Normally, I’d say that Sam Altman deserves any pushback he gets. But the AI hatred seems to be getting a little too intense.

On the morning of Friday, April 10th, a 20 year-old Texas man named Daniel Alejandro Moreno-Gama was arrested for allegedly throwing a molotov cocktail at Sam Altman’s mansion on Russian Hill in San Francisco. Less than two days later, police arrested 25 year-old Amanda Tom and 23 year-old Muhamad Tarik Hussein for allegedly firing a gun at the same house from their car before speeding away.

Earlier the same week, and thousands of miles away, an unknown assailant fired 13 shots into the front door of city councilman Ron Gibson, who had just voted to approve a new data center in Indianapolis against a groundswell of public outcry. A sign that read “NO DATA CENTERS” was left tucked under the doormat.

I can understand why all the AI-hate: data centers are environmental catastrophes, they represent a gross invasion of our privacy, they don’t seem to contribute much of value to society, but wow, they sure help improve billionaires profits. Unfortunately, in addition to a rational opposition, there are also crackpots with bizarre paranoid fantasies.

Little is known about the motives of Tom or Hussein, or the politics of the Indianapolis shooter, but reporters and the online commentariat quickly dredged up Moreno-Gama’s Discord chats and Substack posts. He was a reader of rationalist and AI doomer Eliezer Yudkowsky, who argues, as the title of his last book puts it, if Silicon Valley builds a “superintelligent” AI, “everyone dies.”

Yeah, if you’re citing Yudkowski, you’re a victim of extreme derangement. I guess it’s predictable that if your reaction is to throw molotov cocktails at people’s houses, you’re probably not building your case on a sound foundation. AI is not superintelligent, or even intelligent at all, it’s a tool that can be used by bad people to do bad things. Unfortunately, it’s also the case that AI proponents have built up this gigantic edifice of hype, pumping up the imagined power of AI to the point that they are actively asserting that it might lead to the end of humanity.

If you take at face value what the AI executives themselves have been saying for the last decade, that an AI powerful enough to make humans go extinct is nascent, then acting with force to stop it would be a rational action. The AI industry and its executives—including Sam Altman—need to own this outcome, not blame it on Yudkowsky, safety researchers, or worried activists who take what they say literally.

That’s fair. The people who have pumped up the hype are reaping what they have sown.

The nonsense promoted by the Less Wrong crowd isn’t the real danger, though. This is the real danger:

Inequality is through the roof. A bona fide tech oligarchy is ascendent, buffeted by leverage provided by AI. Its data centers, which bring few jobs and hike electricity bills, are enraging communities on the right and the left. Slop is everywhere. AI-generated art and text is undercutting creatives, powered by pirated, non-consensually ingested work. Employers from Amazon to Block to Duolingo to Meta are firing tens of thousands of workers and citing AI as the reason. AI may one day cure cancer, we’re told; great, even if we believe that, who will be able to afford the treatment?

That’s the anger fueling the anti-AI violence. To the handwringing AI industry insiders blaming doomers and poor messaging, ordinary people are saying: Wake up. We have good reason to hate AI and the people who profit from it. And yes, as people get desperate, as young people increasingly feel like AI elites have mortgaged their future, as residents who vote to regulate AI or ban local data center projects only to see their will overridden in favor of industry interests—well how do you expect them to feel? What do you expect? There is a distinct risk of further escalation.

If I had the opportunity to vote to stop the construction of a local data center, I’d take it, no question. I’m not at the point of throwing molotov cocktails, though. At the rate this country is falling apart at the hands of the oligarchs, give me a year to come around.

Back in October, Trump got an MRI as part of a supposedly routine physical, which was weird. MRIs aren’t routine, they’re usually done in response to specific concerns, and further, Trump didn’t know what was scanned.

Following persistent social media speculation, as well as a November 30, 2025, call from Minnesota Governor Tim Walz to release Donald Trump’s MRI results from his October visit to Walter Reed National Military Medical Center (via Twitter), reporters aboard Air Force One pressed the president to clarify the reason for the advanced imaging. Trump said he didn’t know which part of his body was scanned, but insisted, “It wasn’t the brain, because I took a cognitive test and I aced it.”

I think that a legitimate part of a cognitive test would be to put the person in a massive clanking, clunking machine on a dolly that shuffles them back and forth and ask them what was scanned. If they don’t know, they failed it. Amazingly, I’ve had two MRIs this past year, once for my head and once for my knee, and I knew exactly what they were for every step of the way.

I am pleased to know what the purpose of the president’s MRI was, finally.

We still don’t know the number, though. I’m sure it was huge, really huge, the biggest crowd ever.

This is news to make a professor shudder: a university closing its doors.

A Massachusetts liberal arts college is set to close permanently due to low enrollment and financial problems.

The board of trustees of Hampshire College, a small liberal arts school in Amherst founded in 1965, pointed to “financial pressures” that have been “compounded by shifting external factors”.

Universities have been under attack for decades, thanks to our ‘friends’ in the Republican party. Authoritarians and conservatives hate new ideas and helping people rise up out of poverty, and they’ve been whittling away at support for universities, throwing so much debt onto the shoulders of our students. The pandemic hit many colleges hard, too.

