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Britain's Empire may have forged its leaders on the playing fields of Eton, but the American republic trains presidents in all manner of ways. Harry Truman owned a haberdashery. Abraham [...]

THE IDENTITY TRAP A story of ideas and power in our time YASCHA MOUNK 416pp. Allen Lane. 25 [pounds sterling]. LEFT IS NOT WOKE SUSAN NEIMAN 160pp. Polity. 20 [pounds [...]

Eighty years is a long time . Long enough that few who witnessed an eighty-years-gone event such as the Allied invasion of Nazi-occupied France are still around to remember it. [...]

Earthquakes on the other side of the planet. Burnt wreckage on the other side of the highway. We slow down to gawk, via windscreens or computer monitors, at tragedy visited [...]

The students were out to make a point. They crowded the university, shouting slogans and jeering at rivals. An effigy swung from an overheard wire, depicting something scandalous: a young [...]

On Monday, April 8, a total solar eclipse will have swung across much of North America. That phrase, 'will have', is, I know, awkward--but it is also revealing. By the [...]

By now most of us have learnt to take the ramblings of chatbots with a heap of salt. ChatGPT and its calculating kin may be grammatically adept, but they are [...]

On January 9 South Korea's parliament voted to ban dog farming, not without controversy. As recently as 2015 more than a quarter of Koreans told pollsters that they had recently [...]

WHAT WE OWE THE FUTURE The million year view WILLIAM MACASKILL 352pp. Oneworld Publications. 20 [pounds sterling] G.E. Moore, the utilitarian philosopher, liked to use a 'method of isolation' to [...]

A FEW YEARS AGO I experienced the academic equivalent of nearly hitting someone with your car. Wonky formatting software in the hands of an over-excited copy-editor had somehow deleted several [...]

Before becoming an actor or politician Ronald Reagan was a sportscaster. He got his start on Iowa radio, delivering live play-byplay for Chicago Cubs baseball games. But Reagan couldn't broadcast [...]

IN MAY 1956 Elizabeth Anscombe rendered a public judgment on high politics. The occasion was the award of an honorary degree to the former US president Harry Truman. Morally unacceptable, [...]

She's doing OK, she's doing OK', said Nancy Pelosi, referring to Senator Dianne Feinstein. Interviewed by Politico in early September, the former Speaker of the House angrily batted away suggestions [...]

Pay attention! A former US president has been indicted for mishandling classified documents. Wait, look over here! The current president's son has pled guilty to tax charges. Hold on! A [...]

'You're not a killer ', says the octogenarian corporate bruiser Logan Roy to his son Kendall. This is the closest the patriarch of HBO's dynastic drama Succession ever comes to [...]

Neal Stephenson's archly prophetic Snow Crash (1992) often seems like a Rosetta Stone for the world we inhabit now. The novel gave us the 'metaverse'--a digital parallel reality--though its dystopian [...]

LET NONE DARE FOUL the sacred business records of New York! 'Manhattan is home to the country's most significant business market', said District Attorney Alvin Bragg on April 4. 'We [...]

On February 23 the US Patent Office published work by Ford Motor Company on a remote 'repossession' system. Miss too many monthly payments and your car's onboard computer will try [...]

THE WISE POLITICAL LEADER, wrote Machiavelli, should appear merciful and humane, yet be prepared to act otherwise when necessary. Such a prince will 'have a mind ready to turn itself [...]

IMAGINE YOU'RE A DEPRESSED TEENAGER. It seems as if no one cares about you. Needing to be heard, you log in to an online platform that lets you anonymously share [...]

One of the first goals in any introductory ethics class is to disabuse students of an idea called naive relativism. This is the claim that every culture has its own [...]

'I miss killing Iraqis ', said a Twitter account claiming to be George W. Bush. 'Same', replied a Tony Blair lookalike. Just another day in the social media madhouse, where [...]

To be immortal is commonplace; except for man. all creatures are immortal, for they are ignorant of death.--Jorge Luis Borges Medical science has overturned common sense about what counts as [...]

'That's the trouble with you Dubliners,' says Granda Joe to his unloved son-in-law Gerry, 'you've no manners!' When Gerry protests that he's not from Dublin but Navan, Joe declares that [...]