"In Hannah Arendt's youthful self-portrait Die Schatten (The Shadows), she described her hunger for experience in the world as being 'trapped in a craving.' What drove her to work from an early age was an insatiable desire to experience and understand life. As she would later come to argue, the work of understanding, unlike the urge to know, requires an active commitment to the activity of thinking; it requires one to always be ready to begin again (9)." - Hill, Samantha Rose. Hannah Arendt. Reaktion Books, 2021.
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There are many works of art about making works of art, but few as absorbing and emotionally arresting as Josephine Decker’s masterwork. All of Decker’s films deserve to be more widely seen, but there’s a singular magic to Madeline’s Madeline. It was the film, and the year, that Helena Howard should have been cemented as a superstar. As the eponymous teenager, Howard is volatile and fragile; split between her complex relationship with her mother Regina (Miranda July, breathtaking) and her deceptively exploitative yet affectionate relationship with the director of her experimental theater troupe, Evangeline (a tender Molly Parker). Decker has such a gift for haptic, expressionistic filmmaking that demands your active attention and emotion. It’s wildly original and innovative in its technical framework, but never distances the audience—the familiar growing pains of the coming-of-age genre hit hard. A vital, affecting piece of cinema to add into your favorites at haste. - Ella Kemp
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AbuNe’meh, Fadi and Sima M. "Enduring Frames: Cinema, Solidarity, Palestinian Resistance." Senses of Cinema #113 (May 2025) ["While writing these words, we are struck by the inadequacy of language in the face of annihilation. In spite of this, we approach this dossier as an attempt to respond to the urgency of our moment—a moment in which the past twenty months have unfolded not only as a moment of unprecedented violence, but as a systemic campaign of erasure. Words fail to convey the horrors endured daily by Palestinians in Gaza and the rest of Palestine. Yet, they remain indispensable weapons in the face of this erasure. As the late Gazan poet Refaat Alareer, murdered by an Israeli airstrike in December 2023, declares, “If I must die, let it bring hope—let it be a tale.”1 Palestinians have not retreated in their resistance. In synchrony with allies worldwide, they have harnessed the “strength” of words, from survivor testimonies to the forensic indictments of the International Court of Justice, from protest chants echoing from Yemen to South Africa and the halls of American universities. These voices have forged a new vernacular of global solidarity that loudly opposes the destruction of people in the name of the settler colonial project. As Mohammed El-Kurd has poignantly made visible, the mainstream Western media has pressured Palestinians to adapt to roles of perfect victims, allowing for what he calls “the politics of appeal” as the dominant model for action. However, once we move away from the realm of Main Street in the US, the UK, Germany, and other genocide supporting countries, a quite different constellation of relations becomes legible. From Irish rappers Kneecap’s protest at Coachella, to Greek dock workers blocking arms shipments to Israel, from movements like Film Workers for Palestine to student encampments demanding divestment, all these actors openly reject the legitimacy of appeals to dominant powers. In demanding justice that interrupts atrocities and holds perpetrators accountable, they inevitably de-centre the West and its former colonial metropoles. These politically committed practices have been instantiated from numerous places across the globe. They chart complex geographies, bringing together diverse strategies of resistance that reshape consciousness and collective action. Reinvigorating old images, they are giving birth to new imaginaries of Palestinian liberation. This dossier highlights cinema and film culture’s contribution to this pivotal historical shift of our current global conjuncture. Still, neither words nor images can stand against the onslaught of arms, drones, and bombs. Nor can they prevent the relentless loss of life. While the torture and horrors inflicted by the Zionist apartheid state, through the myriad mechanisms of its settler colonial project, have been taking place since at least the 1948 Nakba, the scale of violence unleashed in the past two years is unprecedented. Faced with these atrocities, the burning urgency to do something has moved countless people across the world. The question of agency and meaningfulness of actions that do not directly change the situation on the ground in Gaza, in Palestine, as well as in Lebanon, Yemen, and Syria now, looms large. As critical law and theory scholar Brenna Bhandar observed, “the idea that taking political (and legal) action should in some ways make one feel hopeful that a change in course is possible – particularly as it relates to intensive lethal violence – has been challenged by the brazen performance of impunity by Israeli politicians, soldiers and citizens.”"]
