Someone named Dewey took exception to my article about a prison being reopened, and quickly fired off a “rebuttal”.

Aw, cry more. Criminals belong in prisons. People who illegally enter homes belong in prison. People who illegally enter businesses belong in prison. People who illegally enter the country belong in prison.

Sure, criminals belong in prison. Listing crimes that get people arrested doesn’t impress me. By the way, he forgot “People who riot and commit violence against the police and vandalize the US Capitol belong in prison.” Or “People who rape women and sexually harass young women belong in prison.” The problem is that these penalties are not justly applied.

Also, people are allowed to enter the country and, for instance, apply for residence or for asylum. Just being in the country doesn’t make a person a criminal.

I’m sure you’d love to completely eliminate the prison system and switch to the honor system, but you’re not in charge, thankfully. Obama was a rockstar who deported over 3 million illegal aliens and did so without the nebulous “due process” you liberals love to whine about.

I’m not lobbying to completely eliminate prisons, but do find it wasteful to reopen prisons that were declared redundant and shuttered over a decade ago. Why reopen a prison unless you’re planning to throw more people into it, in a country with declining levels of crime?

“Due process” is not nebulous. It’s a specific legal process that requires that the state demonstrate criminality and give the accused an opportunity to present their case in court.

Trump probably isn’t competent enough to get even close to that record level of deportations, but any number helps. Beyond him, the people’s minds are changing rapidly. You’re going the way of the dinosaurs. It would be best that you accept that fact.

Why should I accept the fact that injustices are being done? I will oppose them to the end.

I was feeling a bit robust this morning, and managed to hobble all the way out to the backyard, where I could explore the fauna thriving there. Mary was hovering at my elbow to make sure I didn’t topple over, but I did OK — another week or two, and I might be going on real walks (as long as I don’t do anything stupid.) Things I saw that made me happy:

We spotted two monarch butterflies flitting over the garden. No photos, though, they didn’t land and pose for me.

The place is hopping with grasshoppers, which, while not normally associated with good gardens, is fine with me — the purpose of the garden is making spider food, not tomatoes. Mary may disagree with me.

Oh, and it was so bright. I’m not used to that anymore.

We also had lots of interesting pollinators, like this two-spotted longhorn bee.

Of course, the queen of the garden, the devourer of grasshoppers, the true monarch, was Argiope trifasciata.

It’s a fine crop, and congratulations to Mary on her superlative gardening skills. Maybe tomorrow I’ll make it to the front yard to see what wonders flourish there.

I thought all we were getting for sacrificing science was a paint job for the border wall, but no! We’re getting more prisons! Overall, crime is down significantly, but we’re expanding the prison system.

There is a small town about 45 minutes south of me named Appleton, that used to be home to a medium security prison that was shut down about 15 years ago. Now the plan is to reopen the facility under ICE control. It’s got 1600 beds, but I’m sure they can easily double that.

I see no advantage to this construction project, except that it means there will be a nearby locus for protests. Also, who knows, as a liberal university professor I could end up staying there sometime! I sure hope they make it clean, comfortable, and luxurious.

It turns out humans don’t need AI to say incredibly stupid, ignorant things.

She has a new fundraiser-essay, “The Unforgivable Sin of Ms Rachel”. I’ve only seen a half hour of it so far, but it’s magnificent — she is discussing the importance of empathy in raising children and normal human interactions, and is exposing the horrible anti-empathy arguments of conservatives. It’s 2½ hours long, unfortunately, but man, it’s good and thorough. Everyone ought to watch it. Learn more about the anti-Christian sin of empathy, and how the Sermon on the Mount is a crime against Jesus.

It’s also a fundraiser for the Palestine Children’s Relief Fund. I was motivated to donate.

Quiet in demeanour and self-deprecating, the “first American pope” has been enjoying a media honeymoon. It is unlikely to last. Robert Francis Prevost must soon openly face critical issues confronting the Vatican, as well as opposition coming from the wider global Catholic community. These include longstanding challenges, such as the continued fallout from clerical sexual abuse cases, and pressure for the Church to begin ordaining women as priests.

But the most insidious opposition to Pope Leo XIV may, ironically, come from his own back yard. The re-election of President Trump has emboldened ultraconservative bishops and other prominent Catholic figures in the US, many of whom opposed Pope Francis’ drive to reform the Church, and who regard Leo as an heir to this liberalising tendency. Prevost’s particular background, in both the US and Peru, may have uniquely prepared him to stand against these ultraconservative currents in the Church – and against autocrats, including Trump.

The Holy See represents the only faith community recognised as a state, with global reach and diplomatic influence. How this dynamic plays out matters not only to the 1.4 billion Catholics globally, but also to the wider world.

Across the Americas

Robert Francis Prevost, the first pope born in the United States, became the man he is today largely because of his decades serving among the poor in Peru at a key historical juncture. Latin America was aflame with violence and political repression when Prevost arrived in 1985 at age 29, as a priest. Walking amid the faithful in slums and shantytowns, he saw the way much of the world lived – on the economic edge, threatened by war and often by strongmen.

The young cleric was primed to embrace the intense Peruvian experience from his earliest days as a Chicago schoolboy during the post-war population boom, when Catholic parochial schools educated tens of millions. Daily life was entwined with the parish and Catholic societies. Prevost’s mother, Mildred, a librarian and mother of three, was president of the Altar and Rosary Society at their local church; all three sons served as altar boys. Prevost’s was a religious-cum-social upbringing, the same kind of all-encompassing existence lived around faith that he would encounter among the Peruvians.

If Prevost was formed in the United States by his Catholic boyhood – and later by his Augustine order’s theology and spiritual practice – he was deeply influenced by listening to those around him in Cold War Latin America. In the 1980s, Latin Americans often told you that they admired – even envied – the good life that people enjoyed in the United States, or loved its music and movies.

