SubscriptionsSection: Culture & Society
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John Berger at 100
Peter Jukes celebrates the centenary of the birth of John Berger – one of the figures who inspires Byline Times’ analysis on the ideas we think with
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We Speak Therefore We Are
John Mitchinson finds inspiration in a book that explores why linguistic diversity is the key to a healthy culture
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The Chatbot and the Bureaucrat
Will AI end humanity or save it? It may be more mundane than that, writes James Bloodworth
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Bonnie Greer: Never Nobody But Herself
Stephen Colegrave pays tribute to our much-loved contributor who died in September
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‘We’re Trying to Normalise Changing One’s Mind’
Rich Logis was as deep into MAGA as a Trump supporter can be. Until he left. He speaks to Hardeep Matharu about the organisation he has created to help others exit the ‘extremist group’ – and to repent
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Bonnie Greer: The Golden Thread
Stephen Colegrave pays personal tribute to our much-loved Byline Times contributor, who died last week
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Upside Down
John Mitchinson explains why Tolkien’s ‘The Lord of the Rings’ is the wrong role model for Big Tech
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Finding the Right Energy to Tackle Our Existential Climate Dread
John Mitchinson finds an inspiring warmth in the reality-checking work of climate justice activist Mikaela Loach
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The Digital Domain Is the Most Mortal of All
Social media and digital storage are radically changing our concept of time and consciousness of death, writes Peter Jukes
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Directed by History
Stephen Unwin is bringing back ‘Man to Man’ almost 40 years after first working on the seminal play with Tilda Swinton. What’s changed?
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Who Owns Our Beautiful Game?
Global capital is threatening a takeover of the essence of football – but it’s that essence that makes the sport such a commodity, writes James Bloodworth
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‘You Want to Love His Music. Without Thinking That This Guy Raped Kids Year After Year’
After the phenomenal success of the Michael Jackson biopic this year, Hardeep Matharu sat down with Dan Reed, the director of ‘Leaving Neverland’ – which documented sexual abuse allegations against the late singer – to explore how he feels seeing the icon’s continued success, the cult of the ‘cultural god’, and telling complicated truths
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Otto English as Katharine Birbalsingh
Back to school season takes me back. It all began when David Cameron approached me at the Conservative Party Conference and told me about his first visit to a state school.
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Reform U-Turns on Reform
Reform UK’s 2024 ‘Our Contract With You’ – Nigel Farage’s manifesto in all but name – couldn’t have been clearer in backing “proportional representation voting for the House of Commons”.
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The Two Professors and a ‘War On Ideas’
The different stories of the Cambridge academics Jason Arday and James Orr reveal the wider cultural and ideological forces around hierarchies and structural power – and who gets to belong in our institutions
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‘A Polar Bear on an Iceberg? Here’s This Picture of Catastrophe and You’ve Totally Depoliticised It’
The climate crisis can’t be solved without a commitment to fighting injustice at the same time – Asad Rehman, chief executive of Friends of the Earth, sat down with Byline Times’ Editor in Chief to explain why
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Flukes, Strays, Shadows
Automation can’t compete with the material delight of chance encounter in storytelling, writes Peter Jukes
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‘There’s a Value in What We Produce Because We Feel – and an AI Chatbot Can’t Feel’
Byline Times’ Editor in Chief meets Kate Devlin, Professor of AI and Society at King’s College London, to explore how relationships with AI companions aren’t particularly new, why she believes the under-16s social media ban is flawed, and why human creativity can’t be matched
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Yes, Androids Do Dream of Electric Sheep
Peter Jukes explores how the hallucinations of AI reveal that machines can never match the power of the human unconscious
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Reform UK and Big Tech Palantir Co-Founder Peter Thiel’s ‘Political Pipeline’ Recruitment Project at the World-Renowned University Revealed
The academic institution has nothing to say in response to a six-month investigation by Byline Times raising serious concerns about the safeguarding of students and hard-right and foreign influence at Cambridge University. Why?
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The Upside Down – Citizen Ben
Any attempt to calculate the specific gravity of America at 250 should take time out to reflect on the life and legacy of Benjamin Franklin.
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Zeitgeisters – Mark Booth
‘Jonathan Black’ was revealed to be the successful publisher Mark Booth, and much was made of his insider’s knack for finding an intelligent and accessible way of presenting material of cosmic weirdness and obscurity.
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The Far-Right Billionaire Who Is Buying Up French Culture
Vincent Bollore is helping push France to the right as he gathers a growing empire of publishing houses, newspapers, and film studios across the country
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Why has BBC Radio 4’s Today Programme Never Had a Black Editor or Presenter?
