Psychology
Are you tingle-minded? The rapid rise of ASMR
I once had a flatmate called Tom, who behaved very oddly when our cleaner came round. On mornings when she…
Is the judiciary really so bad at judging character?
When I had a cough last week, my son Joe, who has autism, shouted at me and covered his ears.…
Levitating basketball players: investigating the psychic in sport
Years ago, a friend persuaded me that a reviewer should almost never give a book a bad review. Most books,…
The personality test that conned the world
The other day in the Guardian’s Blind Date column, two participants, or victims, finished off an account of their frightful…
My ex-lover’s T-shirt can join the other tragic tat in the Museum of Broken Relationships
I loved a man. But our affair was nasty, brutish and short. Copious weeping was my un-tart retort. All that’s…
The subtle art of showing off at work
This has been an interesting year for me. Back in January, I took up a full-time job as director of…
The rich literature of the game of poker
According to the subtitle, this is a collection of ‘short stories of long nights at the poker table’. Were that…
Help over the hump
Losing our way in life’s trackless forest, whither should we turn for solace and advice? Wisdom used to be the…
Generation Snowflake: how we train our kids to be censorious cry-babies
Another week, another spate of barmy campus bans and ‘safe space’ shenanigans by a new breed of hyper–sensitive censorious youth.…
Warning: rationality could be bad for your health
Almost every popular commercial product owes its success to two different qualities. First, it does the job it is ostensibly…
What could Muslim women do within 48 miles of home? Almost everything
Secrets of the stars The astrologer Jonathan Cainer died after beginning his last horoscope for his own star sign: ‘We’re…
Why it makes sense to buy your banker lunch
We recently moved -offices from Canary Wharf to Blackfriars bridge. When you move after a long time in one place,…
Books aren’t medicine. They’re more powerful than that
Who can forget the terrible climax of Howards End, when Leonard Bast is killed by a deluge of books? Death…
It’s not work that’s stressful. It’s offices
In the 1920s, the anthropologist Margaret Mead studied the people of New Guinea. She noticed that they hunted birds and…
What makes Argos worth £1.4 billion? I reckon I know
When I was at school in the 1970s, some of the richer kids would come back from their summer holidays…
Always obey your satnav? Then you can vote rationally on the EU
In many ways a satnav is a miraculous device. A network of US military satellites more than 10,000 miles above…
Are all moody teenagers potential Columbine killers?
On an April morning in 1999, two teenagers, Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold, walked into Columbine High School in Colorado…
Keith Moon’s wedding-night abseil and other marvellous false memories
It’s the only thing Bianca Jagger and I have in common: we’ve both been victims of false memory. You almost…
The 5 per cent of people who decide everything (and how to be one of them)
What happens when 95 per cent of people like something, but 5 per cent of people prefer something else? You might think…
No golf, no bridge, scared of champagne – it’s tough being a leftie
At a party recently I started talking to a friendly, charming woman and we established early on that she was…
How contactless cards will change the world (much more than you think)
I am one of those annoying, mildly claustrophobic people who sit at the end of a row in cinemas. There…
Dinners for beginners
Never mind teaching children to cook: they need to be taught to eat. Obvious? Totally, but this is the choosing…
A morally dubious mix of Candid Camera and Fawlty Towers: Pushed to the Edge reviewed
Never a man tortured by self-doubt, Derren Brown introduced his latest special Pushed to the Edge (Channel 4, Tuesday) as…
What does it really mean to have a tyrannical father?
What was it like, asks Jay Nordlinger, to have Mao as your father, or Pol Pot, or Papa Doc? The…
The contagious madness of the new PC
It’s becoming pretty clear, as the year rolls on, that some of our brightest youngsters have gone round the bend.…
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