I heard all about the American torpedo attack that sunk the Iranian frigate, Dena, in the Indian Ocean. I couldn’t miss it — multiple channels on YouTube were replaying the footage over and over again. There’s an Iranian warship sailing along, when suddenly it was struck in the stern by a massive explosion that lifted the vessel out of the water, breaking it’s back and leading to its rapid sinking. It was glorious war footage, I guess.

Then Pete Hegseth is on all the news, bragging about the victory and all those dumb, blind Iranian sailors who met their fate at the hands of the brave American navy.

At least 87 sailors were killed in the torpedo attack in international waters in the Indian Ocean, and the Sri Lankan navy responded to the Dena’s distress call and rescued 32 survivors, but 61 members of the crew are still missing. The U.S. didn’t respond to the call, and Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth crowed about the attack to reporters on Wednesday.

“An American submarine sunk an Iranian warship that thought it was safe in international waters. Instead, it was sunk by a torpedo,” Hegseth said, calling it a “quiet death.” As a result of the attack, an Iranian supply tanker that was also near Sri Lanka, the IRIS Bushehr, has taken refuge in the island country.

The news stories, until now, didn’t mention one horrible, ignoble fact.

The U.S. Navy’s attack on an Iranian frigate, the IRIS Dena, on Wednesday was the first time an American submarine has sunk an enemy ship since World War II. But the Dena may not have been armed because it was returning from an international exercise in the Indian Ocean, and the U.S. Navy likely knew it because it was taking part in the same exercise.

Both the United States and Iran were taking part in the MILAN 2026 exercise, organized by the Indian Navy, on February 15–26, with the U.S. sending a maritime patrol aircraft and Iran sending the Dena. Iranian sailors from the ship paraded on land before India’s president.

The exercise in question required ships not to carry any ammunition. Normally, the Dena carries various missiles and guns, including anti-ship missiles. Because the U.S. also took part, it would have been aware that the Dena was unarmed. Former Indian Foreign Minister Kanwal Sibal accused the attack of being “premeditated as the US was aware of the Iranian ship’s presence in the exercise.”

To add to the United State’s shame, the IRIS Dena immediately sent out a distress call; the Sri Lankan navy responded to rescue survivors. The American navy, despite obviously having a ship nearby, ignored the SOS.

Pete Hegseth is a motherfucking chickenshit coward. “Warfighter,” my ass.

Hey! I’m going to be speaking at an Iowa Atheists event tomorrow, which has me mildly shocked. I hope I haven’t forgotten how to talk, or worse, that the only thing I can talk about is spiders (No! Do not talk about spiders! People find it either boring or horrifying!)

It’s been a long time. You know, I’ve been effectively blacklisted by all the major atheist organizations because I’ve loudly criticized some of the atheist saints, like Dawkins and Harris and Hitchens, and then got attached to some hated shibboleths like feminism (but I’m not a woman), or gay liberation (but I’m straight), or trans rights (I’m also not trans), or some other heresy. The last time I talked to an atheist organization about speaking was about ten years ago, and that was painfully tentative — the person I spoke with wanted to check my availability, but they were afraid that some members of their group hated me so much that they’d veto the suggestion…which is what happened, I guess, because I never heard from them again.

Just as well. I’ve got an hour or more of macrophotos and videos of spiders that no one would want to see, anyway. If any of those groups that blacklisted me somehow decided to bring me on, that’s what they’d get, and it would serve them right.

Today I’m driving to the Twin Cities. Tomorrow at 2pm in Des Moines I’ll be talking about social justice, instead, which would make them cry even harder.

We knew it had to be inevitable: Noem has been fired. All that cosmetic surgery and dental work to please her boss didn’t help.

Unfortunately, she’s being replaced by Markwayne Mullin, one of the dumbest sad-sack MAGAs in the Trump camp. This must be the smell of war he’s been talking about.

Questions remain: will Kristi ever get her blankie back? What about her boy toy, Corey Lewandowski? I hope there’s a camera crew around when she knocks on the door of her husband, Bryon.

And of course, we all want to know who the next cabinet member to get two bullets to the back of the head will be. Markwayne is new, but I think he’s in a good position for it.

A controversial view, I know, but I was wandering around the taxonomy lab and saw this snake identification poster:

They’re all just squiggles with patterned markings! Spiders are so much more interesting.

You can fire back, herpetologists.

Over the last several years, a man named Darren Beattie has been busy on Xitter promoting a crude, ignorant form of eugenics (even “sophisticated” versions of eugenics are deplorable and wrong, but Darren favors the ugliest kind.)

Population control? If only! Higher quality humans are subsidizing the fertility of lower quality humans.

When a population gets feral, a little snip snip keeps things in control. Could offer incentives (Air Jordans, etc.).

Pay smart people to have more kids, disincentivize stupid people from having kids. So simple but molds destiny on deep intergenerational level.

In September 2023, he responded to news about migrants from Africa who rioted in Israel by suggesting that the Israeli government “literally just round them up and drop them in the ocean.”

Let the ‘human rights groups’ whine… drop them in the ocean too!

It isn’t “politically correct to say, but low-iq, low-impulse control populations lack higher reasoning and moral faculties. They require strict corporal punishment and threat of violence to function properly within a society. Instead of anarcho-tyranny, we need Singapore for the dumb and violent, and Sweden for the more elevated.”

The same low-IQ trash who watch the fast and furious franchise. Beginning to wish the whole population reduction conspiracy were true.

Competent white men must be in charge if you want things to work. Unfortunately, our entire national ideology is predicated on coddling the feelings of women and minorities, and demoralizing competent white men.

You may say “So what? Trolls like that are a dime-a-dozen on Xitter” or maybe “Typical mindless bot.” Except…he actually has an official position in the Trump administration.

He was a speechwriter (!!!) for Trump in his first administration, but got fired when people noticed that he was attending white nationalist conferences. It was a simpler time, when a few people in the White House could be slightly embarrassed by overt racists.

Don’t worry that Darren might have gone hungry — he was quickly hired by Matt Gaetz as a speechwriter.

And then Trump won his second presidential race, all concern for propriety vanished, and Marco Rubio snatched up this eloquent writer and promoted him to Under Secretary of State for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs, and Trump made him acting president of the United States Institute of Peace. “Diplomacy” and “Peace” are not words I would apply to him, but Trump and Rubio think different.

Beattie has since been replaced as Under Secretary of State by Sarah Rogers, a former lawyer who worked for Philip Morris to protect them from litigation, and then worked for a law firm specializing in clients like the National Rifle Association, tobacco companies, and venture capitalists in AI. She seems to be much more muted and diplomatic than her predecessor, but I still wouldn’t trust her.

He’s still president of the Donald J. Trump Institute of Peace. I don’t know what he does there. Go out for lunch with Stephen Miller?

If you want to know more about the Republican agenda, talk to Darren Beattie.

Humans began bending wild things to their will at least 15,000 years ago (some evidence suggests these processes probably started earlier). Domestication was a turning point in human evolution. Starting with wolves, we exerted further pressure on animal and plant species honed by millions of years of natural selection – exaggerating desirable qualities and reducing undesirable ones on a much shorter timescale.

