Cover

The Spring 2017 issue of New Humanist is on sale now! Subscribe and get four issues a year for just £27.

Age of extremes: a special edition on democracy and its discontents

Introducing our special edition, writer and campaigner Owen Jones surveys the challenges ahead:

We live in an age of insecurity, of fear, of bigotries and deceits that are indulged, of rights and freedoms that are imperilled. Building societies that maximise human freedom and well-being, that allow us to develop our potential unencumbered, that emphasise our common humanity rather than the artificial barriers that divide us: these are the aspirations we must realise.

Vron Ware

In search of whiteness (print only)

Identity politics is back with a vengeance in 2017 – but one particular kind of identity, whiteness, is often left unexplored. Lola Okolosie talks to sociologist Vron Ware about race, class and resentment in the 21st century

Tiso

Hold the front page (print only)

Donald Trump’s “post-truth” politics and populism have a striking precedent. Giovanni Tiso explains what we can learn from Italy's Berlusconi era

einashe

Becoming British (print only)

Arriving in the UK as a child refugee, Ismail Einashe fought hard to feel that he belonged. Now, that right is being undermined – for him and millions of others

Baggini

How to win the argument (print only)

Charles Taylor, winner of the world's most prestigious philosophy prize, believes that community and tradition don’t have to be set against migration, change and difference.

The Spring 2017 issue of New Humanist is on sale now! Subscribe and get four issues a year for just £27.

Also in this issue:

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  • Jonathan Rée on the explorers and adventurers who gave us our modern idea of nature
  • Could microdosing LSD could make you happier and more productive? Suzanne Moore investigates
  • Marcus Chown explores the mysteries of the universe that quantum physics could unravel
  • Rahila Gupta reports from Rojava, where a radical experiment in gender equality is happening in the midst of Syria’s civil war
  • New poems, selected by our poetry editor Fiona Sampson
  • Nobel laureate and economist Amartya Sen talks to New Humanist about the politics of poverty
  • Everyone’s guilty of bullshitting: Louis Brooke asks if we should stop
  • Alex Macpherson argues that country singers are the chroniclers of our age
  • Wail Qasim on why the latest row about censorship in universities is based on a myth
  • Columns from Michael Rosen and Laurie Taylor; the latest developments in biology, chemistry and physics; cartoon by Grizelda; book reviews; cryptic crossword and Chris Maslanka's quiz

New Humanist is published four times a year by the Rationalist Association, a 132 year-old charity promoting reason, science and secularism. Our journalism is fiercely independent and supported entirely by our readers. To make a deeper commitment, why not donate to the Rationalist Association?