Shocking, Hilarious, Poignant: Ricky Gervais’ After Life
“Any plans for the weekend?” asks a sweet elderly receptionist in the fourth episode of Ricky Gervais’ new Netflix show, After Life. Gervais’ character, Tony, a writer struggling to cope…
Culture & Media
125 posts
Iconoclasm and the Erasing of History
At 1:32am on the morning of 8 March 1966, a loud explosion was heard in the center of Dublin. When dawn came, visitors to O’Connell Street were greeted by the…
More Heat than Light: Ben Shapiro’s The Right Side of History. Book Review.
Socrates was executed by democratic Athens for impiety and corrupting the youth. Western political philosophy can be said to originate from this event perhaps more than from any other. Socrates’…
The Left-Wing Case Against Censorship of Social Media
In conversations about online extremism, the question of platforms inevitably arises. YouTube, for example, may be held culpable for featuring video recommendations that lead young men down rabbit holes of…
The Tyranny of the Minority—and How to Prevent It
When the internet first became part of mainstream public life, one of the great hopes it seemed to hold up was that of an expansion of democracy. From now on,…
Siding With The Audience
A variety of recent high-profile media stories have demonstrated the extent to which news reporting has been altered by the power of social media. Traditional journalism is scarcely recognizable—so we…
Why Reality Is Stranger Than Fiction
Critics and philosophers often argue that art estranges reality, thereby drawing attention to the way we organize our lives and perceive things. Reality, however, frequently outsmarts fiction because the human…
On Quillette and the Engaged Left
The online magazine Quillette recently found itself at the center of a heated controversy concerning free speech, academic integrity and journalistic ethics. In response to a tweet castigating the magazine…
The Weaponization of Words
The relationship between a word and what it signifies is not arbitrary. That misconception, the chief legacy of that poster boy of postmodernism, Swiss linguist Ferdinand de Saussure, is largely…
Stephen Harper’s Right Here, Right Now: Politics and Leadership in the Age of Disruption. Book Review.
The emergence of right wing populism—which I call postmodern conservatism—as a global political force has provoked a flurry of explanatory books (including two forthcoming by yours truly). These have ranged…
Don’t Decolonize the History Curriculum—Globalize it
Debates about decolonizing the curriculum—once confined to academic conferences and student common rooms—are becoming increasingly hard to avoid. Campaigners are out to change what is studied at university. Some have…
Lovecraft’s Otherworldly Xenophobia
H.P. Lovecraft is known for his baroque descriptions of creatures that are not merely horrifying but actually beyond comprehension. Take for example this description of a city overrun by aliens:…
Michel Foucault: Arch-Leftist or Subversive Conservative?
Michel Foucault is one of the great thinkers of (post) modern thought, and arguably the most influential figure in the humanities and social science from the second half of the…
Do You Have to be Rich to be a Philosopher?
“Crito, we ought to offer a cock to Asclepius. See to it, and don’t forget.” These were the last words of Socrates, as recorded in Phaedo, Plato’s famous dialogue.
Aesthetic Denialism and the Rise of Acadumbia: Yale, Bloom, English and How It All Went South
The Awakening of a Passion In the early 1990s, when I was in high school, I fell in love with literature and decided I wanted more. I attended a middle…
The Emperor’s New Outrage: Why Legacy Media Is in Trouble
New media—news and entertainment entities native to the Internet, whether companies or individuals—are gaining a share of customer attention and wallet at the expense of legacy media—newspapers, television stations and…
Is Battle Rap the Last True Bastion of Free Speech?
In a packed basement in the heart of Sheffield, northern England, two burly men—one wearing a hoodie, the other sporting a fitted New York Mets baseball cap at a jaunty…
Supposed Former Appropriation Junkie: Reinterpreting Alanis Morissette
Recently, while doing the dishes, I gazed upon a ratty, exhausted old sponge caked with debris—and was instantly reminded of those who have soaked up every bad idea that has…