Dangerous predators became hunting partners and loyal friends. Flinty seeds and hard fruits were fattened in the forges of our appetites. And our lives became progressively easier as a result. The ability to harness evolution and turn it to our own ends was a major facilitator of civilisation and ultimately our colonisation of most of the planet.

But the organisms we now consider to be domestic were never truly our creations. We have certainly modified them beyond recognition in some cases. The obese pug waddling down the sidewalk bears little resemblance to its wolf ancestors. The plump kernels of a corn cob are nothing like the stingy, hard little knobs produced by its parent plant, teosinte. Given the chance, though, many of these organisms are more than happy to rewild themselves. They are not the static, placid entities we think they are. The genes of domesticated organisms remain compatible with those of their wild progenitors. The DNA in everything from a head of lettuce to a greyhound is primed to escape its human confines.

This rewilding process might seem benign – a return for these species to their older state, before humans started meddling. But the practical effects are more complex. When these domesticated genes make a break for it, they can have serious effects on wild populations, sometimes threatening their survival. These challenges call into question our ideas around what is “natural”, along with our assumptions about change and modification.

Interbreeding on the rise

Domestication was a messy process from the start. Ever since humans began to breed crops and domesticate wild animals, there has been some element of interchange with their ancestor species. After all, some of our domestic species were accidental in the first place, or at least partially; wolves in search of easy scraps were drawn into human encampments; wild cats attracted to rodents feeding on grain became prized as pest-killers. As they slowly integrated into human life, these early domesticates invariably returned to the wild or bred with newly acclimated wild specimens. Early dogs almost certainly bred with human-curious wolves, and freshly minted lapcats snuck off behind the grain silos for sneaky trysts with dirty-hot wild toms.

It was a similar story with plant life: crops selected for greater production (wheat and barley were two of the first) were often in proximity to their wild relatives and exchanged genes. This entry of one genetically defined population into another is called “introgression”.

However, as human civilisation has expanded, opportunities for this kind of interbreeding have increased exponentially. Large areas of the Earth are now covered by crops and livestock. Pollen is carried by wind or by insects and other creatures outside of the cultivation area, to fertilise any compatible wild plants. Of the world’s 13 most important food crops, 12 are known to hybridise with related species in the wild. Domestic animals often range freely or escape captivity entirely.

The effects of rewilding may be subtle, such as changes in size or colour or reproduction time. Or they may be massive, in some cases resulting in what is called “genetic swamping” – fundamentally altering the wild population and eliminating the genetic diversity that allows the species to adapt to changing conditions. This process is exacerbated by the fact that species are often bred by humans to be stronger and more resilient than their wild counterparts. But these advantages are general, whereas wild species may have adapted to thrive in particular environmental conditions.

Domestication can also go wrong. It can lead to the accumulation of hidden alternative forms of genes that result in problems such as greater disease susceptibility, which then enter wild populations too. In some cases, introgression can result in failed breeding events (incomplete fertilisation or the production of sterile hybrids). Think of the horse breeding with the donkey and producing the sterile mule.

Hybrid swarms of rice

It’s clear that domestic introgression affects a wide range of plants and animals. But research on the subject is patchy. In some cases, we simply do not yet know what the effects will be. “This is a somewhat avant-garde aspect of linking ecology and genetics,” says Joshua Daskin, chief scientist of biodiversity data organisation NatureServe. “There are not enough ecologists and geneticists, and there’s not enough funding to understand the depth of this threat.”

Most current research concerns the problem of hybrid plants that return to “invade” farmers’ fields, in the form of aggressive weeds. These wild-domestic hybrids can be stronger and more pesticide-resistant and can also evade detection due to their resemblance to the crop. Some of the world’s worst weeds are the result of domestic genes entering wild populations. For example, Johnson grass is a major pest of corn, soybeans and domesticated sorghum, after becoming more vigorous and resistant to herbicides as a result of breeding with its domestic relative. These supercharged weeds also produce larger, more viable seed crops. Genes originally sculpted to serve the needs of farmers have turned against them.

Another remarkable example is that of Asian wild rice. The entire global population now appears to consist of a hybrid swarm derived from domestic rice genes that made their way into the wild through wind and insect pollination. Unfortunately, domestic genes may have conferred some disadvantageous qualities, like reduced seed shattering. This is helpful for a crop meant to be consumed by humans, but wild seeds shatter as a means of resistance to insect damage.

We don’t yet know what the long-term effects of introgression may be. The picture is not clear cut, and while it should be monitored, we should also remember this process has been going on for millennia. For example, nearly all populations of wild rice have some level of domestic ancestry, to such an extent that tracing the exact origins of rice has thus far proven impossible. So clearly these mutations have not been fatal.

What we don't know

Genetic rewilding in animals is even less well studied, with perhaps the exception of salmon. Though the domestication of species such as Atlantic salmon only began in the 1970s, alteration to their basic physiology and habits has been rapid. As with most domestic species, farmed salmon appear less attentive to predator risk, and mature at an accelerated rate. Large salmon farming operations in the Americas, Europe and other regions have led to the escape of farmed varieties from ocean pens into the wild. Their precocious maturity appears to coincide with changes in their migration patterns. Domestic salmon return to the sea at younger ages and may also return to freshwater to breed at later dates.

When salmon escapees breed with local populations, these traits become more common and alter the long-established life histories of the species. This can pose a larger ecological problem, as salmon runs are major events, upon which entire species and ecosystems are dependent (think of grizzly and black bears who rely on salmon to fatten up before their winter hibernation). Even minor alterations may result in significant consequences.

When domesticated animals re-enter the wild, it’s usually because they have escaped captivity. But in some cases, domesticated animals are freed by animal rights activists. In the last few decades, well-intended releases of domestic American mink – bred for their fur, which is highly prized for coats and other clothing – have had damaging effects on native populations of both wild American and European mink. A 2009 Canadian study found that 64 per cent of mink in Southern Ontario were either released mink or hybrids between domestic and wild mink. Because domestic mink have been selected for both exotic colouration and more moderate temperament, survival instincts may be reduced, as well as general fitness and disease resistance. If they breed with wild mink, those vulnerabilities may be passed to their offspring.

In cases where American mink have escaped in Europe, their mating with European mink has resulted in reproductive failures. While American mink are stable within their native range, European mink are critically endangered.

A 2022 study on cross-breeding in New York City also raised concern. Researchers discovered a population of coyotes in Queens that had significant levels of dog DNA – and looked more like dogs too. The researchers also detected genetic elements associated with the domesticated dog trait of hypersociality, leading to concern that they might be less avoidant of humans than pure wild coyotes. Daskin says there is evidence of more of these hybrids across the eastern US. “There’s not a lot of work yet on what that functionally means for their ability to live as wild coyotes,” he says.

This was not an anomalous event – dogs, coyotes and wolves form a genetic complex that has been subject to intensely controversial research. There is debate, for example, as to whether the black coat colour observed in some wolf populations is the result of breeding with dogs or is an ancestral genetic variation. This coat colour may be a beneficial adaptation for wolves in northern, forested environments, but also appears in other populations where it might not be effective camouflage.