Hampshire College hits a little bit close to home. It was a little smaller in enrollment than UMM, my school, and was founded a bit more recently. It was also a liberal arts college, like mine. It differed in some significant ways. According to Wikipedia:

The college utilizes an alternative curriculum, with an emphasis on progressive pedagogy and self-directed academic concentrations, a focus on portfolios rather than distribution requirements, and a reliance on narrative evaluations instead of grades and GPAs.

That’s interesting and I appreciate innovative education, but it does make the work of that university harder. UMM has a more traditional curriculum, but we’ve also struggled over the past few years. Our enrollment bottomed out about two years ago — which is why my senior level genetics course has only 8 students this year, rather than the 30-40 I used to see. (We’re working ourselves out of this hole right now — my fall courses are fully enrolled already, and we may have to pack more students into the class.)

The situation of Hampshire College is a reminder that the situation of all universities in this country is precarious.

Here’s a conflict in human thinking in general. It’s revealed in this old exchange between Mehdi Hasan and Richard Dawkins.

Hasan is a believing Muslim, and Dawkins asks if he believes that Mohammed flew to heaven on a winged horse. Hasan says he does, that he believes in God and in miracles. Dawkins is incredulous.

My position, as a hard atheist, is that I agree that those are ridiculous beliefs that contradict reality and reason, and that it is very silly to believe in gods. I’m going to side with Dawkins a little bit on this one.

At the same time, though, I’m also going to side with Hasan a little bit…maybe a lot. He concedes that he could be wrong, which is a position I will always favor; he’s demonstrating tolerance for ideas that differ from those of his faith. I’ve never heard Hasan proselytize for Islam, and he says that he’s teaching his own child about Islam, which is fine with me as long as he’s also introducing that child to his principles of tolerance and a willingness to concede the possibility of error.

I also believe that everyone holds silly beliefs. Many people will go into the world of a movie or video game and suspend their strict adherence to the rules of reality for a while; I don’t think they go insane while doing that. Humans have an amazing capacity for stretching their minds out of congruence with nature, and that’s a good thing — we’d have no art, no music, no literature, if we didn’t have that ability. Some people might believe that the Minnesota Vikings are the greatest football team in the world, or that they’re a great cook, or that the sound of church bells is esthetically superior to the sound of the Muslim call to prayer. We don’t condemn them for that, as long as they’re willing to tolerate the existence of church bells and the muezzin. I’m comfortable with a Catholic church down the street from me as long as they aren’t trying to compel me to revere a cracker.

The big question in my mind is always going to be what are you going to do about it? You can disagree with me about evolution, for instance, and I’m going to think you are a very foolish person, but I’m not going to have you arrested or burn down your church. On the other hand, I don’t trust a religious fanatic to not try to make my university illegal, or censor the things we teach — we’re already seeing that happening. You can’t police a belief or an opinion!

I’m afraid I don’t trust Richard Dawkins to not be authoritarian. He has strongly held beliefs of his own, about how science is the only acceptable approach to understanding the world, or about how people’s perspective on gender should be tolerated, and I think he has already been abusing the respect he earned for his science and writing to advocate for oppression and intolerance. Don’t give him any more influence.

So far, Mehdi Hasan seems to be mainly advocating for human rights for all people, and is acting as a positive influence in the world.

I could be wrong. I hope I’m not.

I just submitted the official university paperwork resigning from my appointment as of April 2027. One more year, and then I’m outta here.

Don’t ask me how I feel about it yet. Ask me a year from today, when it gets real.

Right now I’m mainly stressed about the fact that Boeing sent me a letter saying they overpaid on my mother’s death benefits, and they want $5000 back right now. On the one hand, that’s peanuts for Boeing, they can go overcharge the government for a bolt to get that money back; on the other hand, do I really want to get in a fight with Boeing?

There was a time in late 50s, early 60s Paris when something was in the air. In just three years, 162 debut feature films emerged from a new generation of filmmakers, who created energetic, rule-breaking, joy-filled cinema, populated by young men and women running through the streets, filming on the hoof with their new lightweight cameras. They called it the nouvelle vague – the French New Wave. Richard Linklater’s black-and-white film Nouvelle Vague is a loving tribute to that scene. It follows the making of one of the era’s masterpieces: Jean-Luc Godard’s A Bout De Souffle, or Breathless for English-speaking audiences.

Each time we meet a new figure, there is a moment when they look to camera and an onscreen caption introduces them to us: Francois Truffaut, Agnes Varda, Claude Chabrol. The sheer number of names is astounding. Many of these talents were friends, who first emerged as writers for the new Cahiers Du Cinema magazine. And there is inevitably some nostalgia, watching Linklater’s film, for that lost era when physical magazines thrived, and living in the heart of a great capital city and pursuing your creative ambition was possible without family money. But what Nouvelle Vague really captures is the excitement of a new world built on talent and the desire to make great art.