But Prevost also would have heard that many regarded his country as the enemy, for having historically exploited their labour and resources, and for its gunboat diplomacy that invariably supported dictators backed by the wealthy. In Peru, he likely heard of the period during the Second World War when Lima collaborated with Washington on a then-secret kidnapping operation that took 1,800 Peruvians of Japanese ancestry to concentration camps in the US, where they were held for years pending exchange for US prisoners of war. The idealisation of his native country taught by Catholic schools during Prevost’s childhood would meet a contrasting narrative in the reality he then came to know.

In Peru, he experienced horror and war. Seventy-five percent of the 70,000 people who died in Peru’s internal conflict (1980-2000), which raged while Prevost was there, were indigenous Quechua. Prevost spoke Spanish, and learned Quechua to communicate with many in his care, who lived at a time of unease, not knowing when they might be detained or dragged from their homes at night. Risk came from several directions – from armed rebels as well as brutal soldiers and other agents of state authority.

The Peruvian Truth and Reconciliation Commission report (2003) showed that the conflict touched virtually every corner of the country. In Chiclayo, where Prevost was once based, according to the report, a police and military suspicious of rebellion had tortured children to make their parents confess to crimes, and held girls as young as 14 for months in government facilities where they were raped.

Meanwhile, the Maoist guerrilla group Sendero Luminoso shot victims in the head. In a nationwide outrage that eventually became public, some 200,000 women and more
than 20,000 men, mostly from Indigenous communities or rural areas, were sterilised without their consent between 1996 and 2000, part of a family planning programme under President Alberto Fujimori, who made himself a dictator by dissolving Congress and the Supreme Court.

As a pastor, Prevost would have been concerned by the danger faced by those in his care, but his own life was also at risk. Four hundred thousand people, mostly civilians, were killed or disappeared in Latin America in political conflict between 1970 and 1990; nuns and priests – even bishops – and other religious workers including US missionaries were not exempt. Some were violently eliminated because they had been identified as defending reformists or rebels or because they supported government targets such as peasant leaders. The cry of the El Salvadoran far-right resounded in Guatemala, Argentina, and other countries: “Be a patriot, kill a priest!”

Vatican diplomacy

Critics may argue that the Church has too much power on the global stage. But even they may wish to see Pope Leo putting his armoury of tools for diplomacy to good use, in the service of peace. The Holy See is historically considered a broker with the power to intervene in conflict or disagreements at the request of one of the parties. It denies having an official spy agency, but is widely thought to engage in intelligence gathering across the globe. Parties desiring mediation may choose to trust Vatican intercession because its diplomatic approach doesn’t carry traditional political, military or trade interests.

Leo is bound to carry in his mind what armed conflict and political crises, as well as government by autocracy, mean to ordinary people en carne propio, as the Spanish term has it, in their own flesh. A pope with such first-hand experience may be more likely to fight for peace. And Prevost has already shown he will engage with world crises. He singled out Gaza and Ukraine during his first Sunday address in a wider call for ceasing global hostilities. He emphasised that he was speaking not only to the tens of thousands before him in St Peter’s Square, but to “the world’s great powers by repeating the ever-present call, ‘Never Again War’!” He soon held a phone call with Vladimir Putin focusing on Ukraine.

But Leo will also have to contend with crises closer to home. These include continued fallout from a wave of grievous clerical sex abuse cases that first arose more than three decades ago; there remains a need for support for abuse survivors and attention to unresolved accusations of mishandled cases and cover-ups.

As a bishop, Leo said he did not favour female ordination. But the clamour from women who believe they have vocations to the priesthood, or who desire to participate in the life of the Church as deacons, a consecrated office now limited to men, is growing apace. He will not be able to close his ears to that burning issue.

Prevost will also be lobbied by more conservative elements in Vatican City. Disgruntled members of the Curia – the administrative body of the Holy See – may push for a return to the days before Francis demanded stricter transparency and named women to important positions. But pressure on Leo is likely to fail, as his own appointment to an important Curia position was part of the reforms, and he has signalled a desire for continuity with Francis and the broader liberalising tradition within the Church. In his first speech to cardinals, Leo positioned the initiatives of Francis as an authoritative interpretation of the Second Ecumenical Council of the Vatican (1962-65), known as Vatican II, called by Pope John XXIII to modernise the Church and “let in the fresh air”.

Taking on Trump's Catholics

This reformist spirit will provoke fierce resistance not only from within the Vatican, but also from ultraconservative groups in the US, many of which have links to President Trump. Take the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB), one of the most powerful lobbying groups in the US. Its 274 active members include New York’s Cardinal Timothy Dolan, a longstanding Trump supporter.

Archbishop José Gomez, another member, also belongs to the ultraconservative Catholic movement Opus Dei. Their centre near the US Capitol is a gathering place for conservative Catholics in Congress and the administration, where priests offer the Traditional Latin Mass, symbolic for those who want a return to the Church before Vatican II and the modernisation of the 60s. These include Kevin Roberts, president of the conservative think tank the Heritage Foundation and an architect of Project 2025, considered a blueprint for the current Trump administration. Its subjects include consolidating presidential power, curtailing immigration and eliminating access to abortion.

The USCCB is now actively lobbying to further undermine the right to abortion in the US, as well as the rights to contraception, same-sex marriage and sexual relations between couples of the same sex. The ultimate aim of the most conservative members is to instill their particular vision of Catholicism into all aspects of US law and society. But this vision doesn’t always align with that of the Vatican. For example, the USCCB’s teaching document for Catholic voters continues to call the abortion issue “pre-eminent,” although Pope Francis maintained that abortion is no more pre-eminent than other pro-life concerns such as care for the poor or the death penalty.

