Trump and Biden shouldn’t fear death

Until a couple of weeks ago, the American electorate faced a choice between a presidential candidate probably suffering from early dementia and one afflicted by advanced narcissism. Should the finger hovering over the nuclear button belong to a senile Commander-in-Chief …

The horror of doppelgangers

A TV interviewer once asked an astronomer whether he thought there was life elsewhere in the universe. “Look,” replied the astronomer, “somewhere in the universe at this very moment, someone looking very much like you is asking that question of …

The Unabomber never grew up

The Unabomber and I share several connections. Both of us hold PhDs, are of Eastern European descent, and attempted to escape the dismal modern world by fleeing to remote locations in western Montana — he after leaving academia, me just …

How grief made me a person

This is an edited extract from Faith, Hope and Carnage, the distillation of more than 40 hours of candid conversation between Nick Cave and Seán O’Hagan.

Nick Cave: I do have certain memories of the night Arthur died. Yet when …