Pre-Existing Convictions
In anticipation of the ‘new results’ RFK Jr. has promised about the causes of autism, an overview of what science has already learned.
Geoffrey C. Kabat
· 13 min read
ChatGPT-5 and the Limits of Machine Intelligence
The disillusion produced by GPT-5 is not a technical hiccup, it’s a philosophical wake-up call.
Hugh Brosnahan
· 6 min read
Fragments Against the Ruins
In his deliberately archaic new rendition of Homer’s epic, Jeffrey Duban takes a defiant stand against the modernisation of classical literature in defence of a disappearing tradition.
Jaspreet Singh Boparai
· 17 min read
Beautiful Visions
Van Morrison turns eighty.
David Cohen
· 11 min read
It’s All Too Much
The Beatles phenomenon is being mined for more meaning than the people at its centre ever intended to convey.
George Case
· 7 min read
Censoring John and Yoko
A new boxset edits out one of John Lennon’s most controversial songs.
Christian Kriticos
· 13 min read
The Geopolitical Thriller: A Right-Wing Genre
Other plots may attract both right and left-wing authors, but successful geopolitical thrillers are always informed by a conservative view of the world.
Stewart Slater
· 10 min read
The Sensitivity Era
Amid literary subcultures, competition has always been fierce and unrelenting and has become even more so in our age of elite overproduction. On social media, these embittered rivalries play out in public amid a chorus of backbiting worthy of Chekhov.
Robert Huddleston
· 8 min read
Because the Night Belongs to Lovers
Love is transformative—and in A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Shakespeare is clear-sighted about the fact that that transformation can be for the worse.
Iona Italia
· 8 min read
Another Tiresome Trans-Activist Power Play
The campaign to strip novelist John Boyne of his Polari Prize longlist honour shows that gender extremists still seek to control progressive arts subcultures—even as mainstream society rejects their illiberal movement.
Allan Stratton
· 9 min read
A Heterodox Education
The Constance Holden Memorial Address, 2025.
Claire Lehmann
· 22 min read
Science, Funding, and Economic Prosperity
A reply to Lawrence Krauss.
Zachary Robert Caverley
· 6 min read
His Satanic Majesty Retires
A tribute to the man who helped to revolutionise modern rock music and reality TV.
Dave Thompson
· 12 min read
The Mediocrity Feedback Loop
If leading media critics don’t expect much, filmmakers won’t deliver much.
Charlotte Allen
· 15 min read
Deprograming Patriotism
‘The Technological Republic’ is a searching indictment of a culture that has lost sight of its metaphysical horizons and now seeks an escape from history.
Brian Stewart
· 11 min read