The nouvelle vague changed world culture, not just cinema. The director Richard Lester took inspiration from it to capture what his Hollywood producers assumed was a passing pop fad. The resulting film, Quatre Garcons Dans Le Vent (Four Boys in the Wind) – or A Hard Day’s Night as we know it – helped The Beatles conquer the world.

The impact of the nouvelle vague movement was on my mind when I recently attended the British Screen Forum’s annual conference – a gathering of film and television industry creatives. With television and filmmaking in decline, there was eager discussion about how far internet influencers have opened up a screen alternative. Influencers create, film, edit and upload their material to the likes of YouTube, X, Instagram, Twitch and TikTok. In one way what they do is comparable to Truffaut and his friends – grasping the possibilities of the new technology to connect directly with audiences of their own generation.

YouTuber Jacob Collier has performed at the Proms as well as releasing acclaimed albums. Women and people of colour have benefited from being able to bypass traditionally biased gatekeeping by entertainment executives. There are many comedians who launched their careers posting online content, such as Mo Gilligan and, in the Covid lockdown, Rosie Holt and Munya Chawawa.

Meanwhile, others have shattered the old boundaries on entertainment formats, like Tommy Innit (real name Thomas Simons) who began in 2018 with video-game streams and filming his own adventures. He now has more than 27 million subscribers to his YouTube and Twitch channels. There’s a natural charm and wit to Tommy’s style – he’s progressed to live comedy and podcasting, and he’s used his profile to tackle misogyny among young men.

Such young talents seem to be very much in the spirit of the nouvelle vague. But back at the British Screen Forum, the panel discussion I watched featured no one like these names. Rather we met young “creators” with big social media followings who self-promote around topics like wellbeing or travel or entrepreneurship. Other than a few jobs for struggling studio technicians and stylists, what, I wondered were such commercially focused figures really creating? Especially when the goal seemed nothing more than to tie up with a major brand as soon as possible.

The French new wave made art driven by love and ambition. Money was a benefit, but it wasn’t the prime motivation. That attitude can seem like a luxury in our time. But one thing still rings true: art made to be true art, rather than merely revenue-generating “content”, is what people will still be watching decades from now.

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: If you’re a space fan, you know that the most exciting astronomical news last week was NOT the diverse team of astronauts working together to fly around the moon in an inspiring display of …

Artemis II has now made its way safely into space and many people have asked if I am related to its commander, Reid Wiseman. This isn’t the case, although I am prepared to step in and take charge of the mission if needed. However, I have written a book about the mindset that took humanity to the Moon and had the privilege of interviewing many of the Mission Controllers involved in Apollo 11 (huge thanks to Helen Keen and Craig Scott for making this happen). At the time of this historic event, they were an amazingly young bunch.  Indeed, when Neil Armstrong walked on the Moon, the average age of the Mission Controllers was an astonishing 28 years old. 

Here are three of my favourite learnings based around memorable quotes….

The power of optimism

Jerry Bostick grew up on a small farm in Mississippi, graduated with a degree in Civil Engineering and eventually ended up working at the NASA.  Bostick led the group that ensured Apollo 11 went in the right direction (known as Mission Control’s Flight Dynamics Branch).  When I interviewed Bostick, he made a great comment on the importance of the Mission Controllers being a young, optimistic, bunch:

“They decided to go with a bunch of young guys fresh out of college because we didn’t know that it couldn’t be done!  When we were told that we needed to find a way of getting to the Moon, we just got on and did it.”

I have often thought about Bostick’s ‘we were so young we didn’t know it couldn’t be done’ comment. We can all embrace the optimism of youth. Don’t give up before you have begun. Instead, assume there is a way forward and start to try to find solutions.

Personal responsibility

Apollo astronaut Ken Mattingly would go to the launch pad and look at the giant Saturn V rocket. Once, he went into a large room packed with electronics and chatted with a technician about the risks involved in the mission. The technician said that he no idea about how many parts of the rocket worked, and Mattingly became concerned. However, the engineer explained that it was his job to ensure that the electronics inside a single panel were in working order, and assured Mattingly that when it came to that panel, the project wouldn’t fail because of him.

Mattingly realized that the complex Apollo missions were successful, in part, because everyone had the same sense of personal responsibility, and that was summed up in a single sentence: It won’t fail because of me.  

It’s a simple but powerful idea. If you say that you are going to do something, do it.  Don’t procrastinate, pass the buck, or cut corners. Be conscientious and make your word your bond. Be fully accountable for what you do and what you don’t do.

Fear and risk taking

Space travel is risky and even the smallest mistake can prove fatal. Flight Director Glynn Lunney noticed that people involved in the Apollo missions often ran away from these risks by holding yet another meeting or other delaying tactic. He understood that if the mission were to become a reality, at some point they were going to have to take risks. He summed up his thoughts in one sentence: If you’re going to go to the Moon, sooner or later you’ve got to go to the Moon.

It is a great mantra. At certain points in our lives, we need to find the courage to face fear in the hope of bringing about a better future.  This means being action-based, taking risks (without being reckless), and focusing on overcoming potential problems. This action-based approach has two advantages. First, you learn by doing. Instead of talking the talk, you roll up your sleeves and get on with it, and so develop the skills needed to make your plans a reality. Second, by putting yourself out there, you increase the likelihood of meeting other like-minded people and coming across unexpected opportunities. 

