Outside the system
Column / Investigation: The Upside Down
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The Upside Down: Why the Tuskegee Experiment Still Resonates
John Mitchinson explores the lasting impact of a controversial American study steeped in the institutional racism which continues to permeate the country today
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The Upside Down: Why Folk Songs Still Mean Something
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
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The Upside Down: Men Are From Earth, So Are Women
John Mitchinson explores how our brains reflect our lives not our genitals John Gray’s Men are from Mars, Women are From Venus was the highest-selling non-fiction title of the 1990s. With sales of over 15 million copies across 40 languages, it created its own publishing ecosystem: Why Men Don’t Listen and Women Can’t Read Maps;…
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The Upside Down: Why Apples are Odder than they Look
John Mitchinson explores the diversity within the fruit of knowledge
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The Upside Down: Why Being ‘Bird-Brained’ is a Compliment
Warbling, tweeting, courting, teaching – John Mitchinson explores the ever-deepening mystery of birdsong
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The Upside Down: Breaking the Frame of History
John Mitchinson lifts the lid on why the Luddites weren’t really ‘Luddite’
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The Upside Down: Themself Alone
John Mitchinson explores a surprisingly modern role model from the backstreets of Jacobean London
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The Upside Down: Back to the Future
John Mitchinson explores why we are hardwired to remember the past, with memories that are made in the moment
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The Upside Down: We Won’t Bow Down – What I Learned in New Orleans
John Mitchinson reflects on his latest trip to the ‘Big Easy’
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The Upside Down: Where Is the Man? The Many Lives of Pontius Pilate
John Mitchinson explores the enduring fascination with the man who was asked to send Jesus to his death
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The Upside Down: Let Them Eat Nothing
John Mitchinson explores how the horrors of the Holodomor still underpin Ukrainian identity
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The Upside Down: Kissing Cousins – Why Learning About Neanderthals Teaches Us More About Ourselves
John Mitchinson explores why our closest cousins were wrongly defamed as boorish, rude stupid louts
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The Upside Down: Glass Act – The Substance that Enabled the Scientific Revolution
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
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The Upside Down: Slow Company – The Shameful History of Humans and the Giant Tortoise
John Mitchinson explains why our relationship with these fascinating creatures is such a depressing one
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The Upside Down: The Appeal of Hibernation
If humans can’t yet hibernate, could we approach something like the ‘torpor’ that bears and other larger mammals practice? asks John Mitchinson
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The Upside Down: Wish You Were Here – The Persistence of the Postcard
With emails, text messages and WhatsApp groups now a dominant feature of all our lives, John Mitchinson considers the enduring qualities of a more humble form of social communication
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THE UPSIDE DOWN: Less Is More – What Buckminster Fuller Still has to Teach Us
John Mitchinson explores the lessons in the inventor, philosopher and mathematician’s ‘doing more with less’ philosophy
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The Upside Down: Odd and Odder – The True Value of Eccentricity
John Mitchinson makes the case for those who have lived and died by their own rules, flying in the face of conventionality
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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.