One wide-ranging study from 2020 found that Eurasian wolves had nearly 3 per cent dog ancestry, whereas free-ranging dogs in the same region showed evidence of less than 1 per cent wolf ancestry. While the wolves appeared to gain little benefit from having bred with dogs, the dogs seemed to have inherited wolf genes encoding greater caution and self-sufficiency.

The case of the rare Scottish wildcat

The problem becomes more existential when the threat of extinction rears its head. Should we care if the genes of one species are altered by those of another, to the extent that the original is wiped off the map? Mike Daniels is an ecologist with the Centre for Mountain Studies at the University of the Highlands and Islands. He says that this dilemma tends to lead on to more questions. “You have a natural process: how do species form, and what is a species? Then you’ve got the even bigger question: is man part of nature?”

This might seem like abstract reflection, but the problem is brought into stark relief when domestic species swamp wild species. This is more likely to occur when wild populations are scant and free-ranging domestic populations are high. Such has been the case with the rare Scottish wildcat, a subpopulation of the European wildcat, now restricted to the Scottish Highlands, and thought to have been isolated from other European wildcats in Great Britain for some 9,000 years. Except now, all wild specimens are believed to carry domestic cat DNA. They are thus functionally extinct in the wild.

The Scottish wildcat is not totally extinct, however, as we humans intervened. From the mid-1950s, captive populations were established in zoos, thus protecting them from domestic cats, whose populations were spreading across the country. Modern conservationists then set up breeding programmes, pairing the purest specimens. In recent years, efforts have been made to release them back into nature, in the hope they would re-establish a true wild population. In 2023, 19 of the offspring of these wildcats were released in Cairngorms National Park in northeastern Scotland. Another nine were released the following year, which also saw the birth of the first wild litter. Further kittens were produced in 2025.

But these “pure” wildcats are constantly under threat. Daniels uses the analogy of water in a bathtub to explain. “You’ve got this bathtub full of cats,” he says. “You’ve got a cold tap and a hot tap and a [drain hole]. The hot tap is pure wild cats. The cold tap is domestic cats coming in. And then the [drain hole] is cats getting killed illegally. You put a plug [in the hole] – stop cats being killed – and you want to turn the tap off from the domestic cats.” The latter apparently has not yet happened. “They found a litter of kittens that suggests that the population they’ve reintroduced have started to introgress with domestic cats, so they’re kind of back to square one,” he says.

Abstract ideas of "purity"

Should it matter whether “pure” Scottish wildcats exist or not? These attempts at reverse engineering raise questions that have bedevilled conservation movements for generations. Are these efforts truly in the interests of a larger ecosystem? Or are they simply aesthetic or sentimental, based on a romantic notion of the superiority of the original species?

The act of reintroducing an endangered or functionally extinct species to its native environment appeals to basic human ideas around freedom and natural goodness. But does it matter if that animal can trace 5 per cent or 10 per cent or 50 per cent of its ancestry to another animal that has been touched by humanity? Outside of the scientific community, most people wouldn’t know, or care too much about that. “Normally you’re releasing Californian condors, or you’re releasing wolves. You’re not releasing something that’s a particular genetic ‘thing’,” Daniels says. The case of the Scottish wildcats is, for now, an unusual exception.

But as introgression progresses, we may want to pay more attention to genetics – and not just due to abstract ideas around “purity”. If a salmon migrates at a different time or is less resistant to predators or disease due to genes inherited from domestic escapees, that is clearly detrimental. If a crop plant is responsible for the emergence of a damaging weed because it has passed its superpowers on to wild plants, there are clear economic concerns. While the effects of interbreeding between dogs, wolves and coyotes may be less concerning, it’s still crucial that we bear witness to yet another effect of our activities on wild things.

There is a need for more research on the introgression of domestic organisms into the wild. For now, work in this area remains halting and inconsistent. Further investigation will in most cases be propelled by dramatic instances that are discovered well after they have caused damage. Occasional anomalous events will inevitably be discovered – a shockingly patterned wild animal or unusual flower betraying the adventurous sexual habits of its parents. But most of the pairings will remain beautifully obscure, taking place at the permeable boundary between wildness and domesticity, and reminding us that the line between is largely an illusion.

This article is from our Spring 2026 edition. Subscribe now.

Back in the day, when online dating profiles contained more than a few sentences, I once put the phrase “enjoys the films of Wes Anderson” in my bio. Alongside the tattoos and my coffee addiction, it felt like a solid signifier of what kind of girl I was. Wes Anderson fans could be counted on to enjoy the unexpected and the twee, taking pleasure in the details and a well-chosen colour scheme.

These days, this same fact would reveal me as an ageing hipster, but judging by the turnout at Wes Anderson: The Archives – a retrospective currently showing at the Design Museum in London – there’s a lot of us. I visited a month after it opened, and it was still sold out for the day. But there’s plenty of time to attend – it’s in London until 26 July, before moving onto other cities worldwide.

This is a show for film geeks, for sure, but one that should also appeal to connoisseurs of design, and anyone with a love of craft and a curated aesthetic. On the surface, it’s a retrospective that allows us to study the archives from the director’s 30-year career, starting with the mid-90s Bottle Rocket before concluding with last year’s The Phoenician Scheme. We’re treated to more than 700 objects, from the icing-pink model of The Grand Budapest Hotel to the lefty scissors “used in self-defence” in Moonrise Kingdom. Anderson’s overarching topics are dysfunctional families, innocence lost, grief, and obsessive characters on a mission, all styled in an exacting, deadpan manner that’s somehow also very funny. Alongside the objects, screens play clips and music, presenting little set pieces from each film.

Some items feel like a celebrity sighting – I experienced a genuine thrill on encountering the Fendi fur coat that Gwyneth Paltrow wore in The Royal Tenenbaums. Ditto the incredible animal-painted suitcases that feature prominently in The Darjeeling Limited, made by the fictional brand François Voltaire (but actually made by Marc Jacobs, in his Louis Vuitton days). The extreme attention to detail is simply stunning – like how Anderson made sure the ink used to tattoo Mayor Kobayashi in Isle of Dogs is the exact type favoured by the Japanese yakuza, even though hardly anyone would be able to tell.

We’re taken deep into Anderson’s world and we’re learning a lot, but rarely does the director reveal himself – we’re left to interpret his intentions through the objects on display. I gather he’s a man who’s exact (his notebooks, which are small, cheap and spiral-bound, are filled with neat block handwriting). He’s uncompromising about detail (he once held an audition for left-handed children just to write notes for Suzy, she of the lefty scissors). He knows what he likes (while refined over time, his aesthetic was there from the start; Bottle Rocket, a heist film that’s really about friends growing apart, is visually framed in the same exacting way as all the rest). He’s not really widened his scope over time, but maybe that was never the point: this is about honing the form, slowly and meticulously, over a lifetime.