I wrote all this up (and much more) in my book, Shoot for the Moon, which looks at the new psychology of success through the lens of the Apollo 11 mission. Thanks for reading.

Climate, 14th century: The characteristic weather conditions of a country or region

In 1854, when the United States Magazine of Science, Art, Manufactures, Agriculture, Commerce and Trade used the phrase “climate changes”, they couldn’t have imagined that this would be one of the most pressing matters facing the human race in 2026. And yet the phrase was used like this: “Some have ascribed these climate changes to agriculture – cutting down the dense forests – the exposure of the upturned soil to the summer sun, and the draining of the great marshes.” So they were on to it even then.

The word “climate” first started being used in English in the 14th century as a borrowing from French and Latin. At the time, it was thought that the Earth had seven climate zones, each one determined astrologically. By 1400 or so, Sir John Mandeville, in his famous Travels, was explaining that the people of India were in “the first climate, that is of Saturn”, while the English climate, he said, was determined by the Moon. It was science, but not as we know it.

Of course, the word “climate” is often used figuratively, like when we talk about the “moral climate” or “economic climate”. According to The Oxford English Dictionary, this first occurred as early as 1661 with the phrase “climate of opinion”, a usage that wouldn’t sound out of place in a current Times editorial. But in uses of the word pertaining to the environment, the appearances of particular phrases tell a history all of their own.

“Climate action” and “climate emergency” both appeared in 1989. Seven years later, in 1996, “climate denial” and “climate sceptic” were first used. It took another few years for people to be labelled as “climate deniers” (2003) but, in opposition to these deniers, in 2014, along comes “climate strike”.

The word is likely to remain a battleground over the next few years. On the one hand, we’ll use it neutrally, to say what the weather is like. On the other hand, it will no doubt remain at the centre of some of the big struggles of the 21st century.

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

Becoming George: The Invention of George Sand (Transworld) by Fiona Sampson

The title of poet and scholar Fiona Sampson’s latest biography denotes several journeys in the life of one of France’s first great women writers, George Sand. Starting with her childhood in rural Nohant in the aftermath of the French Revolution, it follows her to Paris where she takes part in some of the upheavals that followed, taking in her advocacy for women’s rights and against marriage, her self-discovery as a writer, her turbulent relationships with Alfred de Musset and Fryderyk Chopin, the public scandals caused in part by her adoption of masculine clothing, and by her use of a male nom de plume. To become George Sand, writes Sampson in her introduction to a writer no longer as widely read in the UK as many of her male contemporaries, required “will, imagination, chutzpah”.

Charting Sand’s life through the development of mass politics and rapid urbanisation, Sampson bookmarks significant shifts in Sand’s life by spending a few pages between each chapter analysing an image of her subject. As Sand lived from 1804 to 1876, and moved throughout her life in bourgeois circles, she was often captured not just by portrait painters, but also by photographers.

The first “impression” provides circularity, as it catches Sand with her granddaughters, just a year before her death, at the country house where she grew up. This allows Sampson to explore just how much France changed during Sand’s lifetime, positing Sand as a “bridge figure”. In the 18th century, writes Sampson, the likes of Bach, Goethe, Rousseau or Voltaire could shift European culture while working outside their capital cities, whereas Sand had to go to Paris to mix in literary and musical circles, at least for the prime years of her astonishingly productive career.

Sampson spends her first four chapters on Sand’s childhood as Aurore Dupin, establishing the formative nature of her parents’ cross-class relationship, her father’s early death after being thrown from his horse, her being raised largely by her grandmother, and the importance of Nohant as a location throughout her life.

Inevitably, the pace picks up once we move to Paris in 1831, when Sand chose her famous pseudonym – and successfully applied for a permit to wear men’s clothing in public, which was issued by the police at the time. (This permission did not stop newspapers or literary journals from making unkind comments about her lack of femininity, even if the concept of “transgender” was a century from existence, and friends as prominent as Victor Hugo said the matter of whether Sand was “my sister or my brother” did not concern him.)

Sampson, writing in an age of frenzied discussion about gender identity, wisely does not spend much time on the question of whether Sand was a proto-trans pioneer. Assessing Paul Gavarni’s drawing of Sand in male attire, produced for a gossip column in 1831 or 1832, Sampson quotes a letter from 1835 in which Sand writes, “I claim to possess, today and forever, the superb and complete independence which [men] alone believe [they] have the right to enjoy.” It was men’s privileges that Sand wanted, according to Sampson, not a male identity – at a time before the law, and sexologists, defined “the homosexual” or “the transvestite” as types.