The absence of non-white journalists on the BBC’s flagship news programme is not just a symbolic failure – but one of diversity in power, authority, and leadership, writes the director of the Sir Lenny Henry Centre at Birmingham City University
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Makerfield: Can the ‘Politics of Place’ Offer an Antidote to the Poverty of Possibility?
Having been on Reform UK’s target list as a winnable seat, Andy Burnham’s new constituency is a microcosm of Brexit Britain and the failed legacies of Thatcher and Blair. Peter Jukes and Hardeep Matharu paid a visit ahead of its seminal by-election
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Half Man: ‘We’re Beginning to Get a Better, Much More Nuanced Understanding… Vulnerability is a Part of Masculinity Now’
Hardeep Matharu speaks to Duncan Craig, founder of We Are Survivors – a charity supporting survivors of male sexual abuse – about why the ‘toxic masculinity’ narrative has been problematic, and the eye-opening exploration of complex male relationships in Richard Gadd’s new six-part series Half Man
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The Tyranny of Literacy: How Writing Only Scratches the Surface
Text has always been more a technology of control than true creativity, writes Peter Jukes
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‘Hockney’s Art Was as Much an Intellectual Exercise as It Was an Expression of the Joy He Took From Being Alive’
Henry Porter remembers the colourful life and work of the celebrated British artist David Hockney, who died this month
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Be part of The Fête of Britain
Football brings us together – but that shared sense of a diverse and definitive collective identity needs to be built beyond the World Cup, Alanna Byrne
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The Upside Down – Eye of Newt
Most of us know that animals such as ibis, jackals, and crocodiles were venerated by the Ancient Egyptians as avatars for their deities. But the pre-eminence of Heqet, the frog-headed bringer of life, comes as a surprise.
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Zeitgeisters – Margaret Heffernan
Margaret Heffernan has been blurring the line between business leadership and creative thinking for more than two decades.
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Anthem of the North
The poet and author spent the first 12 years of his life in Ashton-in-Makerfield where he was placed with a foster family shortly after his birth in 1967. Here, reproduced with his permission, is a poem he wrote in 2018 to launch the Great Exhibition of the North in Newcastle
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Half Man: ‘We’re Beginning to Get a Better, Much More Nuanced Understanding… Vulnerability is a Part of Masculinity Now’
Byline Times’ Editor in Chief speaks to Duncan Craig, founder of We Are Survivors – a charity supporting survivors of male sexual abuse – about why the ‘toxic masculinity’ narrative has been problematic, and the eye-opening exploration of complex male relationships in Richard Gadd’s new six-part series ‘Half Man’
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‘We Can See Beyond the Surface and Understand that this Character, this Person, is Much More Complicated… Theatre Can Give You That’
Byline Times’ Editor in Chief meets Josephine Burton – creator and director of a new play ‘Our Public House’ by Dash Arts which examines political alienation in Britain today – and two real-life speech-makers taking to the stage each night
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Hedge Funds and Tech Bros: Reform UK James Orr’s Road to Damascus
How did Nigel Farage’s head of policy move from corporate law to political religiosity? Peter Jukes and Nafeez Ahmed report
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‘I Hadn’t Anticipated Developing Empathy for Them, But You Can See How the Conspirituality Belief System Also Serves as a Set of Coping Mechanisms’
Hardeep Matharu introduced Liz Smith and Noelle Cook’s film, ‘The Conspiracists’, at its London premiere in April. She speaks to the British director and American writer about the eye-opening documentary tracking their journey to understand the lives of the women convicted for their role in the January 6 insurrection
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Zeitgeisters – Martin Shaw
Martin Shaw’s life resembles one of the stories he tells with such fluency and grace.
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‘I Hadn’t Anticipated Developing Empathy for Them, But You Can See How the Conspirituality Belief System Also Serves as a Set of Coping Mechanisms’
Byline Times’ Editor in Chief speaks to director Liz Smith and writer Noelle Cook about their journey into the world of ‘conspirituality’ for a new documentary shedding light on the women attracted to MAGA, their ‘soul contracts’, and existence in the ‘5D’ world
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The Upside Down – Smart Moves
One of the things that grates about the obsessive media opinionising over artificial intelligence is the general lack of knowledge about our own actual human intelligence.
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Zeitgeisters – Zakia Sewell
Zakia Sewell is a writer and broadcaster and the presenter of the ever excellent ‘Dream Time’ show on Radio 6 Music on Sunday evenings.
