Comedy podcast Dear Joan and Jericha is brilliant, filthy satire
I’m desperate for a second series of this unapologetically vile show from Julia Davis and Vicki Pepperdine.
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Epic fail
Africa’s forgotten empires
Africa’s relationship with the wider world continues to be understood largely through colonialism. But before this came centuries of…
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Tracey Thorn’s memoir of growing up in suburbia finds the extraordinary in the ordinary
It was boredom that produced Thorn and hundreds of artists like her. Now that it’s gone we might miss…
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I don’t want to work. What happens if we don’t?
Our culture of permanent activity is making us ill. Can slobs and slackers teach us a different way to…
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The UnHerd Tortoise: are elite media start-ups just hype?
Drugstore Culture’s recent implosion exposes the challenge of boutique journalism ventures.
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Lynn Barber’s Diary: Stockpiling sardines for Brexit, the need for free teeth and the genius of John Bercow
Someone on the radio said she’d been hoarding Shippam’s paste but I’ve never developed a Shippam’s paste habit.
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The dark side of the UK’s jobs boom
A financialised economy and weak trade unions mean record employment has done little to increase workers’ pay.
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Adam Foulds’s Dream Sequence is a novel of loneliness and obsession
Concerned with fame and longing, the novel is set in hotels and airports, sterile apartment blocks, gyms and yoga…
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Why mental illness is surging even in the world’s happiest countries
In Finland, named the happiest country in the world for 2018, suicide is responsible for a third of all deaths…
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Richard Dawkins interview: “I’d rather people read my books than my tweets”
The atheist and God Delusion author on Brexit, Islamophobia and why he fears his social media presence has damaged his…
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The father of geopolitics
A hundred years ago Halford Mackinder warned of the threat of global domination from the east. His theories influenced…
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The BBC World Service drama Fall of the Shah drips with menace
Murk is written into every moment of this radio drama marking the 40th anniversary of the Iranian Revolution.
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Marielle Heller’s joyous comedy Can You Ever Forgive Me? positively glows
Plus: our review of Green Book.
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Inside Europe: Ten Years of Turmoil: gripping political television
Plus: Shtisel on Netflix.
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A-lister with a dildo: Cate Blanchett at the National Theatre
Plus: Six, the musical about Henry VIII’s wives.
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Mounting an animal’s head on your wall is a funny way to show how much you revere its beauty
No amount of PR can disguise how different subsistence hunting is from its more leisurely cousin.
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Commons Confidential: Dodgy Dave lies low in Davos
Your weekly dose of gossip from around Westminster.
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The strange rebirth of the German Greens
In a divided country, the party has surged into second place with poll ratings of 20 per cent. But…
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How dancing with millennials exposed the thin but powerful generation gap between us
My friend and I went clubbing to see if we still “had it going on”.
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Letter of the week: The great barrier breach
A selection of the best letters received from our readers this week. Email letters@newstatesman.co.uk to have your thoughts voiced…
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I have washed my trousers – and the MacHovel now looks like a human uses it, rather than a bear
I should point out that doing the laundry here is no joke. In fact, everything is no joke here. Using…
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Theresa May’s “victory” is an illusion – no agreement can be reached without the backstop
The only way for the Prime Minister to keep her promise is for the United Kingdom to leave the EU…
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France’s civil war, the magic of McIlvanney and a haunting glimpse of Anne Frank
According to a new book, France has become an inegalitarian Americanised society where the elites have imposed an economic model that…
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Leader: The 7 per cent problem – how to address the domination of private schools
Under a Fair Access Scheme, private schools would select a proportion of state-funded pupils according to government criteria.
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The doctors fighting our return to an era when people routinely died from common infections
As a profession, we’re supposed to be minimising our antibiotic prescribing to help counter the looming disaster of resistance.
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Is scoring a goal better than sex? Judging by the ecstasy on the pitch, it’s pretty close
In my day, the scorer got a quick handshake from the captain, then players returned to the centre. Now…
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How Peterson, Shapiro and the online right would rather attack the left than debate them
A sort of intellectual cage-fighting in which the aim is to DISMANTLE, DESTROY and OBLITERATE your opponent.
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“I admire Robert Kennedy because he changed his mind”
The designer and sculptor talks Simone de Beauvoir’s The Second Sex, French cuisine, and advice from Eduardo Paolozzi.
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