Today
TODAY – BBC RADIO FOUR. I was on Friday’s programme (8 March) talking about revenge with Natalie Haynes. You can[…]
ReadAuthor: Julian Baggini
Can’t or won’t?
As long as something remains logically possible, some people can’t help but wonder if their dream might become a reality, given enough desire or effort. This is exacerbated by the fact that our culture encourages people to dream big and believe that “impossibility” is simply the hobgoblin of negative minds…
ReadBibliocide
No civilised person is supposed to make bonfires of books. ‘Wherever they burn books they will also, in the end, burn human beings,’ wrote the German poet Heinrich Heine in the century before Nazism. Burning books is a sacrilegious act, and the taboo against it particularly binds writers. So what was I doing in a Somerset field lighting a match under the 32 volumes of the Encyclopædia Britannica?
ReadThe Ill-Starred Church of Atheism
OXFORD UNION – 5 MARCH. Come to the Ill-Starred Church of Atheism for a service with a difference. Starts at 7:30.[…]
ReadShould we fake it till we make it?
Like many, I suffer from a mild form of imposter syndrome: the persistent or recurring feeling that one day I will be exposed as an incompetent fraud. I say “suffer” but actually I think some kind of fear of fakery is entirely healthy and appropriate. More often than not, people are where they are by a combination of talent and hard work, aided by a dash of luck and chutzpah. How can we be sure that in our own cases, what ought to be the dashes are not in fact the principal ingredients? …
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