Leo’s role on critical global issues such as climate change is also likely to attract attention and opposition. He is certain to follow Francis, who emphasised the risk of global warming. His years in Peru have shaped his concern for the environment, and also for the welfare of Indigenous people. In December, as a cardinal, he told a seminar in Rome that it is time to move “from words to action” on the crisis. In contrast, US bishops virtually ignored Francis’s call for action on the environment, formulated in his encyclical Laudato Si’ (2015), which condemns extractive industries and unregulated markets insofar as they harm the poor and contribute to social injustice.

Leo is also concerned by the existential threat of AI. A mathematics major at university, he has echoed Pope Francis’s disquiet about certain rising technologies. Even as he accepts the potential of AI to improve lives, he believes the Church has a role to play in drawing attention to its dangers and abuses, insisting on governance and warning against job displacement.

Immigration, abortion and aid

Alongside resistance from inside the Church, these views are likely to meet opposition from a group of ultra-conservative US lay Catholics, relatively small in number but politically well connected. They include another Leo: Leonard Leo, known as the “court whisperer” for his influence on US judicial appointments. Leonard was instrumental in overturning Roe vs Wade, with the support of Trump. He helped to usher six justices onto the Supreme Court, all of whom were raised Catholic – including its five-member super majority, which is decisive in close cases. This ensured that there was a majority to effectively end the constitutional right to abortion in the US.

Then there is Tim Busch, a business partner of oil billionaire Charles Koch and founder of the Napa Institute. Based in California’s wine country, this 15-year-old institution facilitates the meeting of minds between laity and conservative clergy, and grooms new ultraconservative apostolates like those who reach out to youth on non-Catholic university campuses. They also provide a podium for ultra-Catholic politicians such as JD Vance. Busch is also a supporter of the Opus Dei movement.

During the Conclave in May that elected Leo, hundreds of these wealthy, ultraconservative Catholics descended upon Rome to celebrate “America Week” (planned before Francis’s death) with balls and lavish dinners. The Napa Institute, the Papal Foundation (membership fee: $1 million) and other groups invited like-minded European aristocrats and Catholic members of hard-right political parties.

The idea was to network with each other, and with Vatican officials. As populism rises in Europe, US traditionalists touted America Week as part of an effort to spread the successful fundraising and outreach techniques of the ultra-right US Catholics to the continent. With a Christian nationalist orientation, the traditionalists are comfortable with the global ascendancy of autocratic rule.

In December 2024, Trump named one of these figures, Brian Burch, as his choice for ambassador to the Holy See. Burch is president of the right-wing advocacy group CatholicVote and is credited by Trump with helping him to win over 54 per cent of Catholics in the last election.

A friend of JD Vance, Burch was a fierce critic of Pope Francis. The director of the Catholic Theological Union’s Bernardin Center in Chicago has described him as “an agitator, mostly, the opposite of a diplomat”. As ambassador, he will have to defend Trump’s massive foreign aid cuts, which affect Catholic food and assistance projects in poor and war-torn regions. He represents a country with increasingly draconian immigration policies – opposed by many US bishops – and has personally launched lawsuits demanding to know the role of Catholic border charities in a “record surge of illegal immigrants”.

Opposing visions of Christianity

As the first pontiff with a social media history before his elevation, we have seen Prevost’s critical reaction to harsh US immigration policy in real time. His years in Latin America provided first-hand experience with an influx of newcomers. Beginning around 2015, some eight million people fled economic and political mayhem in Venezuela, about 1.6 million of them to Peru. Prevost advocated for the arrivals, had housing built and founded social and job programmes for them.

As pope, he has identified with migrants: “My own story is that of a citizen, the descendant of immigrants, who in turn chose to emigrate.” In his first address to Vatican ambassadors, he insisted on respect for the dignity of the migrant, pitting himself against Trump, who has slandered immigrants to the US as rapists, and said they are “poisoning the blood” of the country. Of Leo’s first four appointments of US bishops, three are immigrants – from Uganda, Vietnam and Nicaragua.

On immigration and other issues, Pope Leo and the US administration have very different visions of what it means to be a good Christian. Trump and JD Vance had hardly stepped away from the Bibles on which they swore their oaths of office when the new administration dismantled the massive US foreign assistance apparatus, the Agency for International Development. Since the 1960s, the agency had saved millions of lives, financed food and health programmes, supported research on world diseases, provided education and cultural opportunities in places unable to sustain them and backed democracy efforts.

Defending the move, Vance explained that the US government henceforth would follow “the Christian view” of responsibility. “We should love our family first, then our neighbours, then love our community, then our country, and only then consider the interests of the rest of the world,” he said in a television interview that went viral, claiming authority from the ordo amoris, a theological construct of Saint Thomas Aquinas.

The soon-to-be Pope Leo wasn’t having it. “JD Vance was wrong: Jesus doesn’t ask us to rank our love for others,” he tweeted.

Holding the Church together

But while Leo may be a reformist on some issues, he is still head of a Church that does not allow female priests, does not recognise same-sex marriage and condemns abortion in all circumstances.

Prevost opposed teaching gender studies in Peru and has been consistent in regarding a family strictly as “founded upon the stable union between a man and a woman”. In 2012 he said that “the homosexual lifestyle” was at odds with the gospel, and lamented media sympathy for “alternative families comprised of same-sex partners and their adopted children”. In 2023 he appeared to temper his words, referring to Pope Francis, who “does not want people to be excluded simply on the basis of choices that they make, whether it be lifestyle, work, the way they dress or whatever.” However, doctrine has not changed.

This early in the papacy, Catholic women who want access to consecrated roles restricted to men are giving themselves room to hope. As bishop, Prevost gave a definitive “no” to female priests, but the 50-year-old Women’s Ordination Conference, an advocacy group based in Rome with members around the world, has taken a positive approach to the new pope with his “emphasis on bridge-building and dialogue”, as they wrote in their plea to Leo to recognise their “baptismal equality”. Some women aspiring to the diaconate have expressed hope that Leo, who attended theology classes at Villanova University alongside women and has praised the work of women at the Vatican, will listen to them. Others are less optimistic.

