Written by

John Mitchinson

John Mitchinson is a writer and publisher and co-founder of Unbound, the world's leading crowdfunding platform for books. He was previously Director of Research and a senior writer for the BBC TV show 'QI'. He is co-host of the popular books podcast Backlisted and a Vice-President of the Hay Festival. He writes a monthly column, 'The Upside Down', for Byline Times

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The Upside Down: Why We Underestimate Fungi at Our Peril

, 17 March 2023
Perhaps it is the atavistic fear of something growing inside us and consuming us from within that makes us feel so ambivalent towards fungi, writes John Mitchinson

The Upside Down: Why the Tuskegee Experiment Still Resonates

, 17 February 2023
John Mitchinson explores the lasting impact of a controversial American study steeped in the institutional racism which continues to permeate the country today

The Upside Down: Why Folk Songs Still Mean Something

, 13 January 2023
The longer we look at this traditional music, the more we see that its very malleability is its strength and its challenge, writes John Mitchinson

The Upside Down: Why We Still Celebrate Christmas with Dickens

, 21 December 2022
John Mitchinson explores the enduring relevance of the "little Christmas book" the author penned in 1843

The Upside Down: Men Are From Earth, So Are Women

, 25 November 2022

The Upside Down: Why Apples are Odder than they Look

, 14 October 2022
John Mitchinson explores the diversity within the fruit of knowledge

The Upside Down: Why Being ‘Bird-Brained’ is a Compliment

, 16 September 2022
Warbling, tweeting, courting, teaching – John Mitchinson explores the ever-deepening mystery of birdsong

The Upside Down: Breaking the Frame of History

, 9 August 2022
John Mitchinson lifts the lid on why the Luddites weren’t really ‘Luddite’

The Upside Down: Themself Alone

, 12 July 2022
John Mitchinson explores a surprisingly modern role model from the backstreets of Jacobean London

The Upside Down: Back to the Future

, 17 June 2022
John Mitchinson explores why we are hardwired to remember the past, with memories that are made in the moment

The Upside Down: We Won’t Bow Down – What I Learned in New Orleans

, 20 May 2022
John Mitchinson reflects on his latest trip to the ‘Big Easy’

The Upside Down: Where Is the Man? The Many Lives of Pontius Pilate

, 14 April 2022
John Mitchinson explores the enduring fascination with the man who was asked to send Jesus to his death

The Upside Down: Let Them Eat Nothing

, 18 March 2022
John Mitchinson explores how the horrors of the Holodomor still underpin Ukrainian identity

The Upside Down: Kissing Cousins – Why Learning About Neanderthals Teaches Us More About Ourselves

, 18 February 2022
John Mitchinson explores why our closest cousins were wrongly defamed as boorish, rude stupid louts

The Upside Down: Glass Act – The Substance that Enabled the Scientific Revolution

, 21 January 2022
John Mitchinson explains why gazing out of his window or at his computer screen brings him wonderment at an invention we spend little time observing

The Upside Down: The Appeal of Hibernation

, 12 November 2021

The Upside Down: Let Them Eat Bread

, 13 July 2021

The Upside Down: The Lie of the Land

, 14 May 2021

The Upside Down: The Cobbett Conundrum

, 13 April 2021

THE UPSIDE DOWN: Keep Clean and Carry On

, 4 May 2020

THE UPSIDE DOWN: The Eloquence of Saying Nothing

, 6 April 2020

THE UPSIDE DOWN: Reasons to be Cheerful

, 24 February 2020

THE UPSIDE DOWN: Puppy Love

, 20 January 2020
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