Here’s a nice Washington Post headline:

The subhead tells the real story.

They failed to recover the reusable booster, which exploded, and the second stage was tumbling out of control, and exploded. SUCCESS!

This was the ninth Starship launch, and none of them have “succeeded” by any reasonable meaning of the word. Maybe someone needs to teach the editors at the WaPo the word “failed”? Somehow, I think they’re going to need to use that word a lot in the next few years, in lots of contexts.

---

Here’s a detailed breakdown of the flaws in Starship design, with Elon Musk at the top of the list of problems.

Musk isn’t an engineer and doesn’t understand iterative design, and now SpaceX and NASA are facing a sunk cost fallacy.

You never achieve iterative design with a full-scale prototype. It is incredibly wasteful and can lead you down several problematic and dead-end solutions. I used to engineer high-speed boats — another weight- and safety-sensitive engineering field. We would always conduct scale model tests of every aspect of design, iteratively changing it as we went so that when we did build the full-scale version, we were solving the problems of scale, not design and scale simultaneously.

SpaceX could have easily done this. They already proved they could land a 1st stage/Booster with the Falcon 9, and Falcon 9’s Booster could launch a 1/10 scale Starship into orbit. Tests of such a scaled-down model would help SpaceX determine the best compromise for using the bellyflop manoeuvre and retro rockets to land. It would help them iteratively improve the design around such a compromise, especially as they will be far cheaper and quicker to redesign and build than the full-scale versions. Not only that, but these tests would highlight any of the design’s shortcomings, such as the rocket engines not having enough thrust-to-weight ratio to enable a high enough payload. This allows engineers to do crucial, complete redesigns before the large-scale version is even built.

If you have even a passing knowledge of engineering, you know this is what iterative design looks like. So, why hasn’t Musk done this?

Well, developing a Starship like this would expose that making a fully reusable rocket with even a barely usable payload to space is impossible. Musk knows this: Falcon 9 was initially meant to be fully reusable until he discovered that the useful payload would be zero. That was his iterative design telling him Starship was impossible over a decade ago, as just making the rocket larger won’t solve this! But he went on ahead anyway. Why?

Well, through some transparent corruption and cronyism, he could secure multi-billion-dollar contracts from NASA to build this mythical rocket. But, by going for full-scale testing, he could not only hide the inherent flaws of Starship long enough for the cash to be handed over to him but also put NASA in a position of the sunk cost fallacy. NASA has given SpaceX so much money, and their plans rely so heavily on Starship that they can’t walk away; they might as well keep shoving money at the beast.

This is why Starship, in my opinion, is just one massive con.

That is the real reason why Starship was doomed to fail from the beginning. It’s not trying to revolutionise the space industry; if it were, its concept, design, and testing plan would be totally different. Instead, the entire project is optimised to fleece as much money from the US taxpayer as possible, and as such, that is all it will ever do.

I don’t know the answer. This Christian dork kept popping up in my YouTube feed, making this claim that we shouldn’t take atheists seriously because there are so many great arguments for the existence of his god. I had to offer my short sweet response.

Not only are his arguments bad, but arguments are not evidence. I just had to get that off my chest.

There is a plan. The FBI will put together a manhunt to catch the people who cause it!

Yeah, Dan Bongino. Get a crack team of G-men together, give ’em tommy guns, and send them out there to track down, and arrest or kill, the gang responsible for genetic drift. That’s how authoritarian brains work.

Scientific publishing has some serious problems: we’ve outsourced the publication of science to for-profit publishers, it relies on it’s ‘customers’ to do peer-review for free, it has no incentive to provide open access to the research that is largely supported by government funding. The system could use a major overhaul. However, this is not the answer.

Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said he will ban government scientists from publishing in leading medical journals and proposed creating an “in-house” publication by the department.

“We are probably going to stop publishing in the Lancet, the New England Journal of Medicine, JAMA and those other journals because they are all corrupt,” Kennedy said during an episode of “The Ultimate Human” podcast.

Kennedy said such publications are “vessels” for pharmaceutical companies.

The top three journals are the top three because scientists world-wide publish in them — they are popular prestige journals, and scientists prefer to publish in them because these are the sources their peers will read. They are the product of contingent historical processes, not capture by pharmaceutical companies.

Right-wingers are used to relying on billionaires buying “think-tanks” that artificially prop up their bad ideas. That would be a bad model for a scientific journal, which should be a neutral agency. RFK Jr is proposing to build a fake journal that would be under the control of the ideologues who have been appointed for political reasons.

I have questions. Why would anyone want to publish in this hypothetical journal? Why would anyone want to read it? Who’s going to pay for it? The Lancet, NEJM, and JAMA have international popularity, both for submissions and subscriptions — how would a journal in the pocket of American conservatives replace that? Are they going to allow publication of data on vaccines, epidemics, trans issues, or anything that RFK Jr doesn’t like?

To be honest, I don’t read The Lancet, NEJM, or JAMA, because those are medical journals. Imagine, though, that the government announced that they were not going to allow American scientists to publish in Nature or Science because they were “vessels” for climatologists or evolutionary biologists or epidemiologists, or that they were going to create their own edited propaganda journal to block those ideas. You can deplore the flaws in those journals, but you can’t just rip them away and erect a fake journal in their place.

History has shown that student uprisings often lead to nationwide revolt, and Bangladesh in recent years has been no exception. With former prime minister Sheikh Hasina forced out of office and reportedly seeking political refuge in India, an interim government now leads the country, including key figures from the student movement that led to her fall. With Nobel laureate Muhammad Yunus serving as interim leader since early August, the new government has improved freedom of speech, which was stifled under Hasina’s authoritarian rule, and given hope to many, particularly the younger generation.

But the situation is fragile. The ongoing political deadlock has led to a sharp decline in law and order, with some claiming that religious minorities are under increased threat. And as the country gears up for a national vote, possibly as early as December, the fight to fill the power vacuum is likely to intensify.

The turmoil started in the lead-up to the general election in January 2024. Opposition groups demanded Hasina’s resignation and called for a neutral caretaker government to ensure free and fair elections, citing reports of voter intimidation, ballot stuffing and arrests of opposition figures during previous election cycles. Nonetheless, Hasina’s Awami League – the country’s oldest and most established political party – went on to secure its fourth consecutive term, with voter turnout at only 41.8 per cent, according to the Bangladesh Election Commission.