Anderson, Elizabeth S. "What is the Point of Equality?" Ethics 109.2 (1999): 287 - 337. ["What has gone wrong here? I shall argue that these problems stem from a flawed understanding of the point of equality. Recent egalitarian writing has come to be dominated by the view that the fundamental aim of equality is to compensate people for undeserved bad luck-being born with poor native endowments, bad parents, and disagreeable personalities, suffering from accidents and illness, and so forth. I shall argue that in focusing on correcting a supposed cosmic injustice, recent egalitarian writing has lost sight of the distinctively political aims of egalitarianism. The proper negative aim of egalitarian justice is not to eliminate the impact of brute luck from human affairs, but to end oppression, which by definition is socially imposed. Its proper positive aim is not to ensure that everyone gets what they morally deserve, but to create a community in which people stand in relations of equality to others."]
Anderson, Ellie and David Peña-Guzmán. "Cleanliness." Overthink #128 (April 22, 2025) ["How often should you shower to remain ‘clean’? How many times can you re-wear your jeans before they are considered ‘dirty’? In episode 128 of Overthink, Ellie and David take a look at cleanliness. They get into how humans have turned cleanliness into an art, and maybe even an obsession. Why are we so bothered by dirt? What is dirt, anyways? How are notions of dirtiness and cleanliness even into our symbolic systems, including language and religion? And what is up with TikTok’s obsession with the Clean Girl Aesthetic? As they tackle these questions, your hosts also explore the historical weaponisation of the concept of cleanliness against marginalised groups, such as queer people and people of color. In the bonus, Ellie and David discuss cleanliness as a social construct, the link between it and isolation, and Michel Serres’s ‘excremental theory’ of private property."]
Bell, Thomas W. and Michael Smith. "We The People: Canary in the Coal Mine." Throughline (July 24, 2025) ["The Third Amendment. Maybe you've heard it as part of a punchline. It's the one about quartering troops — two words you probably haven't heard side by side since about the late 1700s. At first glance, it might not seem super relevant to modern life. But in fact, the U.S. government has gotten away with violating the Third Amendment several times since its ratification — and every time it's gone largely unnoticed. In a time of escalating political violence, police forces armed with military equipment, and more frequent and devastating natural disasters, why the Third Amendment deserves a closer look."]
Blyth, Mark. "The History of Bad Ideas: Austerity." Past Present Future (June 15, 2025) ["For the first episode in our new series about how bad ideas take hold, David talks to economist Mark Blyth about austerity, the cost-cutting idea that refuses to die. Why is it an article of faith that states need periodic purging to stop them getting too greedy? Why does this so often happen at times when it does most harm, from the 1930s to the financial crisis that began in 2008? And how is the politics of austerity playing out today, in Starmer’s Britain, in Milei’s Argentina and in the DOGE wars happening in Trump’s America?"]
Cook, Katsi. "Women are the First Environment." On Being (April 24, 2025) ["Katsi Cook is a beacon in an array of quiet powerful worlds — a magnetic, joyous, loving presence. The public conversation we offer up here was part of a gathering where a fantastic group of young people had come to be nourished, to explore the depths of what community can mean, to become more grounded and whole. They’ve taken to sitting at the feet of this Mohawk wise woman, mother, and grandmother, and you will experience why. Globally renowned in the field of midwifery, Katsi’s practice and teaching is based in ancient ancestral knowledge, and has taken an esteemed place in research and advances in the science of environmental reproductive health. As founder of the National Aboriginal Council of Midwives of Canada, her work is at heart, she says, about the “reclamation of the transformative power of birth.” Katsi is helping our world recover the natural human experience of cross-generational companionship and care. This conversation you’ll hear between her and Krista, sitting in a room of mostly young people, was an exercise in the art of eldering — which Katsi Cook calls nothing more and nothing less than “generational wealth transmission.” Katsi Cook Katsi Cook is an Onkwehonweh traditional midwife, elder, and Executive Director of Spirit Aligned Leadership Program. She is a Wolf Clan member of the Akwesasne Mohawk Nation and resides at the St. Regis Mohawk Tribe in upstate New York. Her groundbreaking environmental research of Mohawk mother's milk revealed the intergenerational impact of industrial chemicals on the health and well-being of an entire community. Katsi leads a movement of matrilineal awareness and rematriation in Native life. Her book discussed in this episode is Worlds Within Us: Wisdom and Resilience of Indigenous Women Elders."]