Meanwhile, the clerical sex abuse crisis remains an open wound, with many seeing the steps to defrock clergy and compensate victims as too little, too late. In June, Pope Leo reiterated that priests must be celibate and demanded “firm and decisive action” in dealing with abuse reports.

No one has accused the new pope of knowingly keeping abusers in public ministry. Prevost was key to exposing sadistic psychological and sexual abuse in an influential 50-year-old Peru-based religious movement, the Sodality of Christian Life (SCV), with 20,000 members worldwide, including the US. Reporters who published details of the scandal in 2015 suffered harassment, and the Peruvian Church of the time ignored them except for Prevost, who sided with the victims. Arriving at his Vatican post in 2023, Prevost facilitated access for the whistleblowers to Pope Francis, who launched a major investigation and dissolved the SCV shortly before he died. But critics including the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests contend that Prevost could have done more or acted earlier on reports of sexual abuse in several cases, including when he led a diocese in Peru.

Battles ahead

It is too soon to say how Leo will shape the papacy. His first concern will be for the unity of the Church. During Francis’ papacy, differences between the Vatican and ultraconservative US Catholics had some fearing schism. So far US bishops have expressed only joy at Leo’s election, but we don’t know what they may be planning in private. Early indications are that Leo will forge ahead, even as he prepares for pushback. He told the cardinals that the Church will resort “whenever necessary to blunt language that may initially create misunderstandings”. Rooted in concern for the “life and well-being of every man and woman”, he said, “truth [enables] us to confront all the more resolutely the challenges of our time, such as migration, the ethical use of artificial intelligence and the protection of our beloved planet Earth.”

Strong and coherent political forces that engage with global crises, some of them existential in nature, are slow to appear. Meanwhile, the president of the US is looking to remodel the world in his own image, influenced by a very particular brand of US white Christian nationalism, in ways that aren’t likely to benefit “the well-being of every man and woman”. While constrained by his duty to preserve the unity of the Church, Pope Leo XIV may still prove a crucial source of leadership beyond it.

But this may also depend on his ability, and willingness, to oppose and resist the conservatives, and ultraconservatives, within the institutions of the Church and its influential followers.

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

Last month, I posted a video about how online age verification laws are not protecting children from dangerous material, but instead are just a way for the Religious Right to censor content they don’t like. I mostly focused on the “not protecting children at all” part, but at the end I pointed out that these …

This post contains a video, which you can also view here. To support more videos like this, head to patreon.com/rebecca! Transcript: You may have recently heard some news about Costco and the abortion medication mifepristone. Today I want to address some misinformation about that, AND some misinformation ABOUT the misinformation. It’s like mifepristone misinforception. That’s …

This post contains a video, which you can also view here. To support more videos like this, head to patreon.com/rebecca! Transcript: Last month, I talked about an MIT preprint published on arXiv about AI. It’s a little early for an update on that, but there is some interesting news about another MIT preprint published on …

The Autumn 2025 issue of New Humanist is on sale now! This issue is all about how the battle over space – playing out unseen above us – concerns us all.

Read on for a peek inside!

Subscribe now from just £10 – and get access to the new issue, as well as our full 140-year archive – or buy a single issue online and in all good newsagents.

Space and society

In the latest edition of our "Voices" section, we ask five experts – from scientists to philosophers – how to protect space for the benefit of all of humanity.

"When people hear the term 'space technology', they tend to picture rocket launches, or maybe missions to the Moon ... Other types of space activity with strong social impact tend to get less attention"

The satellite war

We speak to security expert Mark Hilborne about space warfare – and how it could be the deciding factor in the conflict between Russia and Ukraine.

"The public doesn’t understand how much we rely on space as a domain of warfare"

Sexism in space

When Nasa prepared a message to aliens with the Pioneer probes in the 1970s, sexism skewed how they represented humankind. Within the next decade, we may have another chance to send a message deep into space – and this time, we must do better, writes Jess Thomson.

"Only five objects we have crafted here on Earth are now drifting towards infinity, and four of them tell a lie about half of humankind"

American alien

The new Superman movie offers the vision of a kinder, more tolerant United States – saved by an immigrant, in this case a literal alien. But should we really pin our hopes on a superhero?

"Trump has even shared photoshopped images of himself as Superman. The idea that superheroes can save us all, if we just let them break all the rules, is one that the Maga followers find congenial"

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

Also in the Autumn 2025 issue of New Humanist:

• James Ball on the spate of murders linked to a group who call themselves "rationalists"
• Veteran human rights campaigner Peter Tatchell on free speech and Palestine Action
• Michael Rosen on the history and meaning of the word "drone"
• Dominic Hinde on what Japan's experience of two very different nuclear disasters can teach us in an age of conflict and climate change
• Former party leader Neil Kinnock on Labour's humanist roots
• Mary Jo McConahay on Pope Leo's looming fight against Trump's Catholics
• Euan Lawson on the science sleuths fighting to save research from bias and fakery
• Diletta De Cristofaro on the fascinating history of hypochondria and the rise of health anxiety
• Samira Ahmed on how generations of feminists are learning from each other
• Durdana Bhat and Kamran Yousuf meet the embattled hoteliers of beautiful Kashmir
• Andrew Mueller on what war does to ordinary men
• Sally Feldman on the magic of grandmas' cooking
• Lois Pryce on how bluegrass is uniting America
• Shaparak Khorsandi on her misunderstood, muffin-making Iranian dad

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.

I was sitting one day in the sunshine, waiting for a festival gig to begin, with a bunch of my fellow comedians. The conversation, as it often does with us, had taken a turn for the personal. Small talk is comedian kryptonite – we can’t handle “Going anywhere nice on holiday?” but “What are your kinks?” somehow feels manageable.