Becoming George is at its most interesting when asking what it means to be an author – and what it means to write a biography. “Most of the ceaselessly branching alternatives and decisions that make up a life evade reconstruction,” writes Sampson at the beginning of chapter five, “Becoming a writer”. When discussing authors, this difficulty is compounded by the fact that the thing important writers spend most of their days doing – writing – does not have the same kind of technical interaction with a medium as painting or music, and tends to be solitary. But Sand was more sociable than many, and had complicated, cross-country affairs with famous composers and poets that gave plenty of material to future biographers and writers. (Notably, the German Expressionist dramatist Georg Kaiser’s 1922 play Flight to Venice imagined Sand’s relationship with fellow writer de Musset as a shared quest for artistic renewal.)

Sampson explores perennial questions for creative women, asking how Sand dealt with sexism, with men telling her “Don’t make books, make children”; the difficulty of pursuing a career while raising a family, with Sand prioritising her work, and her relationship with her daughter suffering as a result; and how her relationship with Chopin had to end because it was suffocating her ability to write. It’s full of insight that could only be reached by a biographer’s shared experience: “The most difficult step in becoming a published writer isn’t what you do with the blank page [but] what you do with the filled one,” writes Sampson, reflecting on how a person’s mid-twenties can be “when time passing begins to measure not progress but the stalling of some original trajectory”. This anxiety drives Sand to a phenomenal output – 70 novels and more than 50 other published works.

Naturally, an oeuvre so large is somewhat uneven, and Sampson charts the economic, social and political pressures for Sand to be so prolific, even if not every text can be analysed in detail in her 350 pages. Though Sampson occasionally overplays contemporary parallels (in lines such as “enjoying the kind of good life often featured in twenty-first-century lifestyle magazines”), this is a highly readable, subtly inventive book that argues for Sand’s importance not just as a writer but as a cultural figure.

Sampson closes with famous Paris photographer Félix Nadar’s portrait of Sand dressed as the satirical playwright Molière, which is “not of a man or woman, nor even of a woman dressed as a man, but of literary authority itself”. It reminds us that Sand is synonymous with the 19th century, France and the extraordinary written culture of that time and place – and that this remains the most important context within which to judge Sand’s life and work.

This article is from our 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 recently stumbled upon a headline that is essentially catnip to me. Beccanip, let’s say. “JD Vance Says UFOs Are Actually Demons.” Yep. Yep, of course JD Vance said that. Why WOULDN’T JD Vance …

The Revolutionists: The Story of the Extremists Who Hijacked the 1970s (Penguin) by Jason Burke

As the subtitle of this book acknowledges, hijacking has a metaphorical resonance as well as a literal meaning. Both describe the garnering of widespread attention by the determined actions of small and reckless groups or individuals. The key characters in this rollicking narrative number barely a few dozen, but they transfixed hundreds of millions throughout the 1970s.

“The Revolutionists” is a clever title, correctly implying a difference between Burke’s protagonists and actual revolutionaries – who, while no less zealous, are also organised and methodical, which is why they sometimes win. Revolutionists, by contrast, are essentially grandstanders and cosplayers, vastly more interested in means than ends. A revolutionary may see the application of violence as a regrettable necessity. A revolutionist is more someone who quite fancies striking poses in a beret and Raybans, and blowing things up, and seeks an excuse.

If one personality exemplifies the revolutionist, it is Andreas Baader: a twenty-something drifter who dominated West Germany’s Red Army Faction to the extent that it became interchangeably known as the Baader-Meinhof Group, after Baader and fellow militant Ulrike Meinhof. Burke describes Baader as “spoilt, arrogant and lazy”, and notes that he was “uninterested in politics and unmoved by progressive causes”. Baader was, however, extremely keen on fast cars, women, drink, drugs and the adoration of credulous supplicants. He went to extraordinary lengths to maintain supplies of them.

Baader and his comrades allied themselves early on to the budding militancy attached to Palestine, making their first visits in 1970 to the training camps in Jordan being operated by Fatah, the largest faction of the Palestine Liberation Organisation. The pages recalling the first trip undertaken by the Red Army Faction to Jordan are rich black comedy. “The following weeks could not be described as an unqualified success,” understates Burke. The Germans whined about the accommodation and the food, wasted precious ammunition acting the cowboy on the firing ranges, and annoyed their hosts with their general performative bohemianism. Nor were they the only vexatious guests (“A group of British International Socialists smuggled alcohol into one camp, got drunk, held an impromptu sing-song, and then got into a fight with a group of British Maoists.”)

Burke is the Guardian’s international security correspondent and the author of several excellent books covering al-Qaeda, Islamic State and other manifestations of a more recent fanaticism. The Revolutionists serves as something of a prequel to his previous works, suggesting a legacy even more baneful than the casualties of the bombings, hijackings and kidnappings wrought by its subjects: that the self-indulgence, self-regard and eventual self-destruction of this broadly secular pro-Palestinian tendency helped bring forth the theocratic nihilists of later decades.

The Revolutionists is a brilliantly told story with many dimensions – Burke also furnishes the wider geostrategic contexts to the follies of the players, even if many of them were ignorant of, or indifferent to these diplomatic shadow plays. It is mostly, however, a story – it might be hoped a cautionary fable – of failure. Things ended badly and/or early for most of the individual “revolutionists” – though some are still with us, including Ilich Ramírez Sánchez, the prolific Venezuelan terrorist better remembered as Carlos the Jackal, now serving forever in a French prison.