Born and raised in Texas, Anderson first met actor Owen Wilson at the University of Texas at Austin. Wilson appears in many of Anderson’s films, one of a list of regular actors he keeps returning to. “I don’t know who gravitated toward whom,” Anderson told the New York Times in 2021. “But as soon as Owen Wilson and I started making a movie, well, I wanted Owen to be involved with the other movies I would do. As soon as I had Bill Murray, I wanted him on the next one. I wanted Jason Schwartzman. It was natural to me.” This preference of familiarity extends beyond just actors – Anderson’s younger brother, Eric, is a painter whose works often appear in his films, while filmmaker Roman Coppola has worked with the director on several recent scripts.

Now 56, Anderson’s been doing his thing for 30 years, and keeping it the same has certainly aided his journey as an auteur. Although he has on occasion crossed the line to become a parody of himself – in Asteroid City, twee charm is not quite enough to suspend disbelief about a vending machine selling real estate. But I suspect Anderson would just say he’s doing what he likes. “I’ve done a bunch of movies. And it’s a luxury to me that they’re all whatever I’ve wanted them to be,” he once told the Observer. To this day, he puts out films that walk the line between the ridiculous and profound, in a way that somehow slips past even the most determined cynicism – it simply feels delightful. (And if you disagree, let me quote my step-daughter: “Is it because you hate fun?”)

The criticism for centering white, well-off characters is harder to brush off. But he’s rarely too sympathetic to his characters, often anti-heroes who are lost, stuck or reeling from recent bereavement. This criticism is most often directed at The Darjeeling Limited, where three rich American brothers blunder their way through India. But their cluelessness is a key point of the film – the trope of the white person going to India, where they try and fail to reach some sort of enlightenment. Anderson’s characters often demonstrate naive motivations and an obsession with what they desire, while struggling to fully grasp what’s going on around them – like a lot of us, one might argue.

Of course, most of us have to work out our issues without exploring quite as many exciting foreign locales, and certainly with far fewer decadent objects and stuffed exotic animals around. Leaning hard into the quirky details is part of Anderson’s process – it’s not a shark but a jaguar shark in The Life Aquatic, faithfully represented in miniature papier-mâché. And nothing speaks to his love of detail more than stop-motion – he created not just one full-length feature using this Sisyphean method, but two.

I think this attention to detail and craft is a big part of what audiences love about Anderson’s work. We live in the era of “enshittification” – a term coined by the author and technology activist Cory Doctorow to describe how our online experience is steadily getting worse, as platforms turn their focus to profits. When everyone seems to be cutting corners, it feels good to know that some processes are uncompromising. In the age of speedy video clips, where a minute is considered long, it’s refreshing that films are still being made that are going to take as long as they take. Fantastic Mr Fox took a gruelling two years, as the stop-motion figures were moved by hand, up to 24 times per second. The worlds that Anderson creates are an invitation into a more embodied time, where all phones are wired into the wall and the idea of asking a computer for its opinion would be absurd. At the core of his obsession lies a simple beauty, and when we stand in front of it we recognise something that is human and real.

The exhibition doesn’t dwell too much on the how and why of it all. Instead, we are invited to simply admire, for example, the mismatched red hats from The Life Aquatic. But maybe the withholding of context, and biographical information, is part of the point. (“The film is the thing,” director David Lynch once said when pressed to explain himself; everything he wanted to say was already on the screen.) In interviews, Anderson is described as reserved and polite, reluctant to talk much about himself but very eager to get into the nuts and bolts of his projects, so it’s fitting that the show is no different.

There are still some hints of the man behind the screen. There’s a miniature of the book Fantastic Mr Fox on display as part of the props from the film – we’re told it’s an exact replica of the edition the director had as a child. Anderson has commissioned lots of book covers to be used in his films, but this time he chose something from his own history. We’re not told why, but we can imagine.

I’m left enthralled by the exactness of it all, imagining the director in deep concentration as he chases down some rabbit hole, riding the flow of focus, seeking discovery and his own idea of perfection. Anderson is always going to be the one who cares the most. He’s doing it for the love of the craft – and thankfully, we get to watch.

This article is from New Humanist's Spring 2026 edition. 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: I’ve previously admitted my enjoyment of the true crime genre, so you may not be surprised by a recent news story I’ve been following: an Austrian man has been found guilty of gross negligent …

Here is a quick and easy way of boosting your motivation….

There was a long running rivalry between tennis stars Andy Murray and Novak Djokovic. In 2012, they faced one another in the final of the US Open. Murray took the first two sets but Djokovic battled back to win the next two sets. Murray took a toilet break and, according to several reports, looked in the bathroom mirror and shouted “You are not losing this match…you are not going to let this one slip’ Murray then walked back out and faced his opponent for the deciding set.

In 2014, psychologist Sanda Dolcos (University of Illinois) carried out some great experiments exploring how motivation is affected by whether we talk to ourselves in either the first or second person.

In one study, she had people try to complete some difficult anagrams. Some participants were asked to motivate themselves by using first-person sentences (“I can do it”) whilst others gave themselves a second-person pep talk (“You can do it”). Those using the ‘you’ word completed far more anagrams than those using the ‘I’ word. Dolcos then asked other people to motivate themselves to exercise more in either the first person (‘I should go for a run now’) or second person (’You must go to the gym’). Those using the ‘you’ word ended up feeling far more positive about going for a run or visiting a gym, and planned to take more exercise over the coming weeks.

Whatever the explanation, it is a simple but effective shortcut to motivation. And it worked for Andy Murray because he broke Djokovic’s serve, won the shortest set of the match, and emerged victorious.

When you are in need of some fast acting and powerful motivation, talk to yourself using the magic ‘you’ word. Tell yourself that ‘you can do it’, that ‘you’ love whatever it is that you have to do, and that ‘you’ will make a success of it. You may not end up winning the US Open, but you will discover how just one word has the power to motivate and energise.

Dolcos, S., & Albarracin, D. (2014). The inner speech of behavioral regulation: Intentions and task performance strengthen when you talk to yourself as a You. European Journal of Social Psychology, 44(6), 636–642.

This post contains a video, which you can also view here. To support more videos like this, head to patreon.com/rebecca! Transcript: I have to start this video with a content warning, because I’m going to be discussing some male-on-female violence and slavery, but I hope you are able to watch because I think it’s important. …

Everything is terrible, obviously, and I have been getting particularly fed up with the general state of literacy I’m seeing in the world. And considering that for some reason my video about the Foo Fighters history of AIDS denialism is currently making the rounds, I figured that today I should talk about Dolly Parton. Yeah …

Connor Tomlinson is 27 years old, a regular commentator on GB News and a self-described “reactionary Catholic Zoomer”. But this wasn’t always the case. In a YouTube interview from 2024, Tomlinson says he was baptised as a baby but was “not a regular church attendee”. It was only, he says, in 2019 when conservative Christian friends inspired him to “make the grown-up decision to just believe it and see what happens” that he started attending weekly mass and was confirmed as a Catholic.