But the discontent did not simmer down, and in July a major student-led movement erupted onto the streets. The trigger was the government’s reinstatement of a controversial job quota system favouring descendants of 1971 Liberation War veterans. Students saw this as a threat to merit-based opportunities, sparking widespread outrage. The movement, fuelled by economic hardship and allegations of human rights abuses, turned university campuses into hubs of resistance, with young activists leading mass demonstrations despite crackdowns by security forces.

The summer demonstrations drew large crowds, including student leaders who later transitioned into mainstream politics. Notably, Nahid Islam, a key figure in the protests, now leads the newly-formed National Citizen Party (NCP), which is part of the current government. The party says its focus will be on education, healthcare, climate change and addressing the specific needs of the nation’s youth. Bangladesh is the eighth most populous country in the world with 170 million people, roughly 28 per cent of whom are aged between 15 and 29 years. The NCP claims to represent the student movements, which involved many young people who took great risks to oppose the government.

One 26-year-old student, Yusuf Neel, who supports the NCP, said he “sheltered many hundreds of international students during the student uprising” when they had nowhere else to go. “I felt it was my duty to protect my fellow students while also taking part in the movement.” He said that the Awami League had perfected the use of media manipulation to control the public narrative.

Controversial legislation hampered freedom of speech – such as the Cyber Security Act, which granted the government broad powers to arrest, detain and prosecute individuals for online content deemed defamatory or false.

Neel also pointed to the use of violence, fear and coercion, recalling in particular the party’s long history of weaponising sexual violence. “There are documented cases where opposition members or their families were targeted to silence dissent. A mother of four was gang-raped for simply voting against [them].” (Sixteen people, including a local Awami League leader, were convicted in this case, which happened during the 2019 elections.)

When Hasina escaped in a helicopter on 5 August, it was generally reported by the western media as a win for freedom, democracy and equality in Bangladesh. The “Iron Lady” who had presided over a reign of terror for decades had finally departed. This was the first “Gen Z revolution”, empowering a younger generation.

Now leading the interim government is 84-year-old Muhammad Yunus, who answered a call by student protesters to take up the position temporarily. Known as the “banker to the poor”, Yunus was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2006, after lending around $6 billion in housing, student and micro-enterprise loans – with a focus on supporting Bangladeshi women – through the bank he founded. “Bangladesh can be a beautiful country, but we destroyed the possibilities,” he said on taking up his position in August. Gesturing to the students in the crowd, he said: “Now we have to build a seedbed again – the new seedbed will be built by them.”

But the overthrow of Hasina has left a power vacuum and a demoralised army and police force, who had been loyal to the former government. Last year was the most violent in Bangladesh since the Liberation War, with unrest spilling over into this year. That has led to ongoing questions over justice and national unity. As the country gears up for elections, this transition period will prove vital for its future.

Violence unleashed

While Yunus presides over the unelected interim government, the established political parties are jostling for power. The largest are the Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) and Jamaat-e-Islami. The BNP’s ideology is rooted in nationalism, blending Islamic values with a focus on economic development. Jamaat-e-Islami, which also has millions of supporters, was barred from contesting elections in 2013 after high court judges ruled that its Islamist charter violated the secular constitution of Bangladesh. During the student revolt, Hasina banned the party outright, accusing it of “terrorist activities”. The interim government has since removed this ban, saying there was no evidence behind it.

Muslims account for 91 per cent of Bangladeshis, with Hindus making up roughly 8 per cent. While the Hindu population had already suffered from persecution, the situation appears to have worsened since the fall of Hasina. Bangladesh’s leading minority rights organisation, the Bangladesh Hindu Buddhist Christian Unity Council, has accused the interim government of neglecting its duty to safeguard religious and ethnic minorities from violence and harassment – a charge the government denies. The council has been tracking incidences of communal violence, and claims that between 21 August and 31 December last year, religious minorities suffered 174 attacks, including 23 murders. It said other incidents involved rape, vandalism, looting and forcible take-over of property and businesses.

The motives for this violence remain unclear. While some attacks may target minorities due to their faith, others could be politically driven, as many Hindus have historical ties to the Awami League, which has long protected minority rights. The interim government insists that the recent violence against minorities has not been driven by religious differences. “These tragic deaths were caused by troublemakers, driven by factors such as personal disputes, theft, domestic conflicts and reckless behaviour,” it said in a March statement. However, there is evidence that banned militant groups like Hizb ut-Tahrir, whose stated aim is the re-establishment of the global Islamic caliphate, are taking advantage of the political chaos to strengthen their position. According to the Global Sufi Organisation, extremist groups have attacked over 100 shrines and holy places of the Sufi Muslim minority across the country in the past six months.

Meanwhile, Bangladesh is still reeling from the violence and unrest unleashed by the student revolt. The protests had started out peacefully in July. But as security forces responded with tear gas, rubber bullets and mass arrests, protesters grew more defiant. Meanwhile, pro-government student groups like Bangladesh Chhatra League (BCL) were mobilised and joined the fray, further inflaming the violence. BCL had always described itself as a champion of democracy and pluralism. However, in recent years, reports indicated a shift towards exerting monopolised power within schools and universities. Amnesty reported an attack on students on 15 July – the key day that violence broke out – by individuals “armed with rods, sticks and clubs, with a few even brandishing revolvers”. Within hours of this attack, it said, “a pattern emerged across the country with similar attacks coordinated by people believed to be members of the Bangladesh Chhatra League.”

Some demonstrations spiralled into riots, with vandalism, arson and attacks on public property amid a country-wide internet blackout that lasted for 11 days. The United Nations human rights office estimated that up to 1,400 people may have been killed during the crackdown, which involved “systematic” rights violations that could constitute crimes against humanity. Approximately 12-13 per cent of those killed were children. While the report focuses on human rights violations by Hasina’s government and associated forces, it also describes “retaliatory killings” and attacks committed by opposition groups, as the former government started to lose control of the country.

