There was some frenzied reporting this weekend of a Brexit breakthrough over the big Irish border issue. But if some of the detail is lost on you, or you don’t quite get how it’s supposed to work, it’s possible that you’re not really meant to. As Anand Menon explains, there’s a lot of fudge flying across the negotiation table at the moment and, for the UK side at least, the language around the backstop needs to stay vague for as long as possible. Otherwise it could all fall apart.

Leading theories of consciousness claim the brain is fundamentally a processor of information – of ones and zeros, or bits. Robert Pepperell has other ideas. He argues that we should understand consciousness in terms of energy, not information – and that the closest we might have to visualising this is in a certain trippy video effect much used in 1990s clubs.

Fairly tales were always about the battles between good and evil – wicked witches were defeated by fairy godmothers and Cinderella always got her prince. But in reality these children’s fables had a darker side. And, as Sylvie Magerstaedt reports, the latest Disney interpretation of the Nutcracker and the Mouse King is no exception.

Next weekend it will be 100 years since the end of World War I. Yesterday, we marked the centenary of the death of poet Wilfred Owen – widely hailed as the greatest war poet – who was killed at the age of 25. Through all of this week we will be discussing the legacy and impact of a conflict that was supposed to be the “War to end all Wars”.

Contact us here to have your event listed.

For sponsorship opportunities, email us here