Soon afterwards, he began writing opinion pieces for Conservative media outlets before becoming a contributor to a group called Young Voices. Supported by the US-based Koch Foundation, the group helps to place young, right-wing commentators in prominent media roles. Since then, Tomlinson’s social media channels (he has more than 100,000 followers apiece on YouTube and X) have hosted hundreds of videos from a conservative Catholic perspective – ranging from rants about immigration to chats about everything that is supposedly wrong with women.

In one YouTube clip from 2023, Tomlinson and disgraced priest Calvin Robinson claimed that “seeking attention on social media [was] a form of digital infidelity … makes your man feel unwanted, and profanes the sanctity of your relationship”. Criticising both liberal and conservative women, whom Tomlinson referred to as “titty Tories”, they suggested that posting selfies online negated any worthwhile work these women may have done and advised them, quoting from the New Testament, to focus on “finding a good husband”.

Tomlinson and Robinson – and other Christian right-wing figures espousing misogynistic views – are gaining a disturbingly large following of young men, including in the UK. Over the last 20 years, the political divide between young British men and women has grown, with the former more likely to identify as right-wing and, according to a 2024 study from King’s College London, to feel negatively about the impact of feminism.

There has also been a growing narrative around disaffected young men turning to religion. Last year, the Bible Society reported a five-fold increase in the number of 18-24-year-old men attending church services in the UK since 2018. The report was based on self-reported data, and doesn’t reflect an actual rise in recorded attendee numbers, but it was nonetheless seized on as evidence that this demographic is turning to faith.

What does seem to be true is that parts of the “manosphere” – the umbrella term for men’s rights activists, pick-up artists, incels and others – are going Christian (or claiming to). It’s a shift that is being leveraged to gain legitimacy and influence for their misogynistic ideas in the outside world – including in political circles, such as via Tomlinson’s close friend and former Reform UK party candidate, 29-year-old Joseph Robertson.

Women and the downfall of humanity

Whereas the leaders of the manosphere often express a blatant hatred of women and a focus on manipulative pick-up techniques, figures like Tomlinson rely more on ideas of the perfect Christian family. But dig a little deeper and the lines between the two worlds begin to blur.

Take US author and so-called “Godfather of the Manosphere” Rollo Tomassi (real name George Miller). Tomassi, who gained fame with his “Rational Male” book series, teaches his followers that women with multiple sexual partners are “low-value”. He has also written that women use sexism as an excuse for their own unsuitability for professional careers.

For Tomlinson, women are unfit for doing 9-5 jobs, because they are “impressionable, led by material incentives and easily manipulated”. Therefore, he claims, it is the job of a man to “be the vanguard against the degeneracy that has wasted so many fertile years and the potential of women who are not ugly, who could’ve been someone’s wife”. Both he and Robertson are keen to blame all manner of societal problems on the contraceptive pill.

The only real difference is that, for Tomassi, these misogynistic beliefs legitimise men using and abusing women because that’s what “nature intended”. Meanwhile, for Tomlinson and other Christian figures, it compels men to take women under their wing and teach them how to live because that is “God’s plan”. In both worldviews, women are responsible for the downfall of humanity and only valued when serving the whims and needs of men.

But despite this overlap, both Tomlinson and Robertson are strongly critical of the manosphere. Tomlinson believes it “perpetuates the paradigm of the industrial and sexual revolutions ... which made men and women so maladaptive and unattracted to each other in the first place”. Robertson appears to agree with this and has written florid critiques of self-appointed manosphere leader Andrew Tate and the perils of pornography.

When we reached out to Tomlinson about his statements and their inherent misogyny, he told us that: “The time I spend with my wife, mother, grandmothers, friends, etc. matters more to me than if someone I don’t know calls me mean on the internet … Men should be considerate, compassionate, and chivalric toward the women they love and who love them. Women should return that compassion and consideration in kind. We may do it in different ways, but that’s the core of it. Ideology obscures those relationships, makes people think in zero-sum terms about competing categories, and is making people miserable … So you’re welcome to engage with what I’ve written and said throughout my career, and I hope you do so in good faith. But I don’t feel compelled to defend myself against such a bad faith charge as ‘You’re a misogynist.’ I would rather spend time with my wife.”

The "God pill"

Tomlinson may want us to think that his religious beliefs are in no way misogynistic. But the reframing of manosphere theories as the “Christian” way to think and live has been going on for several years, and is evident when we look at the trajectory of certain figures within the manosphere. Daryush Valizadeh (aka Roosh V) was one of the first. A key figure in the early manosphere, he taught a version of Tomassi’s beliefs as a pick-up artist – a man who uses coercion and manipulation to pick up women – via his lucrative Return of Kings website. In 2019, after disappearing from the scene, he returned with a blog post explaining that he had “received a message while on mushrooms” and was taking the movement in a new direction.

Having replaced the so-called Red Pill (a trope where “taking the Red Pill” reveals the unsettling truth of reality, in this case revealing women’s “true intentions”) with the “God Pill”, his commitment to misogyny remained the same, only now it was fueled by the teachings of the Russian Orthodox Church. While the rebrand lost him many fans, it opened the door for a new wave of manosphere influencers keen to present their misogyny as piety. No longer seeking to humiliate women by coercing them into sex, they were now “good guys” working to reinstil the supposed natural order of things.

Since then, other men have come into this space; like Tomlinson, Robertson, Calvin Robinson and other protege’s of far-right student organisation Turning Point UK. Justifying their hatred of women via pseudo-intellectual arguments and with reference to Christian teachings, they are far more appealing to men who wish to subjugate the other sex while avoiding associations with the bare-faced aggression and criminality of figures like Andrew Tate.

Even more alarmingly, convincing themselves and others that they are educated men working for God, these men have muscled their way into speaking engagements and onto national news channels like GB News and Talk. The groups they associate with include the anti-LGBT Christian advocacy group ADF Legal (which advised the Orthodox Conservatives, a pressure group with which Robertson is closely involved); the Family Education Trust, a group with evangelical ties whose policy suggestions have made it into parliamentary discussions (Robinson and Tomlinson attended their conference last year); and anti-abortion group Right to Life, for whom Tomlinson, Robertson and Robinson are all advocates. These groups seek to limit access to abortion, prevent children from learning about the LGBT community and push Christian and traditionalist beliefs into policymaking.

Framing their arguments as the only way to “save” the west, the people who truly benefit are white Christian men and the women who obey them. Feminists, people of colour, Muslims, the LGBT community and others have no role in their brave new world.

What's the appeal?

Many of these men also deny that they are “far right”, while holding beliefs in line with both ethnic and Christian nationalism. Ethno-nationalists believe that identity is based on ethnicity and culture, whilst Christian nationalists believe that Christianity is the only way to save race and nation. In both cases the words “race”, “culture” and “nation” relate only to the white, western world.

Examples of both are present in most of Tomlinson’s output. In an interview with the Daily Heretic, a YouTube channel hosted by journalist Andrew Gold who focuses on “culture war” topics from a right-wing perspective, Tomlinson said he was not an ethno-nationalist. But he also claimed that former Prime Minister Rishi Sunak was not “nationally English” and that only those who could trace their British ancestry back to the Neolithic era were truly British. He believes that Britain is a Christian country; a bold claim given that less than half of those asked on the most recent census identified as Christian and 37 per cent claimed no religion at all.