Many Awami League supporters, of which there are still millions across the country, believe the interim government has taken power unconstitutionally and given undue leniency to opposition supporters who were involved in last summer’s violence.

Saddam Hussain is the president of the Bangladesh Chhatra League. He was forced to flee the country and spoke to New Humanist from an undisclosed location. “Today, Bangladesh faces the risk of turning into an extremist state endangering both national and regional security,” he said. He accuses the interim government of being undemocratic and unjust. “The biggest example of lawlessness has been created by the current unconstitutional government when it discarded our constitution and granted indemnity to those involved in the killings of July-August, 2024,” he said.

Meanwhile, political instability has continued to fuel protests, violence and unrest. The military is currently maintaining order with thousands of personnel on the streets. In late February, General Zaman, the chief of army staff, said there was “an urgent need for national unity and institutional discipline”. He addressed those involved in the violence, saying: “If you can’t move beyond your differences and continue meddling and fighting among yourselves, and if you continue to kill one another, the independence, sovereignty and integrity of the country will be at risk – I warn you.”

Newfound freedoms and reforms

Despite the political unrest, many in Bangladesh are still optimistic. Journalists are more free to be critical of the interim government, which has proposed replacing the controversial Cyber Security Act with new legislation aimed at protecting freedom of expression. The economy may be turning a corner after the World Bank projected growth with a potential rise of 5.4 per cent in 2026, contingent on political stability and economic reforms. Initiatives are underway to address Bangladesh’s broken institutions, offering hope for change. However, there is uncertainty about the sustainability of these changes after new elections. Others point out that there should be a limit to what the interim government is able to do, given it has no electoral mandate.

Yusuf Neel, who has continued his business studies at the Independent University in Dhaka, is hopeful that his country is heading in the right direction. “Things are much better than before. The economy is stabilising, and freedom of speech has been restored. However, the remnants of the old regime are still attempting to create chaos,” he said.

While Bangladeshis disagree over the source of their country’s current instability, everyone is suffering from the increase in crime. Political chaos means that law enforcement is stretched thin, leading to a surge in offences, particularly at night. Since Hasina’s fall, the streets have grown increasingly perilous. Police data for January 2025 show spikes in reports of robbery and abduction compared to January 2024, as well as the highest number of muggings in a single month for at least six years.

Sahiba Shah, an Indian national studying medicine in Dhaka, says she and her friends are struggling to adapt to the disruptions. “We avoid certain parts of the city at night and stay extra cautious with our belongings because burglaries have increased around us,” she said. Medical universities have increasingly become hubs for political activity, leading to class disruptions and strikes. Shah says escalating violence has made her anxious about her safety and academic future. “Girls are also being victims of continuous harassment since nobody’s holding people accountable for anything that’s been happening,” she added.

While much of the country appeared to initially back the interim government, growing impatience over economic struggles and law and order is evident, said Michael Kugelman, director of the South Asia Institute at the Wilson Center in Washington. “The interim government took office amid sky-high expectations, but with such ambitious goals, it’s been hard to deliver on all fronts,” he said. Critics blame the interim government for continued violence and lawlessness, demanding the restoration of democracy, the constitution and the protection of the rights of minorities. Yet its supporters see these claims as attempts to discredit the student movements, and to undermine interim leader Muhammad Yunus, who has consistently fought for social progress and economic justice.

Sultan Mohammed Zakaria, joint convenor of the National Citizen Party, the ruling party, believes the crisis is manageable but warns of escalating tensions. “The biggest challenge for the government is to tackle law and order. Given the vast majority of law enforcement agencies and their members were tools of repression during the [rule of] deposed dictator Sheikh Hasina, her departure left these institutions shattered and demoralised,” he said. He acknowledged public frustration with rising crime, attributing it to police inaction and a lack of leadership in the Home Affairs Ministry. “I think Bangladesh is in a serious transition. The future of the country depends on how well it can manage.”

Significant hurdles must be overcome, from security threats to the resurgence of banned extremist groups. If the coming elections – which will likely be held in the first half of 2026 – are free and fair, they could mark a turning point; if marred by violence or manipulation, Bangladesh risks plunging further into instability. “The only acceptable solution to Bangladesh’s current crisis is the establishment of democracy, the empowerment of the people, and ensuring that the state is governed by elected representatives,” says Saddam Hussain. Most Bangladeshis hope for a better tomorrow that safeguards a sense of security, freedom and fundamental human rights.

The primary goal of any new leadership must be to restore democracy and counter rising fundamentalism through social, cultural and political resistance. It must also prioritise meritocracy and equal opportunities regardless of faith, ethnicity or party affiliation, and ensure that higher education institutions remain free from extremist political influence. “Bangladesh stands at a crossroads,” says Zakaria. “The road ahead offers both promise and uncertainty.”

This article is from New Humanist's Summer 2025 issue. Subscribe now.

It’s been one of those days.

This post contains a video, which you can also view here. To support more videos like this, head to patreon.com/rebecca! Transcript: About 15 years ago, the dumbest politician to take the national stage up until that point was Sarah Palin, the former governor of Alaska and, at that time, the Republican Vice Presidential candidate. In …

Nick Fish is a civil rights activist and president of American Atheists, an NGO which fights for the civil liberties of atheists and for the total separation of government and religion. He spoke to us about how atheists, humanists and democrats are coming together to resist the influence of white Christian nationalism under Donald Trump’s presidency.

Much of the dangerous legislation that’s being pushed by white Christian nationalists is targeting schools and young people. Could you give us a sense of the aims there and the scope of that threat?

We have to put this in context of a long history in the United States. The same people, the organisations and funders, who are behind the attacks on our public school system today are the same organisations that were pushing segregation academies [in the 60s], that were creating parallel structures so that their children didn’t have to go to school with black children.

And you can look at the backlash [today] to “critical race theory” or “wokeism” or whatever words they want to use ... When you look at what’s actually being taught in schools, it’s things like “treat everyone with dignity and respect” or “here’s exposure to people that experience the world slightly differently than you might, because of racism, classism, different ways that people move through the world, and let’s understand that and let’s celebrate those differences.”

So when we talk about “white Christian nationalism”, every word in that term is important.

What’s happening on the ground under Trump?

