On a weekend trip to Brighton, three friends and I are watching some standup comedy in a small, hot room. We’re almost the only people there, and the comedian picks us out and asks how we know each ...

Writing a proper biography of Shakespeare is virtually impossible given the shortage of hard data about him. Actually, it’s not that limited for someone who lived 400 years ago, and who never got ...

With deepfakes and chatbots eroding our shared reality, fact checking and news gathering are more vital than ever ...

The time of the superhero is over. In the third decade of the 21st century, we like our entertainment considerably darker ...

©BANANA PANCAKE/GETTY IMAGES I’ve seen a good deal in England which suggested that, just maybe, not all was well with the collective psyche—the in-your-face binge drinking, the bookies stoking ...

In the last year, the United States has transitioned from flawed liberal democracy to competitive authoritarianism. In this new regime, institutions as diverse as universities, law firms and news ...

Corrado Gini (pictured) was a creative and wide-ranging sociologist, demographer and statistician—but not the sort of human being who is remembered fondly. Photo: Prospect composite Concern about ...

It is commonly acknowledged that while biological sex is genetically determined, gender is a social construct. A human being cannot—and should not—be reduced to their biology, or indeed their genitals ...

Given how central journalists like to say their profession is to keeping the public informed, you might think that relentless retrenchment in the industry over the past decade would leave people ...

Twelve months ago, we published our shortlist of Top Thinkers for 2024—and you, Prospect readers, chose well. You picked Daron Acemoglu as the winner, and in October he received a second accolade: the ...

This is not the time for negotiations over Ukraine. Successful peace negotiations usually require both a mutually hurting stalemate (a specific concept in diplomacy) and leadership on both sides ...

For all Aristotle’s reputation as the greatest of the ancient philosophers, most today rightly bracket off his defence of slavery and his dim view of the intellectual capacities of women as ...