And while the revolutionists may have got their pictures in the papers, and though they spawned a minor industry of literature, cinema, music and sundry popular culture, it is difficult to make any case that they, or their approximate contemporaries, much advanced any of the actual causes for which they claimed to have taken up arms. The Red Army Faction and similar groups in Italy, Japan and elsewhere fell some way short of dismantling capitalism, while Palestine, for all the picturesque mayhem wrought on its behalf, is arguably further than ever from being a functional sovereign state. The revolutionists did nothing good, and nothing good came of what they did.

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

Babe, wake up! The Supreme Court of the United States of America has just dropped a new judgment and it fucking SUCKS! I know, it’s not exactly breaking news, but this one IS unique in a few unfortunate ways, so I’m gonna talk about it. On Tuesday, the Trans Day of Visibility, The Supreme Court …

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 made many videos on this channel about anti-trans pseudoscience and mythology, like the Cass Report and journalists who think kids want to turn into attack helicopters. I don’t often talk about trans women …

The names of bacteria rolled off my colleague’s tongue like chocolate bar brands. “There’s all kinds of streptococcus, lactobacillus, E. coli of course, and that’s just the bacteria. You can find out the viruses, too. We’re talking mycoviruses, enteroviruses, astroviruses – oh, and the sample is always contaminated with human DNA.”

I thought for a minute. “So, I could be identified from a sample of my shit?”

“Not could – you already can be! You could call it ... a data dump.” He chuckled.

I was talking with David, my office neighbour at the University of Oxford, about all the new information on humans and bugs that can be learned using cutting-edge methods in pathogen genomics. By examining the genetic material of microorganisms that cause disease, microbiologists can now see how your infection is related to someone else’s, or whether what you have is treatable or not. For example, by studying the DNA of the norovirus you’re carrying, in combination with other kinds of data, they might be able to tell what you have eaten, who you have been in contact with and if you passed the infection on.

It’s an up-and-coming area, already starting to overtake old methods of disease surveillance and diagnosis, which relied on assessing the symptoms of a patient, or sending off a sample of bacteria to be grown in a lab. Some of these new methods can also enable clinicians to look at a range of microorganisms at once, giving them a more complete and detailed set of data.

Your specific set of bacteria and viruses can be as identifying as your fingerprint – not only that, but they can associate you with other people’s disease fingerprints. The information can go on to inform your clinical care, and also public health responses like contacting people you might have infected, or designing vaccines. It’s fast. It’s reliable. It’s powerful.

But as well as helping prevent disease, this data can be used for other means – to establish where a person has been, who they have met and even the nature of the interaction between these people. It can be passed on to health insurance companies, criminal courts or to justify targeted public health measures such as quarantining “disease-spreading” groups.

As a bioethicist, I spend my days learning about ever-accelerating scientific advances like these. It’s my job to help make sure that new technologies are properly regulated and ethically used. So, I listened to David and then did my own research. Some questions immediately came up. “Where are you getting the genome fragments from?” (Surprisingly often, the answer is “shit”.) “And that information only gets shared with the individual and their doctor, right?” (Surprisingly often, the answer is “no”.)

I discovered that, while it has already had a significant positive impact – like helping us control Covid-19 outbreaks and improving care for people living with HIV/AIDS – pathogen genomics data is also being used in harmful ways.

So, should we simply stop? It’s not that easy. We need to be asking a different question: how do we prevent disease while simultaneously protecting people from privacy violations, unfair discrimination, and other moral wrongs?

Fighting disease outbreaks

My interest in pathogen genomics began during the Covid-19 pandemic, when I came across newspaper reports on apartment blocks full of “superspreaders”. These stories troubled me. The newspapers referenced wastewater testing, which used pathogen genomics to see if Covid-19 and other microbes were in building sewerage. These tests gave public health authorities reliable strain data, so they could take strong, fast action. But they also exposed these people, through their data, to public shame. And the apartments’ occupants didn’t consent to their waste, and therefore their DNA, being tested.

This kind of data collection might be justified on the grounds that no one person in any given apartment block is likely to be identifiable. But what if all the occupants are shunned, or their movements restricted? In Melbourne, Australia, nine social housing apartment blocks experienced extended quarantine during the pandemic, as a collective, as a result of pathogen genomic testing. And who is this most likely to happen to? Probably those living in the most overcrowded, unsanitary conditions where disease transmission is the hardest to control.

We saw too many cases of racism and group discrimination during the Covid-19 pandemic. For example, South Asian people were discriminated against during a wave of the disease originally called the “Indian” strain, because it was first detected in India. The World Health Organisation (WHO) and others then shifted from naming strains by country towards letter names (the “Indian” strain became “Delta”; the South African” strain was “Beta”.) But the problem itself points to risks in associating disease with particular communities, or groups of people. The availability of more – and more detailed – data on disease could lead to more speculation and ostracisation of groups that may already be underprivileged and marginalised.