There are two sides that we’re seeing right now. First is the gutting of public schools and public institutions, making it impossible for them to continue with the work they do, so that you can turn around and say, “See, this doesn’t work. That’s why we need to privatise, to redirect money into private schools, into religious schools.”

The second part is to push religious indoctrination into public schools, so that religious teachers can sort of convert those schools from inclusive spaces that educate everyone into exclusionary, divisive institutions. It flips religious freedom protections on their head, so that instead of protecting the freedoms of young people, a teacher who is acting as an agent of the state can say that they have a freedom to indoctrinate students. A core part of the white Christian nationalist agenda is perverting the definitions of religious freedom to mean that the government can impose religion on you.

How is this being resisted?

The defunding side of things is very unpopular. We have been able to find a lot of common ground around [opposing] the privatisation attempts, the attempts to defund public schools, the attempts to create these voucher schemes where you can take the money that would otherwise go to your student in a public school and use it underwrite the cost of tuition at a private institution, usually a religious one. These voucher programmes fail whenever they’re put to a vote by the people.

Part of [the battle] is storytelling, making sure that people know what it’s like to be in a school where you’re being ostracised, where you have prayers being piped in over the loudspeaker every single day – where atheists, yes, but also religious minorities, or people who are just a different sort of Christian, say they feel uncomfortable. [And parents say,] “This is not the type of education that I want for my kid.” So we have to create space for people of different faiths and people who are non-religious to stand together on this issue, making it clear that this is not some sort of partisan left versus right issue; this is not atheist versus Christian. It is everybody who wants robust public schools that prepare kids for the future and that include and educate everybody, versus those who don’t.

Before the election, Trump seemed to promise that he wasn’t going to further attack reproductive rights. Does the general public now think that he’s going too far on these issues?

There are big chunks of the American electorate who didn’t take Donald Trump seriously. But we don’t need to look any further than Project 2025 [a deeply conservative set of policy proposals] that was put out by the very same people who are now staffing this administration at the level below cabinet officials – the deputy secretaries, the assistant secretaries, and so on. Those are the people that care an awful lot about banning abortion or contraception. Donald Trump doesn’t care about that, except in as far as he’s carrying out a promise to a constituency that he relied on to get elected.

But these other people have made it their life’s mission to enact this agenda, and Project 2025 was a crystal-clear roadmap of what they were going to do. Trump denounced them before the election, and said they wouldn’t have any part in his administration, and the media sort of uncritically repeated this. But you know, we’re not far into this administration and I think we’re going to see more extreme boundary pushing, attacks on democracy and flouting of norms.

But we’ve also seen challenges to some of these presidential executive orders.

Yes. At the federal level, it’s important to remember that a lot of these executive orders only have power within the bounds of current law. They all say something at the end like, “all of this must be implemented consistent with current federal law.” That includes things like Supreme Court decisions indicating that the Civil Rights Act protects LGBT people – trans people included – from employment discrimination, for example. So a lot of these executive orders were [little more than] fancy press releases. We’ve seen a few examples of policies being implemented, such as a ban on military health benefits being used to pay for gender affirming care. Obviously, that’s devastating for people that need that sort of care, but it’s not a wholesale ban on or wholesale attack on the existence of trans people in the way that some of these white Christian nationalist groups would want to see.

Unfortunately, we’re seeing some institutions comply [with these federal executive orders] despite the fact that they don’t have the force of law. But the rights that can be attacked at the state level are much more expansive; legislation is much more likely to pass at the state level. And so what we’ve got right now is the unfortunate reality that a person’s right to exist in public very much depends on their postal code. We’ve had examples of volunteers with us at American Atheists being unable or unwilling to travel to a place like Florida, because Florida passed a law that forces people to use the bathroom that aligns with their sex assigned at birth in state-owned facilities. That includes airports, so a trans person using a bathroom that matches their gender identity can be arrested. These laws are intended to be confusing, to encourage people to live in terror.

Under the previous Biden administration, the federal government stepped in from time to time and sued states to protect civil rights. But now states know that the Trump administration is not going to push back in any meaningful way. They can pass new laws all the time, and they do. So in a state like Florida, or Texas, or Arkansas, it’s a deluge. It’s like trying to drink from a fire hose. We [American Atheists] are tracking almost 700 bills right now that impact church-state separation, and many of them are attacks on public education, trans people and abortion.

How do these attacks fit into the broader white Christian nationalist agenda?

It’s about enforcing very strict hierarchies. Who is destined and ordained by God to be ruled? That’s all of us. And who’s ordained to rule? That’s them, white Christian males. A huge part of their ideology is enforcing those very strict hierarchies. And this is a movement that is incredibly well funded. American Atheists and our allies all combined maybe have a budget of somewhere between $25 million and $30 million. The other side, that’s what they spent on Project 2025 – the report itself and the broader “presidential transition operation”, as they called it. So the fact that we’re fighting sort of to parity, and that we’re winning as often as we are, is a great testament to the fact that our agenda is a lot more popular, whereas they need to lie, cheat and steal to get anything done. Like with these book bans, for example. The Washington Post looked at people that were filing objections to books in public schools and found that the majority across the nation were filed by a dozen people, because they’re just getting paid by these billionaires to sit around and fire off these complaints.

Meanwhile, we rely on our volunteers – people who work a full-time job, have kids, and then come home and work with us another three, four hours a day, because they care and they’re dedicated. We have probably close to 100 volunteers that are engaged with us on a weekly basis, engaging in high level work. And then with action alerts, and people submitting testimony or calling their members of Congress or their state legislatures, we have thousands and thousands of people. Our members are very politically active. So [if a community group or teachers’ union is trying to protect their public schools] we can say, “Hey, we’ve got this really great group of people that want to help you.” Write letters, be block captains [residents who serve as local leaders], whatever it might be to fight school privatisation.

American Atheists have called for atheists to be bolder and more vocal. How is the community feeling under Trump Mark 2?

It’s interesting, because I think it emboldens people. It’s this bigger thing, because of the level of stigma that atheists face in the United States. And so people who affirmatively declare, “I’m an atheist”, often it also means, “I’m really upset about the way that our government is going.” Atheists are the most politically engaged demographic in the US. According to the Cooperative Election Study, they’re more likely to donate to candidates, put up political signs and attend protests.

