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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