Time for big tech to share data about themselves They know a lot more than we do about screen addiction and mental wellbeing

Jess Phillips: How I became my caricature At an event last night, the MP explained how politicians can turn into the worst version of themselves

Should we give the cabinet an IQ test? Ministers ought to be capable of creative, original thought — but that's rarely tested in public

Tuesday

18.02

Extinction Rebellion is on a dangerous path The XR movement has a lot in common with religious fundamentalists

The medieval trial of Caroline Flack Trying to remove 'bad influences' reflects a pre-modern idea of what it is to be human

Schools don’t teach about the British Empire — and that’s a good thing Secondary-level history is too limited to teach complex subject matters

Monday

17.02

Churches are closing down — I won’t let mine be one of them The bricks of a church are a statement of Christian defiance

LISTEN: Tom Chivers on Andrew Sabisky and eugenics Our columnist features on The Today Programme to discuss Andrew Sabisky

Without God, it’s harder to defend against eugenics With no religious authority, we lack the language to reject moral atrocities like human selection

Mary Harrington

Saturday

15.02

America’s conservatives are turning radical Two prominent writers are calling for a quiet revolution

Mary Harrington

Friday

14.02

Even George Soros is now a China hawk The billionaire's recent comments reveal a wider crack up among the liberal elite

Mr Jones is a lesson in the dangers of groupthink The journalist exposed the horrors of the Stalinist regime — much to the disdain of educated westerners

Thursday

13.02

WATCH: Justin Welby apologises for his ‘white advantage’ The Archbishop of Canterbury also said the Church is 'still deeply institutionally racist'

Please Boris, let HS2 be your last white elephant The PM should check his attraction to 'grands projets'

Here’s to Chaucer Lane and Attlee Avenue! The PM wants to name a train station after Margaret Thatcher — we should commemorate national icons like this more often

Wednesday

12.02

WATCH: New Tory MP Kieran Mullan maiden speech The Crewe MP on the importance of family, place and belonging in today's world

Got to hand it to him, Boris is good on cycling The PM's cycle plans are the sort of thing that small-c conservatives should welcome

Get ready for a brokered convention There was no clear winner in New Hampshire

Tuesday

11.02

Why shouldn’t modern buildings be beautiful? Beauty doesn't always need to serve a structural purpose

Is it time to give up on the ‘nuclear family’? David Brooks asks some difficult questions in his latest column

Dominic Cummings must win the battle of the SpAds A reformed cadre of advisors is an important first step

Monday

10.02

Advice for the BBC’s next director-general Why the BBC and the Church of England have a great deal in common

Corinthian columns won’t fix Milton Keynes Neoclassical architecture isn't a solution in of itself

Mary Harrington

Sunday

09.02

Middle-class patriotism goes underground An Evensong service left me with an emotion I realised I hadn’t felt for some time

Saturday

08.02

The voice of manual work in the world of letters Bud Smith's account of working in an oil refinery shows how both worlds view the other as more authentic

Mary Harrington

Friday

07.02

As long as universities are businesses, forget about free speech The government's opening salvo in the culture wars ignores the bigger problem

Mary Harrington

On campus free speech, the government will have a fight on its hands Encouraging signs from the Education Secretary, but it's only a start

St Hilda’s demolishes its chapel, and the humanists crow A 'multi-faith space' is about as spiritual as a dentist's waiting room

Thursday

06.02

Being wrong isn’t being hateful The shifting definition of hate speech is flawed and dangerous

Geek tip: if it doesn’t say “Registered Report,” don’t trust it A new study shows how effective the academic system to avoid bias really is

What Walter Bagehot would say about the State of the Union The essayist understood the difference between the political and ceremonial

Wednesday

05.02

It’s time for the church to go green Lent is the perfect opportunity for Christians to reclaim environmentalism

Mary Harrington

Boris is right — mercantilists are everywhere Unilaterally adhering to free-market ideology doesn't seem to be working so well for us either

RIP George Steiner, prophet of attention The deceased cultural critic understood that our attention is our highest gift

Elizabeth Oldfield

Tuesday

04.02

My three-year-old should not know about ‘stress’ We have been subject to increasingly shrill claims about a crisis of childhood

Take that, Leavers: some British things might be slightly foreign The Brexit-themed Horrible Histories has re-ignited a stupid debate

And the winner from Iowa is… Donald Trump Only the Republicans benefit from the chaos in Iowa

In (partial) defence of Grace Blakeley The commentator is right to say that alternatives to neoliberalism are being heard

Monday

03.02

WATCH: Boris on the end of the ‘B word’ More classical rhetoric from the prime minister...