But then there are people who have unplugged completely. So they may not attend church or have a belief in a higher power, though they might be kind of spiritual. And they’re disengaged because of dissatisfaction with institutions. Government institutions – “I’m paying more to live, I can’t get ahead at all in my workplace” – but also religious institutions. They’re just dissatisfied with everything. The larger category of “nones” [any person who identifies as “no religion” in surveys] still kind of leans a bit left, but the participation rates are lower [than atheists]. It’s a much bigger cohort of people. And that’s the big question: What can we present to people as a compelling alternative – to not only religious nationalism, but populist nationalism?

And there’s no easy answer to that question, but I think humanism – presenting an inclusive vision of freedom and civic engagement for those folks, for everybody – is at least a start. Recognising how we’re all intertwined, how we’re all linked to one another, that our fortunes are all bound together, and that we don’t have to think of this as a zero-sum game.

These people are not thinking about politics. They’re listening to podcasts or YouTube channels to decompress, and some of that is being used to sneak in this anti-immigrant, quasi-religious nationalism, like the Jordan Peterson style thing: “Who to blame for your problems? Here’s the easy solution.” It’s very appealing for especially disaffected younger white men who may culturally identify as Christians, who are raised as Christians, but who for example don’t go to church. The gender gap in politics has never been bigger in the United States [with women leaning more to the left and the Democrats and men to the right and the Republicans]. And it’s really, really big among Gen Z voters.

How are atheist and humanist organisations coming together to protect secular culture in the US?

It seems like [the various atheist and humanist organisations in the US] have never been closer in terms of our ability to work together and get things done collaboratively, which is a great position to be in. It’s also about global cooperation. American Atheists is going to be hosting a World Humanist Congress in partnership with Humanists International in 2026, where we’re going to be talking about the threats of religious nationalism and presenting humanism as a positive alternative to that. And I think it’s a great opportunity for us to learn from one another, and to show that we’re not going to be intimidated by the actions of the Trump administration.

We are going to stand up for our values as atheists and humanists, our vision for a positive world. And part of the point of this event and having it in the US is bringing in other civil society and human rights groups to show how all of these things are connected; that it’s not just about atheists and humanists versus religious people. It’s people who care about universal human rights in stark contrast to the people who don’t. And that’s the big struggle we’re facing right now.

This article is from New Humanist's Summer 2025 issue. Subscribe now.

This post contains a video, which you can also view here. To support more videos like this, head to patreon.com/rebecca! Transcript: There’s so much bad news surrounding “AI” right now that I’ve had a real hard time narrowing down what I want to talk about. By “AI” of course, I’m talking about generative AI, large …

When people used to ask me, “Do you ski?” I always thought it was the same as asking, “Do you fly the trapeze?” or “Do you perform skull surgery?” Of course I didn’t. I never knew much about skiing other than that it was enjoyed by people who had organisational skills, finances and a death wish I simply did not possess. I liked relatively safe holidays, ones where returning home with unbroken limbs was expected, and not celebrated as a “win”.

But last summer, I accidentally wandered on to a WhatsApp group with parents from my daughter’s school who were planning an epic ski trip to France. About 25 families were going, all friends and neighbours – some I knew well, some not at all. Before I could work out how to leave the group, I was committed. A middle-aged woman who can’t walk down a slight slope without fearing injury now found herself paying to tie sticks to her feet and slide down a mountain.

I quickly learned that there is more admin involved in a skiing holiday than there was in Brexit. There were times when it all got so much that I lay weeping across my kitchen table. Kind friends had to explain how I had to hire a car, as walking from the airport to the resort would take three days. But eventually skis were hired, appropriate clothing borrowed, lift passes bought and lessons booked. As I watched the money drain from my account, I told myself it would be a wonderful experience with my teenage son and tween daughter. They would forever have beautiful memories of gliding effortlessly down a glistening mountain with their chic mother, at one with nature.

As it turned out, I barely caught a glimpse of my offspring the entire time we were there. They took to it like ducks to water, whizzing off with the rest of the class, while their mother clung to an instructor’s hand. I struggled to balance, even though I am 5’2” with size eight feet, which actually makes me a very close relative of the Emperor Penguin.

The instructor, Michèal, tried his best. He eventually weaned me off his hand and got me to hold on to his ski stick. But unfortunately, I proved too immature to cope with a French man demanding “Shappeee! ’Old my pole!” without giggling and falling arse over tit again. In the end, I was politely kicked out of ski school.

Friends took me up instead. It was more fun, but equally humiliating. There were moments when I simply couldn’t get back up and they had to quickly move me to the side for the safety of others, as though I was a hay bale that had fallen off the back of a tractor. I ended up in contortions with people from the WhatsApp group. I definitely became closer to some of my neighbours. How can you not when you have accidentally wrapped your leg around their husband’s neck in front of them?

After three days of being both Laurel and Hardy on the mountain, I sobbed and gave up. It was fascinating, watching the others enjoy this bonkers activity. These same people had often said to me, “You are so brave doing standup comedy, I could never do what you do.” But the humiliation of dying on stage is nothing compared to being a 51-year-old falling on your arse on the slopes, and a six-year-old going at 80 miles per hour stopping to check if you’re okay.

I had been judgemental about the types that skied, but they are thrill seekers like me. It’s mad to ski and risk injury. It also takes a kind of madness to die on your arse in front of an audience and then insist on doing it again and again until you’re half good – knowing that even then, the risk never goes away. The joy when it works is worth it.

It’s been a month or two since we got back. Out dog walking, I bumped into one of my neighbours who had been on the trip. “Are you going to come again next year, Shappi?” she asked. I looked at her in horror and replied, “Of course I bloody am.”

This article is from New Humanist's Summer 2025 issue. Subscribe now.

Wow, yet another wealthy and famous lover of free speech is using a libel lawsuit to try to silence his critics!  This video is going to be a bit all over the place so I’m breaking it up into sections: first I’ll deliver the new news (since that will probably be in the title and …

Selma Dabbagh is a British-Palestinian writer and lawyer, based in London. Her fiction is mainly set in the contemporary Middle East and has been nominated for major awards.