That day, the chatter turned to the violence the others had experienced as children at the hands of their parents. “They fuck you up, your mum and dad / They may not mean to, but they do / They fill you with the faults they had / And add some extra, just for you.” So goes the start of Philip Larkin’s famous poem “This Be The Verse”, first published in this very magazine. I have had “stuff ” to process around my upbringing – who hasn’t? If perfect Mary Poppins had actually had children, they would have had major attachment issues. “She would jump into paintings or fly off on an umbrella and we never knew when she’d be back, if at all!” My parents never hit me though, so I just listened to my companions, slightly heartbroken at what they had experienced.

Then someone I’ve known for 20 years turned to me and said, “What about you, Shappi? You must have had it pretty bad.” I was thrown. “Why?” I asked. “Well, you know. Iranian dad and all that.” I was floored. All these years, I had thought my dad was a bohemian poet who had endless parties and who gave his daughter the same abundance of freedom that he gave his son ... but all the while he had been a Middle Eastern ogre, one hand gripping a belt, the other clutching a marriage contract, and I hadn’t even noticed.

No one else batted an eye. Not one person said, “Hang on, that’s a weird thing to assume.” I started to wonder – had they all thought that too? But rather than say “and do you get all of your opinions about Middle Eastern men from Tommy Robinson’s Twitter account?” all I managed was “No, my dad never hit me. In fact, he wants to learn to tap dance!” as though child beaters can’t also move their feet.

My father is not a violent man. His only weapons are his words, and they are generally aimed at despots and dictators. Some people seem to watch five minutes of news coverage about Iran and conclude that the entire population is plotting beheadings over bad exam results. Personally, I have never watched a Jackie Chan movie and assumed that every Chinese dad kept nunchucks by the kettle. But apparently people I considered progressive did think like this.

Even more recently, at a party, I was chatting to a woman about therapy and how I’d had to learn to be angry safely. I meant that I’d previously been more prone to crying or throwing an orange at the wall, rather than staying emotionally regulated and articulating my feelings. She nodded and said, “That would be a cultural thing.” A cultural thing? What did she mean? Then I remembered that I was brown; that I must come from a culture where children were taught to obey, in a quiet, disciplined family. In reality, I’d come home from school to my five-foot-two dad with his wild mop of curly hair, waving a wooden spoon in the air and yelling, “Come, come! I made muffins!”

Iran gets painted in monochrome by people whose curiosity doesn’t reach beyond the news of war, revolution, oil and oppression. They don’t know its rich history and wildly diverse peoples. But being from a country that’s constantly misrepresented has given me a lifelong radar for nuance. I know that behind every grim headline, there are poets scribbling in cafés, kids giggling in schoolyards, and grandmothers cracking bawdy jokes.

So when someone from the west tells me – even with the best intentions – what my culture must be like, I don’t just hear ignorance. I hear a kind of poverty, a lack of exposure. A world view robbed by prejudice. There is no culture, no country – developed or developing – that has the monopoly on joy, cruelty, laughter, trauma, brilliance or bullshit. People are the same wherever you go. Someone should write a song about that.

This is a preview from New Humanist's Autumn 2025 issue. Subscribe now.

It’s summertime here in the Northern Hemisphere, and you know what that means: falling asleep on the beach and waking up cooked like a lobster, which you then attempt to alleviate by stumbling over to the beach bar and downing Long Island iced teas, because that sounds delicious and hydrating, and then coating yourself in …

This post contains a video, which you can also view here. To support more videos like this, head to patreon.com/rebecca! Transcript: More than ten years ago, I was the target of a massive hate campaign that started online and moved into the “real world” to the point where people were trying to SWAT me and …

Peter Tatchell is a human rights and LGBT+ campaigner and director of the Peter Tatchell Foundation.

You’ve been campaigning for many decades. Can you tell us about your protest history?

My activism has been inspired by masters of change-making protest like Mohandas Gandhi and Martin Luther King. I’ve striven to adapt their methods of non-violent direct action and civil disobedience to my own campaigns.

I began campaigning in 1967 aged 15, when I was still at high school. During the last 58 years, I’ve participated in over 3,000 protests. In total, I have been arrested or detained by the police 103 times, in the UK and Russia, Qatar, India, France and communist East Germany. But I only have one standing conviction: for the OutRage! protest in Canterbury Cathedral on Easter Sunday 1998. It was against Dr George Carey, the then Archbishop of Canterbury, over his support for anti-LGBT+ laws.

I’m still campaigning at the age of 73 and I plan to carry on well into my 90s.

You have raised your voice against Israel’s war crimes, and also against the crimes of Hamas. Why is it important to speak up about both?

Human rights are universal and indivisible. Hamas is a sexist, homophobic and antisemitic religious extremist dictatorship. The human rights of both Palestinians and Israelis are important. That’s why I condemned the 7 October massacre and urged the release of Israeli hostages. I’ve also repeatedly condemned Israel’s occupation and its killing of Palestinian civilians in Gaza and the West Bank, while at the same time exposing and denouncing human rights abuses committed by Hamas. These abuses include the jailing, torture and execution of political dissidents and the suppression of trade unions, free speech, the right to protest and media freedom.

The Palestine solidarity movement loses credibility when it fails to condemn Hamas’s crimes. If we support Palestinians, we must oppose all their oppressors.

You were arrested on 17 May at a national Palestine solidarity protest in London. What happened?

The police claimed I had committed a racially and religiously aggravated breach of the peace by marching with my placard: “STOP Israel genocide! STOP Hamas executions! Odai Al-Rubai, aged 22, executed by Hamas! RIP!”

It was nonsense. My placard made no mention of anyone’s race or religion. The police also claimed that march stewards told them I shouted, “Hamas are terrorists.” I never shouted anything. And even if someone said those words, they have a right to do so under the laws protecting freedom of speech. Moreover, Hamas is a proscribed terrorist organisation. So why did the police tell me that shouting those words was a potentially arrestable offence?

