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• Bad Faith Awards 2009: Pope Benedict XVI emerges victorious

  After a tightly fought campaign, and more than 7,000 votes cast, we announce the winner of our coveted 2009 Bad Faith Award

• Jihad jokes

  Who dares make fun of Islam? Canadian television, apparently. Roger Davidson tunes in

• First As Tragedy, Then As Farce by Slavoj Žižek

  Owen Hatherley finds Žižek actually making sense

• Smile or Die: How Positive Thinking Fooled America and the World by Barbara Ehrenreich

  Keith Kahn-Harris enjoys Barbara Ehrenreich's antidote to positive thinking

• The Arabs: A History by Eugene Rogan

  Stephen Howe on a new history of the Arabs

• Crying out loud

  Laurie Taylor meets national treasure Barry Cryer

• Déjà vu, only worse

  Michail Ryklin sits in on a Russian censorship trial

• Praise Jshua

  Surely Easter is the time of year when we should spare a thought for the Messiah's less successful competitors? Here's Richard Herring, from the November issue, on one who never quite made it.

• Poem: The Playboy Calendar and the Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám

  How poet Martín Espada became a humanist

• Back from the dead? Facilitated communication and the strange case of Rom Houben

  In February the BBC reported that the Belgian man who appeared to be communicating after a 23-year coma wasn't. Sceptic Nicholas Pearson was on it for us back in November