These attitudes appear to be spreading, and are voiced by some Reform UK party candidates, including Joseph Robertson. In a video posted to X last year, Robertson claimed that “the natal crisis gripping the west” was happening because “the sacred act of motherhood ... has been demeaned and discarded” by feminists, which has “disrupted the natural harmony between men and women” and was “derailing the proper course of western history”.

Part of the appeal of these figures comes down to delivery. Whilst the angry rants of Andrew Tate are easily dismissed, the calm manner in which Tomlinson et al present their ideas makes them more accessible. Whether they are telling their audience that they need to “bring back women shaming women” to enforce modesty, or that men should be “the rock upon which [their wife’s] emotional waves may break”, it is delivered with the calm confidence of a Man Who Knows What He Is Talking About.

And while many manosphere leaders are actively grifting their audience, Tomlinson and his cohort appear to believe their own hype. These are not angry old men who will wrap themselves in the flag while getting arrested alongside Tommy Robinson; they present themselves as young, relevant “intellectuals”. For an audience of lost young men, uncertain of their role in life, that is more than enough to trust them.

Crisis of belonging

In the course of writing my book Incel: The Weaponization of Misogyny, I have had extensive conversations with youth leaders and teachers. They have shown that there is a clear crisis of belonging among boys and men in their teens and early twenties. They have friends, but the friendships stop at the school gates – and a lack of community spaces sees them confined to their bedrooms and screens. The algorithms are designed to promote the most lucrative content, which is often the most controversial.

Faced with a polarised, rage-filled digital world, which punishes young men as either “Nazis” or “soy boys” (progressive men who are deemed less masculine because they care about women), it is possible to see the appeal of the Christian manosphere’s calm utopia, which seems to offer a middle ground.

But aside from increasing support for the far right and growing levels of misogyny, Tomlinson et al are offering young men a version of a life which is both socially and financially unfeasible. For the vast majority, it is no longer possible to survive on a single income. As with the tradwife movement, which sees influencers advocating for women to quit their jobs, marry and start a homestead, Christian manosphere figures are recommending that young men seek out a simple life with a simple wife, while they themselves walk the corridors of power funded by podcast subscriptions.

In the offline world, parts of the Christian establishment are taking steps to separate themselves from these divisive figures and boost their image as welcoming, egalitarian spaces. Last year, Calvin Robinson was dismissed from a US diocese of the Anglican Catholic Church after he appeared to mimic Elon Musk’s “Nazi-style salute” at their National Pro-Life Summit, and he has never been ordained in the Church of England despite completing his training at Oxford. A year earlier, the Free Church of England fired one of their reverends for posting multiple online videos in which he criticised “woke” topics and referred to progressive female ministers as “witches”. And the new Archbishop of Wales is an openly gay woman.

But for those in the Christian manosphere, this simply provides further proof of the British Christian establishment “going woke” and will see them drift deeper into extreme orthodoxy to justify their own positions.

Thankfully, there are many secular groups working with young men. Last year, Mike Nicholson, CEO of the group Progressive Masculinity, told me how his team were going into schools and creating spaces for young men to talk about issues in the online world. Explaining that they “don’t teach boys to be men” but “give boys the agency and the freedom to design the man that they want to be”, Nicholson said that when boys were challenged on harmful beliefs in a safe environment the response was “phenomenal”. He believes in the value of discussion. “This idea that boys and men don’t like to talk is an absolute fallacy,” he said. “In the right spaces, somewhere they feel safe, they love to.”

Parents concerned about their sons can also improve their communication. The PACE model, developed by an educational psychologist to help children through trauma, can be adapted to almost any family situation. An acronym that stands for Playfulness, Acceptance, Curiosity and Empathy, it describes how to approach concerning child behaviour without showing fear or censure.

Young men are bombarded with digital hate on a daily basis. It is our job to provide them with a nurturing, safe environment in which they can be encouraged to think critically about online content and the way they interact with it. It’s vital to remember that young men consuming harmful content are seeking answers to internal questions, not validation for pre-existing beliefs. If we engage with them, we can lead them to healthier sources than the Christian nationalist movement.

This article is from New Humanist's Spring 2026 edition. 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: Last week a commenter wanted me to know he was very disappointed in me, which obviously was quite upsetting for me. When a complete stranger says you’ve disappointed them, well, I probably don’t have …

Well, our fascist Podcaster overlords have chosen another of their brethren to help destroy the United States. This time, it’s for the position of Surgeon General, which historically has been filled by a person with an impressive history of working in medicine with a focus on public health. In general, the Surgeon General’s role is …

It’s an old, old story: Nasty Unfaithful Sex-Crazed Man treats Poor Nice Monogamous Woman like crap. Everything explodes, and they all live divorcedly ever after. This is also the plot of singer Lily Allen’s latest album, West End Girl. Only here it has a fresh new twist: Nasty Unfaithful uses non-monogamy as a cover for his shitty behaviour, forcing Poor Nice Monogamous to (kind of) consent to him seeing other people.

Non-monogamy is becoming increasingly popular, with the growing acceptance that having only one romantic and sexual partner isn’t for everyone, and that there are other valid ways to conduct relationships. Advice about how to do it ethically isn’t hard to find: there are hundreds of books, websites, therapists and communities out there. The narrative arc of West End Girl is an absolute disaster movie, and an entirely predictable one. It’s a caricature of what to avoid: the bad communication, the fact that one partner clearly hates the whole idea and is being pressured into it, the attempt to implement rigid rules in order to “tame” the extramarital encounters. (The rules fail to do this, and are promptly broken anyway.)

But the story resonates deeply for so many listeners precisely because it is familiar. Anyone who’s spent time in non-monogamous circles (or, frankly, on any online dating platform) knows this story too, and these men. Every woman who ever fell for a modern Nasty Unfaithful can see herself in West End Girl, and now she has a whole album of (absolutely belting) new tunes with which to vent her feelings. So far so innocuous: new generations need new versions of old stories.

And this is a story. Allen describes West End Girl as “autofiction”. Crucially, this means it’s not autobiography: it’s a collaboratively made album, and some of the content is made up. The main character (Poor Nice Monogamous) is an alterego of Allen. She is the reluctant partner “trying to be open”, trying to be something she’s not. So many of us have been that woman, trying to defang our fears of abandonment with some kind of self-improvement project.

Did Allen the flesh-and-blood human really do the things the character does in these songs? Did her real husband, or the real “other woman”, do the things described? We’re invited to imagine that they did. The lines between real people and fictional characters are blurred in exceptionally clever ways.

Social media is part of the album, as well as part of the broader media landscape that feeds and is fed by it. Instagram, Tinder and Hinge all show up in the lyrics. The proximity of the album’s launch to the release of the last season of Stranger Things – starring Allen’s erstwhile husband – extended the tendrils of the Upside Down into the West End Girl storyline. The album’s promotional materials have caused a stir, particularly the specially branded butt-plug USB drives – a call back to the now infamous song “Pussy Palace”, where Allen’s alterego describes discovering her husband’s sex toy-laden New York City pad (which, again, may or may not be a real event).