I was detained on the pavement, in a police van and in cells at Charing Cross police station for a total of five hours and 38 minutes and I was denied the right to contact
a solicitor. The police have since said that they will take no further action and admitted I was arrested “in error”. I am taking legal action against the police over this abuse of power – not just for my own sake but for the sake of everyone wrongly arrested.

I support the Palestine Solidarity Campaign but it also has questions to answer. [PSC has said it is not aware of any of its stewards making a complaint to police.]

Rap duo Bob Vylan were widely condemned for shouting “Death, death to the IDF” at Glastonbury music festival. Is this legitimate free speech?

There is something seriously wrong when Bobby Vylan’s chanting of these five words provokes more outrage than Israel’s genocide, ethnic cleansing and its reduction of much of Gaza to a scene of flattened rubble reminiscent of Hiroshima after the atomic bomb.

Free speech includes the right to say offensive, and even appalling, things. But it does not include the right to make violent threats. “Death, death to the IDF” was a response to
the IDF’s murder of innocent Palestinian civilians – a war crime. If it had been a call to kill specific Israeli personnel, the charge of incitement to murder might be answerable
in court. But a generic call for death to the IDF probably would not. Besides, no one at Glastonbury is going to kill an Israeli soldier as a result of Vylan’s words. It was protest
rhetoric; not intended to be taken literally.

What about the proscription of Palestine Action, after activists broke into an RAF base and sprayed planes with red paint?

It is monstrous to equate Palestine Action with terrorist groups like al-Qaeda that have killed thousands of innocent civilians. If Palestine Action damaged property, they can be prosecuted for that crime. They’d go to prison for their beliefs and actions intended to expose UK complicity with Israel’s mass killing of civilians in Gaza, including more than 15,000 children [according to UNICEF]. Indeed, it is the British government who should be prosecuted for aiding and abetting Israel’s war crimes. Israel and the UK government are undermining international humanitarian law.

Why is it important to differentiate offensive speech from hate speech?

Nearly all ideas are capable of giving offence to someone. Many of the most important ideas in human history – such as those of Galileo Galilei, Karl Marx, Charles Darwin, Harriet Tubman and Sigmund Freud – caused great offence in their time. There are, in my view, normally only three legitimate grounds to restrict free speech. First, when someone makes false, damaging allegations – such as that a person is a rapist or tax fraudster. Second, when they engage in threats or harassment. And third, when they incite violence.

I am very wary of hate speech laws because what constitutes hate is hard to define. For example, in 2001, the preacher Harry Hammond staged a protest in Bournemouth town centre, displaying a sign saying, “Stop homosexuality”, saying it was sinful and that LGBTs should repent. But he was not aggressive and did not use inflammatory abusive language. He was charged under Section 5 of the Public Order Act 1986. Although I opposed his views and supported protests against him, I did not think he should have been prosecuted. I offered to testify in his defence on free speech grounds. But Harry was so homophobic that he refused my offer.

What do you make of the decision to prosecute Hamit Coskun after he burned the Koran outside the Turkish consulate in May?

Burning books has an ugly history associated with totalitarian regimes, but it should not be a crime. I was part of the humanist campaign that defied the blasphemy law on the steps of St Martin’s church in Trafalgar Square in 2002 and which successfully lobbied for the repeal of that law in England and Wales in 2008. The law gave religion, but no other institution, privileged protection against criticism. It restricted free speech. That is why it had to be scrapped.

Hamit Coskun was charged with using disorderly behaviour “within the hearing or sight of a person likely to be caused harassment, alarm or distress”, motivated by “hostility towards members of a religious group, namely followers of Islam”, contrary to the Crime and Disorder Act 1998 and the Public Order Act 1986. His conviction is an attack on the right to protest and freedom of expression. It is the de facto reintroduction of a blasphemy law by the back door.

We have to work to ensure that Coskun’s appeal succeeds. If it doesn’t, that would be a green light for many different religions to use public order legislation to repress critiques and satires of their faith.

This is a preview from New Humanist's Autumn 2025 issue. Subscribe now.

Greg Graffin co-founded the band Bad Religion in Los Angeles in 1980, when he was 17. Their 1994 album “Stranger Than Fiction” sold more than half a million copies in the US, popularising their potent mix of harmony, high-speed noise and articulate, provocative lyrics. Meanwhile, Graffin pursued his academic interests. In 2003, he earned a PhD in zoology from Cornell University.

Graffin received the Rushdie Award for Cultural Humanism from Harvard University’s Humanist Chaplaincy in 2008 for his work as a rock star and scientist, and for being an “ideal role model for the nation’s millions of non-religious youth”. He teaches evolution at Cornell, while remaining the only constant member of Bad Religion. The band still tours and released their last album, “Age of Unreason”, in 2019.

In your 2022 memoir, “Punk Paradox”, you say you consider Darwin to have a “punk” approach. That’s quite a startling way to describe a middle-class, English, Victorian scientist.

Yeah, I think what appealed to me was, it was at a time when I was going through my early punk transformation, and of course, when you’re a teenager, you’re kind of self-conscious about everything. I was very concerned by the fact that the classic “English punk” was, you know, from a working-class family and a street kid who didn’t have much – and that wasn’t my experience. In America, many of the punks were also street punks who were kicked out of their houses by their parents and had some serious problems – that was kind of the punk stereotype.

So I thought, wait a minute, here’s a guy in Victorian England, who basically overturned hundreds of years, thousands of years of dogma and dogmatic thinking.

I thought, that’s a different type of revolution that’s much more appealing to me – because here I am raised as an academic, my parents were both academics, I wasn’t kicked out of the house. So I thought that, actually, it’s just as valid.