Dripps, Donald and Corinna Barrett Lain. "We the People: The Right to Remain Silent." Throughline (March 27, 2025) ["The Fifth Amendment. You have the right to remain silent when you're being questioned in police custody, thanks to the Fifth's protection against self-incrimination. But most people end up talking to police anyway. Why? Today on Throughline's We the People: the Fifth Amendment, the right to remain silent, and how hard it can be to use it. Guests: Donald Dripps, Professor of Law at the University of San Diego. Corinna Barrett Lain, Professor of Law at the University of Richmond School of Law."]
Dromgoole, Dominic. "The History of Revolutionary Ideas: The Rite of Spring." Past Present Future (April 17, 2025) ['Our third Parisian revolution is another explosive night in the theatre, this time in the world of dance. David talks to Dominic Dromgoole about Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring, which provoked absolute outrage when it premiered in 1913. Is that what its impresario Diaghilev wanted? How did Nijinsky cope? Did the response foreshadow the trauma to come in 1914? And how did the set designer Roerich end up playing a part in American presidential history? Dominic Dromgoole’s Astonish Me! First Nights that Changed the World.]
Farrell, Maria and Robin Berjon. "We Need to Rewild the Internet." NOEMA (April 16, 2024) ["The internet has become an extractive and fragile monoculture. But we can revitalize it using lessons learned by ecologists."]
Ford, Phil and J.F. Martel. "On Charles Burns' Black Hole and the Medium of Comics." Weird Studies #176 (September 25, 2024) ["Comics, like cinema, is an eminently modern medium. And as with cinema, looking closely at it can swiftly acquaint us with the profound weirdness of modernity. Do that in the context of a discussion on Charles Burns' comic masterpiece Black Hole, and you're guaranteed a memorable Weird Studies episode. Black Hole was serialized over ten years beginning in 1995, and first released as a single volume by Pantheon Books in 2005. Like all masterpieces, it shines both inside and out: it tells a captivating story, a "weirding" of the teenage romance genre, while also revealing something of the inner workings of comics as such. In this episode, Phil and JF explore the singular wonders of a medium that, thanks to artists like Burns, has rightfully ascended from the trash stratum to the coveted empyrean of artistic respectability—without losing its edge."]
Frederick, John. "We the People: Succession of Power." Throughline (March 6, 2025) ["The 25th amendment. A few years before JFK was shot, an idealistic young lawyer set out on a mission to convince people something essential was missing from the Constitution: clear instructions for what should happen if a U.S. president was no longer able to serve. On this episode of our ongoing series We the People, the story behind one of the last amendments to the Constitution, and the man who got it done." John Feerick, Norris Professor of Law at Fordham Law School and author of The Twenty-Fifth Amendment - Its Complete History and Applications.]
Graves, Lisa. "Chilling: Wisconsin Gov. Evers Pushes Back After Trump’s Border Czar Threatens to Arrest Him." Democracy Now (May 5, 2025) ["We go to Wisconsin as the state’s Democratic Governor Tony Evers pushes back after Trump border czar Tom Homan says Wisconsin officials could be arrested over local policies that defy Trump’s mass deportation agenda. This comes after FBI agents arrested Milwaukee County Judge Hannah Dugan. “I think what we’re seeing, in a broader sense, is just an absolute degradation of the rule of law,” says Lisa Graves, a former deputy assistant attorney general in the Department of Justice, now the director of the policy research group True North Research and co-host of the podcast Legal AF. Her forthcoming book is Without Precedent: How Chief Justice Roberts and His Accomplices Rewrote the Constitution and Dismantled Our Rights."]