At the same time, there are plenty of reasons to be optimistic about pathogen genomics, now and in the future. More detailed data on disease is already helping with diagnostics and public health action, while the development of better vaccines against the next pandemic could save countless lives. In the UK in 2022, for example, a salmonella outbreak was curbed by tracing it back to specific contaminated chocolate products and issuing recall notices.

Playing out in real-time

Many of the harms and benefits will not affect us, but future generations. If you’re a parent, you might already be thinking about what this means for your children. It could help keep them healthy, but they also could face Big Brother-style surveillance, where the state has genetic data on people – block by block, city by city – collected in hospital rooms, in wastewater, in prisons, care homes and detention centres. If that powerful data is used for people’s benefit, that’s great. But what if it’s used against them? This depends on whether proper guidance and regulations are put in place.

We are already seeing this tension play out. For a start, tissue or fluid samples are often taken from hospital patients, to confirm their diagnoses or see which drug they should take. But, if they have a notifiable disease, doctors are required to report it to public health authorities – even without the patient’s consent – in order to track disease spread. If the patient’s sample was added alongside other data like their testing location, date or demographic data, the person may then be re-identifiable as a link in a disease transmission chain. The same thing can happen in disease chains in care homes or prisons.

This might not be a problem, if the data was only used for disease prevention. But it can be used for other means, including in criminal courts. In Australia, a 47-year-old man was accused in 2008 of intentionally infecting two people with HIV between 2001-2003. Pathogen genomics wasn’t powerful enough to provide conclusive evidence in the original legal case, but it was later used in a study with more powerful methods to confirm that the defendant had infected the first two people, lining up with the legal decision, which resulted in the man being charged with grievous bodily harm.

On the one hand, I am horrified that someone who knew he had HIV for years would intentionally expose his sexual partners to the disease. On the other, this man went to a clinic to receive a diagnosis, and his sample was used not just to protect his health, but to investigate a crime. And what about other court cases, in other jurisdictions? What about the deterrent effect? In countries where homosexuality is criminalised, men who have sex with men are already fearful of seeking healthcare and testing for HIV. Lower levels of testing can mean higher transmission rates and more deaths.

We need to ask the broader questions. Do people living with HIV have a right for their data to be used only to promote their own health? Many of my colleagues would object to this: it’s the job of clinicians and healthcare systems not only to protect their own patients’ health, but to protect public health more broadly.

The real risk of discrimination

Pathogen genomics follows an already established trend by not requiring individual consent for public health (and even, occasionally, forensic) uses of clinical data. But that has to be balanced against the risk of the data being misused, for example to discriminate or prosecute on the basis of sexual orientation or behaviour.

The stigma of disease can take many forms. Those living in poorer conditions, with inadequate housing or lack of sanitation, are more prone to disease and its spread. Migrant communities may be more vulnerable, particularly those living in refugee camps. In 2015, the BBC reported on chaos on the Greek islands as overcrowded camps left children at risk of disease spread, abuse and heatstroke. In 2020, 140 ill refugee children were moved from the Lesbos refugee camp, with Médecins Sans Frontières accusing the Greek government of “deliberately depriving” the children of adequate medical care. A few months later, refugees and asylum seekers were being blamed by Greek politicians and the media for Covid-19 spreading to the general population. These populations already face systemic discrimination. Then they’re labelled as disease carriers, too.

In the future, our healthcare will look very different. Clinicians will increasingly be supported by AI and care will be highly personalised. So will future ethical issues. Our decision to give away our own data may feel like a personal choice, but it could have significant effects on other people. (How many of your relatives have sent away their DNA for ancestry testing without considering how this might impact you?) Still, if you live in a democracy, then misuse of health data only happens elsewhere, right?

Wrong. Democracies in the western world are gathering and using pathogen genomics data, and there are legitimate concerns that well-intentioned public health authorities might be required to share that data with other agencies – for example, for immigration and customs enforcement, or even to inform political campaigns. There are many incentives for governments to use this data, including the desire to be technologically competitive with other countries and the economic savings to be made by predicting costly events such as potential epidemics.

Biopower

In bioethics, we call this form of state control “biopower”. In the future, it may not matter whether people are willing to disclose information about their interactions, behaviours, locations or health status. The authorities could find out about them regardless. The pathogen genomics data, certainly, is already there: in the water, on the bus handles, in the air of hospitals.

This may seem rather futuristic, but it’s important to look where the slippery slope may lead, and how we can put up barriers along the way to guard against moral failure.

But we also need to consider the significant positive outcomes, in diseases prevented and lives saved. These positives are also likely to increase. So do they outweigh the risks?

Let’s return to Australia’s use of this cutting-edge science. It’s true that people’s waste was tested without their consent during the pandemic, resulting in quarantine for some. But public health action based on pathogen genomics information was estimated to have saved almost 1,000 lives, by alerting policymakers early to a second wave of Covid-19. It was used to develop an award-winning wastewater testing initiative, which functioned as an early-warning system.

Also, because the state could better target lockdowns to areas where Covid-19 was circulating more, restrictions were eased earlier in areas where they weren’t needed. On the one hand, targeting lockdowns impinges on some people’s right to freedom of movement and association. On the other hand, it protected rights relating to health and to freedom of movement and association for others.

