Peter Kay and the myth of the ordinary: Cradle to Grave
Two recent TV comedies conjure emotionally rich and intimate worlds out of everyday experience.
Culture
The rise of the nostalgia industry
Two books examine the recent craze for consumable nostalgia.
The authenticity of online grief
People who mourned David Bowie online were condemned for being self-indulgent, but shared rituals matter.
The #OscarsSoWhite debate raises the question of who gets to be human
Each film and TV race controversy shows that we are nowhere near a “post-racial” society.
The Spring 2016 New Humanist is out now!
The myth of human nature; crime at the Vatican; whatever happened to the Loch Ness monster?; Shappi Khorsandi on life without religion; and more...
Memories of the future: Owen Hatherley and Douglas Murphy in conversation
Join New Humanist contributors Owen Hatherley and Douglas Murphy in conversation as they seek to explode the distortions of history that obscure our present and future in their respective new…
The house that fame built: Celebrity Big Brother
Its pretensions to a "scientific" experiment long since forgotten, Big Brother shows us how trapped we are in celebrity culture.
Reimagining John Lennon
Kevin Barry's inventive novel Beatlebone makes the singer someone worth reading about again.
We are here because you were there: a retrospective of black British art
Holding an exhibition that celebrates black British art at the Guildhall, with its colonial legacy, is an act akin to resistance
The Winter 2015 New Humanist is out now!
Should machines replicate people?; What history tells us about refugees; Mary Beard on Ancient Rome; the myth of "pure" religion; what happens when the Sun goes out; and more...