Category Archives: Human Interest

08Sep/22

Digital nomads have rejected the office and now want to replace the nation state. But there is a darker side to this quest for global freedom

Dave Cook, UCL

A ‘network state’ is ideologically aligned but geographically decentralised. The people are spread around the world in clusters of varying size, but their hearts are in one place.

In June 2022 Balaji Srinivasan, former chief technology officer of the Coinbase cryptocurrency exchange, published an ebook entitled The Network State: How To Start a New Country. It is the latest in a flurry of utopian visions by self-styled digital visionaries, crypto believers and web 3.0 evangelists who are lining up to declare the death of the traditional concept of countries and nationhood.

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02Sep/22

happiness curve is wrong: many people do not get happier as they get older

David Bartram, University of Leicester

On average, happiness declines as we approach middle age, bottoming out in our 40s but then picking back up as we head into retirement, according to a number of studies. This so-called U-shaped curve of happiness is reassuring but, unfortunately, probably not true.

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19Aug/22

What Netflix documentary The Most Hated Man on the Internet gets right (and wrong) about ‘revenge porn’

Jennifer Grant, University of Portsmouth

The most hated man on the internet, according to a new Netflix docuseries, is Hunter Moore. The convicted criminal and self-described “professional life ruiner” Moore enabled the non-consensual distribution of thousands of private images by founding “revenge porn” website Is Anyone Up?.

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17Aug/22

Fathom’s First Catholic Feature Film, SLAVES AND KINGS, Opens Nationwide August 22 & August 23

The new feature film SLAVES AND KINGS produced by the Claretians and Stellarum Films, directed by Pablo Moreno (Luz de Soledad, Poveda) and starring Antonio Reyes (The Ministry of Time, Gran Hotel), Alba Recondo (La Brujas de E’lente), and Carlos Canas (Luz de Soledad, Drug Squad), is set to premiere in movie theaters nationwide via Fathom Events and Bosco Films on August 22 (English) and August 23 (Spanish). Watch the official trailer here. Continue reading

12Jul/22

How much money do people want to achieve their ideal life? Our research gave a surprising result

Paul Bain, University of Bath

Money can’t buy happiness. Many of us are told this at some point in our lives, but that doesn’t seem to stop many people from wanting more of it – even very rich people. The question is, how much money do we each need to satisfy our desires?

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01Jul/22

Death literacy: why it’s important to talk about dying

Lisa Graham-Wisener, Queen’s University Belfast

When it comes to talking about death, we have no shortage of euphemisms. This is perhaps most famously illustrated in Monty Python’s dead parrot sketch from 1971. A pet shop worker insists to a customer that his new parrot is “not dead but resting, stunned, pining for the fjords, kipping on his back, tired and shagged out after a long squawk”. The customer responds: “It is an ex-parrot, deceased, gone to the choir invisible, is pushing up the daisies, demised, passed on, is no more, has ceased to be. It’s expired and gone to see its maker, is a bereft of life, late parrot that rests in peace.”

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28Jun/22

Fast Buds: German cannabis legalisation will open the door to home cultivation

In a potentially game-changing development for the cannabis industry, the German government has confirmed its plans to legalise the sale of recreational cannabis in the coming months. Continue reading