The same goes for other forms of moral harm. The asylum seekers who arrive at our shores are often not given access to basic healthcare, and pathogen genomics may only exacerbate injustice for them. But what about other groups who, though marginalised, might benefit from the use of this data? In the US, pathogen genomics data on hepatitis viruses has shown up clusters and chains of people who have infected each other – often through injecting drugs and sharing needles. This cluster data has been used to target populations in need of needle exchange programmes and other support.

Preparing for the future

The final piece of the puzzle is to re-examine future uses of pathogen genomics. The WHO is calling for a global network for pathogen genomic surveillance to be established. This network will better inform our response to two major threats: another pandemic, and the rise of antibiotic resistance.

We have seen how the field could help in the next pandemic. It could also help to combat superbugs that emerge in people, animals and the environment and cause deaths from drug-resistant diseases. Pathogen genomics can tell us about what genes a pathogen has that might make it able to flush out certain kinds of drugs. With this knowledge, we can opt for different drugs that can properly treat the disease, and stop the pathogen from surviving and passing its resistance genes down the line.

On balance, it seems that these efforts, and positive results, could outweigh potential future harmful uses of pathogen genomics data.
I knocked on David’s door.

“And? What’s the bioethicist’s conclusion?” David wasn’t exactly holding his breath; he was confident in the moral merit of his research.

“I think it’s really important work. There are so many ways the data can protect our future health. But it can also harm us – it’s chaos out there, and there aren’t enough rules to prevent misuse. We need to do better. Will you help me?”

This is where bioethicists like me need to work with both scientists and members of the public. Firstly, we need to establish how much people care about the different harms and benefits. What is most important to people, and why? Once we’ve answered these questions and followed them up with ethically informed regulation, we can put this exciting new subfield of genomics to good use.

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

I really hate to do two videos about movie stars so close together, but there are a few reasons I want to talk about the comedian Rebel Wilson from the Pitch Perfect movies today: first of all, because this story is related to issues of misogyny; second of all, because I don’t see it being …

I have recently received emails about my work into the pace of life, and so I thought that it would be a good time to reflect on the topic.

I’ve always been fascinated by the work of the late, great psychologist Robert Levine. In the early ‘90s, Robert pioneered a brilliant way to measure the pace of life in cities by secretly timing how fast pedestrians walked.

His findings were startling. People in Western Europe were sprinting through life, while those in Africa and Latin America took a more measured pace. Within the US, New Yorkers were the speed-demons, while Los Angeles leaned into a slower groove.

But this wasn’t just about getting to lunch on time. Levine discovered that a faster pace of life was a double-edged sword. Higher speeds were linked to higher income and increased happiness, but also more coronary heart disease and a decrease in helpfulness.

In 2006, I teamed up with British Council to measure walking speeds across the world. On August 22, our research teams went into city centres and found busy streets that were flat, free from obstacles, and uncrowded. Between 11.30am and 2.00pm local time, they secretly timed how long it took people to walk along a 60-foot stretch of the pavement. All the people had to be on their own, not holding a telephone conversation or struggling with shopping bags. The results are shown in the table below.

City (Country)
Fastest
1 Singapore (Singapore)
2 Copenhagen (Denmark)
3 Madrid (Spain)
4 Guangzhou (China)
5 Dublin (Ireland)
6 Curitiba (Brazil)
7 Berlin (Germany)
8 New York (USA)
9 Utrecht (Netherlands)
10 Vienna (Austria)
11 Warsaw (Poland)
12 London (UK)
13 Zagreb (Croatia)
14 Prague (Czech Republic)
15 Wellington (New Zealand)
16 Paris (France)
17 Stockholm (Sweden)
18 Ljubljana (Slovenia)
19 Tokyo (Japan)
20 Ottawa (Canada)
21 Harare (Zimbabwe)
22 Sofia (Bulgaria)
23 Taipei (Taiwan)
24 Cairo (Egypt)
25 Sana’a (Yemen)
26 Bucharest (Romania)
27 Dubai (UAE)
28 Damascus (Syria)
29 Amman (Jordan)
30 Bern (Switzerland)
31 Manama (Bahrain)
32 Blantyre (Malawi)
SLOWEST

We compared the 16 cities that were in Levine’s work and our own and determined that the pace of life had increased by 10%! The pace of life in Guangzhou (China) increased by over 20%, and Singapore showed a 30% increase, resulting in it becoming the fastest moving city in the study. Projected forward, the results suggest that by 2040, they will arrive at their destination several seconds before they have set-off.

A few years ago, I had the privilege of interviewing Robert Levine about this work. I believe it may have been his final interview. You can listen to him discussing the “Geography of Time” below.

Finally, what is your pace of life? Are you moving too fast? Here are four questions to help you to decide.

– When someone takes too long to get to the point, do you feel like hurrying them along?

– Are you often the first person to finish at mealtimes?

– When walking along a street, do you often feel frustrated because you are stuck behind others?

– Do you walk out of restaurants or shops if you encounter even a short queue?

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.

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?

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 […]