Showing results by author "Tom Phillips" in All Categories

We live in a 'post-truth' age, we're told. The US has a president who openly lies on a daily basis (or who doesn't even know what's true, and doesn't care). The internet has turned our everyday lives into a misinformation battleground. People don't trust experts any more. But was there ever really a golden age of truth-telling? As the editor of the UK's leading independent fact-checker, Tom Phillips deals with complete bollocks every day.

From the Satanic Panic to the anti-vaxx movement, it's always been human nature to believe we're being lied to by the powers that be (and sometimes, to be fair, we absolutely are). But while it can be fun to indulge in a bit of Deep State banter on the family Whatsapp group, recent times have shown us that some of these theories have taken on a life of their own—and in our dogged quest for the truth, it appears we might actually be doing it some damage.

In the 70,000 years that modern human beings have walked this earth, we've come a long way. Art, science, culture, trade - on the evolutionary food chain, we're real winners. But, frankly, it's not exactly been plain sailing, and sometimes - just occasionally - we've managed to really, truly, quite unbelievably f--k things up. From Chairman Mao's Four Pests Campaign to the sinking of the Titanic; from the American Dustbowl to the world's leading superpower electing a reality TV mogul as President...it's pretty safe to say that, as a species, we haven't exactly grown wiser with age.

This book is about the apocalypse, and how humans have always believed it to be very f--king nigh. Across thousands of years, we'll meet weird cults, failed prophets and mass panics, holy warriors leading revolts in anticipation of the last days, and suburbanites waiting for aliens to rescue them from a doomed Earth. We'll journey back to the 'worst period to be alive', as the world reeled from a simultaneous pandemic and climate crisis. And we'll look to the future to ask the unnerving question: how might it all end?

Los humanos contemporáneos han recorrido un largo camino en sus 70,000 años de paso por la tierra. Arte, ciencia, cultura, comercio: en la cadena evolutiva somos verdaderos ganadores. Pero lo cierto es que no siempre ha sido un viaje fácil y, a veces, muy puntualmente, hemos llegado a pifiarla de verdad.

Conversations about the issues we face while defining and shaping what it personally means to be masculine. We talk about coping with anger and stress, parenting and fatherhood, relationships and friendships, and everything else involved in molding masculinity.