There’s a lot of reportage on Palestine, but why is it important for fiction to centre Palestinian voices?

One of the things with a novel is the length of it and the proximity of the reader to the emotional state of the characters. You are able to live within their skin before a moment of crisis, for example – whereas in terms of reportage, it’s probably only going to cover the moment of the crisis. If you only see Palestinians as enduring occupation, house demolition, settler attacks, you kind of think that’s what they are, they must be used to it. There’s nothing shocking. Whereas fiction allows the reader to feel with them – in terms of their aspirations, emotional needs, connection to family, the choices that they have to make. There is this pitting of the societal good against the personal good – you know something might not be in your interests, it’s high risk, but you know that it’s your duty. So those kinds of moral choices I find really fascinating, and fiction allows you more space to explore them.

Is fiction a way to resist dehumanisation?

There’s been a lot of discussion about this idea. I’ve heard some Palestinians say, “Writing so that we can be humanised? Why do we have to plead to be human?” But as a shorthand, I’m happy to use that vocabulary [around dehumanisation], because it is a way of understanding the process, which has been so systematic since the early days of Zionist thinking: that the Palestinians don’t exist, and even if they do, their lives aren’t worth anything; that even if they live on the land, they can be easily moved off the land. They’re exportable, disposable, etc.

There has been a disproportionate amount of Palestinian literature and film [being produced] compared to other Arab countries, despite the difficulties that the artists are working in. Some of the earlier works were perhaps a little more didactic. And then it was quickly realised that these weren’t landing well, particularly with western audiences. So it’s changed. Now you have anything from poems being written on Facebook, books based on diary entries, theatrical productions such as the Gaza Monologues [created in 2010 when Ashtar Theatre brought together testimonies from young people after the bombing campaign of 2008-09]. You have personal, domestic or love stories. You have an investigation into one historic killing, as in Adania Shibli’s novel Minor Detail. You get dark humour, like Mazen Maarouf’s short story collection Jokes for the Gunmen. A whole range of styles and approaches.

Tell us about the anthology We Wrote In Symbols: Love and Lust by Arab Women Writers.

This was a collection of writing I edited, by women of Arab heritage from the pre-Islamic era to the current day. It includes work in translation from French and Arabic, as well as work written in English – poetry and prose. I’ve always been interested by the concept of bravery and what makes people able to stand up to oppression – from being able to challenge their personal relationships to confronting state authority by protesting on the streets. And so these women really inspired me, because they all were navigating ways of expressing these primordial human longings of sexual desire or romance (which could be prohibited, but not always), and trying to communicate these emotions as well, to inspire other people’s desire, to navigate themselves into a place of greater happiness.

There was one prose piece I thought was really extraordinary, set in a refugee camp, centred around a couple who can only meet in the latrines of the camp, and they’re communicating to each other through a wall. In a couple of pages, the writer Samia Issa is able to portray the depravity of the conditions, the lack of privacy, and also how human desire doesn’t end with a certain set of circumstances or political oppression. The heart still beats strong, and she’s very creative in forming a place of beauty amid the horror.

How is Palestinian literature under attack today?

The erasure of Palestinian literature is happening on a number of levels. The Educational Bookshop [in East Jerusalem, which specialises in books on the history of Israel and Palestine] being attacked by Israeli authorities in February, the books being removed and the owners being arrested, that’s the most visual example of of how literature is being targeted. The attack is more than just on the material itself: it’s closing down the sense of community and culture. Now that’s quite literal when it comes to a bookshop, because people come in and out, they drink coffee, they make friendships.

But also, I see literature and film as a way that Palestinians all over the world – and there are 14 million, if you include the diaspora in the refugee camps – form a dialogue across languages and geographical spaces. The destruction of cultural heritage is seen to be important when you’re trying to annihilate a population, because it dislocates them from their own history.

What about challenges faced by Palestinian writers here in Britain?

It just happened with the Royal Television Society Awards in March. They created a special award for Palestinian journalists, but then they announced they would withdraw it [citing concerns about controversy overshadowing the award]. It was reinstated after a protest but it was really shameful. There are multiple examples of similar censoriousness when it comes to hearing, promoting and celebrating Palestinian voices.

This suppression works at every level, from the chill factor in terms of your concerns about anything you say being taken out of context, to the idea that there are these very policed and criminalised definitions. So you can’t talk about “fighters”, for example, because they’re all deemed to be terrorists. It doesn’t matter whether they’re Islamist or leftist – anyone who takes up arms on behalf of the Palestinians is probably within a proscribed group. So as a people whose history is very much defined by expulsion, repression, and resistance to that process, that whole thing is very hard to navigate, because you could end up being arrested, quite literally, under the Terrorism Act.

Your novel Out of It was set in Gaza in the early 2000s. What is it like looking back on that now?

When I wrote that novel, I moved the worst situations of the Palestinian reality into a fictional Gaza. I thought I was writing about something so dark it was unimaginable. But what we’re facing now is an unquantifiable number of times worse than anything in that book. In terms of capturing the frustration of youth and the loss of potential and the lack of choices provided to them, [the novel] still stands, and I was pleased that it was able to take a readership into the lives of my main characters; to experience how difficult it is to engage in a meaningful way to change the situation, but also how difficult it is to disengage.

What are your hopes for Palestinian literature?

Palestinian literature is going through a very exciting juncture. There are so many new voices coming out. It’s like a dam is breaking in terms of the urgency of the voices, the variety of them, the experimentality of it.

Palestinian cultural heritage binds people together – not just in terms of a sense of loss, but also an idea of the richnesses that they were capable of experiencing, the variety of social and intellectual experiences, which can form a way of being able to project into a better future. We have to really bear in mind [as artists] not just documenting the cruelty of the reality on the ground, but also saying we’re more than this. And that’s why the interior life and the relationships with people are so important to document in a meaningful way, and to convey to each other and to broader audiences.

This article is from New Humanist's Summer 2025 issue. Subscribe now.

The Summer 2025 issue of New Humanist is on sale now! This issue is all about how communities are uniting in the face of global challenges.

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Protecting American freedoms

As Trump and his army of Christian nationalists trample on rights and freedoms in the US, we speak to Nick Fish, head of American Atheists, about the masses of people volunteering for the fight back.

