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SubscriptionsColumn / Investigation: The Upside Down
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The Upside Down: Let Them Eat Bread
John Mitchinson charts a brief history of British food and the emergence of a humble meal enjoyed billions of times each year
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The Upside Down: Outrageous! Are We Hardwired for Scandal?
John Mitchinson unearths some of the juiciest incidents turning the gossip mills of times past
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The Upside Down: The Lie of the Land
John Mitchinson explains why we should listen to the farmers and why their plight deserves our attention
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The Upside Down: The Cobbett Conundrum
John Mitchinson explores the problematic legacy of one of the founding fathers of English radicalism
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THE UPSIDE DOWN: Mental Slavery – What ‘Moving Forward’ Will Require for America
John Mitchinson explores how the mental structures that enabled slavery are still alive and thriving in the United States today
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The Upside Down: Long Live the Elders! The Exemplary Life of Barry Lopez
John Mitchinson returns with his reflections on the final book of the late great American author and what it reveals about the demands on humans to evolve ethically in order to meet the many challenges on the horizon
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The Upside Down: The Year of No Yule – How the Puritans Created Christmas Without Meaning To
John Mitchinson explains how increasing intolerance around festivities in the 17th Century helped promote a reactionary backlash
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The Upside Down: Why the Poetry of Claudia Rankine is Essential Reading for Right Now
John Mitchinson considers how the author combines the integrity of an investigative journalist with a rhetorical urgency in a timely exploration of whiteness
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THE UPSIDE DOWN: Very Like a Whale – We Need to Rethink Our Relationship with Nature
John Mitchinson is back with another fact and fun-filled insight into the human animal and what we can learn from orcas and octopuses
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THE UPSIDE DOWN: History’s Greatest Headline – Why the Dreyfus Affair Still Reverberates
John Mitchinson reflects on what may be the finest moment in print journalism – the use of the press as a channel of truth and justice
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THE UPSIDE DOWN: The Shocking Brutality of Empire was a Scandal In Its Own Time
John Mitchinson considers the relationship British people have with their country’s past and how questions raised by uncomfortable imperial truths remain unanswered
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THE UPSIDE DOWN: Keep Clean and Carry On
John Mitchinson explores how pandemics can have odd and unexpected consequences and ponders what the new ‘normal’ will be post-COVID-19
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THE UPSIDE DOWN: The Eloquence of Saying Nothing
John Mitchinson explores how being quiet and listening might help us to adjust to the isolation imposed on us by the Coronavirus – and beyond.
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The UPSIDE DOWN: This Too Shall Pass – What Defoe’s Plague Journal Can Still Teach Us
As the Coronavirus pandemic changes all of our lives, John Mitchinson reflects on how the observations of humanity revealed in such moments of crisis transcend time and place.
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THE UPSIDE DOWN: Raising Hell – The Long Afterlife of William Blake
John Mitchinson explores the lasting resonance of the works of the English poet and artist who attracted little acclaim during his lifetime.
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THE UPSIDE DOWN: The Lie of the Land – We Need to Talk about the Enclosures
John Mitchinson considers the economic and psychic dangers of land appropriation.
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THE UPSIDE DOWN: Reasons to be Cheerful
John Mitchinson sets out why the Greek philosopher Epicurus’ legacy has been claimed by hedonism but actually represents the opposite and is so relevant for our anxious times.
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THE UPSIDE DOWN: Mongrel Tongue – Is English Really So Special?
John Mitchinson on why we should celebrate the success of the flexibility of the English language which enables its richness.
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THE UPSIDE DOWN: Why Are We So Quiet About Language Death?
John Mitchinson on why biodiversity helps explain why we are all impoverished by the loss of languages.
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THE UPSIDE DOWN: Puppy Love
Why do dogs and humans have such a special affinity? They tamed each other.
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THE UPSIDE DOWN: Not So New New Year – The original Winterval
John Mitchinson traces the significance of New Year and where the customs associated with it originated.
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THE UPSIDE DOWN: Making Better People – Why Eugenics Refuses to Die
Even if we could make fitter, cleverer humans, would that make them more valuable people?
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THE UPSIDE DOWN: The Point of Wasps
John Mitchinson on why we should cut the pub garden pest some slack.
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THE UPSIDE DOWN: Not The Normal Norfolk – The Original Opioid Crisis
John Mitchinson on the warm haze of opioid bliss – for good and for ill – experienced by the Victorians. If there ever was a golden age for hard drug use, it was the Victorian era. The widespread use of laudanum (opium dissolved in alcohol) had first been encouraged by the greatest English doctor of…
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THE UPSIDE DOWN: The Limits of Charm – Britain’s Worst Ever MP
John Mitchinson on the life and times of Ignácz Trebitsch and the prescient lessons our politicians can take from his grisly demise.
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THE UPSIDE DOWN: Learning to Love Weeds
John Mitchinson explores why weeds force us to think differently about what is and isn’t ‘natural’
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THE UPSIDE DOWN: Show Me the Money – the Story of the First Journalist
John Mitchinson recounts the life of Daniel Defoe, the Patron Saint of Freelancers and Master of Aliases, who hustled journalism into existence three hundred years ago.
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THE UPSIDE DOWN: Is Alexander Dugin Putin’s Brain?
John Mitchinson on the ideologue who revived ‘Eurasianism’. Is Dugin really the Rasputin behind a more aggressive Kremlin? Or is he another post-truth prank?
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THE UPSIDE DOWN: Why Britain Owes So Much to the Navvies
John Mitchinson explores the transformational contribution, too easily overlooked, by the labourers who built the country’s canals and railways.
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THE UPSIDE DOWN: Gene Genies
John Mitchinson turns his curious eye towards the Brave New World of Epigenetics – what is ‘On’ rather than ‘In’ our Genes.
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THE UPSIDE DOWN: Early and Often – A Short History of Fixing Elections
John Mitchinson on the not-so-recent history of rigging the vote, bribing voters with booze and voter suppression, using whiskey
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THE UPSIDE DOWN: Mould Breakers – the Magic and Mystery of Shrooms
If this column were to have a mascot, it would be a mushroom. Fungi are everywhere, they are important, they are deeply weird and we know very little about them.
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THE UPSIDE DOWN: Dead Centre – the Collective Avoidance of Dying
For most of us in the so-called developed world, death is rarely confronted head-on. At best, it’s ‘the rumble of distant thunder at a picnic’.
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THE UPSIDE DOWN: Search Me –when did Google Become So Shallow?
As Facebook and other global tech giants come under scrutiny over the way they amass our data, John Mitchinson reveals how Google has less information
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THE UPSIDE DOWN: Wetworld – the Most Unlikely Thing in the Universe
We live in strange times. Familiarity is draining from our lives; old political alignments are dissolving; the weather is unpredictable and violent. But perhaps we should try harder to embrace the strangeness: after all, we are made from the most unlikely thing in the universe.