Meanwhile, the storytelling itself gently invites the listener to blend life with performance: the first song on the album is about theatre and acting, and the inciting incident for the entire drama is that the narrator gets cast as the lead in a play, as Allen was in real life. The second song then describes a question posed by Nasty Unfaithful as a (fucking) “line”.

If all the world’s a stage, maybe all the world’s a concept album too. Where does West End Girl begin or end? And why does it matter?

As individuals, we relate the stories we consume to our own bodies, our own senses of self. The labels we use to refer to ourselves are tools of self-creation – be they dating app pseudonyms, metrics like height and age, or social roles (the Allen character describes herself variously as “mum to teenage girls”, “modern wife” and “non-monogamummy”). These are the ingredients for alchemising life and people into recognisable narratives.

In our late capitalist economy, those narratives are often structured by what or whom we possess, and what or who possesses us. As Allen sings: “You’re mine, mine, mine”. When you approach a relationship as a casting of another person in the role of your partner, you objectify them: they become supporting cast in the drama of your life.

Meanwhile, of course, they are busy doing exactly the same thing to you. Existentialists and romantic partners Simone de Beauvoir and Jean-Paul Sartre disagreed on whether heteroromantic love could ever be more than a power struggle, each trying to “win” by objectifying the other. Beauvoir was the more optimistic of the two, but remained in a life-long open relationship with Sartre regardless. In Allen’s penultimate song, the narrator refuses to let her (ex-) husband “win”.

But this is about more than individuals. Media narratives play a key part in the social construction of romantic love itself, as well as in the construction of gender roles in romantic relationships. When we keep telling the same story over and over, we strengthen the grip of existing scripts.

West End Girl plays into the standard narrative: it’s men who want sex and therefore non-monogamy. Women who agree to it to try and make men happy will get screwed over and it will all end in tears. It’s obvious that misogynistically practised non-monogamy is no better or worse per se than misogynistically practised monogamy. But it’s more comfortable to demonise non-monogamy than to come to terms with the reality (and ubiquity) of misogyny. It’s easier to cling to the myth that monogamy would solve misogyny, if only men could keep it in their pants long enough. In the Paris Review, Jean Garnett calls West End Girl “a rather neat, crowd-pleasing, bias-confirming presentation of nonmonogamy that casts male extramarital libido as the bad guy and Allen as the victim.” Of course it is: that’s the story people want. That’s how you sell albums and concert tickets and branded butt-plugs.

Which brings us back to capitalism, and the sheer marketing genius surrounding West End Girl. The album is a giant invitation to chime in. It reads like a friend’s post on social media, on which we are expected to comment “you go girl!” and “yes, men are bastards who just want tons of pussy!” It’s chatty and unchallenging, rather like a patter song from Gilbert and Sullivan’s Trial by Jury, in which a late Victorian incarnation of Nasty Unfaithful gets hauled in front of a law court (and of course the theatre audience) to be judged for his abandonment of a Poor Nice Monogamous, offering in his defence the touching plea that “one cannot eat breakfast all day, nor is it the act of a sinner, / when breakfast is taken away, to turn his attention to dinner.” Edwin, though, is a caricature in a comic operetta. The trial-by-audience of Allen’s characters, and the real people behind them, is not a joke.

Sex sells. And people assume non-monogamy is just about getting lots of sex – an impression not exactly refuted by this album. In reality, non-monogamy takes many forms. Polyamory, for instance, is defined by openness to more than one loving relationship. But West End Girl is not a nuanced treatise on love. It is first and foremost a marketing triumph. Lily Allen and her collaborators are presumably making a lot of money out of all this. Is that, under capitalism, what passes for feminism?

This article is from New Humanist's Spring 2026 issue. Subscribe now.

With the great powers facing off and a global authoritarian slide, we are entering a new era of brazen propaganda. But for all those who keep their heads down, there are many more who refuse to go along with it.

In the Spring 2026 edition of New Humanist, we celebrate the heroes of free thought on the frontlines of the battle against dogma and ideology – from the Belarusian women standing up for democracy despite imprisonment and exile, to the poet translating Orwell into Chinese and the therapists helping people rebuild their belief systems after leaving religious groups.

We also hear from Harvard's Steven Pinker about defending America's besieged universities and historian David Olusoga about why we must revisit the story of the Empire.

Keep reading for a peek inside!

The Spring 2026 edition of New Humanist is on sale now! Subscribe or buy a copy online today, or find your nearest stockist.

Defend the truth!

We hear from six champions of free thought around the world about how to fight back against propaganda and protect the truth – including journalist Andrei Kolesnikov on Russia's last remaining dissidents, campaigner Zoe Gardner on how to fight anti-immigration misinformation, and climate and vaccine scientists Michael E. Mann and Peter Hotez on how everyone can do their bit to defend science.

"Today, harm is being done by the spread of despair and defeatism, some of it weaponised by bad actors like Russia to create division and disengagement. We are, in fact, far from defeat"

Breaking free from belief

A growing number of UK therapists are helping people "deconstruct" their beliefs after leaving high-control religious groups. Journalist Ellie Broughton meets the therapists leading the charge, and the clients working to rebuild their belief systems.

“Over time, losing your religion may start to feel less like a loss, and more like an opportunity to rebuild yourself from the ground up”

Inside the women’s prisons of Belarus

Women played a key role in the Belarusian pro-democracy movement that came to a head in the summer of 2020. More than five years later, hundreds of women are still being held as political prisoners or have been forced to live in exile. And yet, they refuse to give up. Journalist Alexandra Domenech hears their stories.

"Despite the government’s attempts to crush their spirits, the women who have emerged from penal colonies tell stories of defiance and solidarity"

Steven Pinker on America's besieged universities

Harvard's high-profile psychologist Steven Pinker has long argued that a lack of political diversity at US universities is skewing research – but now there's a new and more dangerous threat from the Trump administration. He spoke to us about why it's important to fight attacks on academic freedom, no matter where they come from.

"Professors and students have been harassed, fired, sanctioned and censored for constitutionally protected speech"

David Olusoga on Empire, religion in Britain – and The Traitors

Following the success of his BBC Two series Empire, historian David Olusoga explores the challenges of talking about the British Empire today, the influence of the Church in Britain – and why carefully-crafted logic got him nowhere on Celebrity Traitors.

"Much of the hostility towards anything to do with the Empire is just a desire to not have to hear difficult things about Britain"

Also in the Spring 2026 edition:

• Journalist Katherine Denkinson explores how the manosphere is using God to target young men
• Laurie Taylor digs into how life-changing rethinks can hinge on a single word
• Zion Lights looks at the biomedical breakthroughs giving us a reason to feel cheerful
• We can now study diseases to track people and fight crime, writes Oxford bioethicist Tess Johnson – but should we?
• Richard Pallardy explores the havoc that can follow when farm animals breed with wild species
• Award-winning comedian Shaparak Khorsandi on how Stranger Things united the generations
• BBC Radio 4 presenter Samira Ahmed on the new nouvelle vague
• National treasure Michael Rosen explores the history of the word "climate" in the latest edition of his language column
• Marcus Chown on how our tiny brains are able to make sense of the Universe
• Lily Allen's album West End Girl got everyone talking about non-monogamy – but it tells an old story, argue academics Carrie Jenkins and Carla Nappi
• Jessica Furseth on the undiluted joy of the Wes Anderson archives
• Jody Ray takes a tense but awe-inspiring tour of Libya
• We talk to Russian-British comedian Olga Koch about comedy, class and computers

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.