Habib, Connor, and Douglas Rushkoff. "All-Together in the Anti-Human Era." Team Human #125 (September 22, 2020) ["Fascists, intense weather, immigration panics, global health crises, authoritarian governments, ideological divisions, conspiracies, fake news and fake experts and fake press conferences, the singularities, the doomsdayers, the white power psychopaths. What do we do? I draw inspiration from my long time pal and this episode's guest: media analyst, prolific author and the Team Human podcast host, Doug Rushkoff! What do we come up with? Well, that being human is the most radical and subversive strategy in an anti-human era. And what does it mean to be human? Finding the others, of course. But also seeing the others, and seeing the other in yourself. This might sound like a simple answer, but getting there is complex. Also? It's exciting and bizarre and intense, In case you've been missing out all this time, Doug is the author of a whole shelf of books; my favorite of which are his latest, Team Human, a manifesto based on his podcast; and Present Shock: When Everything Happens Now. Doug is always one (or five) steps ahead of everyone else. I'm so happy to have had this conversation with him, and to share it with you. It's warm and full of laughter and connection. ON THIS EPISODE: What is the anti-human agenda, and what does it mean to be human? Why Malcolm Gladwell, Steven Pinker, and Richard Dawkins are, uh, a problem, and emergence is stupid. "Systems theory is spirituality for misogynists." Why localism still matters. How (and why?) to organize with oppositional people. The particular failure of straight people in dealing with coronavirus. Drawing on a commonwealth to meet with each other. Whether or not conservative conspiracy theorists are Very Online or not. Why being bullied helps us in later life. How to do judo with QAnon.
The benefit of becoming an outsider to every group you're in. The opportunities of the ongoing conflict in the US."]
Lewis, Helen. "The History of Bad Ideas: Genius." Past Present Future (June 19, 2025) ["Today’s bad idea is ‘genius’, the label that has enabled all sorts of terrible behaviour through the ages. Writer and broadcaster Helen Lewis explains how and why the idea of genius gets misapplied to people and things that just aren’t. Why are geniuses meant to be tortured? Why are individual geniuses prized over the collaborations that lie behind most innovations? Why do we think that people who are brilliant at one thing will be good at everything else?" Book Description: You can tell what a society values by who it labels as a genius. You can also tell who it excludes, who it enables, and what it is prepared to tolerate. In The Genius Myth, Helen Lewis unearths how this one word has shaped (and distorted) our ideas of success and achievement.
Ultimately, argues Lewis, the modern idea of genius — a single preternaturally gifted individual, usually white and male, exempt from social niceties and sometimes even the law— has run its course. Braiding deep research with her signature wit and lightness, Lewis dissects past and present models of genius in the West, and reveals a far deeper and more interesting picture of human creativity than conventional wisdom allows. She uncovers a battalion of overlooked wives and collaborators. She asks whether most inventions are inevitable. She wonders if the Beatles would succeed today. And she confronts the vexing puzzle of Elon Musk, the tech disrupter who fancies himself as an ubermensch. Smart, funny, and provocative, The Genius Myth will challenge your assumptions about creativity, productivity, and innovation --- and forever alter your mental image of the so-called “genius.”]
