson takes a satirical look at the futuristic technologies that science fiction has optimistically imagined, but that have thus far not been invented, such…
Share
The Mathematics of Twitter Mobs
Twitter is not real life, but, since it was launched in 2006, the platform’s influence has steadily spread. The platform now boasts 330 million active users worldwide. That sounds like…
Share
Crescent Capitalism: Islam and the Birth of the Free Market
Islamists, leftists and conservatives have long debated whether Islam is compatible with western liberal capitalism. Many have framed the history of capitalism as beginning in medieval Genoa and Venice, and…
Share
Good News Is No News
How many upbeat articles have you come across since the COVID-19 pandemic emerged? Not many, probably. While the pandemic hasn’t exactly been a cheerful time, consider what should have been…
Share
Culture Wars in a Galaxy Very, Very Nearby
Since the 1977 cinema premiere of A New Hope, the Star Wars franchise has left an indelible mark on popular culture across the globe. It’s attracted a following comparable only…
Share
Perverse Incentives in Academic Publishing
In summing up the problems with academic publishing, I’d choose two words: perverse incentives. Of course, academics must show that we’re using grant money to produce useful research. But academic…
Share
Patrick Leigh Fermor and the Tensions of Travel
A great writer’s legacy demands constant renewal. Books left on a shelf, whether they are Tolstoyan or trash, gather dust. They look dog-eared, old-fashioned and uninviting. A critic’s task, sometimes,…
Share
Returning the Benin Bronzes
The year 1897 was not a particularly eventful year in Britain. Queen Victoria celebrated her diamond jubilee. The Tate Gallery was inaugurated in London. Oscar Wilde was released from prison.…
Share
Censorship and the Policing of Identity in Young Adult Literature
Becky Albertalli is a mover and shaker in YA (young adult literature). Her 2015 debut novel, Simon vs. the Homo Sapiens Agenda, won the American Library Association’s prestigious William C.…
Share
How Journal Editors Can Stifle the Writer’s Voice
Neither digital nor print magazines have any responsibility to publish everything that is sent to them. First, this isn’t even physically possible. Second, many submissions are poorly written, badly argued…
Share
Naming the Unnameable: Salman Rushdie, Christopher Hitchens and the Defence of Free Speech
We should be wary therefore what persecution we raise against the living labours of public men, how we spill that seasoned life of man, preserved and stored up in books;…
Share
What It’s Really Like to Be an OnlyFans Performer
Header photo of Ariel Anderssen, copyright Hywel Phillips, provided courtesy of the author. There are two ways to go about writing an article about a poorly understood, stigmatised minority. One…
Share
The Trick of Evocative Science Writing: “Books Do Furnish a Life” by Richard Dawkins
In his previous essay collection, Science in the Soul, Richard Dawkins ponders why a scientist has never received the Nobel Prize in Literature—the only possible exception, Henri Bergson, was “more…
Share
A Life of Cultural Appropriation: “The Autobiography of Fukuzawa Yukichi”
Fukuzawa Yukichi was born in 1835. When he was a young man, Japan was still a feudal society: static, rigid and almost completely isolated from the outside world, wanting nothing…
Share