I recently ran a session at the University of Hertfordshire on the 7 factors that I believe underpin an impactful presentation.

While preparing, I was reminded of a conversation I had with a hugely knowledgeable director who had worked with many magicians. He explained that magicians often weaken their performances by letting the audience experience the magic at different times.

Imagine that a magician drops an apple into a box and then tips it forward to show that the apple has vanished. The box must be turned from side to side so that everyone in the audience can see inside. As a result, each person experiences the disappearance at a slightly different moment and the impact is diluted.

Now imagine a different approach. The apple goes into the box. The lid is pulled off and all four sides drop down simultaneously. This time, everyone sees the disappearance at the same time and the reaction is far stronger.

The same principle applies to talks. Some years ago, I ran a year-long experiment with the British Science Association about investing on the FTSE 100. We gave a notional £5,000 to a regular investor, a financial astrologer (who invested based on company birth dates) and a four-year-old child who selected shares at random!

If I simply show the final graph, people in the audience interpret it at different speeds. Some spot the outcome instantly. Others take longer. The moment fragments.

Instead, I build it step by step. First, I show a blank graph and explain the two axes.

Then I reveal that both the professional investor and the financial astrologer lost money.

Finally, I reveal that the four-year-old random share picker outperformed them both!

Now the entire audience sees the result at the same moment — and reacts together. That shared moment creates energy.

It’s a simple idea:

Don’t just reveal information. Orchestrate the moment of discovery.

If you want bigger reactions, stronger engagement, and more memorable talks, make sure your audience experiences the key moments together.

This week we have a quick quiz to test your understanding of sleep and dreaming. Please decide whether each of the following 7 statements are TRUE or FALSE. Here we go….

1) When I am asleep, my brain switches off.

2) I can learn to function well on less sleep.

3) Napping is a sign of laziness.

4) Dreams consist of meaningless thoughts and images.

5) A small amount of alcohol before bedtime improves sleep quality.

6) I can catch up on my lost sleep at the weekend.

7) Eating cheese just before you go to bed gives you nightmares

OK, here are the answers…..

1) When I am asleep, my brain switches off: Nope. When you fall asleep, your sense of self-awareness shuts down, but your brain remains highly active and carries out tasks that are essential for your wellbeing.

2) I can learn to function well on less sleep: Nope. Sleep is a biological need. You can force yourself to sleep less, but you will not be fully rested, and your thoughts, feelings and behaviour will be impaired.

3) Napping is a sign of laziness: Nope. Your circadian rhythm make you sleepy towards the middle of the afternoon, and so napping is natural and makes you more alert, creative, and productive.

4) Dreams consist of meaningless thoughts and images: Nope. During dreaming your brain is often working through your concerns, and so dreams can provide an insight into your worries and help come up with innovative solutions.

5) A small amount of alcohol before bedtime improves sleep quality: Nope. A nightcap can help you to fall asleep, but also causes you to spend less time in restorative deep sleep and having fewer dreams.

6) I can catch up on my lost sleep at the weekend: Nope. When you fail to get enough sleep you develop a sleep debt. Spending more time in bed for a day will help but won’t fully restore you for the coming week.

7) Eating cheese just before you go to bed gives you nightmares: Nope. The British Cheese Board asked 200 volunteers to spend a week eating some cheese before going to sleep and to report their dreams in the morning. None of them had nightmares.

So there we go. They are all myths! How did you score?

A few years ago I wrote Night School – one of the first modern-day books to examined the science behind sleep and dreaming. In a forthcoming blog post I will review some tips and tricks for making the most of the night. Meanwhile, what are your top hints and tips for improving your sleep and learning from your dreams?

I am a huge fan of Dale Carnegie and mention him in pretty much every interview I give. Carnegie was American, born in 1888, raised on a farm, and wrote one of the greatest self-help books of all time, How to Win Friends and Influence People. The book has now sold over 30 million copies worldwide.

I first came across his work when I was about 10 years old and read this book on showmanship and presentation….

According to Edward Maurice, it’s helpful if magicians are likeable (who knew!), so he recommended that they read Carnegie’s book. I still have my original copy, and it’s covered in my notes and highlights.

One of my favourite — and wonderfully simple — pieces of advice is to smile more. Since the book was written, psychologists have discovered lots about the power of smiling. There is evidence that forcing your face into a smile makes you feel better (known as the facial feedback hypothesis). In addition, it often elicits a smile in return and, in doing so, makes others feel good too. As a result, people enjoy being around you. But, as Carnegie says, it must be a genuine smile, as fake grins look odd and are ineffective. Try it the next time you meet someone, answer the telephone, or open your front door. It makes a real difference.

In another section of the book, Carnegie tells an anecdote about a parent whose son went to university but never replied to their letters. To illustrate the importance of seeing a situation from another person’s point of view, Carnegie advised the parent to write a letter saying that they had enclosed a cheque — but to leave out the cheque. The son replied instantly.

Then there is the power of reminding yourself how much the people in your life mean to you. Carnegie once asked the great stage illusionist Howard Thurston about the secret of his success. Thurston explained that before he walked on stage, he always reminded himself that the audience had been kind enough to come and see him. Standing in the wings, he would repeat the phrase, “I love my audience. I love my audience.” He then walked out into the spotlight with a smile on his face and a spring in his step.

This is not the only link between Carnegie and magic. Dai Vernon was a hugely influential exponent of close-up magic and, in his early days, billed himself as Dale Vernon because of the success of Dale Carnegie (The Vernon Touch, Genii, April 1973). In addition, in 1947 Carnegie was a VIP guest at the Magicians’ Guild Banquet Show in New York. Here is a rare photo of the great author standing with several famous magicians of the day (from Conjurers Magazine, Vol. 3, No. 4; courtesy of the brilliant Lybrary.com).

Front row (left to right): Elsie Hardeen, Dell O’Dell, Gladys Hardeen, J. J. Proskauer
Back row: E. W. Dart, Terry Lynn, Al Flosso, Mickey MacDougall, Al Baker, Warren Simms, Dale Carnegie, Max Holden, Jacob Daley

If you don’t have a copy, go and get How to Win Friends and Influence People. Some of the language is dated now, but the thinking is still excellent. Oh, and there is an excellent biography of Carnegie by Steven Watts here.

It’s time for some obscure magic and music hall history.

I’m a fan of a remarkable Scottish conjurer called Harry Marvello. He was performing during the early 1900s and built a theatre in Edinburgh that is now an amusement arcade. I have a previous post on Marvello here and have just written a long article about him for a magic history magazine called Gibecière (the issue is out soon).

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 […]