"We are tracking almost 700 bills right now that impact church-state separation, and many of them are attacks on public education, trans people and abortion."

Meaning in the modern world

At times of instability, the big questions of life are brought into sharp relief. But in an increasingly secular world, some claim we've lost our sense of meaning and purpose.

Is 2025 a year of existential crisis, or is this idea being overblown by the prophets and pundits who benefit?

In our new "Voices" section, we bring together five diverse perspectives on the search for meaning in the modern world.

"The loudest voices warning of our existential vacuum are those who have something to sell – literally or metaphorically."

The joy and politics of play

Can art remind us of what we have in common? Ken Worpole explores two exhibitions that give us a glimpse of daily life around the world – and highlight how children build community through play, even as their right to do so is threatened.

"Throughout history, and in all cultures, children have gathered together, agreed rules, played and dispersed, leaving little evidence behind ... Yet while they last, games are a form of bewitchment, a way of temporarily forgetting the difficulties of life and escaping into another world."

Diaspora dialogue

We speak to writer Selma Dabbagh about how Palestine's literary scene is thriving, despite – or because of – the horrors of war.

"Palestinian literature is going through a very exciting juncture. There are so many new voices coming out. It’s like a dam is breaking in terms of the urgency of the voices, the variety of them, the experimentality of it."

The Summer 2025 issue of New Humanist is on sale now! Subscribe or buy a copy here.

Also in the Spring 2025 issue of New Humanist:

• Journalist Ahmer Khan reports on Bangladesh as its democracy hits a bloody crossroad
• Legendary writer Michael Rosen explores the history and meaning of the word "ceasefire"
• Clinical psychologist Frank Tallis argues that therapy is failing to help us with the big questions
• Marianne Brown visits the Bristol estates generating their own energy
• Ralph Jones talks to Alex O'Connor about his journey from atheist YouTube star to praying for divine revelation
• Becca Warner meets the mushroom mappers as they unearth a hidden kingdom
• Greg Graffin, evolutionist and lead singer of pioneering band Bad Religion, makes the case that Darwin was punk
• Simon McCarthy-Jones analyses Elon Musk's misguided love for The Hitchhiker's Guide
• Jessica Furseth discovers what we lose when we're plugged in to constant entertainment
• Marcus Chown explains the latest efforts to uncover the shape of the Universe
• Samira Ahmed talks Lycra, Reagan and our new love for the 80s
• Marie Le Conte hails Lady Gaga, the weird sister of pop!
• Shaparak Khorsandi regales us with bonkers tales from the ski slopes
• Daniel Callcut explores the upside of pessimism

Plus more fascinating features on the biggest topics shaping our world today, book reviews, original poetry, and our regular cryptic crossword and brainteaser.

Subscribe to the print edition now to get a beautiful copy of the magazine delivered to your door, or choose a digital subscription to read it on the app.

New Humanist, a quarterly magazine of culture, ideas, science and philosophy, is published by Humanists UK.

This post contains a video, which you can also view here. To support more videos like this, head to patreon.com/rebecca! Transcript: A lot of people think they’re too smart to fall for advertising tricks, but I think it’s important to recognize that some techniques work on a person no matter how savvy they are. As …

This post contains a video, which you can also view here. To support more videos like this, head to patreon.com/rebecca! Transcript: Hey, remember “Adam Ruins Everything?” It was a show starring Adam Conover. Personally, I never watched it because I’m bigoted against this entire look–all of it. The hair, the smirk, the suit, I’m sorry, …

I have recently carried out some detective work into one of my favourite paranormal studies.

It all began with an article that I co-wrote for The Psychologist about how research into the paranormal is sometimes ahead of psychology. In the article, we describe a groundbreaking study into eyewitness testimony that was conducted in the late 1880s by a paranormal researcher and magician named S. J. Davey (1887).

This work involved inviting people to fake séances and then asking them to describe their experience. Davey showed that these accounts were often riddled with errors and so couldn’t be trusted. Modern-day researchers still cite this pioneering work (e.g., Tompkins, 2019) and it was the springboard for my own studies in the area (Wiseman et al., 1999, 2003).

Three years after conducting his study, Davey died from typhoid fever aged just 27. Despite the pioneering and influential nature of Davey’s work, surprisingly little is known about his tragically short life or appearance. I thought that that was a shame and so decided to find out more about Davey.

I started by searching several academic and magic databases but discovered nothing. However, Censuses from 1871 and 1881 proved more informative. His full name was Samuel John Davey, he was born in Bayswater in 1864, and his father was called Samuel Davey. His father published two books, one of which is a huge reference text for autograph collectors that runs to over 400 pages.

I managed to get hold of a copy and discovered that it contained an In Memoriam account of Samuel John Davey’s personality, interests, and life. Perhaps most important of all, it also had a wonderful woodcut of the man himself along with his signature.

I also discovered that Davey was buried in St John the Evangelist in Shirley. I contacted the church, and they kindly send me a photograph of his grave.

Researchers always stand on the shoulders of previous generations and I think it’s important that we celebrate those who conducted this work. Over one hundred years ago, Davey carried out a pioneering study that still inspires modern-day psychologists. Unfortunately, he had become lost to time. Now, we know more information about him and can finally put a face to the name.

I have written up the entire episode, with lots more information, in the latest volume of the Journal of the Society for Psychical Research. If anyone has more details about Davey then please feel free to contact me!

My thanks to Caroline Watt, David Britland, Wendy Wall and Anne Goulden for their assistance.

References

Davey, S. J. (1887). The possibilities of malobservation, &c., from a practical point of view. JSPR, 36(3), 8-44.

Tompkins, M. L. (2019). The spectacle of illusion: Magic, the paranormal & the complicity of the mind. Thames & Hudson.

Wiseman, R., Jeffreys, C., Smith, M. & Nyman, A. (1999). The psychology of the seance, from experiment to drama. Skeptical Inquirer, 23(2), 30-32.

Wiseman, R., Greening, E., & Smith, M. (2003). Belief in the paranormal and suggestion in the seance room. British Journal of Psychology, 94(3), 285-297.