The Google Maps hack underlines our powerlessness It is a metaphor for the defeatism of postmodernism

Mary Harrington

Andrew Yang, the ‘think outside the box’ candidate The geeky former tech executive has a unique bipartisan appeal

Saturday

01.02

This piece about the 1990s rave scene takes me back Today's rave revisionism points to a culture in decline

Mary Harrington

Friday

31.01

After Brexit night, what next? Five of the most thought-provoking, from the archives...

For a different image of freedom, read Stalingrad Douglas Murray missed out Vasily Grossman's all important prequel

These days, Peter the Hermit would have a blue tick Medieval-style cults headed by dysfunctional people are rising to power online

Thursday

30.01

Blair Jr campaigns against the university model of Blair Snr Euan Blair has some different ideas from his father

WATCH: Danny Kruger maiden speech The Devizes MP touches on community, culture and Christianity

Coronavirus leaves no room for cultural sensitivity In a globalised world we need to hold our neighbours to higher standards

Wednesday

29.01

Social media broadens our opinions? Sorry, don’t believe it A new report aims to debunk the idea of social media 'filter bubbles'

The House of Lords should become the Future Chamber It's time to turn the 'revising chamber' into the 'long term chamber'

Memo to the heterosexual heterophobe: why not try chastity? The biggest taboo in contemporary sexual politics is simply going without

Mary Harrington

Tuesday

28.01

Evidence: The Trump impeachment is backfiring on the Democrats Two datapoints will be bringing a smile to Trumpland

Labour must decentralise or die The party has always fallen prey to the top-down, micromanaging Left

Monday

27.01

Ed Balls has been on a journey… in more ways than one A trip to Europe gives the former MP a new political perspective

Office sports chat doesn’t ‘exclude’ anyone It is not, as a BBC interviewee puts it, a gateway drug to more offensive behaviour

The real story from Italy’s election The 'Brothers of Italy' surged, and look like a potential new Salvini partner

Hungary is ahead of the curve on population policy Large parts of the world are facing a demographic crisis

Saturday

25.01

Going vegan will not save the planet The system of resource extraction remains environmentally destructive

Mary Harrington

Friday

24.01

I disagree with the Church about sex, but I’m not leaving Ambivalence about the church you are a member of is not disloyalty, it is maturity

The Joe Rogan endorsement is a big win for Bernie Critics of the YouTube star overlook his anti-establishment appeal

OK Lisa Nandy, I’ll give you my vote The Wigan MP is the least uninspiring of the Labour leadership candidates

Time to introduce virtue into AI ethics Could courage, or love, or patience, be part of ‘ethical data’?

Elizabeth Oldfield

Thursday

23.01

Audio: Giles Fraser meets geneticist Adam Rutherford The author and scientist tackles the difficult topic of race and science

France still sees itself as the Protector of Catholicism The Macron row shows that France takes religion more seriously than Britain

Tyler Cowen is pulling on a dangerous thread The economist's new ideological framework is missing a moral dimension

Wednesday

22.01

Two cheers for the Welsh smacking ban The ruling raises questions about where parental authority should give way to the state

Mary Harrington

China’s coronavirus will not be the next Black Death The swift response shows the world has learned from its past failures

When sensitive language stops helping There comes a point at which arguments over words become a substitute for deeds

Tuesday

21.01

Casting ethnic minority actors in period roles is political It wasn't the best example, but Laurence Fox has a point

Should we send the Lords up north? Moving the House of Lords, while leaving the House of Commons in London, doesn't make much sense

Tony Hall leaves the BBC with an uncertain future The Director-General achieved many things, but his record is not all positive

Monday

20.01

The new ‘Orthodox Conservatives’ are missing a trick A new youth pressure group has set out its core values, but there are some glaring omissions

Mary Harrington

Audio: how bad is Viktor Orban? Phillip Blond and Peter Franklin take opposing views on the virtues of the Hungarian regime

The sixteenth century roots of Gwyneth Paltrow’s candle A new book reveals how our attitude to smell was set relatively recently

Saturday

18.01

How Jesuit missionaries invented spin The cultural legacy of 16th and 17th century missionaries in Brazil and India is still with us today

Mary Harrington

Friday

17.01

In praise of hereditary politicians What if meritocracy is a bad idea and we're better off with hereditary politicians?

Anne Brontë, the forgotten sister who was ahead of her time Anne Brontë, who died 200 years ago today, was more radical than either of her sisters

No, Guy Verhofstadt, citizenship is not a Netflix subscription The latest idea from the EU is part of a wider loss of the importance place

Thursday

16.01

Leavers, not Remainers, deserted Labour in 2019 A spurious claim is being made by some in the party to deflect criticism over the second referendum pledge

The dark side of digital money The end of cash poses a potential threat to personal autonomy

There’s not going to be a Tsar Putin The Russian president's constitutional proposals have been widely misinterpreted

Wednesday

15.01

WATCH: Tributes to the Beast of Bolsover led by Conservatives Tory MP Mark Fletcher paid homage to Dennis Skinner in his maiden speech