You managed to immerse yourself in an authentic punk scene without sacrificing the academic side and your interests in birdwatching and geology and all the rest. How did you balance that?

Well, it’s called adaptation, you know – if I can borrow another term from evolution. As a kid, you don’t really set out to create a unique lifestyle. You know, you just sort of adapt to the conditions.

There were expectations of me, as a person. The expectations of your family create your environment. I knew that there were strong expectations, and I don’t think it is out of line for me to say that I was doing what I was told to do in a way that kept me on the straight and narrow, if you will.

You say that Monty Python was an influence, and you acted out sketches in your band rehearsals.

Monty even predates my punk years, because by the time my friends and I were 10 or 11 years old our parents, who were all professors, were teaching us to be good cynical observers of society. PBS showed Monty Python every week. And our parents, you know, they wanted us to stop watching those damn cartoons and watch something that’s satirical, or something that can teach you something, something that is critical of society. So Monty Python was a very big influence on our outlook.

Another influence that surprised me was “Jesus Christ, Superstar”, the musical. It’s a subversive take on religion but it’s also the work of Lord Lloyd-Webber and Sir Tim Rice, both establishment figures and known for their support of the Conservative party.

Yeah, maybe I attributed more significance to it because at certain times in your developmental life you’re introduced to something and it has a very deep, lasting impact on your thinking. But I love the music. First of all, it’s a beautifully recorded album – and I’m not talking about the Broadway version, my mother purchased the original studio recording, the two-album set, and really, even as a fourth grader, a kid, I could tell that this was great sounding music and I loved the lyrics.

I could identify with the main character in Jesus Christ Superstar. You know, here was a persecuted individual. And it’s exactly what Andrew Lloyd Webber wanted, right? He wanted us to identify with the main character. And even though I didn’t know it at the time, it was a great rock-and-roll singer who was playing Jesus, it was Ian Gillen from Deep Purple. And so here’s this great and persecuted individual. And just like Charles Darwin, he came to represent someone who went against the grain, and who was the hero of a story.

If you were starting a band today, would you still call it Bad Religion? Do you still consider religion to be your antithesis, this totemic thing you’re in opposition to?

Oh, yeah, I think so. I think religion in the broadest sense is all we’ve ever identified in Bad Religion. Particularly the dogmatic elements of it. And I think today dogma is just as prevalent. I even wrote a little couplet saying that here we are in a secular world now – you know, it gets more secular every decade. But secular dogma is bad religion too.

How do you see America’s future, in terms of free thought?

Everyone talks about the great divisions in America, but from my perspective those divisions have always been there: it’s ideology versus free and open inquiry. And unfortunately the Democrats didn’t do enough to popularise free and open inquiry, because America spoke loud and clear [when they elected Donald Trump as president]: they don’t want free and open inquiry. They want doctrine and ideology. I just think that that’s a very persistent problem in our country, but to be honest with you, it’s a persistent problem in western civilisation.

You don’t think it’s a uniquely dangerous time for rationalism?

I’m in jeopardy of looking naïve, but in terms of calling it uniquely dangerous, it’s like, one problem is that if we ignore history, then we can say whatever we want about the current era and the current situation. But as you know, there have been dangerous times in the past as well.

For some reason there’s a need to press upon the reading public that these are unprecedented times. Well, in one sense, that’s a tautology, of course: They are unprecedented, they’ve never happened before. But I don’t know, is it interesting to explore the dangers of the current political climate? It’s something I will leave to the political scientists, you know?

You use punk music to express some very complex ideas around individuality and ideology and society, which isn’t what we might typically expect from punk. Was that a reaction against what other people were doing?

Well, it was part of a scene in southern California. So, you know, when you’re part of a scene, you try to embody what you perceive to be the rudiments of that scene. And I think I was – maybe because my dad was an English professor – I maybe was able to identify some of those streams of consciousness that would resonate. I don’t think it was because I was trying to construct a philosophy or anything. I was too young for that.

But you know, I will say, you triggered a memory – because you [journalists] just love to talk about Donald Trump, which is fine, but you know, the only disappointing thing to me is that every single news outlet in the country is jumping for joy because they get to talk about him literally every day.

And I’d just point to one of the first songs I ever wrote – I was only a teenager, and I believe good old Jimmy Carter was in the Oval Office at that time, and here was a liberal president, a guy who did so much good in the world, and yet I still wrote Economy, technology doesn’t really work / The guy running the government is just another jerk [from the 1982 song “Politics”]. It sounds so simplistic and so teenage! But you know, I’m still using it today. So it must’ve had legs when I wrote it.

The point is, I was not willing in those days to get into a political discussion because I didn’t see it as bearing any fruit. So I went in a different direction.

Can you tell me about your academic work?

I teach one class a year at Cornell. I teach evolution for non-majors [university students who aren’t studying evolution as their main subject], which I find a very rewarding way to exercise my intellect. It’s a challenge in the sense that, because it’s for non-majors, I really enjoy having them come in with, maybe, some of their own biases, but completely open to the foundational principles of evolution. And it’s an important science to understand.

I think every student who graduates should have certain fundamental understandings of basic science, and even though it’s a struggle to get evolution recognised as a basic science, there’s no arguing against the fact that Charles Darwin ushered in a revolutionary way of thinking that affected more than just science – it affected all of the sciences, and many of the social sciences as well.

How has science informed your music? I’m thinking about the ecological crisis, and wondering why environmental science doesn’t feed more into the songs.

Well, first of all you have to remember there are two principal songwriters in Bad Religion. And the answer I give you is not at all reflective of my partner, Brett [Gurewitz, the band’s guitarist and co-founder] – he’s got his own thoughts on the topic.

But more personally, there’s nothing in the current environmental milieu, if you will, that is particularly good or bad for songwriting. Does the rapid increase in CO2 make for a good topic? No, it doesn’t, that’s not interesting at all to me. The fact that there is CO2 in the atmosphere and that there’s a historical component to it, maybe that’s something that’s allegorical that could be seen as an element in a good song – but I just don’t think that focusing on [news] headlines has ever made for great songs.