Delighted to say that tonight at 8pm I will be presenting a 60 min BBC Radio 4 programme on mind magic, focusing on the amazing David Berglas. After being broadcast, it will be available on BBC Sounds.

Here is the full description:

Join psychologist and magician Professor Richard Wiseman on a journey into the strange world of mentalism or mind magic, and meet a group of entertainers who produce the seemingly impossible on demand. Discover “The Amazing” Joseph Dunninger, Britain’s Maurice Fogel (“the World’s Greatest Mind Reader”), husband and wife telepathic duo The Piddingtons, and the self-styled “Psycho-Magician”, Chan Canasta.

These entertainers all set the scene for one man who redefined the genre – the extraordinary David Berglas. This International Man of Mystery astonished the world with incredible stunts – hurtling blindfold down the famous Cresta toboggan run in Switzerland, levitating a table on the streets of Nairobi, and making a piano vanish before hundreds of live concert goers. Berglas was a pioneer of mass media magic, constantly appeared on the BBC radio and TV, captivated audiences the world over and inspired many modern-day marvels, including Derren Brown.

For six decades, Berglas entertained audiences worldwide on stage and television, mentoring hundreds of young acts and helping to establish mentalism or mind magic as one of the most popular forms of magical entertainment, helping to inspire the likes of Derren Brown, Dynamo and David Blaine. The originator of dozens of illusions still performed by celebrated performers worldwide, Berglas is renowned for his version of a classic illusion known as Any Card at Any Number or ACAAN, regarded by many as the ‘holy grail’ of magic tricks and something that still defies explanation.

With the help of some recently unearthed archive recordings, Richard Wiseman, a member of the Inner Magic Circle, and a friend of David Berglas, explores the surreal history of mentalism, its enduring popularity and the life and legacy of the man many regard as Master of the Impossible.

Featuring interviews with Andy Nyman, Derren Brown, Stephen Frayne, Laura London, Teller, Chris Woodward, Martin T Hart and Marvin Berglas.

Image credit: Peter Dyer Photographs

I have lots of talks and shows coming up soon. Meanwhile, here are two podcast interviews that I did recently. ….

I hope that you enjoy them!

 

The Edinburgh Magic Festival takes place soon, and I am staging a few events, including a talk on the magical history of Edinburgh, a magic workshop (joint with slight of hand expert Will Houstoun), and my ‘Invention of Magic’ show. For details, please click here. 

As part of the event, I have teamed up with Festival co-founder Svetlana McMahon and the amazing Young Carers charity to produce a fun optical illusion exhibition. Together, we created some mind-bending illusions, and then photographed the carers staging the images around the city. Each photograph features young carers doing what they do every day – making the seemingly impossible possible. 

If you are in Edinburgh, please pop into the Storytelling Center on the High Street, enjoy the free exhibition and watch our behind-the-scenes video. Here are a few of my favourite images….

 

I recently received a lovely email from a pal of mine, Ian Franklin. We met when I investigated alleged ghostly phenomena at Hampton Court Palace, and so I thought that it would be a good time to re-visit the work.

As a kid, I was fascinated by ghosts and hauntings. In the 1990s, I obtained a PhD in the psychology of the paranormal from Edinburgh University and then started my own research unit at the University of Hertfordshire. One day, I received a curious letter from Hampton Court Palace.

This historic Palace has been home to many British monarchs and is now a popular tourist attraction. It also has a reputation for being haunted, with many people experiencing unusual phenomena in an area now known as ‘The Haunted Gallery’. The letter invited me to carry out an investigation (the first at a Royal Palace).

I put together a team of researchers (Caroline Watt, Paul Stevens, Emma Greening and Ciarán O’Keeffe) for a five-day investigation. It proved to be lots of fun. For instance, before we started, the Palace staged a press conference to announce my study. During a break, I stepped outside to get some fresh air and some teenagers drove past. Weirdly, one of them threw an egg at me and it smashed on my shirt, leaving a large stain.  I returned to the press conference, said that the stain was actually ghostly ectoplasm and that this is going to be a tough investigation. 

At the time, Ian Franklin was working as a palace warder. He was kind enough to go through the historic records and figure out where people had reported unusual phenomena in the Haunted Gallery.   

Each day, I asked visitors to walk through the Gallery and write down any unusual experienced (e.g., suddenly feeling cold or sensing a presence). They were also given a floorplan of the area and asked to indicate the location of their experience. About 600 people participated. Interestingly, the experiences from those who believed in ghosts tended to take place in areas that Ian had identified from historic reports. Before the study, we had asked everyone to rate their previous knowledge about strange happenings in the Haunted Gallery, and we could see that that wasn’t a factor.

So, what was going on? We discovered that some of the experiences were caused by natural phenomena (e.g., subtle draughts), and speculated that others might be due to areas looking dark and scary. But who knows, maybe there actually are ghosts at the Palace! Importantly, the work showed that it was possible to carry out a rational and open-minded investigation into an alleged haunting, and it paved the way for my later ghost work (more about that in another blog post). Alas, little did I know that there would soon be lots of people (including those on TV) carrying out somewhat less scientific investigations into alleged ghostly phenomena!

Anyway, it was wonderful working with Ian, and the journal article about the study is here, and it also described in Paranormality. 

check, 1, 2…is this thing on? hi everyone! it’s been a while.

Someone contacted me hoping to find young atheists who might be interested in being part of a new series. I’m not particularly interested in having my mug on TV, but I would love to have some great personalities represent atheism on the show, so I offered to repost his email on my blog: My name […]

All throughout my youth, I dreamed of becoming a writer. I wrote all the time, about everything. I watched TV shows and ranted along with the curmudgeons on Television Without Pity about what each show did wrong, convincing myself that I could do a better job. I flew to America with a dream in my […]

A friend linked me to this. I was a sobbing mess within the first minute. I sometimes wonder why I feel such a strong kinship to the LGBT community, and I think it’s because I’ve been through the same thing that many of them have. So I watched this video and I cried, because, as […]

UPDATE #1: I got my domain back! Many thanks to Kurtis for the pleasant surprise: So I stumbled upon your blog, really liked what I saw, read that you had drama with the domain name owner, bought it, and forwarded it here. It should work again in a matter of seconds. I am an atheist […]