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Editor's note
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When I turned up for a meeting with Pablo de Orellana and Nick Michelsen at their King’s College London office a few months ago, I didn’t expect to have quite as fascinating a time as I did. Their research for the past two years has involved an in-depth historical analysis of New Right ideology and theory, and so I was expecting to have a valuable, but rather dry and theoretical chat. Instead, I left our meeting quite wishing we’d gone for a pint.
They told me stories of marching the streets of Paris with the militant far-right group Génération Identitaire; their meeting with Charles, a young French man terrified by what he sees as the degeneration of Western culture; and explained why the comparisons of the New Right with fascism are inaccurate and unhelpful. They have traced the ideology that is fuelling the extreme nationalism, racism and sexism they saw in the streets to an unlikely source: Maurice Barrès, a French man born 150 years ago. They write about this research in the latest of our new long read series, Insights. It’s a must read if you want to better understand the New Right – and how to counter it.
We published another Insights piece this week about Kiritimati, a tiny coral island in the Pacific which was nuked multiple times by the British during the Cold War. Becky Alexis-Martin spent some time there collecting the stories of the unwitting Pacific islanders and British veterans who were far from prepared for what these nuclear tests would mean for them – and explains how the legacies of this dark period of British history are still
seen today, at a time when the island, like other “drowning nations”, is also threatened by climate change.
And don’t miss NASA’s upcoming mission to Saturn’s moon Titan, which could reveal secrets about the origin of life, and five reasons why English speakers are so bad at learning other languages. And if
you’re planning on mowing your lawn this weekend, think again: how about creating a wildflower garden instead?
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Josephine Lethbridge
Interdisciplinary Editor
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Twitter/NigelFarage
Pablo de Orellana, King's College London; Nicholas Michelsen, King's College London
We are living through the latest battle in a 300-year long ideological war over the meaning of humanity itself.
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Kyung Muk Lim/Shutterstock.com
Becky Alexis-Martin, Manchester Metropolitan University
The British nuclear weapon tests on Kiritimati (or Christmas) Island had profound and lasting cultural consequences for both atomic veterans and local islanders.
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Artist’s impression of the Dragonfly landing.
NASA
Christian Schroeder, University of Stirling
Titan may host primitive lifeforms and could tell us how life arose on our own planet.
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ivosar via Shutterstock
Michelle Sheehan, Anglia Ruskin University
Britons are notoriously bad at learning other languages. Here are some of the things that they find difficult.
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Sean Xu/Shutterstock
Adam Bates, Nottingham Trent University
Wildflowers, bees and butterflies – your lawn is a vibrant ecosystem waiting to be unleashed.
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Sam Carr, University of Bath
Parenting: attachment is not, and has never been, the only way.
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Aristea Koukiadaki, University of Manchester; Geoff Pearson, University of Manchester
Survey of 3,000 players in 33 different countries outlines how difficult it is for women footballers.
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Josefine Hirschfeld, University of Birmingham
Oil pulling is a useful addition to toothbrushing.
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Sarah Thebaud, University of California, Santa Barbara; Leah Ruppanner, University of Melbourne; Sabino Kornrich, Emory University
Dirt blindness is used by some to excuse men for spending a third as much time as women cleaning. A new study shows it's a myth.
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Daniel Brown, Nottingham Trent University
Did you know it's a myth that Teflon came out of NASA?
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Featured events
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University of Portsmouth, Portsmouth, Hampshire, PO1 3DE, United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland — University of Portsmouth
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Berrill Lecture Theatre, Walton Hall, The Open University, MK6 7AA, Milton Keynes, Buckinghamshire, MK6 7AA, United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland — The Open University
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The Forum, Streatham Campus, Exeter, Devon, EX4 4QJ, United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland — University of Exeter
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University of Essex, Wivenhoe Park, Colchester, Essex, CO4 3SQ, United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland — University of Essex
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