MacFarlane. Robert. "Is a River Alive? – A Conversation with Robert Macfarlane." Emergence Magazine Podcast (May 20, 2025) ["In this conversation, acclaimed author Robert Macfarlane asks the ancient and urgent question: is a river alive? Understanding rivers to be presences, not resources, he immerses us in the ways they “irrigate our bodies, thoughts, songs, and stories,” and how we might recognize this within our imagination and ethics. He speaks about his latest book, and traces his journeys down the Río Los Cedros in Ecuador, the waterways of Chennai in India, and the Mutehekau Shipu in Nitassinan and how each brought him to experience these water bodies as willful, spirited, and sacred beings." Book description: "Hailed in the New York Times as “a naturalist who can unfurl a sentence with the breathless ease of a master angler,” Robert Macfarlane brings his glittering style to a profound work of travel writing, reportage, and natural history. Is a River Alive? is a joyful, mind-expanding exploration of an ancient, urgent idea: that rivers are living beings who should be recognized as such in imagination and law. Macfarlane takes readers on three unforgettable journeys teeming with extraordinary people, stories, and places: to the miraculous cloud-forests and mountain streams of Ecuador, to the wounded creeks and lagoons of India, and to the spectacular wild rivers of Canada—imperiled respectively by mining, pollution, and dams. Braiding these journeys is the life story of the fragile chalk stream a mile from Macfarlane’s house, a stream who flows through his own years and days. Powered by dazzling prose and lit throughout by other minds and voices, Is a River Alive? will open hearts, challenge perspectives, and remind us that our fate flows with that of rivers—and always has."]
Pagels, Elaine. "The Desire for Miracles and Wonder." Pulling the Thread (April 3, 2025) ["For decades, Elaine Pagels’s work has been changing the historical landscape of Christian religion. She’s also changed the way many people, including myself, see the world. Pagels is a religion professor at Princeton University, and the author of seminal, award-winning books like The Gnostic Gospels, and her newest, Miracles and Wonder. We talked about the surprising things she’s learned about Jesus and his followers; what his most radical teaching was; and why Jesus, this essentially unlikely traveling rabbi, emerged as the figure he did in our culture. And why this all still matters today. We talk about Pagels’s own story, her personal spiritual pull; as well as a vortex I went down in boarding school that made me understand how susceptible we all are to constraints that explain the world in overly reductive and simple ways. We reflect on how natural it is for us to want some sense of connection with a transcendent being. And how this has shaped the way Elaine approaches her work: not with the intention of destroying a framework, but looking for ways to expand it."]
Pappe, Ilan. "On Zionist Mythologies." Against the Grain (September 10, 2024) ["Since last autumn, we’ve witnessed an unspeakable crime perpetrated by the state of Israel with our tax dollars. And that crime has been rationalized by much of the U.S. media. Israeli scholar Ilan Pappe says that such justifications rest partly on a distorted view of the history of Palestine/Israel. He suggests that dismantling the mythologies about the formation and nature of the state of Israel is key to fighting for justice."]
Runciman, David. "Politics on Trial: Charles I vs Parliament." Past Present Future (June 12, 2025) ["Today’s political trial is perhaps the most consequential in English history: the trial and execution of King Charles I for treason in January 1649. How could a king commit treason when treason was a crime against the king? How could a court try a king when a king has no peers? How could anyone claim to speak for the people after a civil war when so many people had been on opposite sides? The answers to these questions would cost more than one person his life – but they would also change forever the prospect of holding tyrants to account."]
Verstraten, Peter. "'I Will Be Your Preacher Teacher': Babygirl." Senses of Cinema #114 (July 2025) ["In interviews Reijn has repeatedly mentioned that Babygirl was inspired by erotic thrillers from the 1980s and early 1990s. Her third feature film is a thorough exploration of the “dark thoughts” of protagonist Romy Mathis (Kidman), and in this article I will delve into the nature of her obscure desires. To a certain extent, Babygirl – the most debated film this year in the Netherlands – is a present-day successor to the so-called woman’s films from the 1940s; but, rather than expressing a “desire to desire”, the more emancipatory Babygirl comes closer to Slavoj Žižek’s call to “enjoy your symptom!”"]
West, Stephen. "The Late Work of Wittgenstein - Language Games." Philosophize This! #231 (June 28, 2025) ["Today we talk about the late work of Wittgenstein in Philosophical Investigations. We talk about the meaning of words. Augustine's theory. Forms of life. Rules and practices. Grammar. Geometry. Family resemblance. And the role of a philosopher on the other side of accepting this view of language."]
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