Why does every Hollywood baddie need a redemption story?
Cruella de Vil is the latest villain to be transformed into a good-hearted hero. Why can’t we let baddies be baddies?
Ideas
Who controls our bodies? The autumn 2021 New Humanist
Out now – featuring Zoe Holman on the battle over childbirth, Ray Filar on the new threat to sex workers, Jem Bartholomew on the right to die, and Alex Riley…
Book review: The Hitler Conspiracies
Richard J Evans dissects the untruths emerging out of the Second World War, narratives that continue to influence conspiracies to this day.
Deconstructing Derrida
Peter Salmon's new biography "An Event, Perhaps" cuts through the tendency to either adore or dismiss the controversial French philosopher.
Q&A: A.C. Grayling
We talk to the philosopher and Vice President of Humanists UK about his new history of philosophy, and what the discipline can teach us today.
Paranoid states
Like viruses, conspiracy theories travel around the globe. But are they always unhealthy?
The conspiracy takeover: The summer 2021 New Humanist
Out now – featuring David Hutt on the global spread of paranoia, Jem Bartholomew on the exploding fact-checking industry and Gayan Samarasinghe on the ethics of face-reading in court.
Could an epidemiology for viral ideas end the culture war?
In the history of tackling disease, the great leap came once we stopped uselessly treating the symptoms. Let's apply the same approach to ideological contagion.
The master provocateur
Genius or contrarian? A decade on from Christopher Hitchens’ death, we’re still arguing over his legacy.
‘‘We can stop politics from creating new forms of tyranny’’
Q&A with economist, author and former Greek finance minister Yanis Varoufakis.