You know, the [2003] fires in LA inspired Brett to write “Los Angeles Is Burning” [When the hills of Los Angeles are burning / Palm trees are candles in the murder wind / So many lives are on the breeze / Even the stars are ill at ease / And Los Angeles is burning]. But even though that was an actual fire, I think the best thing about the song is that it can be seen as an allegory as well.

So you tend to take the long view.

Well, yeah, in an evolutionist that’s fairly natural! But here’s the thing that’s important to remember: you call it a long view, but I’m talking about what is purely a goal of good writing, which is you look for universals. And even when you teach science, you look for things that are universal truths that you can try to teach people.

And whether you like it or not, calling the current environmental situation a “crisis” is not a universal truth. That’s doctrine, and that’s something that we try to steer clear of and let people come to their own conclusion. That’s what Bad Religion has always done.

Can we talk about your solo work? “Millport” came out in 2017, and that was your third album of country rock. What prompted you to use that style?

You probably got to know me by now – I let other people put that in the category of their choosing. But I think the word over here is “Americana”.

[These solo albums] are oriented more towards the way that I was raised, in American folk music. It was always playing in our house and it’s had an influence on me musically and I enjoy exploring it. And I was lucky enough to have the opportunities to make records in that genre with very accomplished musicians.

And meanwhile Bad Religion carries on. Do you think you’ll do it for ever?

Yeah, you know, up to a certain point. If you look at it as an opportunity, as I do, then you don’t question how long it’s going to last. You’re just grateful for the opportunity.

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

I am going to perform a new show at the 2025 Edinburgh Fringe Festival called ‘The World’s Most Boring Card Trick.’

The show has its roots in the notion that creativity often comes from doing the opposite to everyone else. Almost every Festival performer strives to create an interesting show, and so I have put together a genuinely dull offering. Because of this, I am urging people not to attend and telling anyone who does turn up that they can leave at any point. Everyone who displays extraordinary willpower and stays until the end receives a rare certificate of completion.  Do you have what it takes to endure the show and earn your certificate?  

I have identified the seven steps that are central to almost every card trick and devised the most boring version of each stage. Along the way, we explore the psychology of boredom, examine why it is such a most powerful emotion, and discover how our need for constant stimulation is destroying the world.

It will seem like the longest show on the Fringe and success is an empty auditorium. There will only be one performance of the show (20^th August, 15.25 in the Voodoo Rooms). If you want to put your willpower to the test and experience a highly unusual show, please come along!

As ever with my Fringe shows, it’s part of PBH’s wonderful Free Fringe, and so seats are allocated on a ‘first come, first served’ basis. I look forward to seeing you there and us facing boredom together.

Around 2010, psychologists started to think about how some of their findings might be the result of several problems with their methods, such as not publishing experiments with chance results, failing to report all of their data, carrying out multiple analyses, and so on.

To help minimise these problems, in 2013 it was proposed that researchers submit their plans for an experiment to a journal before they collected any data. This became known as a Registered Report and it’s a good idea.

At the time, most psychologists didn’t realise that parapsychology was ahead of the curve. In the mid 1970s, two parapsychologists (Martin Johnson and Sybo Schouten from the University of Utrecht) were concerned about the same issues, and ran the same type of scheme for over 15 years in the European Journal of Parapsychology!

I recently teamed up with Professors Caroline Watt and Diana Kornbrot to examine the impact of this early scheme. We discovered that around 28% of unregistered papers in the European Journal of Parapsychology reported positive effects compared to just 8% of registered papers – quite a difference! You can read the full paper here.

On Tuesday I spoke about this work at a University of Hertfordshire conference on Open Research (thanks to Han Newman for the photo). Congratulations to my colleagues (Mike Page, George Georgiou, and Shazia Akhtar) for organising such a great event.

As part of the talk, I wanted to show a photograph of Martin Johnson, but struggled to find one. After several emails to parapsychologists across the world, my colleague Eberhard Bauer (University of Freiburg) found a great photograph of Martin from a meeting of the Parapsychological Association in 1968!

It was nice to finally give Martin the credit he deserves and to put a face to the name. For those of you who are into parapsychology, please let me know if you can identify any of the other faces in the photo!

Oh, and we have also recently written an article about how parapsychology was ahead of mainstream psychology in other areas (including eyewitness testimony) in The Psychologist here.

I am a big fan of magic history and a few years ago I started to investigate the life and work of a remarkable Scottish conjurer called Harry Marvello.

Harry enjoyed an amazing career during the early nineteen hundreds. He staged pioneering seaside shows in Edinburgh’s Portobello and even built a theatre on the promenade (the building survives and now houses a great amusement arcade). Harry then toured Britain with an act called The Silver Hat, which involved him producing a seemingly endless stream of objects from an empty top hat.

The act relied on a novel principle that has since been used by lots of famous magicians. I recently arranged for one of Harry’s old Silver Hat posters to be restored and it looks stunning.

The Porty Light Box is a wonderful art space based in Portobello. Housed in a classic British telephone box, it hosts exhibitions and even lights up at night to illuminate the images. Last week I gave a talk on Harry at Portobello Library and The Porty Light Box staged a special exhibition based around the Silver Hat poster.

Here are some images of the poster the Porty Light Box. Enjoy! The project was a fun way of getting magic history out there and hopefully it will encourage others to create similar events in their own local communities.

My thanks to Peter Lane for the lovely Marvello image and poster, Stephen Wheatley from Porty Light Box for designing and creating the installation, Portobello Library for inviting me to speak and Mark Noble for being a great custodian of Marvello’s old theatre and hotel (he has done wonderful work restoring an historic part of The Tower).

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

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 […]